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INGLESE
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It regards the ways in which members of a particular discourse community conceptualize their experience, encode it in a linguistic form and then use that code in sociali interaction. Language powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. This explains why the systematic study of a language necessarily regards both cognition (the way in which language structures thoughts in the human mind) and communication (the way in which language serves social intercation). So it’s so important study linguistics because every actibity is done throught the use of language, language is vital to the process of transforming political will into social action, any political action is prepared, accompanied, controlled and influenced by language. Terminology
- Text→ the word text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever lenght, that does form a unified whole ( di qualsiasi lunghezza che costituisca un insieme unitario). A text is a unit of language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence, and it is not defined by its size. When we study texts we also need to examine the total environment in which the text unfolds (its con-text). The relation between text and context is dynamic→ a text is the result of the context in which it is being realized and the context is realized in turn by the text. - Discourse→ the use of language in real contexts of use There are two definition of discourse:
- structural or textual definition: discourse is a particular unit of language (above the sentence)
- functional definition: discourse is a particular focus of language use ex: the minister explained (cut-backs were unavoidable) the cut-backs were necessary the minister claimed (the minister tries to justify an unpopular measure) the minister i magined (the minister might be mistaken in their belief) There is an intimate relationship between power and discourse, and so it is also necessary to understand discourse as having a somewhat specialised meaning in the context of CDA. In most lay contexts discourse tends to be a synonym of ‘language’, and the terms are often used interchangeably. However, in critical linguistics, indeed in a range of cognate disciplines such as sociology or politics, discourse is thought of as having a purpose in the social world. Simpson, Mayr and Statham make a clear distinction between ‘language’ and ‘discourse’: ”Basically discourse is what happens when language ‘gets done’. Whereas language refers to the more abstract set of patterns and rules which operate simultaneously at different levels in the system (the grammatical, semantic and phonological levels, for example), discourse refers to the instantiation of those patterns in real contexts of use. In other words, discourse works above the level of grammar and semantics to capture what happens when these language forms are played out in different social, political and cultural arenas.” - Power: “Power is not in itself bad. On the contrary, the power of people to do things is generally a social good. We need to distinguish between the ‘power to’ do things and ‘power over’ other people, though we need to see this binary (and others) in a dialectical way: having power over people increases the power to
do things; power to do things is conditional (in some cases at least) on having power over people. But ‘power over’ is not inherently bad either, as long as it is legitimate; we vote in elections for governments or councils which have various forms of legitimate power over the rest of us […] Having and exercising power over other people becomes open to critique when it is not legitimate, or when it has bad effects, for instance when it results in unacceptable and unjustifiable damage to people or to social life” This explanation of power by Fairclough makes a distinction between potential and practice beacuse power has the potential to operate in the interests of individuals and society. However the achievement of this potential depends very much on the pratical organisation of power within society itself. In fact what we will uncover will demonstrate that power is very often not enacted in the interest of “social good”. There are two types of power: individual-level power (coercive, rewars, referent, legitimate and expert) and social-level power (money, influence, political and status). The perspective which will be taken is that power is directly connected to access to social resources (more access to wealth, knowledge and influence possessed by an institution or an individual) We will discuss about two types of power classified by Scott ad “mainstream”(power-as- domination) and “second stream” (power-as-persuasion) power. The second-stream view of power are much more subtle (sottile) than a group of powerful organisations bluntly controlling less dominant groups or individuals. This more subtle process is represented by the work of Antonio Gramsci and his principle of “hegemony”. Hegemony refers to the ways i which powerful groups persuade subordinates pf the importance and legitimacy of their moral, cultural and economic principles. Persuading people that these values are legitimate and natural is much more effective than simply imposing a set of values through control and dominance. The second-stream view of power recognises that these systens are constructed ideologically through processes which persuade people of their legitimacy and apparent “naturalness”. CDA refer to the processes of “legitimation” and “naturalisation” in order to note that as power relations are construted ideologically, they can also be deconstructed to expose and demystify those guiding ideologies.
- Ideology : Lan guage is part of political and socio- cultural contexts. It is influenced by and in turn influences ideology. The view of ideology adopted in this book is that ideology operates in a close inter- relationship with the interests of social groups or institutions. Again, there is a somewhat one- dimen sional view of ideology which operates in non- scholarly or non- critical contexts where ideology simply refers to the beliefs of individuals or groups. This view is somewhat inadequate for our purposes because essentially it does not say enough about the role of ideology in light of power relations in society or in terms of the networks of domination and persuasion outlined above. The view of ideology as operating closely with the interests of powerful groups has its origins in Marxist theory (Marx [1933] 1965), which views ideology as part of the subjugation of the proletariat by the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie. Ideology has come to be viewed slightly more broadly as a belief system possessed by social groups who operate in a range of ways, including linguistically, to maintain and legitimise their power and influence. Often this involves using language to legitimise belief systems so that powerful institutions can continue to flourish.
6. The link between text and society is indirect or “mediated”: CDA is focussed on the connections between text and society. Fairclough and Wodak say that text is characterised by a range of institutional practices. For example, in a hospital the discourse of medical records and patients’ notes, and increasingly of administrative documents and managerialist discourse marked by registers of accountancy instead of health and science, characterise the general discourse of the institution. So we can say that the language produced by institutions is mediated by various institutional practices. The link between text and society is generally understood as mediated through orders of discourse (che sono structured sets of discursive pratices associated with particular social domains). (le strutture linguistiche-la sintassi, la semantica e la pragmatica- devono essere analizzate per comprendere come costruiscono significato e potere). 7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory: CDA typically distinguishes three stages of critical analysis: description, interpretation and explanation. 8. Discourse is a form of social action or social pratice: CDA in this mode is intended to be “a socially committed scientific paradigm”. These principles make it clear that CDA pursues a critical focus on discourse with a politically motivated agenda to expose and challenge the actions of powerful groups. Language is used to disseminate and legitimise, reinforce and naturalise the ideologies of these groups, and critically focussed linguistic ana lysis can be used in turn to reveal both the processes and motivations of ideo logical discourse. Three-dimensional model of CDA (esempi del modello da pag.25 a 28) A seminal model for CDA developed by Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995) operates by a three- stage procedure which accounts for language as text, discursive practice and social practice. Each of these interrelated levels of analysis corresponds with description, interpretation and explanation, which are necessary elements in an analysis which recognises the social role of language. We can describe each element and its role in Fairclough’s model as follows: - DESCRIPTION (TEXT) is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the text. Description corresponds to the text dimension of the model. This essentially refers to identifying the formal features of a text, such as lexical choices, pronouns and metaphor, for example, and grammatical features, like the favouring of one aspect of a verb over another. **Linguistic description of the language text- focuses on elements such as noun, verbs, metaphorical expressions, evaluative meanings, grammatical structures, transitivity, pronouns etc- (analizza il contenuto linguistico, cioè come le parole e le frasi sono stutturate e quali significati comunicano)
- INTERPRETATION (DISCURSIVE PRATICE)** specifies the discursive practice section of the three- tiered model. Interpretation is about viewing text as a product of the processes of production and consumption. Particular attention should be paid here
to the different ways in which interaction is achieved in text, specifically through intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Intertextuality means the presence, either implicitly or explicitly, of other texts. Interdiscursivity refers to strategies for using both formal and informal language in a text. If you consider these features in terms of the model’s requirement to pay appropriate attention to elements of production and consumption, the focus on intertextuality and interdiscursivity should make perfect sense. In a newspaper article, for example, intertextuality comes in the form of sources who are quoted or referred to in the text. This is a quintessential feature of the production of news which must rely on sources to construct the impression of credibility. Of course, the privilege of certain sources over others is itself an ideological choice. Interdiscursivity is important in the consumption of a text by readers. Formal language constructs newsworthy events with an appropriate level of gravitas, whilst more informal language is used to build an alliance with readers. Interpretation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the text (studia il processo di produzione, distribuzione e ricezione del discorso, cioè chi lo crea, come viene diffuso e come viene interpretato dal pubblico)
- EXPLANATION (SOCIAL PRATICE) refers to the social practice dimension of the model. It is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context. This stage of the analysis considers how the text interacts with ideologies and power relations in wider society. It considers the social context of the discourse and asks about the wider societal effects of its linguistic structures. Explanation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the social processes (si concentra sul contesto sociale, economico e politico in cui il discorso si inserisce. Questo include l’influenza delle istituzioni e delle strutture di potere nella creazione e nella diffusione del discorso) → s o any discursive event is simultaneously a three-dimensional phenomenon: it is a piece of spoken or written text, it is an instanza of discourse pratice and it is an instance of social pratice. 1.The “text dimension” involves the analysis of the language of the texts, and includes such features as choices and patterns in vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and text structure → these elements contribuite to construction of lexical cohesion 2.The “discouse pratice dimension” considers the nature of text production, distribution and consumption in society. Attention should be paid to intertextuality beacuse this is an aspect of discourse that links a tezt to its context. → intertextuality can be divided into “manifest intertextuality (attingere apertamente ad altri testi ad esempio citando altre persone o organizzazioni) and “interdiscursivity” (quando i testi sono costituiti da elementi eterogeneri o da vari tipi di discorso ad esempio un mix di linugaggio formale e informale)
- The “social pratice dimension” deals with issues important for social analysis, such ad the power relations and idological struggles that discourses produce, reproduce, challenge or transform in some way. CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
- The theme is the element which serves as the point of departure of the message, it is that with which the clause is concerned. The rest of the message, the part in which the Theme is developed is called Rheme.
- The theme is indicated by its position in the clause. In writing, we signal that an item has thematic status by putting it first. No other signal is necessary.
- The theme does not always correspond with the grammatical subject of the sentence.
- The rheme is the part of the sentence in which new information is added. *COHESION/COHERENCE
- Coherence and cohesion refer to the way a text is organized
- Coherence makes a text semantically meaningful, ideas are connected logically to create meaning
- Cohesion refers to the grammatical and lexical features used to organize the text and give it a logical sequence 1 .As indicated by its name, the experiential function refers to how experience, the various ‘goings- on’ in the world, as Halliday has it, are represented in lan guage. The experiential function refers to the transitivity of clauses in a text. In SFL the term “transitivity” is used in a different sense than in traditional grammar. Traditional grammatical analysis of transitivity essentially refers to whether or not a verb takes a direct object ( whether it is transitive or intransitive). But for our purposes this traditional view of the transitivity of a verb is not sufficient. → transitivity in grammar: transitive or intransitive verb/ transitivity in sfl: verbs categorized in meaningful groups. Meaningful groups= range of processes → each process carries specific terminology which relates to the participants which carry out or are affected by the process, which can be situated within a circumstance ( es. Mario participant eats process the cake participant/goal) *participant: the person or entity who engages in the process process: the verb, the action that is undertaken participant/goal: the person or entity affected by the process circumnstance: additional details given (mario eats the cake by the rivier ) sentences can have more than one participant, process, goal Processes can be divided into 6 types according to whether they refer to actions, feelings, speech, states of mind or states of being: material process, mental process, behavioural process, verbal process, relational process and existential process.
- material process : material process are preocesses of doing. Usually these refer to some concrete
action with a discernible result or consequence, such as in a sentence like ‘Soldiers shot insurgents’. The participant components are known as the Actor and the Goal, the person or entity who does the act and the person or entity to whom/ which it is done respectively. Material processes can be further divided into sveral sub-processes→ for example when there is an inanimate actor the process is called “event process” , when there is an animate actor the process is called “action process” , when an actor acts voluntarily the process is called “ intention process” and when the action is involuntary the process is called “supervention process”. Also the material process can have beneficiaries known as recipient and client (these roles refers to someone for whom the action occurs. There is also a participant known as the range , which is a participant which is unaffected by the process – the range is also known as the scope of a material process -.
- mental process : mental process are processes of sensing (usually they are internal rather than external like the material process). The participant roles are Senser, the entity which thinks or feels or perceives, and Phenomenon, that which is thought or felt or perceived. There are three different types of Mental processes, known as cognition (anything related to thinking), affection (or reaction) ( any expression of like or dislike) and perception (related to sense like seeing, hearing).
- behavioural processes : refer to psychological or physical behaviour. They have a number of aspects in common with both Material and Mental processes but also possess important unique characteristics. Behavioural processes have one participant known as Behaver. Processes such as ‘laugh’, ‘smile’, ‘frown’, ‘watch’,‘stare’, ‘ogle’, ‘dream’ and ‘breathe’ are all examples of Behavioural processes. Behavioural processes can be viewed as a sort of ‘halfway house between Material and Mental processes in that they represent both the activities of sensing and doing’ (Simpson, 2014:25). Behavioural processes in this way might be seen as the physiological articulation of feeling. For example, ‘like’ is a Mental process whereas ‘smile’ and ‘laugh’ are Behavioural, ‘hear’ is Mental whilst ‘listen’ is Behavioural and ‘see’ is Mental and ‘watch’ is Behavioural.
- verbal processes : refer to the process of saying and are represented by the verb “say” and its synonyms. The participant roles are Sayer, the person or occasionally the thing which does the sayin, the Receiver the person or thing that the verbal process is directed at, and the Verbiage, that which is said. (the receiver and the verbiage element are not always explicitly stated) → say, tell: neutral structuring verbs → claim, posit: metapropositional verbs
- relational process : Relational processes is a rather complex category that refers to a particular type of states of being and encodes meanings where things are stated to exist in relation to other things. There are three different types of Relational processes which come in two different modes, resulting in six categories. The three types of Relational processes are intensive, possessive and circumstantial. Intensive Relational processes denote a relationship of equivalence ‘x= y’ and usually can be identified through the verb ‘to be’, usually with an adjective, adverb or noun phrase. Possessive Relational processes refer to an ‘x has y’ relationship and are identified by the verb ‘to have’ or indicated by a possessive apostrophe. Circumstantial Relational process denote an ‘x is at/ on/ in/ with y’ type relationship, usually marked by the verb ‘to be’ alongside a prepositional phrase.
Young, Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald (2018:83) remind us that orders can be issued by forms other than imperative commands, such as through questions and statements. If a teacher asks a pupil, ‘Would you explain Brexit?’, this is clearly a command given the context despite its grammatical realisation as a question. Equally, the same teacher could say to a student in the midst of a discussion on the subject, ‘It would now be a good idea for you to explain Brexit’. This essentially operates as a command even though it is grammatically realised as a statement. In these cases we can say that whilst these sentences are semantically an interrogative and a declarative respectively, they have the pragmatic force of an imperative, whereby the speaker intends to issue an order. MODALITY → Simpson (2014:131) defines modality as ‘that part of the language which allows us to attach expressions of belief, attitude and obligation to what we say and write’. In short, modality is the system which accommodates expressions of varying levels of certainty to spoken or written utterances. There are four different stances which speakers or writers can adopt when expressing this ‘in- betweenness’: probability, frequency, obligation and inclination. Probability refers to how likely you are to believe that something may occur. Probability can be expressed by the nine modal auxiliary verbs in English: ‘shall’, ‘should’, ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘will’, ‘would’, ‘may’, ‘must’, ‘might’; or by the quasi modal auxiliaries ‘ought to’, ‘need to’, ‘has to’. Modal adverbs such as ‘prob ably’, ‘possibly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘maybe’ can also express probability. Frequency, on the other hand, is about how often you feel something may occur and is expressed through the use of similar modal verbs and adverbs like ‘usually’, ‘sometimes’, ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘seldom’ and ‘rarely’. Halliday refers to these types of modality as ‘modalisation’ and associates them with propositions that are realised as statements and questions. Obligation and inclination are referred to as ‘modulation’ and are realised through proposals, offers and commands. Obligation is used to express the extent to which you believe something has to be done. Modal adverbs like ‘definitely’, ‘absolutely’ and ‘possibly’ are noteworthy in a speaker or writer’s expression of obligation. Inclination is how you assess the tendency of an occurrence, ‘willingly’, ‘readily’, ‘gladly’ or ‘easily’, for example. modualisation: probability and frequency (prepostions realised through statements and questions) modulation: obligation and inclination (realised through proposals, offers and commands). EVALUATION → More recent studies (Hart, 2014; Statham, 2016) have analysed other ways through which a speaker or writer can encode their evaluation of a topic, recognising other language resources for expressing opinion, such as adjective and adverb phrases. As critical discourse analysts, we are interested in how language is used to communicate ideological opinions to listeners and readers, and in turn, therefore, to contribute to widespread and conventionally accepted evaluative positions on important aspects of society. There is a range of models of analysis to investigate how evaluation is communicated in language. An important text which brings together several central approaches to the language of evaluation is the collection by Hunston and Thompson (2000), who state that one of the main functions of evaluation is to ‘express the speaker’s or writer’s opinion, and in so doing reflect the value system of that person and their community’. There is a model for analysing evaluation in text and it is called “ appraisal system ”, which is a systemic-functional lexical-semantic framework for analysing how a speaker or writer can express stance through language. Appraisal system→ It is concerned with how speakers/ writers approve and disapprove, enthuse and abhor, applaud and criticise, and with how they position their readers/ listeners to do likewise.
We can see from Martin and White’s introduction that evaluation can be expressed in a multitude of ways, and the Appraisal framework offers a model which organises these different types of evaluations into a system which can be applied to multiple discourse situations. The three main types of evaluation are known as affect, judgement and appreciation.
- AFFECT: how good or bad on a positive/negative spectrum a speaker or writer thinks something is. Categories in the system of affect address happiness and sadness (un/happiness), expressions of peace and anxiety (in/security) and feelings of achievement and frustation (dis/satisfaction). (guardare tabella sul libro)
- JUDGEMENT: Judgement refers to evaluation about how people should behave, and therefore codifies ethical or moral reactions. The Appraisal framework recognises that evaluations of morality, ethics, behaviour and ultimately the character of a person have different levels of seriousness and so proposes two main types of judgement: social esteem and social sanction. Judgements of social sanction tend to be somewhat more serious than those of social esteem, as Martin explains: “Social esteem involves admiration and criticism, typically without legal implications; if you have difficulties in this area you may need a therapist. Social sanction on the other hand involves praise and condemnation, often with legal implications; if you have problems in this area you may need a lawyer.” Judgements of social sanction are more approving or condemning than those of social esteem. Socialcsanction is further subdivided into evaluations of propriety (how un/ ethical someone is) and veracity (how un/ truthful someone is). There are three subdivisions of social esteem: capacity (how in/ capable someone is), normality (how un/ usual someone is) and tenacity (how ir/ resolute someone is). (guardare tabella sul libro e spiegazione di come fare a capire quale evaluation è)
- APPRECIATION: this refers to expressions of how things are valued. Appreciation is comprised of the important subsections reaction, composition and valuation. Reaction describes impact (did it grab me?) and quality (did i like it?), composition refers to balance (did it hang together?) and complexity (was hard to follow?), and valuation addresses questions like “did i find it meaningful?”. *appreciation of aesthetic value * (guardare tabella sul libro) → Affect, judgement ad appreciatiion can be rendered through the use of more indirect strategies: direct evaluation or invoked evaluation. 3. The textual function is about how writers or speakers connect parts of discourse, and it is usually analysed by paying attention to cohesion and coherence in text. Cohesion refers to the internal connection between clauses in a text (the grammatical and lexical features used to organize the text and give it a logical sequence) and coherence to how external connections are built between a text and its context. (what makes a text semantically meaningful, ideas are connected logically to create meaning) Essentially, the textual function is about how speakers or writers build connections with discourse; analysis is focussed on the organisation of text within a piece of spoken, written and indeed visual language. Young and Fitzgerald state that the textual function of language attends to questions like ‘What holds the discourse together?’ and consider cohesion initially in terms of chains and Themes.
VOICES IN DISCOURSE
The examples we have analysed over the last four chapters have each demonstrated that CDA builds upon the findings of close linguistic analysis in order to consider the wider social context of discourse. Discourse drives the process through which readers or listeners internalise certain ideologies as common- sense principles which appear natural and legitimate. We have analysed institutional discourse examples, such as election leaflets, speeches and newspaper articles, which play prominent and powerful roles in the social world. These examples, especially those from the news media, often utilise official sources, particularly through quotations, to provide context or give insight into a topic. These voices in the text, in terms of how and why they are selected and presented, often strengthen the ideological agenda of a piece of discourse. In this chapter we will present a model which analyses the textual representation of those whose voices are present in discourse. We have noted in Chapter 2 the importance of prominent and absent voices in texts. The analysis of voices in discourse will form part of a larger focus on the institutional practices of the news media throughout this chapter. The use of sources in media discourse is one of several important institutional practices which contribute to the construction of the media examples which are examined by critical discourse analysts. As examples of institutional discourse, the texts we analyse in this book are products of various processes of production which are closely connected to the ideological agendas of speakers, writers and wider organisations. The discourse of the media is a particularly good example of this fact. How to make news→ At the very beginning of the process of the production of news, decisions have to be made about what is included and excluded from a newspaper or from a news broadcast. Some of these decisions might be practical: newspapers and broadcasts are limited by space and time, for example. These limitations are not quite so restrictive online, however, and yet there is no news website which can claim to have covered every event which may have happened everywhere in the world on any given day. Of course, it would also be practically impossible for a reader to fully engage with this level of content in any case. Other decisions might be more philosophical than practical: certain events in very many contexts may be deemed less likely to be engaging for a publication’s assumed readership. And into this mix we must add both the geographical spectrum and political spectrum of the news. → geographcal spectrum : Geographically there are four broad types of news: local, regional, national and international. Of course, these bound aries are not always quite so clear- cut, and there may be a fair amount of overlap in terms of content. Local newspapers will not necessarily ignore national or international stories, but the stories may be presented with some aspect of ‘local interest’, for example. Television news is organised along similar lines as newspapers; many major channels cover national and international news for the most part but dedicate a certain amount of daily coverage to news from the viewer’s region. Conversely, local television or radio stations will prioritise local events and will cover international incidents from a local perspective, much as local newspapers do. Most national and regional newspapers will have dedicated international news sections, variously labelled as ‘World Events’ or ‘Around the Globe’ and suchlike. Despite the seeming geographical diversity here, additional criteria influence the stories which appear in these sections.
→ political spectrum: The perspective offered in the news on socio- political events often depends on the political position of a newspaper or broadcaster on a broad Left– Right spec trum. There is an additional distinction between the so- called ‘quality press’, broadsheets like The Times and the Telegraph, and the tabloid press or ‘red tops’, like the The Sun and the Daily Mirror, which generally cover more entertainment- based, sexualised and sensationalist news items.
- local and international, left and right, broadsheet and tabloid. * In the case of all of these publications and associated agencies of broadcast and online news, the practical and political decisions considered here are also taken with concerns of ‘ newsworthines s’(notiziabilità) in mind. News editors consider which characteristics of an event make it worth covering. Most producers of news, journalists, photographers, presenters, anchors and editors will have internalised characteristics known as ‘values of newsworthiness’ or ‘news values’ and will consider them when evaluating a story. It is not necessarily that there is a physical checklist which journalists will tick off, but rather through daily practice criteria will have become ingrained. When you hear a journalist described in terms of having a ‘good nose for a story’, what is really being referred to is the adoption of institutional practice. For critical discourse analysts, recognition of the importance of institutional factors is crucial; they are significant driving forces behind the eventual verbal and visual articulation of news discourse. The most influential list of ‘news values’ was developed in a seminal paper by Galtung and Ruge, who assessed the components of the coverage of three major international events and developed twelve news values:
- frequancy: how close a story happens to the moment of publication;
- threshold: the level an event must reach to stand out to be newsworthy;
- unambiguity: a story that is clearly understood rather than uncertain;
- meaningfulness: relevant to likely readers’ frame of reference, have some familiarity;
- consonance: stories that meet with the media’s expectations and cultural norms will receive more coverage;
- unexpectedness: unpredicatble events are particularly attractive;
- composition: an equilibrium of stories in a publication, light stories to balance more serious ones;
- continuity: a big story can be updates as it develops, and hence garner newsworthy longevity;
- refernce to elite nations;
- reference to elite people;
- reference to person: the human interest angle constantly peddled by news organisations;
- reference to something negative: a sort of culminations of the above criteria, bad news almost inevitably contains more newsworthy factors than positive stories. → The major point that we should take from this discussion is that the discourse with which media audiences interact is subject to a complex array of institutional arrangements right from the very beginning of the news production process. The media is not some neutral reflection of the world and is constantly doing ideological work through content and the linguistic composition of this content.
→ aggregation: actors are represented as a part of a group. It focuses on collective identity or shared characteristics. We can have aggregation (quantifiable groups like 80% of employees) and collectivisation (goups as unified entites without quantification like the community). Another important social actor grouping is categorisation and nomination → nomination: use the proper names to refer to the actor. This involves representing social actors by their unique, proper namer. It focuses on individual identity and can include titles or honorifics. (ex. President nelson mandela spoke about recconciliation). Social actors can be nominated formally (surname and possibly with honorifics), semi-formally (given name and surname) or informally (given name only or through a nickname)→ honorification : use of honorifics (“president) → categorisation : refernce to actors by social function, class, ethnicity.. This represents social actors based on their functions, roles, or identities within a social or cultural group. (ex. World leders spoke about reconciliation). Categorisation can be divided in functionalisation and identification → functionalisation : represents social actors by what they do, focusing on their activities, roles or functions (ex. The engineer designed the bridge→ this phrases focuses con the person’s professional role as an engineer). → identification: represents social actors by what they are, emphasizing intrinsic, stable or unvoidable attributes (ex. The creative visionary designes the bridge→ this phrases highlights an intrinsic characteristic-being creative-as central to identity). *la prof sulla slide fa altri esempi, leggerli * Identification can also be divided into classification , relational identification and physical identification → classification : represents social actors based on their membership in a social group, such as by gender, age, ethnicity, religion or nationality (ex. A young woman applied for the position) → relational identification: defines social actors in terms of their relationships to others (ex, the teacher’s daughter won the competition) → physical identification: describes social actors based on their physical traits or appearance (ex. The tall man in the blue jacket gave a speech) *leggere su slide week 4 e su libro pag.137 gli altri esempi e comparazioni *
POLITICS AND POWER_analysing political discourse Politics involves making common decisions for a group of people. It is the activity by which differing interesrs within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share in power in proportion to their importance to the welfare and survival of the whole community. There are some weapons that can be used in politics: coercion and manipulation of information (totalitarian regime) and persuasion in debate (pluralistic democracy). Metaphors → a figure of speech in which a name or quality is attributed to something to which it is not literally applicable/ understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another. Metaphors is a core component in how language users conceptualize the world around them, is pervasive in language and plays a particularly importannt part in political discourse. Through metaphors we “map” relatively familiar concepts, close to our experience, onto more abstract or less familiar domain. Metaphors are considered essential for the creation of social realities. “a certain quality that belongs to an entity ( the source ) is re-applied or transferred to another entity ( the target ) which is usually of a very different type of source” → target domain: a conceptual area/field described, through analogy, using elements from a normally unrelated conceptual area/field (ex. The nation) → source domain: a conceptual area/field used to describe, through analogy, an entity/process which is originally unrelated to it (ex. A family) → mapping: creating a correspondance between taarget and source domain, describing the latter in terms of the former. (ex. The nation is a family) The family matephor is a common and powerful tool in political discourse, used to conceptualize nations, goverments or political entities ad families (ex. The nation as a family) Also sport and war are frequently used metaphors in political discourse. Different approaches to metaphors→ conceptual metaphor theory: “a conceptual metaphor is understanding one domain of experience (that is tpically abstract) in terms of another (that is typically concrete)”→ ex. I’m at a crossroads in my life=linguistic realizations of the conceptual metaphores we think by→ conceptual metaphors are both a process and a product. Similies → a similies is a statement which makes a comparison between two entities which are deliberately unlike (ex. The brownie was so overcooked that it tasted like charcoal)→ similies contain an overt expression of comparison such as like, as, look like, similar to, that. Metonymies → a figure of speech in which the name of one object or entity or concept is used to refer to another to which it somehow related/ use of a word or phrase for another to which it bears a relation, as the effect for the cause, the abstract for the concrete, etc. Commonly used metonymies in political discourse are toponymical.
→ The third form of rhetoric, deliberative, is the variant which is most useful in this chapter. This type of rhetoric is concerned with justifications of political decisions in terms of advantages and disadvantages. Political rhetoric is comprised of three interconnected modes of persuasion. You will likely have heard of the terms ethos, pathos and logos in a general sense, but in Aristotle’s Rhetoric they have a specific meaning relative to their importance in constructing persuasion. → ETHOS: this first mode of persuasion in political rhetoric refers to the personal character of the speaker. An audience is more likely to be persuaded by someone with authority or expertise. (how you manage to be listened to) → PATHOS: refers to persuasion constructed through emotion. Pathos is used to construct emotional responses in an audience and refers to the many linguistic ways that this can be achieved. (how you appeal to the audience’s emotions) → LOGOS: refers to the presentation of an argument as logical. (how you present a plausible argument in a logical way) *sul libro esempio di persuasione con la lettera di Boris Johnson pag. 165 * MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE So far most of the analysis in this book has focussed on the ideological import ance of written text but, as we know, discourse is comprised of much more than the written and spoken word. Discourse can also refer to images and sound, for example. A website or a social media post, for instance, can comprise written text, image and sound in a single discourse space. So discourse can also refer to images and sound → and for this reason CDA developied tools to analyse the meaning potential of modes other than the written and spoken, where discourse is recognised as being “ multimoda l” But what means “multimodal CDA”? “ Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) is interested in how visual aspects of a text play a part in the communication of power relations → MCDA focusses on images and other modes of communication alongside written and spoken text. In a newspaper article which includes pictures, for example, images have ideological meanings of their own as well as being meaningful in how they interact with accompanying text. Their placement in an article or on a webpage may also be significant and can contribute to how text encoders support the ideologies put forward in a text. Images can be said to “denote” and “connote”→ what is documented by an imaage vs. what is meant by an image. While in Critical Discourse Analysis we are most interested in how image, sound or video contribute to the constraction of ideological meaning. VISUAL SYSTEMIC FUCTIONAL LINGUISTICS We already explored the three functions of Systemic Functional Linguistics and demonstrated the important links between models of analysis in SFL and the motivations of CDA. The experiential function of language is analysed primarily through the transitivity framework, the interpersonal function considers how interaction can be achieved between speaker or writer and
listener or reader through mood, modality and evaluation, and the textual function is investigated through devices to construct cohesion and coherence. In this section we will outline more systematically how the models of analysis prominent in SFL can be used in a Multimodal CDA. → experiential function : The transitivity framework examines the experiential function of language through analysing processes, participants and circumstances. The analyst is interested in who does what to whom and how. When examining written text, we look at verb phrases, noun phrases and circumstantial adjuncts in a clause to establish meaning and patterns, and in CDA we consider how these meanings are operating socially. In MCDA we therefore consider the operation of such meanings visually, and we can start by using the same set of categories offered by Halliday (1994) to examine the visual representation of social action.We can analyse for example whether or not visual participants are represented materially as doing something or whether they are instead represented relationally as ‘being’, which invites a different sort of evaluation from the viewer. Images can also contain visual representations of passivisation where an action or the result of an action might be portrayed but no perpetrator; a Goal but no Actor might be present. Circumstances such as location or time might also be relevant. Images can have meaning potential in isolation based upon the social or personal context of the viewer but usually they have more ideological weight relative to surrounding images and text in an institutional discourse scenario. ESEMPIO: Experientially this image reinforces the main message of the article, which is to pitch lecturers’ actions as an attack upon students rather than as a reaction to profit- obsessed management practices in higher education. In this image we assume the Material process of reading or writing. We cannot see the direct Goal but we assume that it is related to the pile of books on the right of the image. The generic student is obviously the Actor. In the context of this article, this image reinforces a motif of student stress; the head- in- hand pose connotes pressure and the books piled higher than the Actor herself exacerbate this impression. However, in another context, this image might have different connotations; it could be employed to promote studiousness or to indicate the importance of libraries. Rather than under pressure, the student could be concentrating and engaged. Owing to the context of the article and the ideological message which it clearly constructs, the viewer evaluates the image as one connoting stress and pressure rather than scholarly endeavour. Images can be said to ‘denote’ and ‘connote’. The former refers to what is documented by an image, i.e. what is included in the image. Very simply, this image denotes a woman and a stack of books. Essentially, denotation refers to description. However, critical analysis must transcend description to consider not just what is documented by image but also what is meant by image, i.e. what an image connotes. In connotation we are interested in how an image signifies meaning, how it communicates ideas or concepts to the viewer. This image connotes through the stack of books not only the idea of
