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INGLESE
(Emanuela borrelli) (A1) What is power? When we talk about power we mean the ability of an entity to make changes, and to make something change. In short, power comes from the social resources such as education, knowledge and wealth. The access to these resources provides authority and influence, which is an enabling mechanism for the domination and control of subordinate groups. ● Language as public discourse = public media ● Language as interpersonal communication. Power in interpersonal communication : it is more personal, referring to the power of individuals to influence interactions with others. It depends on our skills (knowing when to speak and when not to speak) and stems from the social roles that the individual fills (for example, an interaction between a doctor and his patient). Power in public discourse : it is the power of dominant institutions within our society, and how these institutions maintain their dominance through the use of language: media, advertising, etc. One important power is to control the flow of information: if one can shape public opinion, one can change (or strengthen) the power structures that exist. Power structures use public discourse to strengthen their own control and to weaken the power of other groups. Research of power is part of two traditions:
- Mainstream tradiction : the origin of this tradition are located in in Weber ’s study (that was a sociologist) of authority in modern and premodern states. This tradition focuses on the varying abilities of actors, such as judicial and penal institutions, to secure the conformation of others even in the face of resistance. In this sense, the power is not only present in the state, but also in other sovereign organizations, such as business and church. Power as dominance. In democratic societies, power needs to be seen as legitimate by the people in order to be accepted and this process of legitimation is generally expressed by means of language and other communicative systems.
- Second stream traditions : is represented with the significance of persuasive influence and the central figure of these traditions is Gramsci. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony describes the mechanism whereby the dominant groups persuade subordinate groups to accept their values, and power is exercised routinely. An important factor in this process is “consent”: the subordinate group consent to live in the social order because our society is presented by the state and institutions as being universally beneficial. The reasons why the concept of hegemony as power operates through the language. Ideology : Ideology refers to the way in which people’s beliefs and opinions intersect with social and political structures; ideologies are capable of influencing people’s language, text and even thoughts.
Marx is one of the authors who talks about ideology, in particular he highlights how the ideas of the ruling class (the capitalists) are in every age the ruling ideas of subordinated groups (the proletariat). Althusser was one of the first to describe power as a discursive phenomenon, and showed the presence of:
- Ideological state apparatus (ISA): apparatus based on ideology represented by cultural or religious institutions (church, school, etc..)
- Repressive state apparatus (RSA): apparatus based on the threat of force like government, the police, the prisons, etc.. Language as discourse : There is a difference between these two terms: ● Language refers to the set of rules and patterns which operate simultaneously in a system. ● Discourse could be defined as the use of language in real contexts of use; It’s language above the sentence or above the clause. When we talk about discourse we should consider some important parts like the speaker/writer , the reader/hearer and the context. A discourse is composed by sentences, clauses and phrases, which are organized like a matrioska’s structure: ● Sentence means frase ( Domani visiterò un museo molto interessante, non vedo l’ora di andarci ) ● Clause means proposizione, periodo ( Domani visiterò un museo molto interessante ) o ( non vedo l’ora di andarci ) ● Phrases means elementi minimi nella frase ( un museo molto interessante ) (B1) Critical linguistics : demonstrates that grammatical forms can be used as ideological instruments to make meaning in texts and to categorize and classify things, people and events.
Critical Discourse analysis (CDA)
Coming from Marx and Fairclough, studies how social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in social and political contexts; deals with the relationship between discourse and power (with the aim of understanding, exposing and resisting social inequality). CDA’s main principles: are been made by Fairclough and Wodak:
- CDA addresses social problems : CDA is seen as a form of intervention in social practice and social relationships.
- Power relations are discursive : How power relations are exercised and negotiated in discourse, and power is exercised through the discourse.
- Discourse does ideological work : It means that ideologies are particular ways of representing society that reproduce relations of power, dominations and exploitation.
- Discourse is intertextual/historical : Discourse must always be analysed in context in order to be understood. Context includes socio-cultural knowledge as well as intertextuality. The concept of intertextuality refers to the way discourses are always
● An interpretation of the relationships between the discourse processes and the text ● An explanation of the relationships between the discourse processes and the social processes. Fairclough moreover focus his attention on the use of naturalization and common sense It’s a strategy to convince someone to accept something saying it though common sense
(C1)
We need to analyse the vocabulary, the cohesion, the value of the words, the metaphors. We need to analyse the grammar, the verbs, the nominalizations, the structures, the sentences, the pronouns. The Lexicon can pretend to use emotive words or hyperboles to give more importance to the news. The overlexicalization is a strategy for encoding ideology. There are also many repetitions. The objective is to put in evidence the feelings that the news has caused. Metaphors belong to a more formal discourse/news. In a metaphor there could be a hidden ideological or political reference. Pronouns : We = inclusive, You = ambiguous Modality : it is the capacity to introduce a statement Social Practice : a text can have a big input on social relations. The media choose how to talk about something and the media do that in various ways. TESTO C This is an article from UK tabloid paper the Daily Mail and talks about EU migrants. The migrants in this article are represented as criminals/cooks, because this is an article from the time of Brexit referendum (2016). In fact, is an article pro Brexit, and has had a very big influence on the population. The United Kingdom has always felt distant from Europe, maybe because it is an island, in fact, they call Europe “continent”. The pronouns are used for making an English appartenance sense in the player, and the metaphor makes the speech informal. In other words, we can say that this article is racist, because it is aimed above at the ex Soviet Union habitants (Poles and Romanian), and it only describes them as criminals, and does not explain that maybe those people are running away from war. This article reports statistics used to emphasize scaremongering in the population, and the sources are not disclosed, for this reason, the statistics are used like a strategy for fuelling fears on the subordinate groups (population).
(A2)
INSTITUTION
Institutions have been the object of many investigations in the area of sociology, media and cultural organizations studies. Institutions are commonly associated with physical buildings or settings (hospitals, schools, media organizations, prisons or courts of law). “ Organization ” seems to be used more for commercial corporations, whereas “institutions” is more associated with the public organs of the state. The discourse of institutions/organizations ● People can and do resist and subvert dominant institutional discourses and practices. ● Resistance in discourse is more likely to take active forms in institutional settings ● Imposed identities can and are constantly (discursively) negotiated, contested and resisted ● Resistance is articulated in many ways (contestation in prison, humour, anti language etc.) Media as organization: it is the institutional procedures and practices that define what becomes news more so than the events themselves, it is because of institutional, practical and financial concerns that news media offer only a partial view of the world that fits with the interests of the socially and economically powerful. Institutions attempt to legitimize their own interests and existence through discourse through which they seek to transform social practices. Phrases, clauses, and sentences are units of structures, since they can be described in linguistic terms and operate according to rules stated by the grammar of the sentence. Other units, paragraphs and texts to be described require reference to meaning: also, they operate according to an across-sentence or textual grammar. A paragraph : is often made of several sentences kept together by rules operating across (not only inside) sentences. It is characterised by a definable communicative intent. It is a unit, but it is only partially independent because it is linked to the other paragraphs forming the same text. A text : is a completely independent unit which can be made of one word only (the road sign STOP, or the cry HELP!) or of many volumes. There are no restrictions to its length since it is a unit of meaning, not of structure. When it is longer than one sentence is controlled by textual rules, continuity of meaning can be signalled through the use of explicit linguistic links. Across and inside paragraphs and texts Inside : to develop the central idea, paragraphs need a logical organisation of the sentences they contain. Across : to develop the central idea of a text, a paragraph requires logical connections with one another (linguistic links: as a consequence, in addition, to sum up, ...) Paragraph functions:
- Paragraph introducers: establish the controlling idea of the paragraph as a whole
- The textual function : is relayed principally through cohesion and discourse semantics. It holds the information-building and text building properties of language, both inside and across sentence boundaries. Systemic Functional Linguistics : it considers language to have evolved under the pressure of the particular functions that the language system has to serve. It focuses on what things do rather than how things are composed. The three contextual variables in register analysis are known as field, tenor. and mode. Halliday’s metafunctions Ideational metafunction (field) : the means by which we make sense of reality. It reflects the contextual value of the field, the nature of the social process in which the language is implicated. It can be logical (grammatical resources for building up grammatical units complexes) or experiential (grammatical resources involved in construing the flux of experience through the unit of the clause). Interpersonal metafunction (tenor): like field, tenor comprises three components: speaker/writer, social distance, social status. Textual metafunction (mode) : textual interactivity, the medium of communication Context of situation (Malinowski) ● In presenting his research: free translation (comprehensible) but nothing of the language and culture. Literal translation not comprehensible. ● Extended commentary that placed the text in its living environment. ● 1923 he coined the term context of situation: the environment of the text ● Context of situation + context of culture = adequate understanding of the text Text: product and a process, social exchange of meanings, is a product of its environment. According to Halliday, every text takes place in a situational and cultural context. The three components of Halliday’s context of situation ● Field : subject matter and the nature of the activity, what is happening to who, when and where. What the participants know, why they are doing what they are doing. ● Tenor : social (power and status) relationships existing between participants. How they regard each other, and how familiar they are with each other. ● Mode : how the language is being used, organised, whether is written or spoken, written to be spoken, spoken to be written. Also refers to how the text is produced: spontaneous, prepared, performative or reflective.
Field: Indian cooking (ingredients and process of preparing food) Tenor: expert writer to a learner, learner is beneficiary of the advice, neutral formality, neutral distance Mode: written, prepared. Text often read as part of process of cooking
they want. Ex. In times of war new registers are used by the media to mask unpleasant issues. Nukespeak: one method by which governments legitimize themselves and their policies is to create, through language and also through other semiotic means, a compatibility between policies and relatively stable stereotypes that are already present in traditional and popular culture. Grice’s ‘cooperative principle’ Grice’s ‘Logic of Conversation’ Conversation works even when we don’t say what we mean. Grice wondered about conversations such as this: Jack: You’ve got a mountain to climb! Lily: It’s better than a slap in the face. Grice (philosopher) wondered just how we make meaning out of such conversation. He concluded that conversation must follow its own set of logical principles or ‘rules’. Even when we don’t mean what we say, the full ‘pragmatic force’ of our utterance is easily understood. Grice’s Insights Grice's insights Communication is a cooperative activity: when two people communicate, their communications must achieve their goals. Cooperation is built around a series of "Gricean maxims": quality, quantity, manner, relation. Quality : When someone speaks to us, we assume that what they say is not false and that the truthfulness of what they say does not need to be stated. Quantity : When someone talks to us, we assume that person is not giving more information than they are asked for. Mode: When someone speaks to us, we assume that what they are saying is being said in the most truthful way possible. Relevance : When someone speaks to us, we assume that what they say is relevant to the conversation. Grice argues that although speakers usually choose to cooperate, they may also refuse to abide by those principles. If a maxim is broken, it is done to achieve a conversational implication. The intended meaning will be achieved through the speaker's processing of pragmatic force. Pragmatic meaning : what the producer is doing or intending with the words, even when their literal meaning may be quite different. When speakers appear not to follow the maxims they expect hearers to appreciate implied meanings. A speaker can choose to: ● ‘ violate’ a maxim intentionally
● ‘opt out’ of a maxim and refuse to co-operate. ● deal with a ‘clash ’ of maxims, for instance, between saying enough and saying all that we know to be true. ● ‘flout’ a maxim and be intentionally ironic. Violating quality it’s quite permissible and acceptable in some contexts and cultures , especially a lie that protects or a white lie, the kind that is told to children. According to Grice there are two forms of non-observance of maxims: ● Infringement : due to an imperfect use of the language due to the level of language skills (child, foreigner), impairment (drunkenness, nervousness, excitement) or if they have cognitive problems or speech impediments; ● Opting out : occurs when a speaker is unwilling to cooperate, Sometimes they cannot reply in the expected way for legal, professional or ethical reasons. The most important use of Grice’s maxims. ● Irony : violates quality by saying the opposite of what we mean, and the words are the opposite. Irony is often used in a friendly fashion. ● Sarcasm is less friendly and frequently used to make criticism. It is normally obvious because of the gap between what is said and what is meant. ● Banter : expresses a negative sentiment and implies a positive one. Considered “an offensive way of being friendly”, it is common between friends, longstanding colleagues and partners. It can often be used to tease and flirt. It can often take the form of abusive or offensive language. Flouting Grice’s maxims is very difficult in writing because it’s less easy to make sure that your reader understands what is happening. (A3) Institutional talk vs asymmetrical talk Institutional interactions take place within social institutions such as schools, the police, or the law courts which have defined hierarchical structure. Power in spoken discourse is expressed through 4 devices: i nterruption, enforcing explicitness, controlling topic, formulation.
- Interruption : a very common device used by participants to show their power in relationships or in The context where they’re working. Interruption can also indicate cooperation rather than dominance.
- Enforcing explicitness : A less powerful speaker may use ambiguous or vague statements to deal with the more powerful person.
- Topic control : Topics are often introduced and changed mainly by the dominant person. Often questions are used as a means of controlling the topic.
- Formulation : It is the practice of summarizing, or developing the previous statements. It is common in institutionalized settings. It aims to check understanding but it is also a control device. (B3) Conversation analysis (CA)
A study of a group of American ‘welfare mothers’ found that these women resisted stereotypes that branded them as lazy and promiscuous by making use of ‘reverse discourse’. Anti Languages: ● Characteristically, these are negations of acceptable, dominant languages. ● Anti Languages generally serve to create and sustain solidarity among participants and distance from the dominant forms. ● Often appear among groups marginalized by the mainstream. ● The groups themselves come to constitute a kind of anti-society or anti-world. ● Examples: prisoners, criminal subcultures, secret societies. Main characteristics ● Relexicalization, which is the process of creating from existing forms new names for things and people. ● Overlexicalization, which is the creation of new expressions for particular areas of interest and relevance to the anti society.
Language, gender and power Sex : biological and physiological category referring to anatomical differences Gender : social category and social construct. It can vary within different classes, cultures and societies.
