Download E300 Meeting #1 Tutorial Notes Prepared by Dr Hayat Al

Book one
Content: Chapters 1-3 in Sociolinguistics
Chapter 1 in Media Texts
E300 has three major components:

Sociolinguistics

Halliday and Functional Linguistics

Discourse Analysis (with a focus on Language and Power)
The firts part of the course introduces three major approaches to
studying language:
The first model: the decontextualized approach
This perspective includes:

Theoretical Linguistics: views language as an abstract system
studied as a set of rules with a focus on correct combinations,
independent of context

Historical Linguistics: traces the development of language from a
historical perspective

Structural Linguistics: looks at language as a system that is self
contained and can indicate value and meaning of its components
through their structural positioning within the system
An overview of the contributions of two influential language theorists are
included in the first part:
Ferdinand de Saussure and his distinction between
-
synchronic and diachronic approaches to language, and
syntagmatic and paradigmatic notions, where syntagmatic
notions denote the structural horizontal axis of grammar rules that
prescribe the word class of the language item, and paradigmatic
vertical axis of relations introducing the synonyms and opening up
1
the
field
to
effectiveness.
notions
These
of
will
selectivity,
be
explored
appropriateness
later
in
and
Halliday’s
Functionalism and Fairclough’s language and power pragmatics.
Noam Chomsky distinguished between competence and performance,
where competence is viewed as the sole criterion in determining linguistic
correctness. Chomsky allows only the ideal native speaker (the linguist)
and his intuitive knowledge of the rules of the language to be the
determining factor in prescribing language rules. Performance is
overlooked as full of errors and thus unsuitable to generate linguistic
rules.
The second model: the contextualized approach
This perspective introduces notions on applied linguistics where language
is viewed as unabstracted from its context. The sociolinguistics of the
second model looks at language in use. Studies from anthropological
linguistics and real life contexts emphasize the context-bound language
aspect in a reflective approach where language use reflects the
properties of its context.
The works of William Labov on social class and the pronunciation of
prevocalic ® in New York underlines the need to view language practices
as part of the social fabric that brings about distinctive features under
specific social circumstance.
John Gumperz argued through a series of studies that choices of
language style or code are directly related to the social situation
including speakers, setting and purpose. Issues on gender styles,
adolescent styles, in-group styles were cited to bring forward the socialbased approach to language studies.
2
Dell Hymes worked through previous arguments on competence to extend
the category to include not only what is linguistically correct but also
what is socially appropriate. He used the term Communicative competence
to refer to appropriate and socially sensitive exchanges of when to speak,
what to speak, to whom and where.
The third model: Pragmatics
This perspective argues for a more pragmatic approach where language is
viewed in a more fluid perspective: not only as reflective of its context
but also as constitutive of it. The third model looks at structures as
multidimensional where language is conceived of as one aspect in
multimodal semiotic signaling. Meanings are negotiated, reconstructed and
challenged across dialogues and contexts. Pragmatics looks at the way
people create and recreate meaning through language exchanges.
Language in this model is seen not just as reflecting but also as
constructing the social, ideological, interpersonal and political situations
associated with its use. There are two major influences on this third
model on language: Foucault and Bakhtin. The third model disrupts ideas
on the stability of the social world and the fixivity of language-based
idealized exchanges.
The three models can be categorized as follows
Model One
Model Two
Model Three
Language as an
abstract model
Language as reflective
of the social context
Language as negotiated
and undetermined
3
Idealized and
homogeneous
Stable social context
and static situation
Constructed social
context and fluid
situation
Tutorial # 2 Content: Chapters 4-7 Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
is
the
study
of
language
aspects
(features,
characteristics, styles and variation) in relation to the social context.
Pragmatics is the study of language strategies in relation to the goals
of the speaker and the social context. There are questions that can
frame this interest:
In what ways does people’s spoken language vary in different
context?
What are the social factors that lead people to choose one
form of language rather than another?
Sociolinguistics involves the description of language features (lexis,
phonology, syntax) and an identification of the social factors that lead
people to use one form rather than another. The basic framework of
sociolinguistic description include: participants setting, topic and function
and notions of social distance, formality, status and referential
(instrumental) and affective (ideological) functions.
When participants, context, topic and function are considered, the use of
language variation of different language styles becomes more predictable
and meaningful.
Domains are contexts where language is used. Diglossia is the
linguistic division of labour between two varieties of the same
language the high code H-variety is used in formal situations and
low code L-variety is used in the informal context.
4
Language shift, language survival of language death are aspects
that relate to social, cultural and political issues.
Code switching is switching between two languages. This can
result from changes in the social situation (situational code
switching) or as result of the preference of the speaker and has
two functions: the affective function where code switching has
dramatic effects (amusements, anger etc). The metaphorical
function where each of the two codes is used to represent a set of
social indicators (education, status, group membership etc).
Lexical borrowing is when a lexical item is borrowed from one
language and used in the context (sentence) of another. We call
the language where the lexical word is borrowed the Embedded
language. We call the language where the embedding occurs the
Matrix language.
There are syntactic and morphological constraints governing the code
switching and lexical borrowing between languages. Shana Poplack
proposed two constraints:
1.
The free morpheme constraint where only free morphemes can
be switched. No switching is allowed between free and bound
morphemes.
2.
Switching can only occur at equivalent sites of the two
languages in order not to disturb the syntactic order of the
sentences in the languages involved.
5
Vernacular and standard languages.
-
The vernacular is an unmodified and unstandardized
variety, used in informal situations associated with specific
functions (rituals, membership, ethnicity etc).
-
Standard language: the prestigious variety that emerge
as the result of social and political factors and economic
influences.
In sociolinguistics, the focus includes the characteristics of the
variety concerned (the vernacular or the standard) and the
activities and social relations linked to its use. (see William Labov’s
study (1972) on Black English Vernacular
BEV of the African
American children).
Lingua Franca is the language used for communication between
people whose first languages differ.
Pidgin is the language that develops as a means of
communication between people who do not have a common language.
Pidgin languages have no status or prestige. They develop to serve a
restricted function and have a short life, e.g. a trading pidgin
disappears when the trade between the groups dies out.
Creole: a Creole is a pidgin language that has acquired native
speakers, i.e. it succeeded into passing to second generation as
their native tongue.
National and official languages
In sociolinguistics the distinction between a national language and
an official language is generally made along the affectivereferential
dimension
or
more
instrumental dimension.
6
specifically
the
ideological-
A national language is the language of the political cultural and
social unit. It is generally developed and used as a symbol of
national unity. Its functions are to identify the nation and unite its
people,
An official language is a language which is used for government
business. Its functions are primarily utilitarian rather than
symbolic. It is possible of course for one language to serve both
functions.
Planning for a national official language involves four
interrelated stages:
Selection: standardizing its structural or linguistic features
Elaboration: extending its functions for use in new domains. This
involves developing the necessary linguistic resources for handling
new concepts and contexts.
Implementation: securing its acceptance and use in formal context.
Samuel Johnson’s 40,000 word dictionary (1755) was a landmark in
the codification of English.
Regional and social dialects:
Monolingual speakers speak a single language but within this
language
there
is considerable
variation in pronunciation,
vocabulary and grammar between the users. Linguistic diversity
correlates with social diversity. People often use a language to
signal their membership of particular groups.
Regional variation
Pronunciation and vocabulary differences exist between British and
American English. There are grammatical differences too.
7
E.g. American English uses ‘do you have’ and ‘did you eat’. British
English uses ‘have you got’ and ‘have you eaten’
Differences exist between regions in the same nation. The south
may speak a different regional variation from the north, and the
urban from the rural.
Social variation
RP-is perceived as a social accent
Particular linguistic features (usually of accent) vary according to
identifiable social factors such as the social class of the speakers,
their age, education and gender.
The main strength of the sociolinguistic approach is its ability to
describe and classify variation in urban communities and to make
sense of what had appeared to be chaotic and unsystematic
linguistic variability.
Accents are distinguished from each other by pronunciation
alone. Different dialects are distinguishable in pronunciation,
vocabulary and grammar.
Regional dialects involve features of pronunciation, vocabulary
and grammar which differ according to the geographical area of
the speakers.
Social dialects involve features of pronunciation, vocabulary
and grammar which differ according to the social group of the
speakers. A social group is determined by a range of features, such
as education, occupation, residential area, and income level.
8
People who come from different social groups speak different social
dialects: they use different words, pronunciation and grammatical
features.
Gender and age:
-
There are gender exclusive speech differences in
western and non-western communities.
-
There are gender-preferential speech features.
-
Examples include in’ for males and ing for females.
In Western societies where women’s and men’s social roles overlap,
the speech forms they use also overlap.
Women tend to use more standard forms than men. Men use more
of the vernacular forms.
Research and Explanations:
Standard speech forms are generally associated with high
class status. Women use more standard speech forms as a way of
claiming such status.
Woman’s role as guardians of society values.
Society tends to expect “better” behavior from women than men
especially
that they have the role of serving as models for
children’s speech.
Subordinate groups must be polite
By using more standard speech forms women are looking to be
valued by the society.
Vernacular forms express machismo.
Men
prefer
vernacular
forms
because
connotations of masculinity and toughness.
9
they
carry
macho
This suggests that these forms have convert prestige by contrast
with the overt prestige of the standard forms which are cited as
models of correctness.
Chapter 8: Ethnicity and Social Networks
The same group often speaks similarly and therefore has the same
or similar linguistic features. These features indicate a person’s
social status, gender, age and ethnicity.
Where a choice of language is available for communication, it is
possible for an individual to signal their ethnicity through specific
short phrases, verbal fillers or linguistic tags. Greetings, emphatic
phrases, tags and responses are used to signal or emphasize
common ethnicity.
When an ethnic group adopts the language of the dominant society,
an important symbol of their distinct ethnicity, their language,
often disappears. Ethnic groups often respond to this situation by
using the dominant language in a way which signals its ethnic
identity.
African Americans do not need a distinctive variety or code as a
symbolic way of differentiating themselves from the majority
group. They are visibly different. Nevertheless, this group has
developed a distinct variety of English known as African American
Vernacular English AAVE. This dialect has a number of features
which do not occur in standard mainstream American English. These
linguistic features act as symbols of ethnicity. They express a
sense of cultural distinctiveness for African Americans. One of its
most observed features is the complete absence of the copula verb
“be” in some social and linguistic contexts:
AAVE
American SE
She very nice
He a teacher
That my book
She’s very nice
He’s a teacher
That’s my book
10
In recordings of Detroit speech, white Americans never omitted
the copula verb “be”, whereas African Americans, especially those
from the lower socio economic groups, regularly did.
Another distinctive grammatical feature of AAVE is the use of
“be” to signal recurring or repeated actions.
AAVE
American SE
She be at school on weekdays
She is always at school ....
Children do be messing around a lot
I run when I bees on my way to school
The children do mess
around a lot
I run when I am on ..
There are many features of the English used by lower socio
economic groups in the US which also occur in AAVE. Multiple
negation was identified as a feature of the English of many lowersocioeconomic groups. It is also a feature of AAVE.
AAVE speakers simplify the consonant clusters at the ends of
words. They omit the verb “be” and when using it, it has the
meaning of habitual or recurrent occurrences.
Such consistency in the use of vernacular features of speech
indicates correlation between ethnicity and social class on the one
hand, and language on the other.
In Britain the English of the ethnic minorities generally signal their
ethnic background. Ethnicity is not signaled by the speaker’s
knowledge of a specific linguistic variety but by the way speakers
use the varieties in their linguistic repertoire as symbols of their
ethnicity. Patois features are incorporated in the speech of
Jamaican British speakers to signal their Black identity. Lexical
items such as “lick” to mean “hit” are substituted as ethnicity
markers in language. Special features of intonation, like stress, and
patterns that differ from those of Standard English are also used
11
as well as the omission of “h” sound in “home”. The substitution of
“t” sound by “d” in “then” and “th” sound by “t” in “thin”. Plural
forms do not have “s” on the end. Tenses are not marked by
suffixes for verbs, so forms like “walk” and “jump” are used rather
than “walked” and “jumped”.
The form “mi” is used for I, me and my e.g. Mi niem (my name), and
“dem” is used for they, them and their, e.g. Dem niem (their name).
There are regional varieties of British Black English. The function
of these varieties is to act as symbols of ethnicity among British
Black people. The term of anti-language is sometimes used for
these varieties to mark their function as expressing opposition to
the mainstream values of white British Society which exclude Black
people and their culture.
Social Networks
Networks in sociolinguistics refer to the pattern of informal
relationships that people engage in on a regular basis. There are
two technical terms which have proved very useful for describing
different types of networks: density and plexity.
Density refers to the degree of interaction between members of
the same network. Plexity is a measure of the range of different
types of transactions people are involved in with different
individuals.
A uniplex relationship is one where the link with the other person is
in only one area. Multiplex relationships involve interactions with
others along several dimensions. People’s speech often reflects the
types of networks they belong to. When adults belong to more than
one network, they may signal this by unconsciously altering their
speech forms as they move from one context to another. The social
class background, gender, age, ethnicity as well as contexts and
interactive networks are all influences that bear on the language
used by speakers.
12
Communities of practice and the construction of social identity
Ekhert, an American sociolinguist, uses the term “community of
practice” to capture the complexities of what it means to belong to
a social group. The concept “community of practice” has been
adopted by some sociolinguistics to permit a focus on social
categories like these which make more sense to participants than
abstract categories such as class and gender. Communities of
practice develop around the activities which group members engage
in together, and their shared objectives and attitudes.
Members may belong to more than one community of practice at
the same time, e.g. family, religious community, club, workgroup etc.
This perspective highlights the extent to which we use language to
construct different identities, in different social interactions and
to indicate different affiliations and values. Through using this
ethnographic approach, the researcher focuses on the ways in
which individuals “perform” particular aspects of their social
identities in specific situations.
Sociolinguists need to describe the linguistic patterns that
correlate with the macro-level abstract categories of class, age,
ethnicity and gender to explain the social meaning of language.
Individuals use linguistic resources in dynamic and constructive
ways to express various social identities.
Conclusion
Linguists believe that all language varieties are equal. They all have
complex structures that serve specific purposes in different
situations. They all have resources to develop complex vocabulary
and grammar constructions suitable for any occasion. The barriers
are social and cultural. Varieties acquire the social status of their
users and the divisions of dialects are along racial, ethnic and social
lines and follow social hierarchies.
13
Chapter 9: Language Change
Languages change occurs over time in areas of spellings, sound and
meaning. Speakers and writers change the way they use language.
Variation and change
Language varies in three major ways which are interrelated: over
time, in physical space and socially. Language change, or variation
over time, has origins in spatial (or regional) and social variation.
The distinctions between “witch” and “which” in pronunciation and
“whether” and “weather” are disappearing in some areas in Britain.
In meaning, slang words used by young people change the way
vocabulary is used. For example to mean “good” a range of words
are used, e.g. “wicked”, “cool” and even “bad”. These alternatives
are moving from slang into consistent use for young speakers whose
mother tongue is English. Sociolinguists try to identify the
particular social factors which are responsible for spreading
linguistic changes, and then try to explain how they work.
In many parts of England and Wales, standard English has lost the
pronunciation of (r) in cases where it follows vowels in words like
star and start. Post-vocalic (r) does not occur in RP nor in the
London **ney dialect any more. The loss of post-vocalic (r) seems
to have begun in the 17th century in the south–east of England, and
is still in progress. In south west of England, post vocalic (r) is still
regularly pronounced. Accents with post vocalic (r) are called
“rhotic”. In large areas of England rhotic English accents are
regarded as rural and uneducated.
In New York, a survey in 1960s found that rhoticism was
increasing. In New York rhoticism is regarded as prestigious. Post
vocalic (r) is used by almost all New Yorkers.
The spread of vernacular forms
A pronunciation which is considered prestigious will be imitated and
will spread through the community. There are, however, examples
14
of vernacular pronunciations which have spread throughout speech
communities.
The spread of changes
-
-
From group to group: social factors such as age, status,
gender and region affect the rate and direction of the change.
Linguistic changes infiltrate groups from the speech of people
on the margins between social or regional groups, and have
therefore contract with more than one group.
From style to style: young people tend to adopt styles of
admired peers or the groups they want to be associated with.
In New Zealand, a study has shown that some distinctive features
of pronunciation are disappearing in the speech of young people,
specifically in the area of vowels in word pairs, e.g. “really” and
“rarely”.
It is more difficult to identify a change when it involves the
introduction and spread of a less prestigious form, a vernacular.
Language change in real time
The apparent-time method of studying language change is a useful
frame for sociolinguists who generally cannot afford to wait to
report on change. It is also possible to build on the works of earlier
linguists when studying change.
Young people from Norwich had completely lost the “th” sound in
“thing” by 1983 and substituted “th” sound by (f) in words like
“thing” and “thin”.
Reasons for language change
- Social status and language change: The pronunciation of the vowel
is “top” and “dog” has changed in Norwich from (ta:p) and (da:g) to
RP (top) and (dog). Middle class speakers and specially women have
been among the leaders in this change. Lower class speakers, men in
particular, often adopt speech forms from nearby local workers to
express solidarity, rather than status and prestige.
15
Gender and language change
Women tend to be associated with change towards prestige norms,
whereas men more often introduce vernacular changes. Women
usually lead changes towards the standard, while men introduce new
vernacular variants.
Interaction and language change
Interaction and contact between people is crucial in providing the
channels for linguistic change. Face-to-face interaction is crucial
for linguistic change. ‘avin a bi’ of bovver is the result of contact
with **ney speakers and their glottal stops.
Linguists believe that linguistic changes spread through the social
networks of individuals. Change will need to have some sort of
prestige attached to it, whether overt (expressing social status) or
covert (expressing solidarity).
Language serves two very basic functions:
referential or informative function, and
social or affective function.
Tracing the progress of a linguistic change through the speech of a
community involves considering the influence of a wide range of
social factors: social class, age, gender, context and interaction.
Chapter 10: Style, Context and Register
Language varies according to its uses as well as according to its
users. The addressees and the context affects our choice of code
or variety, whether language, dialect or style.
People vary their language styles to reflect their group
membership. These features are sometimes described as stylistic
features. Distinctive styles or registers may be shaped by the
functional demands of particular situations or occupations.
Addressee’s influence on style
Addressee is a major influence on the speaker’s style. People vary
their language in relation to the person they are addressing and to
16
whether they want to coverage or diverge in their speech to him or
her. Many factors contribute to determining the degree of social
distance or solidarity between people, relative age, gender, social
roles, whether people work together, belong to the same group,
social status, etc.
Age of addressee
People talk differently to children and to adults. Some adjust their
speech style or “accommodate” more than others.
Social background of addressee
The perceived social background of the addressee influences the
linguistic features used by the speaker.
The simplification of consonant clusters e.g. (la:st) becomes (la:s)
and (nekst) becomes (neks) features in speech directed to working
class listeners. Evidence of speech variation in relation to audience
or addressees comes from the behavior of the same newsreader on
different radio stations.
The accommodation theory
Speech convergence: when people talk to each other their speech
becomes more similar. Participants converge to each other’s speech
in speech accommodation as a polite speech strategy, using the
same pronunciation and vocabulary to signal that they are on the
same understanding.
How do speakers accommodate?
People accommodate to others by selecting the code that is most
comfortable for their addressee. Speakers respond to the
initiation of a topic by developing it. In the case of interlocutors
with lesser proficiency, the speaker converges downwards. In a
professional context, the speaker converges upwards.
Speech divergence
17
Sometimes respondents deliberately diverge from the speech style
and even the language of the person addressing them to indicate
disagreement. When the Arab nations issued an oil communiqué to
the world, the leaders selected using Arabic not English as the
language. This selection was to make a political stand. They did not
want to be seen as accommodating the western English speaking
powers. The selection of the code matched the political message
that they wanted to dispatch.
Accommodation problems
It is possible to overdo convergence and offend listeners. Overconvergence may be perceived as patronizing and ingratiating, as
sycophantic, or even as evidence that the speaker is making fun of
the others.
Reactions to speech convergence and divergence depend on the
reasons people attribute for the convergence or divergence. If
divergence is perceived as unavoidable, then the reaction will be
more tolerant than when it is considered deliberate.
Context, style and class
Formal contexts and social roles:
Participants relationship influences the content and style of the
language that is exchanged between them. Relative status,
solidarity social distance and roles are important factors.
Choices of the form are influenced not by the personal
relationship between the participants only but by the
formality of the context and their relative roles within the
setting.
Different styles:
Colloquial style or the vernacular: may be used at specific
situations and not others.
Social class and style:
The interaction between social group membership and style is
a feature in language selection.
18
Hypercorrection
Hypercorrection usage goes beyond the noun. It involves
extending a form beyond the standard.
Hypercorrect behavior results from insecurity and attempts
to act in a perceived correct way to please.
Style in non-western societies:
Japanese is one of a number of languages with a special set of
grammatical contrasts for expressing politeness and respect
for others. The choice of appropriate style involves not only
pronunciation but also word forms and syntax.
Knowledge of the complexities of stylistic variation reflects a
person’s educational level and social status.
Relative status must be carefully assessed on every occasions
in order to select the correct combination of grammatical
forms, vocabulary items and pronunciation – in other words,
the appropriate style for the context and the addressee.
Register:
Register is the kind of jargon which a group of specialists
often develop to talk about their specialty, an occupational
style that uses specific vocabulary.
1.
Syntactic reduction in sports announcer talk is a
specific style that involves omitting linguistic elements,
the subject noun or pronoun, as these are totally
predictable from the context, the referent is
unambiguous.
2.
Syntactic inversion or reversal of the normal word
order is another feature of sports talk to foreground
or focus on a specific action.
3.
Heavy noun modification is another feature of sports
register to focus on people and not action, when the
aim is to foreground them.
4.
Routines and formulas: registers employ specific
routines and formulas to reduce the memory burden on
the speaker in oral communication.
Conclusion
People’s speech not only reflects aspects of their identity such as
their ethnicity, age, gender and social background, but also
19
reflects the degree of formality of the contexts in which they are
using language as well as the social roles and status of the people
within the context of interaction.
Stylistic variation accounts for linguistic distinctions between
styles.
Part I: AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINUISTICS
* STUDENT PRESENTATION OF CHAPTERS 8-10
________________________________________________
E300
Meeting #4 Tutorial Notes
Chapter 11: Speech Functions,
Politeness and Cross-Cultural Communication
We use language differently in formal and casual contexts. The purpose
of talk will also affect its form. Consider the range of functions language
may serve and the variety of ways in which the “same” message may be
expressed.
The concept of politeness: the social dimensions determine what is
considered polite in different situations and communities. Being
linguistically polite is often a matter of selecting linguistic forms which
express the appropriate degree of social distance or which recognize
relevant status of power differences. Clearly rules for polite behaviour
differ from one speech community to another. Linguistic politeness is
culturally determined e.g. appropriate language on gratitude, appropriate
greeting, etc.
Language serves an affective, or social, function and a referential, or
informative, function. There are a number of ways of categorizing the
functions of speech:
1. Expressive utterances express the speaker’s feelings e.g. I feel
great today.
20
2. Directive utterances attempt to get someone to do something, e.g.
clean the table.
3. Referential utterances provide information, e.g. It is nine o’clock.
4. Metalinguistic utterances comment on language itself, e.g.
“context” is a sociolinguistic term.
5. Poetic utterances focus on aesthetic features of language, e.g. a
poem, a rhythm, etc.
6. Phatic utterances express solidarity and empathy e.g. Hi, how do
you do.
Phatic communication conveys an affective or social message rather than
a referential one. Language is not simply used to convey referential
information, but also expresses information about social relationships.
Halliday identified a function of language concerned with learning, which
he labeled “heuristic” (tell me why function). Other researchers have
added categories to deal with promises and threats “commissives”, and
with rows, bets and declarations “performatives”.
Directives are concerned with getting people to do things. Orders and
commands are speech acts which are generally expressed in imperative
form. Polite attempts to get people to do something tend to use
interrogatives or declaratives (examples on p. 261).
Social factors affect a speaker’s choice of the perceived appropriate
form: the social distance between participants, their relative status, and
the formality of the context. Where status differences are clearly
marked and accepted, superiors tend to use imperatives to subordinates
indicating the sets of rights and obligations in a role relationship.
Formality and status are relevant in choosing an appropriate directive
form. To make a directive more polite, the required action is used in a
subordinate, embedded, clause in the second part of the declarative
sentence, e.g. “I call on the vice chancellor to read the citation.”
In general, imperatives are used between people who know each other
well, or to subordinates. Interrogatives and declaratives, including hints,
tend to be used between people who are less familiar with each other, or
where there is some reason to feel the requested taste not part of the
routine.
21
It has been noted that females tend to favour more polite and less direct
forms of directives than males. Some research go on to suggest that
gender differences exist within the same status, e.g. in doctor and
patient interactions where female doctors tolerate more interruptions
than their male counter parts, use less direct imperatives, e.g. “ may be
you could eat less sweets”.
Choosing the appropriate linguistic form involves the dimensions of
solidarity, social distance, social status, power, etc. The word “please: is
used differently by children and adults. In children’s it denotes a polite
request. In adult talk it has the effect of making the directive sounds
less polite. Intonation and tone of voice are used invariantly for effect.
We need to understand the social values of a society in order to speak
politely. There are two ways of perceiving politeness:
aPositive politeness is solidarity oriented. It emphasizes shared
attitudes and values and minimizes status differences.
b- Negative politeness includes the use of polite forms that involves
expressing oneself appropriately in terms of social distance and
respecting status differences.
Politeness involved the dimension of formality. In a formal situation the
appropriate way will depend on the roles of participants in the context.
Address terms, marked context refer to formal settings that are
governed by explicit discourse rules. They are culture and contextdependent. Learning another language involves more than learning the
literal meaning of the words, how to put them together, and how to
pronounce them. There is a need to know their meaning and relevance in
the cultural context in which they are normally used. Knowing a language
involves knowing how to express a range of speech functions in a
culturally appropriate way.
E300 tutorial notes
Chapter 12: Gender, Politeness and Stereotypes
Sociolinguistics is concerned with styles and registers, the way language
is used, the relationship between language, thought and culture, and
language attitudes. Women and men use language differently, what
22
message does the language used by a specific group convey about their
status in the community?
While some social dialectologists suggested that women are status
conscious and that they use standard speech forms to reflect this
aspect, Lakoff, an American linguist, argued that women use the type of
language that reinforce their subordinate status.
Social dialect research focused on RP pronunciation and syntactic
construction. Lakoff shifted the focus of research to gender differences
in syntax, semanties and style. She identified a number of linguistic
features that expressed uncertainty and lack of confidence, e.g. “uh”,
“sort of”, “like”, “urm” (see p. 285).
Features of women’s language
1- Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, you see, well…
2- Tag questions, e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?
3- Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it is really good
4- Empty adjectives, e.g. divine, cute, charming.
5- Precise colour terms, e.g. magneta, aquamarine.
6- Intensifiers like so, just e.g. he is so cute. It is just right.
7- Hypercorrect grammar forms.
8- Super polite forms, e.g. “I’m sorry to bother you and I hope I’m
not too much trouble but could you move your foot a little either
way because somehow mine seems to have got caught under yours”
(p.262)
9- Emphatic stress, e.g. It was a BRILLIANT performance.
Lackoff identified a number of linguistic features which were unified by
their function of expressing “lack of confidence”.
ALinguistic devices which are used for hedging, or reducing the
force of an utterance.
BLinguistic features which may boost or intensify a proposition’s
force.
Women boost the force of their utterance because they think that
otherwise they will not be paid attention to. So, according to Lackoff,
both hedges and boosters reflect women’s lack of confidence.
Tags may be used as confrontational and coercive devices to force
feedback from an uncooperative addressee. Women used more tags
than men but they did not use them for the same purpose as men.
23
Many linguistic forms have complex functions. They are used
differently in different contexts. They mean different things
according to their pronunciation, their position in the utterance, the
kind of speech act that they are used for, who is using them to whom
in what context.
Analyses
reveal
women
as
facilitative
and
supportive
conversationalists. Men dominate the talking time with interrupting
behaviour and conversational feedback.
Occupational status, social class, gender role relations and other social
factors account for many interactional patterns. Men and women
belong to different cultural groups. Verbal insult for some groups is an
established and ritualized activity and serves the function of
establishing solidarity and maintaining social relationships, as
compliments and agreeing do for women.
The construction of gender
Approaching gender identity as a construction, rather than as a fixed
category is useful when accounting for examples where women adapt
to “masculine” contexts, and men adapt to “feminine” contexts. Women
in the police force are sometimes advised to portray a masculine
image, to wear bulky sweaters suggesting upper-body strength, and
well-worn boots to suggest that they are used to hard work. They also
adopt a cool distant style, they don’t smile much and they talk tough.
Men who work in clothing shops or hair dressing salons, on the other
hand, often construct a more “feminine” identity in these contexts.
They use features of the more cooperative style associated with
“gossip”, use affectionate terms of address and encourage the
addressee to talk.
Narratives are means of constructing particular gender identities.
Approaching the construction of gender as a process, rather than as a
given category, leads to a view on individuals as constantly doing
gender. This approach encourages a view that every linguistic and non
linguistic choice is meaningful.
Sexist Language
24
Can a language be sexist?
The study of a sexist language is concerned with the way language
expresses both negative and positive stereotypes of both men and
women.
Can a language contribute to the maintenance of social inequalities
between men and women?
There are a number of ways in which it has been suggested that the
English language discriminates against women: through the vocabulary
and imagery of the language.
The male form is the unmarked form, the norm. The use of additional
suffix the signal “femaleness” is seen as conveying the message that
women are deviant or abnormal.
English renders women invisible in the use of generic forms like “man”
or “he”. This is no longer acceptable because the generic meaning has
become overshadowed by the masculine meaning.
Linguistic categories are one source of evidence on a culture’s values.
Once these views are encoded it takes considerable time and effort to
alter the language, even when the social attitudes reflected are slowly
changing.
E300 tutorial notes
Chapter 13: Language, Cognition
And Culture
Dominant social stereotypes indicate people’s thinking habits. The way a
person speaks generally signals social information about their background.
A person’s ethnicity, age, and gender are also reflected in their linguistic
choices.
Sociolinguists who adopt a social constructionist approach argue that
language not only reflects and expresses membership of social categories,
it also contributes to the construction of the social identity. We choose
to portray ourselves according to the linguistic features we use.
Language and perception
25
Language reflects the social context in which it is produced. It also
conveys a worldview or perspective which may affect the perceptions of
individuals.
Can language determine the way we perceive reality?
Deborah Cameron uses the term verbal hygiene to describe how people
attempt to use language precisely and appropriately in different
situations and registers. Language reflects society’s perceptions of
particular groups through labeling that has positive and negative
connotations.
Sapir-Whorf
Studies have suggested that there is a close relationship between
language and perception. Do categories of language pre-determine what
we can think about or conceive of? Do the categories we learn to
distinguish as we acquire language provide a framework for ordering the
world? The relationship between language, thought and reality has
fascinated linguists and philosophers for centuries.
Benjamin Lee Whorf and later Edward Sapir suggested that particular
words selected to describe or label objects often influence people’s
perception and behavior. “We dissect nature along lines laid down by our
native languages. The world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of
impressions which has to be organized in our minds, and this means largely
by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into
concepts and ascribe significance as we do, largely because we are parties
to our agreement to organize it in this way, an agreement that holds
throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our
language”.
Linguistic determinism: The medium is the message
The strong interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is generally
labeled linguistic determinism. This holds that people from different
cultures think differently because of differences in their languages.
26
Few sociolinguists would accept such a strong claim. But most accept the
weaker version on linguistic relativism; that language influences
perception, thought, and at least potentially behaviour.
Research testing this claim with experiments on colours and shapes
confirmed that categories provided by a language make it easier to draw
on conceptual distinctions. The categories provided by a language may
favour certain ways of perceiving “reality” or “the world”.
Grammar and cognition
Grammatical categories such as tense, aspect and gender encode aspects
of reality differently in different languages. Whorf’s analysis of the Hopi
verb system led him to argue that the Hopi conception of time is
fundamentally different from Western cultures. Hopi verbs require an
analysis of events in terms of dynamic motion. Hopi does not have tenses
and words for time units.
Whorf’s detailed claims do not hold up but sociolinguists consider his
general argument an interesting one, with implications for the way
speakers of different languages and cultures “filter” or “cut up” reality.
To what extent then does culture intersect with language and cognition.
Linguistic categories and culture
Native American and Australian Aboriginal Languages are often cited to
refute popular misconception about primitive societies that “simple
societies can’t have complex grammar”. A native American Language,
Kwakiutl, requires a grammatical classification of nouns based on whether
they are visible or not.
Aboriginal Language, Dyirbal, has four classification for every noun, based
on semantic associations. Myth and cultural beliefs influence class
allocation. Also at the lexico-grammatical level Aboriginal languages
challenge western preconceptions about primitive languages, e.g. Wallaby
and Kangaroo.
27
This suggests an alternative to Whorf’s position. Rather than language
determining what is perceived, it is rather the physical situation and
socio-cultural environment which determines the distinctions that the
language develops. From this perspective, language provides a means of
encoding a community’s knowledge, beliefs and values, i.e. its culture.
Kinship labels are among a range of lexical labels used to identify social
rights and obligations between members of a culture.
Language, social class and cognition
Basil Bernstein studied possible cognitive implications where groups use
different varieties of a language. Bernstein tested the language of
working class children where they were shown a series of events in photos
and asked to describe what they saw.
The children used short, monosyllabic responses. In the interview this
performance was viewed as “restricted” in terms of the linguistic
resources. Bernstein went further. He suggested that a “restricted code”
might constrain the cognitive abilities of those who use it. In other
words, he was extending the principle of linguistic determinism. He
argued that the language children use might affect what they were
capable of perceiving and even their thinking abilities.
The hypothesis had great appeal as a way of accounting for working class
children failure in school. It placed the blame on the children and their
language rather than on the schools’ failure to adequately identify their
educational needs.
Bernstein’s hypotheses forced sociolinguists to examine Whorf’s claims
about the relationship between language, thought and society really
thoroughly. His research appeared to support a view on working class
children as linguistically deprived, and their use of vernacular forms as
evidence of cognitive deficit.
Conclusion
There are various ways in which language, thought and culture interrelate.
Most sociolinguists agree that language influences perceptions of reality.
There is little doubt that consistent use of pejorative terms for a group,
for instance, affects people’s perception of that group’s members, e.g.
Slave (black in Arabic).
28
There is also psycholinguistic evidence that the existence of particular
categories in a language way predispose speakers to classify reality in one
way rather than the other, e.g. Freedom fighter or terrorist.
The physical and cultural environment in which language develops
influences the vocabulary and grammar of a language.
E300 tutorial notes
Chapter 14: Attitudes and Applications
Attitudes to language
The issue of whether “r” should be pronounced or not in English is a good
example of the arbitrariness of the linguistic features. There is nothing
intrinsically good or bad about [r] pronunciation. In some communities it is
regarded as an example of “good speech” and in others as evidence of lack
of education. Attitudes to language reflect attitudes to users and uses of
language.
Attitudes to language are strongly influenced by social and political
factors.
Overt and covert prestige
The standard variety in a community has overt prestige.
Covert prestige refers to positive attitudes towards vernacular or nonstandard speech varieties. The local accent is the only possible way of
speaking to friends, work mates and family. It expresses group identify
and solidarity.
Overtly negative attitudes to non-standard varieties of English, e.g.
Patois and Creole reflect the depressed social position of the West
Indian people in Britain rather than features of the language itself.
Attitudes to Standard English and RP
Standard English has an enormous legacy of overt prestige. It has been
regarded as a symbol of British nationhood. For well over a century, it has
been promoted as the only acceptable variety for use in all official
29
domains, including education. By comparison, vernacular dialects of English
are down graded.
Support for grammar teaching derives from an association of grammar
with authority, hierarchy, tradition and elitism, order and rules.
The standard dialect is primarily a socially defined entity, not a
linguistically defined one. Standard English is the English used by
educated people with relatively high social status.
Oral Presentation on Chapters 11 - 14 (selected students)
__________________________________________________
_________
E 300 Tutorial Notes on Meeting # 5
Approaches to language studying can be categorized under three
general models.
The first approach focuses on the material substance of language.
Language, in this perspective is conceived of as being autonomous,
consisting of entities called phonemes, morphemes, clauses and
sentences.
By establishing a concern for material form, the human experience
of communication is made more concrete and therefore manageable
as an area of study. By structuring the study around the set
entities of language, the first model can be referred to as the
structuralist model. This has been the dominant model of language
description in Western thought for many centuries.
The second approach arose in the middle of the twentieth century,
partly as a reaction to the “pure” linguistic approach. Model 2 does
not abandon structuralism but put forward the argument that
linguistic structure alone cannot explain meaning. An account of
social context is also required. Model 2 includes sociolinguistic and
ethnographic studies.
Model 3 can be loosely labeled post modern. It represents an
attempt to understand the fragmentary flux of language not by
30
idealizing simple underlying mechanism but by attempting to tease
apart and understand the nature of the fragmentation. It
conceptualizes language and the ways in which it conceives of
society and individual identity. In post modern approaches there
are no clear-cut boundaries between language and other forms of
human
communication.
Post-modernists
advocate
holistic
approaches with a view to dynamic unstable realities. Language,
from postmodernist view, is diverse and unstable in structure, e.g.
architecture as a form of communication.
Model one: Structuralism
In the twentieth century, two scholars have been of pre-eminent
importance in developing modern linguistic theory. The first is the
Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure and his “course in general linguistics”,
and the second is the American Noam Chomsky and his seminal
work, “Syntactic structures”. Both linguists contributed to the
structuralist stand in their attempt to describe, analyze and
explain the complex FORM of language from a view that sees it as
an autonomous mechanism.
Pre-Saussurean Structuralism
In the seventeenth century, the English philosopher John Locke
sets out a semiotic theory concerning human understanding. Locke
conceives of communication as a system of “signs”: words are the
signs of ideas, ideas are signs of things. The relation of the word
to the idea is an arbitrary one. Locke argued that the primary
function of language is communication.
Many of the post-renaissance scholars who published on grammar
and language in Britain were also scientists. This brought closer the
investigation of science and more general linguistic enquiry.
During the eighteenth century grammar books and dictionaries that
helped ascertain and standardize the English language appeared,
e.g. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. During that period approaches to
language study matched approaches to science study. Texts and
utterances were seen as the compounds, in chemistry for example,
constructed of elements and arranged in characteristic patterns of
combination.
31
In the nineteenth century, Language was viewed as a living organism
with a course of development of its own: it is formed, develop and
die out. Linguists even began to talk about the “struggle for
survival” amongst languages in competition. By this time language
study was an historical enterprise rather than a comparative one.
Languages were theorized as evolving and changing over time. By
the end of the nineteenth century the metaphore of language as a
natural organism was phased out. This stemmed from a growing
awareness that languages do not change on their own, but follow
the circumstance of their speakers.
Saussure and Structuralism.
Saussure distinguishes between historical or diachronic approach
to language studies, and the study of language at a particular point
in time or synchronic approach. Synchronic approaches can account
for the ways language works at a particular interval in time.
Saussure regards language as a system of elements which conveys
meaning through two basic mechanism. First, the meaning is
arbitrarily assigned to an element (here, the word) through social
contract between speakers of a particular speech community to
interpret the element (the word) in a particular way, giving use to
decoding the intended meaning. Second, the meaning of elements
are interpreted as well as modified through a mechanism of binary
opposition, so what is man is not woman, old is not young and so on.
The conventions of language that form the social contract on
meaning and interpretation are called La Langue, the actual speech
is called La Parole.
Post-Saussurean Structuralism
European Linguistics (Saussure is a Swiss Linguist) was taken to
America by Leonard Bloomfield and applied to the study of
American Indian Languages. Bloomfield was keen to establish
linguistics as a science. In 1920s and 1930s the dominant model in
human sciences was that of BEHAVIOURISM, the doctrine that
only OBSERVABLE human behaviour could be used as data when
constructing theory. In linguistics, such an approach stressed the
need for rigorous methodology in data collection. Analysts,
however, worked on language alienated from context. This
abstraction of text from context limited the analysis to
descriptivism that is void of meaning. Meaning was not an area of
32
interest for Behaviourists. It was mentalistic and inaccessible to
observation. For Bloomfield, in order to understand the meaning of
an utterance, one had to investigate scientifically the properties of
the objects being referred to.
Noam Chomsky reacted strongly to this narrow conception of
“structuralism without meaning”. He argued that going to the field
to collect a corpus of utterances was a fatally flawed enterprise.
It would result in a very limited range of structures which the
investigator happened to record during his brief fieldwork. The
data would be polluted with numerous errors. The collected data
would not reflect the real grammar of the language but rather the
incidental effects of the non-linguistic real world such as lapses of
memory, interruptions and slips of the tongue. For Chomsky, the
“language” which was the object of study was not empirically
directly accessible. The language that Chomsky was interested in
studying, consisted of every possible sentence which a speaker,
competent in the language, could possibly ever utter. Chomsky
argued that the use of intuition and introspection can be employed
by the ideal native speaker of the language (the linguist) to make
judgments about the grammaticality of an utterance.
Chomsky distinguished between competence (the underlying
knowledge of grammar which every speaker possesses) and
performance (the inconsistent use that speakers make of this
knowledge in the real world). Chomsky’s work marked a major
departure for linguistic theory in the United States. It shifted the
emphasis to syntax and sought universals of language structures.
Sentences or parts of sentences became “strings” which underwent
transformations.
Chomskyan grammar looked like structuralism but with a new
flavour. language as seen by Chomsky consists of a system of rules
or principles which guide the construction of sentences. Language
remains, from Chomskyan perspective, an autonomous mechanism
whose structure can be described and analysed independently of
the social context of its use.
Corpora collected for computer databases reflected this alignment
in the exclusion of spoken materials in earlier corpora.
Structuralism in literary theory, cultural studies and anthropology
33
Saussure located language as one among many kinds of sign system.
“Semiology would show what constitutes signs, and what laws
govern them”.
MODEL ONE
As an ideology of Language
Model 1 aims to identify an idealized system
As a theory of communication
Model 1 embodies the idea that human communication works
by transferring ideas from the mind of the speaker to the
mind of the listener (signifier →signified →decoding) through
what was termed “telementation fallacy”. Obstacles
hampering correct decoding are attributed to either noise
interrupting signaling process, or different algorithms used
by the recipient.
Concepts on the language user
Model 1 perceives the language user as an idealized person
who knows his language perfectly and is operating in a
homogeneous speech community. No consideration is given to
diversity or conflict by either Saussure or Chomsky.
Locke conceives of the language user as an individual who “acts
voluntarily in acts of utterance”, in other words, who makes
choices: “every man has …a liberty to make words stand for
what ideas he pleases”.
MODEL TWO: SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Structuralists have imagined that under the messiness of real
life experiences lies an ideal form. Idealisation focuses on
structures and assumes that context and social process are of
marginal interest.
Throughout the twentieth century, there have existed
alternative traditions of language study which reject the idea
of an autonomous language mechanism.
Early Anthropological linguists
34
This tradition started in North America with linguists like Boas
setting out to describe the native languages of North America.
This project required the training of numerous field workers.
From this enterprise arose an important principle of relativism:
languages were diverse and that none was structurally superior
or inferior.
Edward Sapir, a student of Boas, argued for the necessity of
viewing language as inextricable from its culture: “Language
does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially
inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines
the texture of our lives”.
Britain’s emerging tradition of language study also had
anthropological roots. One of the major figures was Malinowski,
who studied the culture of Trobriad Islanders in the Pacific
Ocean.
Malinowski argued that to speak, in a primitive culture, is not to
tell, but to do. “In its primitive use, Language functions as a link
in concerted human activity—It is a mode of action and not an
instrument of reflection”. In other words, language use, in
primitive societies, is related to activities in the immediate
context, not to reflect, recall or comment on things that are out
of sight.
Malinowski identified three main functions in the “language of
the savages”:
1-
To realize action
2-
To express social and emotive functions (feelings of
togetherness of society)
3-
To establish bonds of sentiments, in gossip, This he turned
Phatic Communion.
For Malinowski, utterances become comprehensible only in the
context of the whole way of life in which they form part. The
focus of analysis is not on the sentence but on the “speech
event in a context of situation”.
Sociolinguistics in the USA
The ethnographer Dell Hymes argued that the cultural
knowledge needed by speakers to talk in socially appropriate
ways is what is needed in communicative competence.
35
William Labov in his quantitative methodology examined the
relationship between language and social context, correlating
details of pronunciation with the speaker identity and formality
of situation.
Sociolinguistics in the UK
The tradition in UK began at the University of London.
Malinowski was Professor of linguistics at the University of
London. Firth was also a prominent academic at the University
of London and so was Halliday. Halliday recognized the
importance of Malinowski’s work and was a student of Firth.
Halliday built a formal model that showed how language and
context were interlinked in the production of meaning.
The context of situation, for Halliday, can be described in
terms of three parameters:
Field : The activity and the language forms related to it, in
terms of participants, processes and circumstance.
Tenor: The roles and status relationships between participants,
and the language forms related to this as well as the
social functions of the utterance.
Mode: The channel of communication, spoken, written, telephone
or face-to-face, and the rhetorical devices associated
with each mode.
Registers or diatypic varieties derive from the range of uses
that language serves in a particular culture or subculture.
MODEL 2
As an ideology of language
Model 2 recognises varieties and look at standard language as
one among many dialects. Distinction between varieties has to
do with the social and political contexts in which they are
used.
As a theory of communication
Model 2 sees meaning as arising from an interaction between
language and social context. The same linguistic structure
used in different social contexts of use will carry different
36
meanings. Text is the central object of study. It encodes not
just ideas but also the social context and social relations
between participants. An important part of communication in
sociolinguistic theory is the choice, by a speaker.
Concepts of the language user
Society is seen as containing well-defined social groups
ordered along lines of ethnicity, social class, gender and age.
An individual’s social identity is defined in terms of
membership to such groups.
Sociolinguistics thus appeals to a structuralist model of
society and adds it to structural description of language
varieties. The British sociolinguist Robert Le Page asserts,
“the individual creates his system of verbal behaviour so as to
resemble those common to the group or groups with which he
wishes from time to time to be identified”.
MODEL THREE: POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism advocates no absolute static reality. The
cosmos becomes a different place depending on the position
adopted by the observer. Postmodernist theory looks at
language from a view that it is in constant flux, reflecting and
constructing changing realities.
Postmodernism takes a broader semiotic view to language. The
concern is with signs not words, and the signifying practices.
In pursuit of human communication, the boundary between
language and non-language is blurred.
Postmodern theories are concerned pre-eminently with texts.
Texts are not internally homogeneous entities. They are
produced by processes in which relations of power and social
role apply.
Model 3
As an Ideology of Language
37
Ideas and assumption on fixed roles and entities are rejected
by post modern theory.
As a theory of communication
In post modern theory communication is precarious. Meaning
arises from interaction with context and the social activities
of the participants. Different hearers or readers will respond
differently to the same material in a text, according to their
ideological status and position in the world. Meaning in
postmodern theory is not fixed but provisional and subject to
further negotiations, specially in relations of power.
Texts, within the post modern model, are nor simply read and
understood, but consumed, used, exploited and a site for
struggle. A text will take on a different life, new functions
and new meanings, according to the social activities in which it
is embedded.
Conceptions of the language user
The post modern language user is often described as a
“speaking subject”. Subjectivity is not given by their
membership of well-defined social groups but is constructed
through discourse, the every day experience of language
interaction.
Book two:
Part II: Halliday and functional linguistics
E300
Meeting #6
Tutorial Notes
THE FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE
Preliminaries
Grammar and meaning
For Halliday, language is a system of meaning. When people use
language, their language acts as the expression of meaning.
The grammar becomes a study of how meanings are built up
38
through the use of words and other linguistic forms such as
tone and emphasis
Linguistic choice
Halliday’s explanation of how language works involves the idea
that a language consists of a set of systems, each of which
offers the speaker or writer, a choice of ways of expressing
meaning : the interrogative form, the declarative form, the
imperative form as well as choices in the syntagmatic and
paradigmatic orders.
Language in use
Language in use is influenced by the complex elements from
the specific situation. The situation also influence the
interpretation and expression of meaning within the same
register, for example. A letter to a friend is different in
content and style from a business letter.
The study of texts
Halliday insists on studying real life texts. Communication is an
interactive process through which meaning is negotiated. In
Halliday’s view, a grammar that was only satisfactory for the
analysis of individual sentences would be incomplete. We need
a grammar that can also account for texts, and language parts
that are longer than a sentence. The choice of words and the
word order of one sentence often depends on the language
part that preceded it.
The linguistic analysis can help us to find out why some texts
are more effective than others.
The notion of rank
The meaning of the text is constructed out of its component
parts: sentences, clauses and words. Hallidayan linguists
employ the notion of rank. A sentence consists of one or more
groups, a group consists of one or more words and a word
consists of one or more morphemes. Each of these ranks refer
to a unit of meaning. The clause and its constituents allow us
to express ideas.
Functions and metafunctions
39
The functional approach to grammar is concerned with
language in use.
Grammatical functions: in a lexico grammar, each element
(word or group or clause) has to be seen as part of the
system of the language e.g. syntactic positioning, form etc.
The communicative function
Halliday makes the point that the relationship between the
forms of utterances and the types of meaning they can
express is a complex one which is based on the principle what
speakers say makes sense in the context in which they are
saying it. Language is organized around a small number of
“functional components” which correspond to metafunctions.
Metafunctions have a systematic relationship with the
lexicogrammar of the language.
Metafunctions
1-
The ideational function can be classified into two
subfunctions: the experiential and the logical. The
experiential relates to the experience or ideas. The logical
function relates to the relationship between ideas.
2-
The interpersonal function relates to the roles, attitudes
and judgments.
3-
The textual function relates to the use of language to
organize the text itself.
In any instance of language use all three metafunctions operate
simultaneously in the expression of meaning.
Chapter 2: Labels
Labels are technical terms.
o
o
o
Word classes : a set of categories for classifying words.
Parts of speech is the old term.
Word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions, articles and/or interjections.
Hallidayan grammar also features eight word classes: nouns,
adjectives, numerals, determiners, verbs, prepositions,
adverbs and conjunctions
Nouns: Common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns
Pronouns: are closed set of items: no additions or
transformations.
40
Personal pronouns: I, me
Possessive pronouns: my, mine
Wh-pronouns: who, whom, which, what, whose.
o
Verbs: Halliday lists three basic subclasses: lexical, auxiliary
and finite.
The finites and auxiliaries are closed sets. Lexical verbs are
an open set.
A significant subset of finites is the set of modal auxiliaries
or modals: could, can, may, might, shall, will, would…
o
Adjectives: are modifiers of nouns or the head of a group
that is complement of a copular verb (i.e after copular)
o
Determiners: a more comprehensive category than article.
o
Numerals
o
Adverbs: are characterized by the morphological feature- ly,
e.g. Clearly, cleverly, sadly,…
o
o
Prepositions
Conjunctions: linking conjunctions or coordinators (and, but,
for, or) binding conjunctions (because, whenever, until, before,
after, whether, although).
Chapter 3: The subject and related functions
The subject is realized by a Nominal Group.
o
Apposition: is when there is a substitute in meaning, e.g.
the subject of the first clause is substituted by the
personal name in the second (referring to the same entity)
o
Subject-finite agreement: a change of number or person
in the subject may coincide with a change of number in the
verb.
Texts written predominantly in the present tense offer
more examples of explicit subject-verb agreement.
o
Question-tag: the subject of the main clause is reflected
in the tag.
o
Passive clauses: passive clauses are, in a sense, an inverted
form of corresponding active clauses.
41
o
Empty subjects: or dummy subjects, eg. There, it. Such
dummy subjects are sort of stand-in holding the subject
position until the subject comes along. The postponed
structure is an embedded clause. We analyze the dummy
subject and the embedded clause together as making up the
subject.
o
Finites and predicators
Verbal groups realize the function of finite (F) and predictor
(P). In simple verbal group, the finite and predicator are said
to be fused. In the case of non-fused Finites and
Predicators, e.g. had written, was known. The first part is
the finite, carrying the agreement and the second is the
predicate.
Verbal groups can contain up to five words, not counting the
negative polarity element not or the particles e.g. slow down.
An example of a five part verbal group: It might have been
being written during that period. In such instance the first
element realizes the finite function while the rest of the
verbal group realizes the Predicator function.
o
Negatives and interrogatives
Where the positive declarative contains a separate Finite
and predicator, the negative counterpart is identical except
that not is present immediately after the finite.
Interrogatives likewise have a fairly straight forward
systematic correspondence with declaratives in that the
finite and the subject are inverted.
o
Mood: Halliday divides the clause into two parts: the Mood
and the Residue. The mood is made up of the subject and
Finite; the residue is the rest of the functions of the
clause.(Predicator, complement and adjuncts).
o
Direct object complement follow transitive verbs.
Intransitive verbs occur with or without an object
complement. Most verbs in English seem to function both
transitively and intransitively, with or without a complement.
A complement which follows a copular verb is called an
intensive complement: she is a brilliant woman.
Some verbs allow two object complements : a direct object
complement and an indirect object complement. The verbs
that allow indirect object complements are called
42
ditransitive verbs. Typical ditransitive verbs are : give, send,
offer.
Most linguists do not label a to-phrase as an indirect object.
They prefer for it the term adjunct (joined to). Eg. John
sent 120 flowers to me. The same is true of for-phrase John
sent 120 flowers for me.
o
Adjuncts: Adjuncts fall into three subtypes:
circumstantial, conjunctive and modal, corresponding to
three macrofunctions: the ideational, textual and
interpersonal respectively.
Circumstantial adjunct: information about time or place,
circumstances of the events or states described in the text.
Most typically they are realized by prepositional phrases or
adverbs.
Circumstantial adjuncts express information about the
circumstance of the process : they convey information about
such matters as place, time, manner. They are part of the
ideational meaning of the clause.
Conjunctive adjuncts show the link between this clause and what
precedes it (conjunctive adjuncts).
Modal adjuncts: indicate some aspect of the speaker/writer’s
attitude, eg. Normally, for a while, repeatedly, or degree of
commitment eg. Probably, possibly, conceivably.
Adjuncts and conjunctions.
Adjuncts are realized by prepositional phrases, adverbial groups
and sometimes nominal groups. They are not realized by
conjunctions.
Conjunctions are a word class within the same system as noun,
verb, adjective, adverbs, determiner, preposition and numeral.
Adjunct is a function in the clause and is realized by such word
classes as adverbs and nominals as well as by prepositional
phrases.
The conjunction but indicates adverse relations.
The adverb however serves as a conjunctive adjunct in linking
two separate sentences, e.g. He remembered writing something
important but he could not decipher his scrawl.
Or
43
He remembered writing something important. However he
could not decipher his scrawl.
Conjunctive Adjunct (adverb)
Conjunction
Moreover, furthermore
and
However, nevertheless
but, yet
Alternatively
whereas
or,
Thus, therefore, consequently
so that
There are five clause functions, covered here, subject (S),
finite (F), predicator (P), complement (C) and adjunct (A).
Part II: Halliday and functional linguistics
THE FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH (Chapters 4-6)
E300
Meeting #7
Tutorial Notes
The Functional Analysis of English
Chapter 4: Information Structure and Thematic Structure
An aspect of functional grammar is the way information is structured in
communication. We organize what we say in a way that will make it easier
for the interlocutor to understand.
Spoken language is of two types: prepared speech and unprepared speech.
Prepared speech has many shared characteristics with the written
language, e.g. public speaking, political address. Unprepared speech occurs
mostly in conversations. At a closer glance, we find that we consciously or
subconsciously impose structure on our speech as part of the act of a
communication.
44
In Hallidayan grammar, there are two parallel and interrelated systems of
analysis that concern the structure of the clause. The first of these is
called Information Structure and involves constituents that are labeled
Given and New. The second is called Thematic Structure and involves
constituents that are labeled Theme and Rheme.
Information Structure: Given and New information
An independent clause is a clause that can stand alone as a complete
sentence. Given and New information can be found in both dependent and
independent clauses and in combinations of the two. In order to
communicate effectively the speaker must bring to the hearer’s attention
some elements of shared or mutual knowledge. This shared information is
usually found at the beginning of the clause and is labeled Given
information. Most clauses also include information that is the focus of
the message, New information.
The two elements, the Given and the New, make up an information unit.
This consists of the Given, which is optional, and the New, which is
obligatory.
With the exception of the imperative, all the clauses have Given elements
that are referentially linked either to the interlocutor or the previously
mentioned elements the conversation.
Where a speaker or writer constructs a clause where Given information is
placed first and New information come second, the clause is said to be
unmarked. This is a matter primarily of intonation, the way in which the
different levels of pitch (or tone) are used in the language to express
meaning.
In an unmarked declarative clause, the New information is said to have
the most communicative dynamism and is signaled intonationally by a
falling tone.
Thematic structure: Theme and Rheme
Thematic structure is similar to information structure and in many
clauses there is a parallel equivalence between theme and Given on one
hand and Rheme and New on the other.
45
Theme in English is the idea represented by the constituent at the
starting point of the clause, the point of departure of the message. A
clause begins with a realization of the theme. This is followed by the
realization of the Rheme, which can be explained as being the rest of the
message.
The topical theme represents the topic of the discourse: a participant,
circumstance or process. The topical theme is realized by one of the
following elements: Subject, Predicator, Complement or Circumstantial
Adjunct.
In some interrogative clauses, the Finite precedes the Subject and hence
can be theme, but in such case it will not be a topical theme.
Nominal Groups as theme
When a subject is in theme position in a declarative clause it is said to be
unmarked.
Interrogatives, imperatives and exclamations
Consider the examples:
1- Had he written down something of importance?
2- What had he written down?
The starting point of the clause is different in interrogative clauses. The
Theme-Rheme structure is also different. The theme in the first
interrogative is realized by the finite Had and the Subject together, in
this case Had he. In the second interrogative the theme is realized by
the word what.
Consider now the following examples:
1- Write it down
2- What neat writing you’ve got!
3- How sweetly she sings!
MOOD
Declarative
Interrogative
Imperative
Exclamative
THEME realized by
Subject
Finite + Subject
Predicator
Wh-word complement
46
Or Wh-word Adjunct.
Marked theme in declarative clauses
The theme is said to be unmarked where the subject is the starting point
of the clause. In cases where other elements are found in theme position,
the theme is said to be marked. The most common element to appear as
marked theme is the circumstantial Adjunct.
Consider the examples:
1After the war, the Spartans erected a memorial in the battle
field.
2For a long time, the Spartans proved themselves invincible on
land.
Theme is realized by the prepositional phrases which are acting as
circumstantial adjuncts.
The writer could have put each of these adjuncts at a later position in
the clause. This flexibility allows the writer to select the initial position.
A more unusual case of marked theme, occurs where the first constituent
in the clause is the complement. Complements usually follow the verb in
declarative sentences, but occasionally, for special effects, they come in
theme positions, e.g. Poetry, where there is a stylistic intent in fronting.
The themes in all the marked examples so far are part of the ideational
element of the clause, which is to say that they tell us something about
the world the writer is describing.
Multiple themes
Some clauses have more than one theme. They have multiple thematic
structure.
Every clause has a theme which relates to the ideational function of
language. This is the theme which represents what the clause is about,
the topic of the clause, and hence the name Topical theme.
In addition to the Topical theme, some clauses also have Textual and/or
Interpersonal themes. When speakers in a conversation, use expressions
like well, or oh, they are using a Textual theme. When speakers address
47
listeners directly, by using a name or a term of affection, they are using
an Interpersonal theme.
Well
Children
The Story
Textual theme
Interpersonal
theme
Topical theme
48
Is about to
begin
Rheme
Morning
Interpersonal
Theme
Oh yes
Textual theme
so
Textual theme
ladies and
gentlemen
Interpersonal
theme
last tutorial
Topical theme
I
Topical theme
We talked about
democracy
Rheme
Dropped your case
Rheme
some of the comments
Topical theme
are valid
Rheme
It is possible to analyze clauses for both their Given – New structure and
for their Theme – Rheme structure. It is usually the case that the Given
element is the same as the Theme, but not necessarily always. In
Imperative clauses, for example, we draw a distinction between Theme
and Given.
(You)
Given
(You)
Given
Have
Theme
some bread
Rheme
New
don’t touch
the sandwich
New
Topical theme
Rheme
The use of intonation helps place emphasis and locate New information in
theme position.
Chapter 5: Grammar and Text
Text and Texture
The grammar of English allows speakers and writers to structure
information within the clause by making use of two patterns:
1- The Theme and Rheme system of the clause, and
2- The combination of Given and New information units.
49
The thematic choices made by the language user can help to make a text
coherent. Cohesive devices are combined with structural elements to give
a sense of continuity to discourse.
The textual component of the grammar
Halliday identifies the textual component (texture) as consisting of
features associated with two groups of resources: the structural and the
cohesive.
Structural component
Given and New information: the information structure and
focus.
Theme and Rheme: the thematic structure.
Cohesive Component
1- Reference
2- Ellipsis and Substitution
3- Conjunction
4- Lexical Cohesion
The logical progression of the information through the text is helped
both by the thematic structure and the use of the devices: reference,
ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.
The constant theme pattern (same reference case)
The constant pattern, where a common theme is shared by each clause
and where this theme equates with the Given information, is common to
short passages and descriptions of factual information focusing on a
particular thing or concept.
The Linear Theme pattern
The Linear pattern is when the Rheme of one clause is taken up as the
theme of the subsequent clause.
The Split Rheme pattern
The Split Rheme pattern occurs when the Rheme of a clause has two
components each of which is taken in turn as the theme of the
subsequent clause:
Derived themes
50
Derived themes is the term used to describe expressions in theme
position which are cohesively linked in meaning, but not necessarily in
form, to a topic which has been stated earlier in the text or the overall
topic of the paragraph.
Cohesive ties
Cohesive ties can be classified into four main types:
Reference:
Reference can be cohesive when two or more expressions in the text
refer to the same person, thing or idea.
An essential characteristic of cohesive reference is that, on second and
subsequent mention, the person or thing referred to is not named but is
indicated by means of a pronoun, demonstrative (this, these) or
comparative term. When readers or listeners come across a pronoun or
determiner, they are forced to mentally identify the linked nominal in
order to make sense of the text. This has a very strong cohesive force.
References can be endophoric references, i.e. to reference things within
the text. These have a cohesive function. There are the non-cohesive
exophoric references, i.e. references to things outside the text
Eudophoric references are further divided into cataphoric (forward
pointing) references, e.g. look at this, a beautiful cat. Anaphoric
references (back ward looking), e.g. Armstrong went to the moon. He was
the first man to walk on the moon.
In terms of grammatical realization there are three main types of
cohesive reference: personal reference, demonstrative and comparative
reference.
Personal reference is dependent on the use of personal pronouns.
Possessives are also referential and can be used as Modifier or Head in a
Nominal Group. Demonstrative reference is dependent on the use of
Determiners (this, these, that and those) and adjuncts (here, now, then,
there) and comparative reference uses adjectives like (same, other,
identical, better, more) or their adverbial counterparts (identically,
similarly, less) and so on, to forge links with previously mentioned entities.
Substitutions and ellipsis
51
* Substitution is used where a speaker or writer wishes to avoid the
repetition of a lexical item and is able to draw on one of the grammatical
resources of the language to replace the item.
In the case of referential cohesion, the tie exists between two or more
references to the same concept. With substitution we do not have coreferentiality, but rather a substitute for a word or a group of words.
There are three types of substitutions in English: verbal, nominal and
clausal substitutions.
In nominal substitutes, one, ones and same can stand in place of Nominal
Groups and Head Nouns.
In verbal substitutes, any nonfinite form of the verb do can stand in the
place of the Lexical Verb in a Verbal Group.
The third type, clausal substitution, is extremely common both in speech
and in written prose. Here, the words so and not stand in place of an
entire clause except for the subject, and the reader or listener can only
interpret the meaning of the substitution in terms of what has previously
been expressed in full.
An interesting point about substitution is the grammatical distinction
between the use of the substitute not following a verb like (think,
suppose, guess) and the ordinary negative form of the verb, as in I don’t
suppose.
* Ellipsis is the omission of words, groups of clauses (referred to by
Halliday as “substitution by zero”). Ellipsis takes place in similar
grammatical environment to substitution. We have nominal, verbal and
clausal ellipsis.
The grammar of Nominal ellipsis permits the omission of Head Nouns in a
Nominal Group. Verbal ellipsis is common in all short form answers and
responses.
Conjunctions
Conjunction is the term used to describe the cohesive tie between
clauses or sections of text in such a way as to demonstrate a meaningful
relationship between them. This “linking” or “joining” is achieved by the
use of Conjunctive Adjuncts, which are sometimes called “cohesive
conjunctives”, for example: then, for this reason, on the other hand.
These are words or expressions which have two textual functions: they
52
indicate conjunction and indicate the type of relationship that operates
between the elements being joined, for example, relationship of time,
reason, cause.
Conjunctive adjuncts and conjunctions have different grammatical
characteristics.
There are four classes of cohesive conjunction:
Additive
Adversative
Causal
Temporal
Other groupings may include:
Additive – exemplification, e.g. for example.
Adversative – contrastive, e.g. by contrast.
Causal – result, e.g. as a consequence of this.
Temporal – sequential, e.g. Firstly, secondly.
Conjunctive adjuncts are signals or signposts that indicate the direction
of argument.
Lexical cohesion
Lexical cohesion refers to the cohesive effect of the use of lexical items
in discourse where the choice of an item relates to the choices that have
gone before.
Repetition or re-iteration is a type of lexical cohesion that probably has
the strongest cohesive force. Synonyms and near synonyms can have the
same effect as the entity referred to. Where the cohesive device has
the same referent, it is termed an identity device.
There are also superordinate synonym relations like flower and daisy or
subordinate synonym relationship like daisy and flower.
As well as synonyms, words from mutually exclusive categories (such as
male and female, or hot and cold) are related as opposites. Words with
contrastive meanings (antonyms) have cohesive effects.
Collocation is also an indicator of cohesion. Words collocate differently in
different registers. One of the most important types of lexical cohesion
concerns the use of general nouns. With these words, a speaker of writer
can create a cohesive link with almost any previously mentioned entity.
53
Within the class of general nouns there is the category of Anaphoric
nouns (A-nouns) that is used to refer back to sections in the text.
Summary nouns are used to summarize previous sections. Any noun which
can be used to refer to other sections in the discourse (meta
discursively) can be used as an anaphoric noun.
Lexical cohesion involves meaningful connections in text that are created
through the use of lexical items and that do not intrinsically involve
reference, substitution, ellipsis or conjunction.
Chapter 6: Process and Participants
Meanings: the Clause as representation
Language is a means of representing the world or worlds, perceived or
imagined. Language encodes our experience, and plays a crucial role in our
involvement with other people, life, the universe and everything. When we
speak of language as representing real world events or imaginary events
we are not ruling out the probability that language itself has a formative
role in human experience and the reality it is representing. This
representation is the ideational function of language, with the clause as
its unit of representation.
Processes
The linguistic representation of the components of the clause: the
participants and the processes take place with Nominal and Verbal Groups
respectively. The participants are the entities involved in the process,
they can be animate or inanimate.




Material Processes: in an action oriented narrative, material
processes involve doing words with actors and goals
The actor is explicit performer of the material process and the
goal is the recipient of the action
In the active voice, the actor is the departing point of the clause:
Jerry opened the door (actor – process – goal)
In the passive voice the goal is the departing point of the clause:
The door was opened by Jerry (Goal – process – actor)
54






Beneficiary: Sometimes a material process has three participants,
e.g. He gave some of the bills to Jerry (Actor – process – goal –
beneficiary)
In the active voice the beneficiary is the Indirect Object
Complement, in the passive clause it is often the subject
Some material processes are metaphorical. In the example: “The
burglar took a bath” If the taking involves a material process, i.e.
was part of the theft where the burglar actually took the bath,
then the bath is Goal. If, on the other hand, the burglar had a
shower, and the statement is metaphorical, then bath is Range.
Mental Processes: Some processes involve states of mind or
psychological events. With such processes the Goal is substituted
by phenomenon
Senser and Phenomenon: in mental processes, the participant is
labeled senser, and the experience felt, phenomenon.
Relational Processes: are realized by the verb be or other copular
verbs, e.g. seem, become, appear or sometimes by have own,
possess. They typically fall into two categories:
-
Attributive Relational Processes: in attributive processes we
have the carrier of the attributation and the attribute, e.g. She
was hungry (carrier of the attributation – process – attribute)
-
Identifying Relational Processes: where the function of the
relation is to identify the entity involved, e.g. Clint is his name. In
such case the elements of the clause are: the identified – the
identifying relational process and the identifier.




Verbal Processes: are of two kinds: the quoted and the reported.
The person who produces the utterance is the Sayer. The verbal
process is realized by verbs like said. The actual words spoken are
labeled quoted or reported depending on their function.
Quoted is realized as direct speech, e.g. I said: if there isn’t I’ll go
to city mall.
Reported is realized as indirect speech, e.g. I said I wanted to go
to city mall.
The person to whom the verbalization is addressed is the Receiver.
55
(remember we use ask or say to - we never use ask to)
Other processes: There are minor processes : Existential and
Behavioural processes.
 Existential Processes have only one participant: the Existent. This
type of process has two main grammatical realizations:
With a copular, with there as the empty Subject, e.g. There
were ten of us.
With a copular, and the Existent as the Subject, and a
Circumstantial adjunct, e.g. Ten of us were at the party
 Behavioural Processes: only one participant is usually required, the
Behaver, e.g. the car vanished.


Circumstance: are elements which carry a semantic load but which
are neither process nor participants. They are concerned with
matters like setting, physical or temporal, manner in which the
process is implemented or other entities accompanying the process
rather than directly engaged in it. Their realization is typically
adverb or prepositional phrase.
Part II: Halliday and functional linguistics
THE FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH (Chapters 7-9)
E300
Tutorial # 8
Notes prepared by Dr Hayat Al-Khatib ©
The Functional Analysis of English
CHAPTER 7
Chapters 7 - 9
Structures of the Nominal Group
Tutorial outline:
 Definition of nominal group, nominal phrase, and nominal clause
 Functions: logical and experiential
 Logical function: sequencing head and modifier
 Experiential function: deictic, numerative, classifier, epithet, thing,
qualifier
 Premodification and Postmodification
56
Definition
The Nominal Group is a linguistic unit that has some of the
characteristics of a noun.
The nominal phrase or noun phrase has the noun or pronoun as the
head.
The Nominal Clause or noun clause is a clause that functions as a noun
or a noun phrase. It may occur as a subject, object complement, in
apposition or as a prepositional complement, e.g. nominal clause as a
subject: What she said is awful. Nominal clause as an object: I don’t
know what she said.
The noun group is made up of the logical relation between the Head
Noun and the Modifier. Modification may occur in a noun phrase, a
verb phrase, an adjectival phrase, etc.
Modifiers that precede the head noun are called premodifiers.
Modifiers that follow the head noun are called postmodifiers. Halliday
uses the term qualifier for cases of postmodification.
The function of modifiers can be realized by various word classes:
determiners, adjectives and numerals, as premodifiers, and
prepositional phrases as postmodifiers.
The function of the modifier can also be realized by a noun. Common
examples of nouns as modifiers are found in everyday expressions like:
art gallery, football field, grammar book, telephone number, etc.
Logical and Experiential Functions
The logical function of the Nominal Group is realized in the sequencing
of the Head noun and Modifiers. As for the experiential functions,
there are six experiential functions that are realized in the Nominal
Group. These are the Deictic, The Numerative, The Epithet, the
Classifier, the Thing and the Qualifier.
Deictic
Deictic is a term for a word or a phrase which directly relates a
reference to a tie or place or person. The deictic function in the
Nominal Group is realized by determiners: demonstratives like this,
that, these and those, and also by the articles a, an, the. Deictics can
57
be possessive nouns or pronouns, e.g. my book, your home. They can
also be non specific items like, some, each, both, neither, all, every.
Numerative
Numerative is a word of a phrase that refers to a number.
Numeratives can be realized by numerals or expressions like many,
several, few, lots of.
Classifier and Epithet
Classifiers: a word in the noun phrase that puts the modified item
into a subclass, distinguishing it from other subtypes.
The Epithet indicates features or characteristics, not a subtype of
the category, example: two new light switches. Light is the classifier
as it is the noun classifying the type of the switch. New, however,
indicates the characteristic of the switch, not a subtype of it.
You can distinguish an epithet from a classifier when you paraphrase
the structure with Epithet in a be clause, e.g. The switches are new.
The classifier cannot be rephrased in the same manner (the switches
are light) X.
Thing:
The thing in the functional analysis of the Nominal group differs from
its literal meaning. It can here refer to inanimate or animate
categories as well as to abstract concepts. Thing refers to the main
item in the nominal group (the head). In two new light switches,
switches is the thing.
Qualifier:
A linguistic unit that is part of the nominal group, follows the Head
and gives more information on it (qualifies it). A qualifier is usually a
prepositional phrase but a nominal phrase, a verbal phrase, etc.
The prepositional phrase can function
 As postmodifier/qualifier in a nominal group when functioning as an
adjective: The women, in the corner, is from Italy
 As an adjunct in a clause when functioning as an adverb (of time,
frequency, degree and manner). Adjuncts are part of the basic
structure of a clause or a sentence and modify the verb.
Examples of adjuncts:
58
He died in England (Adjunct/place)
I have almost finished (Adjunct/degree)
He came yesterday (adjunct/time)
I love you regardless (adjunct/manner)
When the prepositional phrase has the same reference as the head
noun, it is said to be in apposition and has the function to qualify the
Head. Apposition is the case where two words, phrases, or clauses in a
sentence have the same reference.
* Lebanon, in the Mediterranean basin, is a region of exceptional
moderate climate in the Arab World.
Lebanon and in the Mediterranean basin, are in apposition: they refer
to the same entity. The prepositional phrase in this example functions
as a qualifier/ postmodifier for the Nominal Group, the Head.
In the following example the prepositional phrase serves a different
function than to qualify the Head.
* I was in Lebanon for two weeks, the prepositional phrase for two
weeks is an adjunct.
Recursion
A prepositional phrase may have another prepositional phrase
embedded in it and this pattern can be repeated (recurrent) within
the embedded entity.
The
first [ of many steps [ on
Determiner
the road [ to
ruin ] ] ]
Preposition
Numerative
Determiner
Preposition
Noun
Numerative
Preposition
59
Noun
Noun
(See Fig. 7.6 P.145 )
60
Paratactic and Hypotactic Nominal Group Complexes
When two or more Nominal Groups are combined as a single constituent to
form a super-Nominal Group and they have parallel or equal relation they
are said to be paratactic Nominal Group Complex.
Hypotactic combinations refer to clauses that have dependent relations
on one another.
CHAPTER 8 : Rank shifted clauses
Tutorial outline:
 Definition of Rankshifted clauses
 Rankshifted clauses and the relative clause
 Categories: Superordinate and Embedded
 Functions: logical function (in sequencing it functions as a modifier)
experiential function (modifying in premodification sequences and
qualifying in postmodification sequences, through defining,
restricting, non-restricting functions)
 Types: Full defining, reduced, omitted
A rank shifted clause is one which is used as a unit of lower rank or part
of such a unit; it is also referred to as an embedded clause, e.g. its rank
shifts from clause to group.
The clause which is inside another clause is the embedded (or rank
shifted) clause. The clause which contains the embedded clause is the
superordinate clause.
From the logical point of view the rankshifted clause functions as a
modifier. From the experiential point of view the rankshifted clause
functions as modifier in premodification and qualifier in postmodification.
The convention for symbolizing a rank shifted clause is the use of double
square brackets [[ ]] enclosing a clause.
Rankshifted clauses are known as defining relative clauses or restrictive
relative clauses in. Full defining relative clauses contain a relative
pronoun. This may be a wh-pronoun (who, whom, which, whose, where,
when or that). In some relative clauses the relative pronoun can be
61
omitted and the clause is termed a reduced relative clause. In writing,
the defining relative clause is NOT separated from the Head it restricts
by a comma, e.g. The woman whom he married was his childhood
sweetheart.
In a non-defining relative clause, also called a non-restrictive relative
clause, additional information is given on the Head noun without
restricting or defining it. In such instances commas ARE used to separate
the non-defining relative clause: My students, who are bright, will all pass
the final.
Any common noun and some pronouns can be modified by a defining
relative clause. The Nominal Group which contains the relative clause may
realize any function open to Nominal Groups. In the following examples
the relative clause is between brackets and the grammar function of the
relative clause is given between parenthesis:
1Any person [[ who writes good English]] is a learnt person
(subject)
2Soil variation affect the plants [[ which are grown]] (Direct
Object Complement)
3The electricity should be tested with some device [[ which
indicates voltage ]] (complement of preposition in adjunct)
4It’s a job [[ that can be done all in one go ]] (Intensive
complement)
The relative pronoun itself can function as modifier (whose) or adjunct
(where, when).
Omitted relative pronoun (zero pronoun option).
Some relative pronouns cannot be omitted:
1The men [[who know English]] had good fortunes
2He met the woman [who took his heart forever]
In these two examples the relative pronoun cannot be omitted
However, in the example below, the use of the relative pronoun is
optional:
1The book [that she wrote] was good / The book [she wrote]
was good
62
This is called the zero pronoun option. The meaning remains the same
whether the relative pronoun is used or omitted.
Although grammar offers these possibilities, stylistics and registers
determine which option is chosen. Churchill was reprimanded for ending
his statements with prepositions.
Non-finite relative clauses
Non finites can be used in relative clause. Non finites are the infinitives
(used with to) and the participles (present with –ing functioning as an
adjective and past with -ed), examples:
1- Hot water taps draw from a pipe [connected to the hot water
cylinder]
2- Most arguments [presented in favour of the quiz next week] had
little support.
Bracketed structures are non-finite clauses.
Clauses and Embedding
Clauses may have multiple embedding. Embedding occurs with binding
conjunctions or binders like when, because, unless, that binding a
dependent clause to an independent one.
Rank shifted clauses as subject or complement
It is possible for a rankshifted clause to stand in for the whole of a
Nominal Group as subject of a clause.
[ What is Beautiful ] is also
S
F
C
F
in some ways ugly .
A
A
C
S
The embedded (rankshifted)
superordinate clause.
clause
63
is
the
subject
of
the
As well as functioning as subject, rankshifted clauses can also function
as complement:
They took [ what they wanted]
S
F/P
C
S
F/P
C
Non-finite clauses as subject or complement
Non finite clauses can realize the subject or complement Function.
[Cutting plaster] is not difficult
P
C
S
F
C
64
[ To err ] is human ; [ to forgive ] divine
P
P
S
F
C
S
C
Extraposition
Extraposition is the process of moving a word, a phrase, or a clause to
a position in a sentence which is different from the position it usually
has. Extraposition can function as a rankshifting strategy. Consider
the following examples:
Aristotle’s arguments appealed to logic. This is not surprising.
12-
That Aristotle’s arguments appealed to logic is not surprising
It isn’t surprising that Aristotle’s arguments appealed to logic
In the first example rankshifting occurs through the use of the
binder that at the beginning of the sentence. In the second example,
the empty pronoun it stands in and holds the fort until the real
information about the subject comes along in the shape of the
rankshifted clause. It is called the anticipatory subject and the
rankshifted clause here is the postponed subject.
Non-finite rankshifted clauses can be extraposed:
1- It is difficult to disentangle them.
2- It is impossible to say how far
Other Rankshifted clauses
Some adjectives permit clause embedding
ready (to die for)
quick (to reply)
eager (to help)
happy (to be of service)
Rankshifted clauses can be embedded in comparative adverbial groups.
Move easily [than anyone had imagined]
65
Faster [than any one of his rivals]
As fast [as you can]
Too hot [to handle]
Too young [to be in love]
So soon [that no one is ready].
66
CHAPTER 9: Clause Complexes : Expansion
Tutorial outline:
 Definition
 Types: equal (coordination) and dependent (subordination)
 Linking conjunctions: linkers and binders
 Linking relations: parataxis and hypotaxis
 Thematic roles: marked and unmarked
Clause complexes are clauses which contain one or more dependent
clauses in addition to the independent or main clause. In addition to
rankshifting (cases of embedding), there are two further ways in
which sentences can incorporate more than one clause. The first
involves linking the clauses together on an equal footing. The second
involves binding one clause to another in a dependency relationship.
Where clauses are joined together in either of these ways, we have a
clause complex.
Equal clauses (cases of the compound clause)
In the case of clauses with equal status the linking is done through the
use of a category of conjunctions called linking conjunctions or linkers.
In traditional grammars these are known as coordinating conjunctions
(and the resulting structure is the compound clause).
The semantic distinction among these linkers is as follows: and is
additive, indicating addition and sometimes chronological or logical
sequence; but is adversative indicating a contrast; or is disjunctive,
signaling alternation; so is consequential, indicating cause and effect
relation.
The phenomenon of linking that involves such conjunctions and
operates among equal clauses, is called parataxis. The clauses linked in
this way are said to have a paratactic relation to each other.
Dependent clauses (cases of subordinate clause)
Dependent clauses combine in clause complexes where a dependent
clause is bound to a dominant clause through hypotaxis. Hypotaxis
means that one clause is attached to another but has a lower status.
67

The Blue Nile grows wider as it advances into the desert.
The second clause as it advances into the desert is bound in a
hypotactic relation to the first clause The Blue Nile grows wider. The
conjunction as shows this relationship.
Binding conjunctions or Binders (known in traditional grammar as
subordinating conjunctions) include: when, while, until, before, after,
if, unless, since, because, where, whereas, so that, as). They are used
to indicate hypotactic (dependent) relationship.
Sequencing of clauses: Theme and Rheme
Sequencing of clauses suggests a thematic role for the clause in the
theme position, as a whole in relation to the other clauses within the
complex.
The linking conjunctions (and, but, or, so) never occurs at the
beginning of the complex which it links. The binding conjunctions (as,
because, when---) can occur at the beginning of the complex which it
binds.
The thematically unmarked sequence is: dominant clause followed by
dependent clause. The thematically marked sequence is dependent
clause followed by dominant clause.
The fact of making the dependent clause the starting point has
meaning for the message conveyed.
Non-finite dependent clauses
Dependent clauses have the function of expanding the proposition in
the dominant clause, indicating some contingency relating to that
proposition; of condition, time, purpose, means, matter…
Non-finite clauses in a clause complex with a finite clause are always
dependent.
1. Prepare for a quiz as advised in Moodle
2. Looking back on what has been achieved one sees the good spells
and the bad.
68
In the first example the dominant clause precedes the non-finite
dependent clause. There are binders to signal the dependency
relationship. In the second example the dependent clause comes first
with no binder or linker.
This type of dependent clauses is labeled expansion clauses.
Defining and non-defining relative clauses
The defining relative clause is an essential component of the Nominal
Group. It restricts the scope of the head noun.
The non-defining relative clause, also known as the non-restrictive
relative clause is less intimately bound up with the item that it relates
to and is analyzed not as a rankshifted (embedded) clause but as a
dependent (subordinate) clause.
1He measured the shadow of the pyramid which was visible under
the noon sun.
2- He measured the shadow of the pyramid and it was visible under
the noon sun.
The function of the relative clause in this example is not to restrict
the head noun, but rather to provide additional information. Such a
clause is grammatically dependent on the dominant clause, but not an
integral part of it.
Non-defining relative clauses are analyzed not as paratactic but as
hypotactic structures. They are not integrated into the dominant
clause in the way that rankshifted clauses are but they are dependent.
There are additional grammar differences between defining and nondefining clauses. In defining relative clauses there is the option of
using either wh-pronoun or that. In non-defining clauses the relative
pronoun is wh-pronoun.
Part II: Halliday and functional linguistics
THE FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH (Chapters 10-12)
E300 meeting#9 Tutorial Notes prepared by Dr Hayat Al-Khatib ©
69
The Functional Analysis of English
Chapter 10: Complex clauses / Projection
Projection is another function in clause complexes that contain verbal
processes.
Projecting verbs:
Mental processes involving verbs like believe, hope, pretend,
wish and wonder, can project
Verbal processes involving verbs like argue, claim, declare,
explain, insist, promise and vow, project.
The ideational function of projection clauses identifies categories of
sayer, quoted and reported.
The logical organization focuses on the paratactic and hypotactic
combinations of projecting and projected clauses.
Hypotactic projection clauses:
The clause containing the sayer and the reporting verb is the dominant
clause and the reported element is the dependent clause.
In reported speech (indirect speech) the projected element, is
grammatically integrated with the reporting clause. The result is that
the choice of tense, pronoun and other deictic elements (adverbs of
time and place) in the reported clause are influenced by the general
orientation of the reporting clause.
This does not happen with direct speech where no grammar changes
occur, e.g. He said “you are a thief”(direct speech).
70
Paratactic projection clauses are typically direct speech. Hypotactic
projection clauses are typically reported speech. Projecting and
projected clauses may occur in any order. Projecting clauses may
interrupt projected clauses, e.g. “Civil war” he said “is a disgrace”.
Reported speech makes use of the binding conjunction, that in clause
complexes with projection. The use of that signals a hypotactic
projection.
Although binders cannot normally be omitted from finite dependent
clause, the use of that as a binder is often optional. We can have:
1-
He said that he had not known about my feelings.
or
2-
He said he had not known about my feelings.
Non finite and finite projections:
Like expansion clauses, projection clauses may be finite or non-finite.
Reported
promises,
commands
or
requests
involve
non-finite
dependent clauses, e.g.
1-
I told him to follow my lead.
2-
He promised to honour his vows.
The verb “ask” can be used to project questions and requests, e.g.
She asked me to help her
Dependent and independent projections:
71
The clauses projected by verbs are dependent clauses. Clauses
occurring with the nouns take the form of rankshifted clauses
occurring as Postmodifiers of the Head noun.
1-
He concluded (that) there was no harm done
(Projection /dependent clause)
2-
He drew the conclusion that there was no harm done
(Projection / postmodifier)
Ambiguous structures:
A potential for ambiguity arises when it is not clear whether a
structure is an expansion or a projection. Sometimes the boundaries
are not clear cut.
Chapter 11
Applications of Functional Analysis
The functional analysis of English helps the language user understand
the functions of language and ways of using it for effect. The language
user needs to understand the functions of language and how to resist
linguistic pressures and to recognize when people are using language to
exploit or oppress others.
There are methods of analysis that focus on the structure. These
split the clause into its SFPCA components, each having its distinctive
characteristics. Other methods focus on the clause as message. These
look at information structure: Theme and Rheune or Given and New.
72
In both cases language is recognized and treated as a system or a set
of systems.
Viewing the characteristics of registers, structurally and functionally,
helps native and non-native users produce appropriate valued texts.
Grammar features of scientific writing are characterized by
nominalization of processes, e.g. accelerate becomes acceleration,
compare-comparison and so on. The tendency to use Nominal Groups
rather than verbal processes has a number of major effects in
scientific texts. It projects external objective reality that facilitates
the expression of general “truths” or “claims”.
Register analysis, the study of thematic progression in texts, lexical
cohesion,
cohesive
conjunctions,
the
use
of
different
verbal
processes, reporting verbs, etc, all contribute to the learner’s
awareness of the appropriate and effective use of English. Methods of
linguistic analysis give us the tool for investigating the characteristics
of a text.
Non-native speakers’ discourse is frequently a string of unconnected
independent clauses, whereas the native speaker signals the clause
relations and “peaks of prominence” in the message.
Functional grammar helps highlight the significant grammatical
features in valued texts that can be learned to improve communication
skills. In language teaching, it establishes beyond doubt that simplistic
linguistic analysis based only on identifying incorrect grammar use is
of little help in the evaluation of the success of communication.
73
The Functional perspective introduced the concepts of register and
language for specific purposes. Appropriate cohesive devices and
specific aspects of grammar like ellipsis and substitution are new
areas that merit functional analysis. These were not targeted in any
old pedagogic grammar. Also, changing the focus of a sentence and
manipulating word order indicate more than just movements at the
surface level of grammar.
Appropriateness in languages use varies as the functions of language
vary and in relation to the situation of the language exchange.
Language and power
Language is a human and social phenomenon, it develops and changes,
as people use it for social purposes.
Our construction of reality and the world is dependent on language.
Words and grammar picture reality in certain ways that also reflect
the language user’s ideologies and attitudes towards the topic
represented.
Grammar has the category of possessive pronouns, for example, that
indicate ownership. These may be used also to refer to non-material
possessions like my wife, my country, thus creating specific
affiliations or relations.
The exertion of power by individuals with certain social roles in
particular social positions is often revealed in the form of language, as
well as the lack of power. An example is the language used by teachers
74
who have the responsibility for both discipline and learning. This is
displayed in the language they use. Language analysis can contribute to
our understanding of power relations and ideological process as
reflected in the discourse.
Description is one stage in critical discourse analysis. The other levels
relate to interpretation and explanation. The focus is on choices made
with vocabulary, grammar and textual features. The choice of words,
grammatical form and text structure in terms of the experiential
value (how is the language user representing the world), relational
values (how are the social relationships between interactants
expressed) and the expressive values (how are the attitudes to the
topic and the social identities of the language users revealed). Norman
Fairclough poses the following list for critical discourse analysts:
1-
2-
What experiential values do grammatical features have?
-
What type of processes and participants dominate?
-
Is agency clear?
-
Are processes what they seem?
-
Are nominalizations used?
-
Are sentences active or passive?
-
Are sentences positive or negative?
What relational values do grammatical features have?
-
What modes (declarative, interrogative, imperative) are
used?
-
Are there important features of relational modality?
75
-
Are the pronouns we and you used, and if so, for what
purposes?
3-
What expressive value do grammatical features have?
-
4-
Are there important features of expressive modality?
How are simple sentences linked together?
-
What logical connectors are used?
-
Are complex sentences characterized by coordination or
subordination?
-
What means are used for referring inside and outside
the text?
In an analysis that incorporate the above items more is revealed through
critical discourse that would indicate through features of the text
relations of the world.
Chapter 12
Although
Historical perspective
modern linguistics
differs
significantly from
traditional
approaches, some of the concepts and insights from earlier periods
underpin much modern thought. The notions of active and passive voice,
word class, tense, subject and object, person, number, subject and verb
agreement are indispensable for grammar discussion.
The principles of a science of linguistics developed from earlier historical
comparative work.
76
Ferdinand de Saussure redirected the course of linguistic study away
from historical concerns to the synchronic (chain) and diachronic (choice)
analysis. Saussure distinguished between the language system “La langue”
and the individual’s use of the system “La Parole”.
American Linguists:
Edward Sapir Examined the languages of Native Americans and proposed
that language structures, including grammar, reflect social and cultural
influences.
Leonard Bloomfield was inspired by the behaviorist psychology arguing
that language is a set of acquired habits that can be documented through
empirical observation.
Noam Chomsky focused on the field of syntax on primarily two areas:
-
Deep and surface structures in grammar
-
The mechanism of transformation
Chomsky had no interest in the social aspect of language. He was
preoccupied with discovering the universals of language. He viewed
language as a biologically determined phenomenon, innate to human beings.
Michael Halliday views language primarily as a social phenomenon. He is
interested in language and communication.
Dell Hymes posits the construct of communicative competence, of which
grammatical competence is only a component, “there are rules of use
without which the rules of grammar would be useless”.
77
William Labov researched the role of situational factors in systematic
dialectical variation and historical change.
Benjamin Lee Whorf places great emphasis on the role of language in
culture and argued that a society’s perception of reality is determined by
the language of that society, e.g. Eskimo and snow 30 synonyms in the
Inuit Language.
The Prague School
A group of linguists with a line of thinking attributed to Saussurean
principles, laid down some functional explanations on language like Theme
and Rheme.
Firth and Malinowski
Bronislaw Malinowski studied “primitive” languages and argued that
language was primarily a form of action. He coined the term “context of
situation” and explained that in order to understand an utterance, we
need to know not only the literal meaning of words but also all the
complex of social detail in which the utterance occurred.
J.R.Firth argued that the grammar of a language is polysystemic, a
system of systems.
Corpus Linguistics
78
Advances in computer technology have facilitated great progress in
corpus linguistics, which involves the computational analysis of vast
collections of textual data.
Book Three:
Part III: Discourse analysis
LANGUAGE AND POWER (Chapters 1-2)
E300 Language and Power Tutorial Notes Prepared by Dr Hayat Al-Khatib ©
Meeting # 10
Ch. 1: Critical Language Study
Language and Power is a trend developed by Norman Fairclough that
examines how language functions in maintaining and changing power
relations in contemporary society. Critical language study focuses on
language and power relations in an attempt to reveal processes leading to
consent and examining ways of resisting and changing them.
Language and power is about connections between language use and
unequal relations of power. The focus is two-fold. The first is theoretical:
to help correct widespread underestimation on the significance of
language in the production, maintenance and change of social relations of
power. The second is more practical: to help increase consciousness of
how language contributes to the domination of some people by others,
because consciousness in the first step to emancipation.
Linguists, and specially those working in the field of sociolinguistics, have
studied languages and dialects, without deep explorations of the
relationships of language and power. Critical language analysis studies
existing conventions as the outcome of power relations and power
struggle.
Ideologies are closely linked to language. They are embedded in particular
conventions with language as the primary medium of social control and
power. Language contributes to the domination of some people by others.
79
Resistance and change depend on people
consciousness of domination and its modalities.
developing
a
critical
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.
80
Sociolinguistics, however, 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
81
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
82
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.
83
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.
Social conditions of production
Process of Production
Text
Process of Interpretation
Interaction
Social conditions of Interpretation
Context
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
84
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.
85
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
structurings 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 and the society as a whole. 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
86
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 elations 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.
Part III: Discourse analysis
LANGUAGE AND POWER (Chapters 3-4)
E300
Meeting # 11 Tutorial Notes Prepared by Dr Hayat Al-Khatib
Language and Power
Chapter 3: Discourse and Power.
87
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 non-standard, 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:
aconstraints on content : enacted in the discourse
b- constraints on relations: enacted in the discourse
cconstraints on the subject position: that people can occupy in
the discourse.
All of these constraints are very closely connected, they overlap and cooccur in practice.
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.
88
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 extralinguistically (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.
89
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
90
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 plethora 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:
aConstraints on contents: the discourse in formal situations is
subject to constraints on topic, relevance and fixed interactive
routines.
bConstraints on subjects: the social identities of those
qualified to occupy subject positions in the discourses of formal
situations are defined.
cConstraints 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
91
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
Relations
Subjects
Structural effects
Knowledge and Beliefs
Social Relationships
Social Identities
92
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 discoursal common sense:
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 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.
93
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 common
sense, 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 reproduces them in the process.
Assumptions which text producers put across as commonsensical.
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
94
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 antilanguage. 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.
95
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.
Part III: Discourse analysis
LANGUAGE AND POWER (Chapters 5-6)
E300
Khatib
Meeting #12
Tutorial notes prepared by Dr Hayat Al-
Chapter 5: Critical Discourse Analysis Practice :
Description
In CDA textual samples contain features of vocabulary, grammar,
punctuation as well as discourse features of turn-taking, 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.
96
Text analysis is part of discourse analysis. Text, interaction and social
context contribute to three levels of corresponding CDA:
1- Description of text
2- Interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction,
and
3- 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.
Overwording 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.
97
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 variously grammaticalized in the three
modes.
Are there important feactures 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)
98
-
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:
Interpretation, explanation and the position of the Analyst
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.
99
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:
 situational context: features of the physical situation, properties
of the participants, representation of the societal and institutional
social orders.
 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.
Four levels related to the interpretation of text:
 Surface utterances: the first level of text interpretation that
involves knowledge of the language (phonology, grammar and
vocabulary)
 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.
 Local coherence: the third level of interpretation establishes
meaning connections between utterances, producing coherent local
interpretations of pairs and sequences of them.
 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)
Situational context and discourse type.
100
Social order: societal
Determination of institutional setting
Social order: institutional
Determination of situational setting
Situation
What is going on?
Activity, topic, purpose
Who’s involved
In what relations
What’s the role of Language
in what’s going on
Discourse type
content
subjects
Relations
Connections
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.
101
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-discoursal 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.
LANGUAGE AND POWER (Chapters 7-8)
E300 Meeting #13 Tutorial Notes Prepared by Dr Hayat Al-Khatib ®
Language and Power
Chapter 7: Creativity and Struggle in Discourse
______________________________________________
102
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 common-sense
(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 destructured. 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
103
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 postwar 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
104
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
backdown 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).
105
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 not masculinity to cater for the
states' affairs, a deep voice, instead of the shrilling feminist emotional
pitch, to captivate audience and reflect seriousness of the discussion, 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
106
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 discoursal
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 (although this can also be
107
strategic with specific applications from a person who knows the rules of
the game!).
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:
the relationship it constructs between the
producer/advertiser and the consumer
the way it builds an image of the product
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.
108
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'.
109
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, are discourse technologies that have
specific format and layout, specific syntax and technical vocabulary.
Manipulation of relations and subjects through synthetic personalization,
involve easification 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.
110
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 discoursally 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.
Part III: Discourse analysis
LANGUAGE AND POWER (Chapters 8-10)
Meeting # 14
E 300 Tutorial Notes Prepared by Dr Hayat Al-Khatib
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
111
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 oh 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
112
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.
113
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 selfconsciousness, 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.
114
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.
115