Review: Understanding the place of language in hierarchical

societies

Language and society

• Language and ideology

--ideology part of discourse

• Language and social status

---status and authority non-partial

Power and language

• Coercion

--through force or threat of force

--institutions instruments for power

--Example:Apartheid, dictatorship

• Consent (“Democracy”)

--winning approval through discourse

--less costly, less risky

--discourse the instrument of power: institutional settings

Discourse

• Is Language (speech) as a form of social practice

• Embodies Ideological assumptions

• Social conditions determine properties of discourse

Assumptions and common-sense

• Implicit

• non awareness

• Authority and hierarchy as natural

• Aura of authority

• Assumptions embedded in language

Example: Hierarchical assumptions embedded in

language

• “If you take them right, you are going to be in pretty good shape… and of course, everybody uses birth control pills.”

Language and Ideology

• Language = Belief systems = social orders

• Inherent superiority and inherent inferiority

• Messages social order consciousness

Development of ideologies about language

• Standard languages

• Naturalization of language

• Only one correct form of language

• Standard language and nation-states

• Language and social control

Non-standard languages

• Less powerful• Viable alternatives: group solidarity• Resistance to power : French Kreol, Haiti, AAVE,

When standard languages become naturalized

• Common-sense unquestionable

• Deviation as backwards, incorrect

• Part of everyday thinking: political

• Uncritical thinking

• Manipulative usage of language

The Power of Language

• Transmit culture

• At the center of cultural, political and economic struggle

• Potent instrument of control

Resistance

• Rejection of dominant language for a local language

• Appropriation of a colonial language: realization

Language always political

• Identified structures of languages as enforcing structures of power

• Identifying languages as important for nation

Language and status

• Rights and values manifested in language

• Power of naming, classifying, etc

• The power of defining others

• Definire: to limit

• Right to speak and the right to name (correlated with higher social positions)

Language is not neutral

• Exposes attitudes, intentionalities (social positions)

• Conveys authority or subordination• Talk is part of social and cultural meanings• Beliefs systems serve specific functions

(gaining and maintaining political and economic control)

Construction of language

• Non-arbitrary• Determined by social conditions

• Particular to social and cultural environments, • institutions • and society as a whole

Social conditions determine:

• properties of discourse (the parts that constitute it)

• and types of discourse (valuable and less-valuable discourses)

Discourse connected to the whole of society implies that:

• 1. Language is part of society and not something external to it

• 2. That language is a social process: interconnected, regulated

• 3. Language is a socially conditioned process: conditioned (by other non-linguistic)parts of society

Text and discourse

• Text: (a product of the process of text production) the product of social interaction, utterance

• Discourse: the whole process of social interaction including text

The conditioning of discoursive language

• MR (members’ resources)

• Cognitive but dependent on social relations

• Internalized and naturalized

• MR part of the individual’s psyche

• Resources for life

Social conditions and levels of social organization

• 1. Social situation: the immediate social environment in which the discourse occurs

• 2. Social institution; wider contexts

• 3. Society as a whole: Structures of capitalist society

It is important to see language as discourse and discourse as a social practice because:

• It forces us to be critical thinkers

• It help us understand social structures

• It help us understand our position in the world

• It help us understand the non neutrality of discourses

Cultural capital

• Unequally distributed in society (literacy, professions, knowledges)

Discourses carry particular knowledges and power

• Institutional system

• Reproducers of structures of power

• Limited access

Constraints on less powerful participants

• Constraints on contents

• Constraints on relations

• Constraints on subjects

Text is ideologically creative

• Individual

• Commonsensical

• Related to one’s position in society

• Develop knowledge about ourselves (technologies of the self)

Discourse types

• Ideologically particular or ideologically variable (one position or another)

• Determined by different economic and political realities (elite and dominant block, resistance)

• Naturalization and universality of discourses (sustaining power in social institutions)

Alternative discourses

• Conscious (against dominant discourse)

• Oppositional (resistance)

• Marginal to political and economic dominance

Presentation of experiential values through words

• Coded in vocabulary

• Significance of ideology in words (subversive, democratic forces, etc)

• Example of the Contra war in Nicaragua: freedom fighters or murderers

Relations between words in discourse

• Ideologically contested

• Meaning depending on the discourse

• Depending on the relation of some words with others (Evil Empire)

Institutional Settings and Discourse

• Educational, health, judiciary, the media, etc.

• Transmit and maintain societal structures

• Involves participants separated in place and time

• Involves hidden power relations

Differences: face-to-face discourse and media discourse

• 1. One-sided nature of media discourse--sharp division: producer and

audience( interpreter)--no room for contestation• 2. Lack of close interaction in media

discourse--adaptability of face-to-face discourse--mass media design for mass audiences

Why do we need to understand media discourse?

• Influence of media unquestionable

• Construct and reconstruct particular realities

• Aura of partiality of media is deceiving

• Expressed bias: they highlight some items and ignore others

The assumption of neutrality: Media Discourse

• TV• Sustained by form and content• Form: familiarity• Familiarity creates a sense of trust• Printed Media• Neutrality by anonymity• Language control: institutional control• Language devices: nouns, verbs, etc

Syntactic Constructions and Media Discourse

• Agents of actions and subjects• Example:

--Anna ate a pizza

--The pizza was eaten by Anna

Shifting focus from agent of action to recipient of action

--The pizza was eaten

Two headlines: The Times and the Guardian

• RIOTING BLACKS SHOT DEAD BY POLICE AS ANC LEADERS MEET

Eleven Africans were shot dead and 15 wounded when Rhodesian police opened fire on a rioting crowd of about 2,000 in the African Highfield township of Salisbury this afternoon.

• POLICE SHOOT 11 DEAD IN SALISBURY RIOT Riot police shot and killed 11 African demonstrators

and wounded 15 others here today in the Highfield township on the outskirts of Salisbury.

TV, Film

• Similar hidden messages

• Focus on particular topics

• Sounds influences moods

• Organization of images

Why do we need to understand media discourse?

• Influence of media unquestionable• Construct and reconstruct particular realities• Aura of partiality of media is deceiving• Expressed bias: they highlight some items and

ignore others• Syntactic Constructions and Media Discourse• Agents of actions and subjects: --Anna ate a pizza,

--The pizza was eaten by Anna

Then

• The nature of mass media is often not clear• There are differences between face-to-face

interactions• Lack of feedback• Media discourse designed with mass audiences in

mind: construction of ideal subject• Involves grammatical constructions, vocabulary

and language

Two ways of colonization of people’s lives

• Consumerism(economy and commodity markets)

• Institutional control (bureaucracy, social order)

Social tendencies

• Imposed by the dominant block

• They change according to the change of these tendencies

• Discourse of consumerism: re-structuring of other discourse types

• Strategic discourse

The dimensions of ideological work in advertising

• 1) The relationship advertising discourse construct between the producer/advertiser and the consumer• 2) The way advertising discourse builds an imagine for the product (predicated on the ideology (freedom,

richness, efficiency, etc)• 3) The way it constructs subject positions for consumers

Advertising construct consumption communities

• Through ideology

• Superficial view of the relationship between truth and fiction

• Commons sense assumptions

Works ideologically through

• Building relations

• Building images

• Building the consumer

Types of constraints in discourse

• Contents:what can be part of types of discourse

• Relations: who can participate in types of discourses

• Subjects: who can acquire a type of discourse