* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download Discourse
Symbolic interactionism wikipedia , lookup
Social network (sociolinguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Social Darwinism wikipedia , lookup
Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship wikipedia , lookup
Multiliteracy wikipedia , lookup
Style (sociolinguistics) wikipedia , lookup
Anti-intellectualism wikipedia , lookup
Community development wikipedia , lookup
Social psychology wikipedia , lookup
Social theory wikipedia , lookup
Social constructionism wikipedia , lookup
Sociological theory wikipedia , lookup
Social perception wikipedia , lookup
State (polity) wikipedia , lookup
History of social work wikipedia , lookup
Social computing wikipedia , lookup
Unilineal evolution wikipedia , lookup
Sociology of knowledge wikipedia , lookup
Tribe (Internet) wikipedia , lookup
Social group wikipedia , lookup
History of the social sciences wikipedia , lookup
Sociolinguistics wikipedia , lookup
Public rhetoric wikipedia , lookup
S Welcome to All Course Code: E 300 A Course Name English Language and Literacy Language and Power Norman Fairclough Ch1: Introduction: critical language study The critical study of language raises consciousness of exploitative social relations and the role of power and ideology. Critical language study analyses social interactions in a way that focuses upon their linguistic elements uncovering the role of social relationships and their effect. Approaches to language study Earlier approaches to language study include: Linguistics Sociolinguistics Pragmatics Cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence Conversation and discourse analysis. Linguistics The term linguistics refers to all the branches of language study which are inside the academic discipline of linguistics. It is sometimes termed “linguistics proper” when it is the study of the sound system of a language (phonology), the grammatical structure of words (morphology), sentence and word order (syntax) and more formal aspects of meaning (semantics). Linguistics is accused of holding a narrow conception of language study and of giving little attention to actual speech or writing. It perceives language as a potential, a system, an abstract competence, rather than describing actual language practice. Linguistics assumes an idealized view of language which isolates it from the social and historical matrix outside of which it cannot actually exist. Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics developed under the influence of anthropology and sociology and looked at socially conditioned variation in language. Sociolinguistics focuses on the relations without attending to the social conditions that made them and the conditions surrounding their change. Pragmatics Anglo-American pragmatics is closely associated with analytical philosophy, particularly with the works of Austin and Searle on “speech acts”. The key insight is that language is seen as a form of action: that spoken or written utterances constitute the performance of speech acts such as promising or asking or asserting or warning, or on a different plane, referring to people or things and implicating meanings which are not overtly expressed. The idea of uttering as acting is an important one that is also central to CLS. The main weakness of pragmatics from a critical point of view is its “Individualism”: action is thought of as emanating wholly from the individual and is often conceptualized in terms of the strategies adopted by the individual speaker to achieve his or her goals. Cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence Discrepancies exist between what is said and what is meant, and with how people work out what is meant from what is said. Processes of comprehension and processes of production are investigated by cognitive psychologists and workers in artificial intelligence concerned with computer simulation of production and comprehension matching features of utterance at various levels with representations stored in long-term memory. These representations are prototypes for a very diverse collection of things referred to as Members’ Resources or MR. MRs are socially determined and ideologically shaped. The processes of production and comprehension are essential to an understanding of the interrelations of language, power and ideology. Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis Conversation analysis is one prominent approach within discourse analysis that has been developed by a group of sociologists known as “ethnomethodologists”. Ethnomethodologists study how people organize and understand their everyday activity. Conversation analysis studies natural conversation in terms of linguistic characteristics and use. CA has demonstrated that conversation is systematically structured, and that there is evidence of the orientation of participants to these structures in the ways in which they design their own conversational turns and react to those of others. Conversation analysis, however, has been resistant to making connections between “micro” structures of the conversation and the “macro” structures of social institutions and societies. Ch 2: Discourse as Social Practice Language is centrally involved in power and struggle for power through its ideological properties. Language and discourse: Language is conceived of in terms of discourse: language structures influenced by social practice that is determined by social structures. Discourse and orders of discourse: discourse is determined by socially constituted orders of discourse; sets of conventions associated with social institutions. Class and power: orders of discourse are ideologically shaped by power relations in social institutions. Dialectic of structures and practices: discourse has effects upon social structures as well as being determined by them. There is a need to conceive of actual discourse as a manifestation of unequal relationships between participants who are firmly in control, who do not need to mitigate their discourse and whose language exchange is reduced to minimal phrases. Control is exercised with no acknowledgement of the other’s contribution, interruptions and allowing no interruptions to own turn. Control is exercised with minimal answers and closing off interruption. Discourse properties are determined by social conditions and the nature of the relationship. Social conditions determine properties of discourse, the process of producing and interpreting texts and how these cognitive processes are socially shaped and relative to social conventions. The focus is two-fold: the social determination of language use and the linguistic determination of society. Language and discourse Language is conceived of as a form of social practice. Langue and Parole Saussure regarded “Langue” as a system or code that is prior to actual language use. “Parole” is determined by individual choices. Language use “parole” is characterized by extensive linguistic variation. Sociolinguistics has shown that this variation is not, as Saussure thought, a product of individual choice, but a product of social differentiation: Language varies according to the social identities of people in interaction, their socially defined purposes, social setting, and so on. So, Saussure’s individualistic notion of “Parole” is unsatisfactory and instead the term discourse is used to commit to the view that language use is socially (not individually) determined. Saussure understood that “Langue” is something unitary and homogeneous throughout a society. A variety of language is standardized as a result of economic, political and cultural influences in a particular historical epoch. What we really have is politically motivated linguistic theory. Saussure’s langue/parole distinction is a general one underlying social conventions and actual use. Langue and its conventions of use are the site of power struggle and diversity, rather than being unitary and homogeneous. Discourse as social practice Language is part of society, not external to it. It is a socially conditioned process. Linguistic phenomena are social in the sense that whenever people speak, listen, write or read, they do so in ways which are determined socially, and which have social effects. Social phenomena are linguistics, in the sense that the language activity which goes on in social contexts is not merely a reflection or expression or expression of social processes and practices, but is part of those processes and practices. The term Discourse is used to refer to the whole process of social interaction, of which the text is just a part. The process of production, for which the text is a product and the process of interpretation for which the text is a resource are also included in the analysis. Discourse involves social conditions which can be specified as social conditions of production and social conditions of interpretation. These social conditions relate to three different levels of social organization: - The level of the social situation or the immediate social environment in which the discourse occurs. - The level of the social institution which constitutes a wider matrix for the discourse. - The level of society as a whole. These social conditions shape the Members’ Resources (MR) that people bring to course production and interpretation, which in turn shape the way in which texts are produced and interpreted. Discourse as text, interaction and context: In seeing language as discourse and as social practice, one is committing oneself not just to analyzing texts, not just to analyzing processes of production and interpretation, but to analyzing the relationship between texts, processes and their social conditions: the immediate conditions of the situational context and the more remote conditions of institutional and social structures. The relationship between texts, interactions and contexts corresponds to three dimensions of critical discourse analysis: - Description: is the stage which is concerned with the formal properties of the text, identifying and labeling formal features of a text and transcribing speech. - Interpretation: is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction. The text is seen as the product of a process of production and a resource in the process of interpretation. The fours of interpretation of the text influences the way of transcribing it. - Explanation: is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context with the social determination of the processes of production and interpretation: interactions, social orders of discourse, social structures which shape them and their social effects. Verbal and visual language: Texts are essentially verbal but talk is interwoven with gestures, facial expressions, movement, posture, to such an extent that it cannot be properly understood without reference to these “visuals”. Discourse and orders of discourse: Social conditions of discourse and the determination of discourse by social structures and the way in which actual discourse is determined by underlying conventions of discourse, termed Orders of discourse by Michel Foucault, embody particular ideologies. Social preconditions for action prescribe that the individual is able to act only in so far as there are social conventions to act within. Discourse and practice are constrained by interdependent networks (orders): orders of discourse and social orders. The term social order refers to the particular social space (domain) associated with various types of practice. Social order Order of discourse Types of practice Types of discourse Actual Practice Actual discourse Social orders and orders of discourse: The order of discourse of a social institution structures constituent discourses in a particular way. The order of discourse of the society structures the orders of discourse of the various social institutions in a particular way. How discourses are structured in a given order of discourse, and how structuring change over time, are determined by changing relationships of power at the level of the social institution or of the society. Discourse draws upon predictable discourse types associated with social institutions. Class and power The social conditions of discourse at the societal and institutional levels suggest how social structures at these levels determine discourse. The way in which orders of discourse are structured and the ideologies which they embody are determined by the relationship of power in particular social institutions There is a need to be sensitive in critical discourse analysis to properties of society and institutions associated with the text under examination. Ideology Institutional practices that people draw upon often embody assumptions (or ideologies) that directly or indirectly legitimize existing power relations. Practices become naturalized and types of discourse function to sustain unequal power relations. Power relations, class relations and social struggle Power relations are always relations of struggle. Social struggle occurs between groupings. It may be more or less intense and may appear in more or less overt forms, but all social developments and any exercise of power take place under conditions of social struggle in a society where power relations are characterized by monopoly. In modern societies, there is a special relation between ideology and exercise of power by consent as opposed to coercion, but social control is increasingly practiced. Discourse is the favorite vehicle of ideology and therefore control by consent. Dialectic of structures and practices The relationship between discourse and social structures is dialectical in the way that discourse assures such importance in terms of power relationship and power struggle. Social practice does not merely reflect a reality. Social practice is in an active relationship to reality and changes in reality. Social structures determine discourse and are also a product of discourse. Social roles become subject positions, part of social structures. Discourse types determine discourse practice which reproduces discourse types. Social subjects are constrained to operate within the subject positions set up in discourse types. Being constrained is a precondition for being enabled. Discourse types are a resource for subjects, but the activity of combining them is a creative one. Orders of discourse embody ideological assumptions and these sustain and legitimize existing relations of power. Social institutions has the hidden agenda of reproducing class relations and other higher level social structures, in addition to the overt agenda, e.g. educational, work flow, institutional, etc. In discourse people can be legitimizing or delegitimizing particular power relations without necessarily being conscious of doing so. Chapter 3: Discourse and Power. In exploring the various dimensions of the relations of language and power we focus on two major aspects: 1- power in discourse, and 2- power behind discourse Power in discourse is concerned with discourse as a phase where relations of power are exercised and enacted. Examples are Face-to-Face spoken discourse, cross-cultural discourse and the discourse of the mass media exercising hidden power. Power behind discourse, reflecting dimensions of the social orders of social institutions or societies, are themselves shaped and constrained by relations of power. Examples are the effects of power in the differentiation of dialects into standard and nonstandard, the conventions associated with particular discourse types, e.g. classroom discourse. The final argument underlines the view that power, wherever it be “in” or “behind” discourse is never definitively held by any person or social grouping, because power can be won or exercised through the dynamics of social interaction in which it may also be lost. Fairclough takes a Marxist view in interpreting it all from the perspective of social struggle of classes. 1-Power in Discourse Face-to-face discourse where participants are unequal reflect an unequal encounter. Manifestations of this aspect are found in the number of interruptions by the powerful participant directed to constrain and to control the contribution of the non-powerful. Three types of constraints are exercised and enacted: constraints on content : enacted in the discourse constraints on relations: enacted in the discourse constraints on the subject position: that people can occupy in the discourse. All of these constraints are very closely connected, they overlap All the directive speech acts (orders and questions) come from the powerful participant. The non-powerful has the obligation to comply and answer, in accordance with the subordinate relation of his role. The constraints derive from the conventions of the discourse type. It is the prerogative of the powerful participant to determine which discourse type(s) may be legitimately drawn upon. Thus, in addition to directly constraining contributions, powerful participants can further constrain discourse by opting for a particular discourse type. Once a discourse type has been selected, its conventions would constrain and regulate the flow of the interaction/discourse exchanged. However, the more powerful participants may allow or disallow varying degrees of latitude to less powerful participants. Cross-cultural encounters: are unequal encounters where possibilities for culturally-based miscommunication are ample. In gate-keeping encounters, e.g. job interview, gate-keepers come from the dominant culture they constrain the discourse types which can be drawn upon to those of the dominant grouping, including all expected conventions of the exchange, linguistically (appropriate turn-taking strategies, phatic communion, sequencing of information, direct/indirect responses etc.) and extra-linguistically (gaze, proxemics, head movement body position, etc. ). Media discourse is characterized by the use of hidden power for participants who are separated in time and place. The discourse used in television, ratio, film and newspaper involve hidden relations of power. Media discourse is one-sided as opposed to face-to-face interaction, where discourse is exchanged between two participants. In Media discourse, producers exercise power over consumers by determining what is included and excluded and how events are represented. An interesting manifestation of power in mass media is the perspective whose perspective is adopted. In British media, the balance of sources and perspectives and ideology is overwhelmingly in favour of existing power-holders. Media operate as a means for the expression and reproduction of the power of the dominant class and bloc. The mediated power of existing power-holders is also a hidden power, because it is implicit in the practices of the media rather than being explicit. Linguistic strategies reflecting power include Nominalization and causality. A process is expressed as a noun, with the effect of hiding crucial aspects of the process through the grammar form selected. Media discourse is able to exercise manipulative and powerful influence on social reproduction, but people do negotiate their relationship to the ideal subjects proposed by media discourse. However the exercise of media power by power holders is perceived as professional practices. Hidden power can sometimes be a characteristic of face-to-face discourse. A close connection between requests and power is identified, as the right to request someone to do something often derives from having power. There are however, many grammatically different forms for making requests. Some are direct and mark the power relationship explicitly, while others are indirect and leave it more implicit. Direct requests are typically expressed grammatically in imperative sentences. Indirect requests can be expressed grammatically in questions of various degrees of elaborateness and corresponding indirectness, including hints. The “power behind discourse” is also a hidden power, in that the shaping of orders of discourse by relations of power is not generally apparent to people. 2- Power behind discourse The social order of discourse (the connections of the exchange) is put together and held together as a hidden effect of power. Example, standardization, whereby a particular social dialect, is elevated into what is called a standard, or even a national, language. Standard Language Standardization is a part of a much wider process of economic, political and cultural unification. We can think of its growth as a long process of colonization, whereby it gradually “took over” the major social institutions of literature, government and administration, law, religion and education. Standard English emerges as the language of political and cultural power, and as the language of the politically and culturally powerful. Standard English was regarded as correct English, and other social dialects were stigmatized not only in terms of correctness but also in terms which indirectly reflected on the lifestyles, morality and so forth of their speakers. Standard English moved to prescription through codification and was portrayed as the national language, although it remains a social dialect. The power behind discourse: a discourse type portray through the discourse conventions particular power relations associated with the discourse of the participants. Power and access to discourse. The constitution of orders of discourse and their component discourse types brings an interest in the study of who has access to them and who has the power to impose and enforce constraints on access. There is a lot of constraints on access to various types of speech and writing. Religious rituals, medical examination, lessons, litigation are examples of discourse types that are constrained. Access to a high level of literacy is a precondition for a variety of socially rewarded goods including well-paid jobs. However, literacy is not equally distributed. There is constraint on access and the exclusion of people from particular types of discourse, who remain unfamiliar with the conventions. Constraints on access: formality Formality is best regarded as a property of social situations which has effects upon the language forms used. It manifests three types of constraints associated with the exercise of power: a- Constraints on contents: the discourse in formal situations is subject to constraints on topic, relevance and fixed interactive routines. b- Constraints on subjects: the social identities of those qualified to occupy subject positions in the discourses of formal situations are defined. c- Constraints on relations: formal situations are characterized by an exceptional orientation to and making of position, status, and “face”. Power and social distance are overt and consequently there is a strong tendency towards politeness. Politeness is based upon recognition of differences of power and degrees of social distance. Moreover, consistency of language forms is also a characteristic of formal situations that influence the vocabulary that has to be selected from a restricted set throughout. Recently, there has been a shift from the explicit making of power relationship in a discourse towards a system based upon solidarity rather than power (tu/vous) hiding power is a strategy that is sometimes used for manipulative reasons. Conclusion Discourse is part of social practice and contributes to the reproduction of social structures. If., therefore, there are systematic constraints on the contents of discourse and on the social relationships enacted in it and the social identities enacting them, these can be expected to have long term effects on the knowledge and beliefs social relationships and social identities of the institutions and societies. Constraints Contents Subjects Social Relationships Structural effects Relations Knowledge and Beliefs Social Identities Ch 4: Discourse, common sense and ideology This section discusses the relationship of ideology to discourse. Conventions that are drawn upon in discourse embody ideological assumptions that were naturalized to become common sense. These have the function of sustaining existing power relations. Harold Garfinkel (a sociologist) has argued that the world is built upon assumptions and expectations which control both the actions of members of a society and their interpretation of the actions of others. Such assumptions and expectations are implicit, back grounded and taken for granted. The effectiveness of ideology depends on a considerable degree on it being merged with this common-sense background to discourse and other forms of social interaction. Coherence of the discourse is dependent on discourse of commonsense: between the sequential parts of a text and between the parts of the text and the world. Common sense assumptions and expectations of the interpreter are drawn from the members’ resources (MR). Texts presuppose a view of the world that is common sense for some people, but strikes others as odd. The producer of a text constructs the text as an interpretation of the world. Formal features of the text are traces of that interpretation. The traces constitute cues for the text interpreter, who draws upon his assumptions and expectations (MR/conventions). Thus text interpretation is the interpretation of interpretation. Aspects of coherence: implicit assumptions chain together successive parts of text through supplying explicit propositions and inferencing. The operation of ideology is seen in terms of ways of constructing texts which constantly and cumulatively “impose assumptions: upon text interpreters and text producers, typically without either being aware of it. Common sense and ideology: “Common sense” is substantially, though not entirely, ideological common sense in the service of sustaining unequal relations of power. Many assumptions are taken for granted. If one becomes aware that a particular aspect of common sense is sustaining power inequalities at one’s own expense, it ceases to be commonsense, and may cease to have the capacity to sustain power inequalities, i.e. to function ideologically. Ideologies are brought to discourse not as explicit elements of the text, but as the background assumptions which lead the text producer to “textualize” the world in a particular way. Texts do not typically spout ideology. They so position the interpreter through their cues that he brings ideologies to the interpretation of the texts and reproduce them in the process. Diverse ideologies come from differences in position, experience and interests between social groupings, which enter into relationship with each other in terms of power. These groupings may be social classes, women versus men, groupings based on ethnicity. Groupings of a more “local” sort are associated with a particular institution. For instance, in education, children, parents, and teachers, and groupings within each of these (based upon age, class, political allegiance, etc.) may in principle develop different educational ideologies. Ideological struggle takes place in language. Language itself is a stake in social struggle as well as a site of social struggle. Having the power to determine things like which word meanings or which linguistic and communicative norms are “legitimate” or “correct” or “appropriate” is an important aspect of social and ideological power, and therefore a focus of ideological struggle. -Seeing existing language practices and orders of discourse as reflecting the victories and defeats of past struggle, and as stakes which are struggled over, is, along with the complementary concept of “power behind discourse”, a major characteristic of critical language study (CLS). In politics, each opposing party or political force tries to win acceptance for its own discourse type as the preferred and “natural” one for talking and writing about the state, government, forms of political action and all aspects of polities, as well as for demarcating politics itself from other domains. The primary domains in which social struggle takes place are the social institutions and the situation types which each institution recognizes. A dominated type may be in a relationship of opposition to a dominant one. Michael Halliday calls one type of oppositional discourse the anti-language. Anti-languages are set up and used as conscious alternatives to the dominant or established discourse types. Examples would be the language of the criminal underworld or the non-standard social dialect of a minority. Another possibility is for the dominated discourse type to be contained by a dominant one. Naturalization and the generation of common sense: ideologies come to be ideological common sense to the extent that the discourse types which embody them become naturalized. This depends on the power of the social groupings whose ideologies and whose discourse types are at issue. The learning of a dominant discourse type comes to be seen as a question of acquiring the necessary skills or techniques to operate in the institution: the appearance in the discourse and the essence. Ideology and meaning: we treat the meaning of a word and other linguistic expressions) as a simple matter of fact. Because of the considerable status accorded by common sense to the dictionary, there is a tendency to generally underestimate the extent of variation in meaning systems within a society. The dictionary is a product of the process of codification of standard languages and thus closely tied to the notion that words have fixed meanings. Meanings vary between social dialects. They also vary ideologically. The meaning of a word is not an isolated and independent thing. Words and other linguistic expressions enter into many sorts of relationships – relationships of similarity, contrasts, overlap and inclusion. The meaning of a single word depends very much on the relationship of that word to others. Interactional routines are associated with different discourse types. Subjects and situations: the French philosopher Althusser pointed to an important connection between common sense assumptions about meaning and common sense assumptions about social identity (or the subject), perceived as ‘commonsensically’ given, rather than socially produced. The socialization of people involves coming to be paced in a range of subject positions. The social process of producing social subjects can be conceived of in terms of the positioning of people progressively over a period of years, in a range of subject positions. Social subjects are, in Gramsci’s words “composite personalities”. Foucault argues that the subject is dispersed among the various subject positions: “discourse is not the majestically (uncontested) unfolding of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined. The naturalization of the meanings of words is an effective way of constraining the contents of discourse, and in the long term, knowledge and beliefs. So, too, is the naturalization of situation types, which helps to consolidate particular images of the social order. The naturalization of interactional routines is an effective way of constraining the social relations which are enacted in discourse, and of constraining in the longer term a society’s system of social relationships. The naturalization of subject positions constrain subjects, and in the longer term, both contributes to the socialization of persons and to the delimitation of the “stock” of social identities in a given institution or society. Naturalization then, is the most formidable weapon in the armory of power, and also, a significant focus of struggle. Chapter 5: Critical Discourse Analysis Practice: Description In CDA textual samples contain features of vocabulary, grammar, punctuation as well as discourse features of turntaking, types of speech acts and the directness and indirectness of their expression. Close analysis of such features contribute to our understanding of power relations and ideology in discourse. Text analysis is part of discourse analysis. Text, interaction and social context contribute to three levels of corresponding CDA: Description of text Interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction, and explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context. The set of formal features in a specific text can be regarded as particular choices from among the options in vocabulary and grammar. In order to interpret the features it is generally necessary to take account of what other choices might have been made. Vocabulary: What experiential values do words have in terms of: Classification schemes in terms of which vocabulary is organized in discourse types. Wording Ideological significance Collocation Metaphorical transfer of a word or expression from one domain to another. Overworking shows preoccupation with some aspect of reality which may indicate that it is a focus of ideological struggle. Hyponymy in meaning relations is the case where the meaning of one word is included in the meaning of another word, e.g. family and society. Synonymy is where words have the same meaning. Antonymy is where the meaning of one word is incompatible with the meaning another, e.g. man and woman. What relational values do the words have? The text’s choice of wording depends on and help create social relationships between participants, as well as indicate features of the formality of the occasion. What expressive values do the words have in terms of negative and positive evaluation? What metaphors are used in terms of representing one aspect of experience in terms of another, and the ideological significance of such representation? Grammar What experiential values do grammar features have? What types of processes and participants predominate? Is agency unclear? Are processes what they seem. i.e. processes of one type appearing as processes of another type? - Are nominalizations used? - Is there absence of agents? - Are sentences active or passive? - Are sentences positive or negative? What relational values do grammatical features have? What modes (declarative, grammar questions, imperatives are used?) Are direct personal pronouns (you, we) used? And how? What expressive values do grammar features have Declarative may have the expressive value of a request. Grammar questions (wh-questions and yes/no questions)may have the value of a request for information or a suggestion - Imperatives may have the value of a suggestion (try moving the antenna) Different Speech Acts may be grammatical in the three modes. - Are there important features of expressive modality? Relational modality (writer’s authority) Expressive modality (truth and probability in representing reality, permission and obligation). - Use of pronouns of relational value (we/inclusive) (we/exclusive – writer’s reference) - How are sentences linked together What logical connectors are used (conjunctions) Are complex sentences characterized by coordination or subordination What means are used to refer inside and outside the text (nouns, articles)? Textual Structures - What interactional conventions are used? (organizational aspects of discourse). - Are there ways in which one participant is controlling the interaction? Interruptions, enforcing explicitness, controlling topic, formulation. Chapter 6: Critical Discourse Analysis Practice: Features of a text have experiential, relational, expressive and connective value. These are related to the three aspects of social practice which may be constrained by power (content, relations and subjects) and their associated structural effects (on knowledge and beliefs, social relationships and social identities). The relationship between text and social structures is an indirect and mediated one. Mediated by the discourse which the text is part of, because the values of textual features only become real and socially operative when they are embedded in social interaction, where texts are produced and interpreted against a background of common-sense assumptions (Members Resources MR). Discourse processes and their dependence on background assumption are the concern of the second stage of the procedure, interpretation. The relationship is mediated, secondly, by the social context of the discourse, because the discourses in which these values are embedded become real and socially operative as parts of institutional and societal processes of struggle. The relationship of discourses to processes of struggle and to power relations is the concern of the third stage of the procedure, explanation. Interpretation: Formal features of a text are “cues” which activate elements of interpreters’ assumptions. Many of these assumptions are ideological there are six levels of interpretation: - Two relate to the interpretation of context: 1. situational context: features of the physical situation, properties of the participants, representation of the societal and institutional social orders. 2. Intertextual context: participants assumptions based on the relation of the present discourse to previous discourses. This aspect determines what can be taken, agreed upon or disagreed with. 3. Surface utterances: the first level of text interpretation that involves knowledge of the language (phonology, grammar and vocabulary) 4. Meaning of utterance: the second level of interpretation that involves assigning meaning to the constituent parts of a text: sentences, semantic propositions. The analyst combines word meanings and grammar information and work to arrive at meanings for the whole proposition. They also draw upon pragmatic conventions which allow them to determine what speech acts an utterance is being used to perform. 5.Local coherence: the third level of interpretation establishes meaning connections between utterances, producing coherent local interpretations of pairs and sequences of them. 6. Text structure and point: Interpretation of text structure at level form is working out how a whole text hangs together, a text’s overall (global) coherence. This involves matching the text with one of a repertoire of schemata, or representation of characteristic patterns of organization associated with different types of discourse. Schema direct analyst to particular expected patterns or orders in the discourse (greeting, establishing a conversational topic, changing topics, closing off conversation, farewells). The point of a text is a summary interpretation of the text as a whole. The experiential aspect of the point of a text is its overall topic. (see also figure 6.1 page 119) Speech Acts Speech acts are a central aspect of pragmatics which is concerned with the meanings which participants in a discourse ascribe to elements of a text. The pragmatic properties characterize what the producer is doing: making a statement making a promise, threatening, warning, asking a question, giving an order etc. The producer can be simultaneously doing a number of things, and so single element can have multiple speech act values. The conventions for speech acts which form part of a discourse type embody ideological representations of subjects and their social relationships, asymmetries of rights and obligations between subjects, these may be embedded in asymmetrical rights to ask questions, request action, complain, and asymmetrical obligations. Frames, scripts and schemata Schemata are part of (MR) constituting interpretive procedures for the fourth level of text interpretation, mental representation of aspects of the world. Whereas schemata represent modes of social behaviour, frames represent entities that populate the natural and social world. A frame is whatever representation of a topic, a subject matter or referent within the activity. Related aspects are implicit assumptions, coherence and inferencing. Scripts represent the subjects who are involved in these activities and their relationships. They typify the ways in which specific classes of subjects behave towards each other and how they conduct relationships. There is overlap between all three categories because the three terms identify three very broad dimensions of a highly complex network of mental representation. Explanation The objective of the stage of explanation is to portray a discourse as part of a social process, as a social practice. Explanation has two dimensions: - processes of struggle - processes of power relations As processes of social struggles, they are contextualized in terms of the non-discourse struggles and the effects of these struggles on structures. As processes revealing power relations, these discourses are the outcome of struggles and are established by those in power. Chapter 7: Creativity and Struggle in Discourse Text production develops the concept of the subject in discourse, the subject as having paradoxically properties of being socially determined and yet susceptible to individual creativity. In the course of discussion we will be examining the discourse of Thatcherism. Producing Discourse Text production, social determination and creativity of the subject involve the resolution of problems of various sorts in their relationship to the world and to others: contents, relations and subjects. The problem of the producer may be problematised as to content where some discrepancy arises between the producer's commonsense (ideological) representation of the world, and the world itself when the producer's representation come into contact with other non-compatible representations. A familiar example is where a newspaper tries to deal with some event which appears to conflict with its normal way of representing that part of the world. A producer's position may be problematised in terms of relations in the sense of the social relations between producer and interpreter (s) (addressee, audience). An example might be an interaction where producer and addressee are of different genders. Mixed-gender interaction is widely problematic these days because of the increasingly contested relative social positions of men and women. The position of a producer may be problematised in terms of subjects either in terms of subject position or social identity of the producer or in terms of subject position or social identity of the interpreter(s). Example is the subject position of the teacher when students are narrowing the gap between themselves and their teachers in terms of attaining knowledge or qualifications. The same is true in situations where a politician is trying to maintain or create a commonality of ideology or allegiance among audience. These three types of problems in the position of a producer can be seen as a consequence of discourse conventions becoming destabilized or de-structured. In the destructuring of orders of discourse, relatively stable relationship between discourse types and order of discourse come to be interrupted. In other words, producers experience problems because the familiar ways of doing things are no longer straight forwardly available. Producers had to be creative and put together familiar discourse types in novel combinations. The formal features have experiential, relational and expressive values. Producers are to successfully resolve problems through restructuring and achieve harmonization of values where the novel combinations of discourse types come to be naturalized. Although the destructuring and restructuring of the orders of discourse affect individuals and involve individual creativity, their main determinants and effects lie outside the individual, in the struggle between social groupings. What are experienced as social problems can be interpreted socially as indicators of the destructuring of orders of discourse which occur in the course of social struggle. Discourse is a stake as well as a site of social struggle. Individual attempts to resolve problems can be interpreted as moves in social struggle towards the restructuring of orders of discourse. The creativity flourishes in particular social circumstance, when social struggles are constantly de-structuring orders of discourse, and the creativity of the individual is socially constitutive, in the sense that individual creative acts cumulatively establish restructured orders of discourse. The social and the individual, the determined and the creative are facets of a dialectical process of social fixation and transformation. Political Context of Thatcherism Britain has been affected for decades with a process of relative decline as an industrial nation and as a world power. In 1970, Britain suffered from a prolonged crisis in its economy resulting in a general social crisis that intensified industrial struggle, urban decay, crisis in services, upsurge in racism and a widespread division between social classes and genders. Conservative and Labour governments were both ineffectual in dealing with this crisis. Thatcherism was a radical response from the right to these problems and political failures. Thatcherism rejected post-war Conservatism and promised commitments to full employment and the welfare state (leftist slogan). To be able to fulfill its pledges, Thatcherism had to generate and promote new policies. The new mix between traditional Conservative political elements: authoritarian commitment to strengthening the state in defense, law and order, and control over money supply and trade unions was combined with neo-liberal policies of free market unconstrained by state interference. All this had to be "sold" through discourse to appeal to the ordinary citizen, through novel articulation to promote the novel restructurings. In their struggle with political opponents both within their own party as well as outside it, Thatcherites have problematised and deconstructed the political discourse of their opponents and attempted to impose their own restructuring. Thatcherites have been faced also with the problem of how to establish a subject position for a woman political leader in a social context characterized by institutionalized gender-differences (sexism). Articulatory problems included ''selling" the image of the leader: the way she sounds and the way she projects her image. Solutions were in the restructuring of the image and the ideologies. The way she sounds was restructured, with the help of professional tuition, to lower the pitch of her voice and opt for deep quality. She also reduced the speed of her speech to appear more like a statesperson. In terms of political image she had to restructure a feminine image that would also be behaving in a statesmanlike manner. The restructuring included tough, resolute, uncompromising and even aggressive political persona that does not keep down from confrontation with political opponents. The new restructuring needed o be promoted in discourse styles that cater for the content, relations and subject position. Content The content needed to deconstruct ideologies and reconstruct new ones that would be not only acceptable but necessary and successful. Relations Mrs Thatcher and the people: Discourse has to take account of the audience in terms of structuring the message, as well as introducing creativity in the interpretation of issues and ideologies. Mrs Thatcher presents herself as the "ordinary person" with ordinary concerns to establish solidarity with the audience. Configuration of her discourse reflects a subject position for the hearer that is constituted indirectly through the way in which Mrs Thatcher represents the experience, beliefs and aspirations of all the people (and therefore claiming their voice as well as representation). Discourse shows different relational values associated with the use of pronouns we (solidarity) and you. Textual features of relational modality of obligation (the use of must, have to, etc.) as well as expressive modality (certainty, probability, categorical truths) express toughness. There are also features when Mrs Thatcher reformulates the focus of the question to introduce a new aspect. Such textual features and discourse styles reflect power in language and discourse strategies used by people who control the discourse. Subject position: the woman political leader The subject position of a woman political leader had to appeal to both genders of the society. As a statesperson who cannot assume absolute masculine characteristics, there had to be restructuring of the characteristics of the leader: toughness, a deep voice and an honest stylish feminine appearance (groomed hair, professional suites). Subject position: the people Any political leader needs to have a social base whom it can claim to represent and can look to for support. Part of what is involve in restructuring subject position for the people who are the target of political discourse is to project onto them a configuration of assumptions, beliefs and values which accord with the novel mix of political elements and constitute authoritarian populism. This is done indirectly. Mrs Thatcher makes many claims in the text about the people which by implication position the audience as representative of the people, with Mrs Thatcher as their speaker. Mrs Thatcher produces lists f assertions, questions, noun phrases and cause-effect clauses, all linked by coordination to give equal weight. These are implicitly connected, with an invitation to the audience to be part of the reconstruction through interpreting the connections. Interpretation Interpretation is conducted by the receivers of the discourse type (audience). Through the process of interpretation audience or receivers of the discourse become part of the reconstruction and align themselves with the promoted ideologies and positions. Explanation Solidarity with the public and the synthetic personalization create a novel social identity that has been reconstructed through discourse types and strategies. Conclusion Discourse types and discourse strategies are characterized by a relationship of containment between novel ideologies and socially influential issues and determinants. This is evident in the case study of Thatcherite discourse. Chapter 8: Discourse in Social Change: Discourse is regarded in Critical Language Studies (CLS) as the reflection of social attitudes bringing about changes. Attention to discourse dimensions brings an awareness of the major social tendencies. A closer examination can determine what part discourse has, in the inception, development and consolidation of social change. Looking at the relationship between certain social tendencies and certain tendencies in orders of discourse can be very informing to linguists. Jurgen Habermas claims that there are systems that work to colonize people's lives. These can be economic; money and power, the state and institutions. Colonization is done through discourse. A societal order of discourse is a particular structuring of constituent institutional orders of discourse. This structuring and desctructuring can be the site of social struggle. Social tendencies are imposed by the dominant bloc, through destructuring previous societal orders of the discourse, and are resisted and contested through discourse. We can think of these restructurings in terms of changes in the salient relationships between discourse types within the societal order of discourse. There are discourse types of consumerism, e.g. discourse of advertisement, and discourse types of bureaucracy e.g. discourse of interviewing. Both discourse types are called by Habermas strategic discourses, discourses oriented to instrumental goals. Strategic discourse is broadly contrasted with communicative discourse, which is oriented to reaching an understanding between participants The impingements of the economy and the state upon life have resulted in problems and crisis of social identity for many people which have been experienced and dealt with individually rather than through forms of social struggle. Examples of aspects of social order in discourse are: advertising and consumerism, discourse technologies and bureaucracy and the discourse of therapy. Advertising and consumerism: There are three dimensions of the ideological work of advertising discourse: 1. the relationship it constructs between the producer/advertiser and the consumer 2. the way it builds an image of the product 3. the way it constructs subject positions for consumers. These dimensions constitute respectively the constraining of relations, content and subjects. Consumerism: Consumerism involves a shift in ideological focus from economic production to economic consumption. Consumerism grew out of sets of economic, technological and cultural conditions. Consumerism is the product of mature capitalism when productive capacity is such that an apparently endless variety of commodities can be produced in apparently unlimited quantities, and when the position of the workforce in relation to leisure time and wages leave a significant residue that activate consumerism. Advertisement and the technological development of film, TV and radio promote special products for consumerism. On the other hand they absorb a high proportion of leisure time. As for culture, capitalism, in the process of industrialization and urbanization, has fractured traditional cultural ties associated with the extended family, the local community and religion, etc. In certain circumstances, these traditional ties have been replaced by ties generated by people in the workplace and urban and industrial environments, i.e. ties of class. This leads to changes in their discourse types and strategies. Advertising is of course the most visible practice and discourse, of consumerism. People are exposed to massive daily injections of advertising. The most significant qualitative effect is the constitution of cultural consumption communities. The British Code of Advertising Practice is directed at controlling surface levels features of advertising which relate to its nature as strategic and persuasive communication oriented at selling things. Codes of practice ignore the socially ideological work for advertising: advertising constructs consumption communities through ideology. Advertisements create beliefs in teenagers and the unaware public, and therefore work on ideology: It works on building relations which facilitate the main ideological work It builds images drawing upon ideological elements in their MR in order to establish an image for the product being advertised. It builds the consumer, construct subject positions for consumers, as members of the consumption communities. Verbal and Visual elements in Advertising Visual image underline the reliance of the image building process upon the audience: where visual images are juxtaposed the interpreter (consumer) has to make the connections. Visual images allow advertising to create worlds which consumers may be led to inhibit. Colonizing tendencies in advertising discourse Advertising is conceived of as a colonizer. The extent to which people are exposed to advertising and the effect of advertising on non-economic aspects of life through media and television brings with it the ideologies of the dominant class and brings about the restructuring of family life by imposing specific types of behaviour and promoting specific concepts of beauty, elegance, middle class, to name but a few. Discourse technologies and bureaucracy Discourse technologies are types of discourse which involve the more or less self conscious application of social scientific knowledge for purposes of bureaucratic control. The effect of bureaucracy on orders of discourse is via the colonizing spread of discourse technologies, e.g. skills training, interview. Bureaucracy According to the sociologist Max Weber, a bureaucracy is a 'hierarchical organization designed rationally to coordinate the work of many individuals in the pursuit of large scale administrative tasks and organizational goals'. Discourse technologies Discourse technologies fall within the more general category of strategic discourse, discourse oriented to instrumental goals and results. These are based upon knowledge about discourse itself. This involves the interpretation of power and knowledge. Social skills training Larger units of practice, and discourse, such as an interview, are assumed to be composed of sequences of smaller units which are produced through the application of skills which are selected on the basis of their contribution to the achievement of goals. This involves the manipulation of relational and subjective dimensions of discourse for instrumental reasons. Articulation becomes a discourse technology that includes different institutional orders of discourse. Public information and official forms The transmission of information to the public by bureaucratic organizations, and the solicitation of information from members of the public through official forms, is discourse technologies that have specific format and layout, specific syntax and technical vocabulary. Manipulation of relations and subjects through synthetic personalization, involve simplifying of aspects of the contents of the text. The two sides of the impingement of the system on people's lives, the economic/consumerist and the bureaucratic/discourse technological increasingly overlap. The powerful consumer subject position constructed in advertising can be made use of for bureaucratic purposes. A common dimension of synthetic personalization is simulated equalization. Direct address of the reader, use of questions instead of imperatives are also strategies to put the producer on equal footing with the reader through selected expressions in language. Synthetic personalization may strengthen the position of the bureaucracy and the state by disguising its instrumental and manipulative relationship to the mass of the people beneath a façade of a personal and equal relationship. The discourse of therapy Further examples of discourse technologies that are not in a direct relationship with bureaucratic rationality are therapeutic technologies, as opposed to disciplinary technologies. These can also be ideological practices. Counselling is a person-to-person form of communication marked by the development of a subtle emotional understanding often described technically as rapport or empathy that is centred upon the problems of the client and is free from authoritarian judgmental or coercive pressures. However the counselor does not only do the listening. He or she offers interpretations that may involve ideological reformulations that may suggest a new mechanism for achieving and legitimizing social order. Assumptions colonize orders of discourse. In accounting for what is going on in terms of discourse and socially there are indications of increased fragmentation rather than increased integration. Integrating tendencies are manifested in colonizing integrations in the societal orders of the discourse. However, tendencies to fragmentation are manifested in a proliferation of types of discourse. Ch.9: critical language study and social emancipation One of the aims of Critical language study (CLS) is to contribute, through raising awareness, to the emancipation of those who are dominated and oppressed in society. One potential domain where social emancipation could be developed is language education in the school. Critical language awareness, based on CLS should be a significant objective in language education, given the major changes in educational policy and practice which are being implemented or planned. Critical discourse analysis helps to increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation. Domination in modern society works through “consent” rather than “coercion”, through ideology and through language. Social emancipation is primarily about tangible matters such as unemployment, housing, equality of access to education, the distribution of wealth. Critical language studies or any critical social analysis distinguish objective and subjective conditions. The main objective condition is: the wider social situation must be such as to make progress towards social emancipation feasible. Subjective conditions involve raising the consciousness of dominated groupings of people. There are many social context in our society where CLS might play a part in struggles for social emancipation. Some of these are educational (schools, colleges, on – the – job training, etc.) One context involving professional teachers is the teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL). Teachers of ESL, (in Britain) deal with some of the most disadvantaged sections of the society, whose experience of racism is particularly sharp. Some of these teachers already see their role in terms of empowering their students, to deal with communicative situations outside the classroom in which institutional power is weighted against them, preparing them to challenge, contradict, and assert themselves, in settings where the power dynamic would expect them to agree, acquiesce, or be silent. The educational process must be grounded in a dialogue about the meaning of power and its encoding in language. The training of workers in public service implicitly involve enormous pressure to adapt their practices in order to meet the purely instrumental criteria of bureaucratic rationality, such as “ efficiency” and “cost- effectiveness”: fewer workers are expected to handle more people. In the media, discourse usually runs to protect the interests of the dominant class. The Minister of Education in Britain Mr. Kenneth Baker in a speech in January 1987 underlines the importance of critical language awareness approach: “Pupils need to know about the workings of the English Language if they are to use it effectively. Most schools no longer teach old – fashioned grammar. But little has been put in its place. There is no common ground on teaching about the structure and workings of the language, about the way it is used to convey meaning and achieve other effects, we need to equip teachers with a proper model of the language to help improve their teaching”. A model of the English Language, whether spoken or written, which would: - Serve as the basis of how teacher are trained to understand now the English Language works. - Inform professional discussion of all aspects of English teaching. The principles which would guide teachers on how far and in what ways the model should be made explicit to pupils, to make them conscious of how language is used in a range of context. what pupils need to know about how the English Language works and in consequence what they should have been taught and be expected to understand on this score at age 7, 11 and 16. The characterization of discourse provides an appropriate model of language for language education, its main elements being text, interaction and context. Two points need to be emphasized: - Discourse is not just a matter of text, or of language form. It should have something to say about interaction or context. - In relation to context, discourse is determined by social relations, and it contributes to shaping social relations. The instrumental views of language education are training-oriented, focusing on the transmission of knowledge and skills, whose content is assumed to be unproblematic and whose social origins are ignored. An example is the concept of literary education, where the transmission of dominant cultural values is passed from one generation to the other. Education, by contrast, is not just passing things on, it is developing the learner's critical consciousness about their environment and critical self-consciousness, and their capacity to contribute into the shaping and reshaping of the social world. Learners ought to have access to an explicit model of language. This requires "meta language", a language to discuss language, and to talk about texts and interactions and social context. Empowerment has a substantial "stock" potential, and can help people overcome their feeling of powerlessness by showing them that existing orders of discourse are not immutable. The transformation of orders of discourse is a matter of the systematic de-structuring of existing orders and restructuring of new orders. Chapter 10 : Language and power 2000 We need to look at social relations, structures and processes on an international scale if we are to understand and contest the naturalized social orders reflecting the increasing gap between the dominant and the dominated, the rich and poor, inequality And social exclusion, racism, the double exploitation of women as both workers and women. This means that when the focus of analysis is national or local, it is important to recognize that the national and locals are set within an international frame which shapes them. Language is doubly involved in the struggle to impose the neo-liberal. The new ways of being and acting entailed are partly new ways of using language. Dr. Veena Vijaya E-mail: [email protected] Thank You