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Critical Discourse Analysis: an introduction, Dispense di Lingua Inglese

Riassunto del Manuale con annessi appunti del corso di Lingua Inglese III 1 C

Tipologia: Dispense

2020/2021

Caricato il 16/01/2021

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Lingua Inglese III 1 C 13109 [email protected] A.A. 2020/2021
C(ritical) D(iscourse) A(nalysis)
What is discourse?
It basically is Language in action in its many forms, whether directly through spoken or written language or
via gesture, pictures, diagrams, films, or music. Whenever I speak, I do it because I want to reach a goal.
Sometimes it can be reached by offering a meaning opposite of what I want. For example, irony: I say
something which is exactly the opposite of what I mean. How is discourse realized? First of all, by our body,
like voice or hand to write. But it can also be realized in a way in which I am dressed, like a suit, or by the
way we make-up. We are trying to communicate something to society and show a precise message. It can
also be realized whit numbers, with math formulas or algorithms, or by musical notes. They are also
interactions between images and text on the internet. Discourse may be realized with empty space, no
words and void, and this is probably the most typical type of discourse to analyze. We have difficulties to
assign meaning to a void.
What is discourse analysis?
Discourse analysis indicates an investigation: this investigation is never about language as an abstract
system of communication, but rather about language and action, both text and its contextual use.
CDA explains the role of discourse as a controlling force in society. It has a dapper understanding of the
way language is used to persuade and manipulate both individuals and social groups. It uses systemic
functional grammar (SFG) as a model of grammar which:
- Stresses the importance of social context (that is, the context of culture and the context of
situation) in the production and development of language.
- Is concerned not only with words and sentences, but also with longer texts and collections of sexts
(corpora) above the level of the sentence.
The aims and goals of CDA differ from the aims of linguists. Linguists, in general, are concerned with the
way in which language or discourse “works”. CDA, on the other hand, are interested in the way in which
language and discourse are used to achieve social goals and in the part this use plays in social maintenance
and change. Because of this, CDA has a multidisciplinary approach (anthropology, sociology, ethnography,
and ethnomethodology; human cognition and behavior, such as cognitive and social psychology).
Some basic terms and tools
Discourse
In its broadest sense, discourse refers to all phenomena of symbolic interaction and communication
between people. We have said that discourse is language above the sentence level: a continuous stretch of
spoken or written language larger than sentence, often constituting a coherent unit. It is perceived to be
meaningful unified and purposive. Discourse is “language-in-action”. Discourse is often used in contrast
with text, where text” refers to actual written or spoken data, and “discourse” refers to the whole act of
communication involving production and comprehension, not necessarily entirely verbal. Discourse is
frequently used to refer to the general communication that takes place in specific institutional contexts
(discourse of science, legal discourse, and so on). A multimodal discourse refers to discourse which relies
on more than one mode of communication, like a film, which has a video and music, written and an oral
component.
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Lingua Inglese III 1 C 13109 [email protected] A.A. 2020/

C(ritical) D(iscourse) A(nalysis)

What is discourse?

It basically is Language in action in its many forms, whether directly through spoken or written language or via gesture, pictures, diagrams, films, or music. Whenever I speak, I do it because I want to reach a goal. Sometimes it can be reached by offering a meaning opposite of what I want. For example, irony: I say something which is exactly the opposite of what I mean. How is discourse realized? First of all, by our body, like voice or hand to write. But it can also be realized in a way in which I am dressed, like a suit, or by the way we make-up. We are trying to communicate something to society and show a precise message. It can also be realized whit numbers, with math formulas or algorithms, or by musical notes. They are also interactions between images and text on the internet. Discourse may be realized with empty space, no words and void, and this is probably the most typical type of discourse to analyze. We have difficulties to assign meaning to a void.

What is discourse analysis?

Discourse analysis indicates an investigation: this investigation is never about language as an abstract system of communication, but rather about language and action , both text and its contextual use. CDA explains the role of discourse as a controlling force in society. It has a dapper understanding of the way language is used to persuade and manipulate both individuals and social groups. It uses systemic functional grammar (SFG) as a model of grammar which:

  • Stresses the importance of social context (that is, the context of culture and the context of situation) in the production and development of language.
  • Is concerned not only with words and sentences, but also with longer texts and collections of sexts (corpora) above the level of the sentence. The aims and goals of CDA differ from the aims of linguists. Linguists, in general, are concerned with the way in which language or discourse “works”. CDA, on the other hand, are interested in the way in which language and discourse are used to achieve social goals and in the part this use plays in social maintenance and change. Because of this, CDA has a multidisciplinary approach (anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and ethnomethodology; human cognition and behavior, such as cognitive and social psychology).

Some basic terms and tools

Discourse

In its broadest sense, discourse refers to all phenomena of symbolic interaction and communication between people. We have said that discourse is language above the sentence level: a continuous stretch of spoken or written language larger than sentence, often constituting a coherent unit. It is perceived to be meaningful unified and purposive. Discourse is “language-in-action”. Discourse is often used in contrast with text, where “text” refers to actual written or spoken data, and “discourse” refers to the whole act of communication involving production and comprehension, not necessarily entirely verbal. Discourse is frequently used to refer to the general communication that takes place in specific institutional contexts ( discourse of science, legal discourse, and so on). A multimodal discourse refers to discourse which relies on more than one mode of communication, like a film, which has a video and music, written and an oral component.

Text

A text is a product of discourse. It is normally used to describe a linguistic record of a communicative event. It can be written, oral or visual. Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) proposed that a text as a meaningful speech event will meet seven standards of textuality:

  • Cohesion : the connection of words and elements on a sequence
  • Coherence : the outcome of cognitive relations, such as mutual knowledge – discussed below – between the participants in the discourse
  • Acceptability : the form of the text of appropriateness to the cultural setting and the way in which it is received by those taking part
  • Intentionality : the text’s producers’ discourse purpose, goals, or plan
  • Informativity : how far the degree of information transmitted is more or less suitable for receivers in the circumstances
  • Situationality or relevance : the factors which make a text relevant to the situation in which it occurs
  • Intertextuality : the way in which a text relies on previous texts for its form and references and the ways in which it may incorporate other texts.

Domain

Discourse domain is the term for a socially recognized context within which the discourse takes place. For instance, if we talk of scientific discourse, “science” is the domain. A domain may have a narrower focus and embrace, say, the social setting in which the discourse takes place, for example:

  • Offices, universities, and places of worship along with their recognized structures may be seen as domains.
  • The media may be seen as a domain, but CDA can be concerned with discourse from a more specific domain such as the BBC or The New York Herald. Within this domain there are certain recognized social practices and conventional genres.

Social practices

People within specific domains engage in social practices. They hare human behaviors which involve following certain socially established conventions. These socially established conventions are rules within which the actors have some degree of individual freedom and opportunities for unique behavior. Examples of social practices include business meetings, religious services, birthday parties, and so on. The knowledge and skills required to engage in social practices are part of socially shared knowledge. They may have been “picked up” through experience or contact with other actors or they may have been learned via specific instructions within the home environment or as part of education or training: although special practices are often well established and persistent within a particular culture, they are rarely “frozen” and unchanging. A single instance of a social practice is called social event. When a social event is language-based (such as committee meeting) is also known as a speech event.

Genre

A genre is a form of discourse which is recognized culturally, and which obeys socially agreed structures. Swales (1990) described genre as a socially recognized, recurrent, culturally defined speech event. Genres have their own formal characteristics which can be identified, described, and taught. A genre can be an e- mail, a poem, an article, etcetera. It is the exterior element of a text which is socially organized, and which allows the reader to detect immediately the type of text he/she is reading.

To these practical objectives, we can add the more theoretical aims that have been proposed for the subject:

  • To demonstrate the significance of language in the social relations of power
  • To investigate how meaning is created in context
  • To investigate the role of speaker/writer purpose and authorial stance in the construction of discourse How it started: from Critical Linguistics to Critical Discourse Analysis The mains scholars are Fowler, Hodge, Kress. Recently Fairclough, van Dijk and Wodak. Critical Linguistics is a branch of linguistics born in the 1960s. This approach is basically a philosophical approach: language can be mystificatory, so that responsibility is omitted. The analysis of this type of language has to be demisted. Sometimes in language, we construct a much more difficult language. From critical linguistics we go to CDA, which is developed by Fairclough through three books. His key ideas were that discourse is socially constructed rather than naturally created, and in this it is both the result of a social practice and social practice itself. In society there are as many social practices as the social network forming society itself. We can see society as formed by layers. Different layers correspond to different contexts. Indeed, society is structured in layers or “places”, that is structures that can be situational, institutional, societal. They are defined as social orders. Seen from a linguistic perspective, such social orders correspond to orders of discourse. In these orders, linguistic and non-linguistic elements interact: participants, actions, settings, times etc.. The relationships existing in, behind and across discourses between are power relations. Language reproduces social networks that influence the way we think and use discourse, which ultimately is ideological. The use of language hides the ideology of the social structures and practices.

Teun van Dijk Together with Fairclough, he applied to these philosophical investigations, also a psychological one. He too says that language can be used as instrument of ideology, power and domination by individuals and social groups. He also says that analysis of texts reveals strategies used and analysis leads to emancipation via increased awareness. To him, discourse refers to contextualized language use that to mega discourses. He also regards discourse as involving mental (cognitive) operations:

  • Mental models -? A cognitive theory of context Context is “out there” but is the speakers’ mental representation of the context: what they know about the situation and what is expected in terms of talk exchange. Micro and macro contexts as knowledge. K-device Knowledge of “ setting (time, place), participants and their various identities , roles or relations , the ongoing action , and the goals of the participants” PLUS assumptions about what knowledge other speakers are likely to share. Wodak The K-device is a starting point for Wodak. She uses elements of sociology, ethnography, and rhetoric. She usually analyzed politics. She developed a Discourse-historical approach ad said that all discourse is linked to power and ideology. She implemented analysis with sociological and ethnographical approach. Goals of analysis: emancipation Via:
  • Text immanent critique : analysis reveals inconsistencies in text
  • Socio-diagnostic critique : “the demystifying exposure of the – manifest or latent – possibly persuasive or “manipulative” character of discourse practices”, using knowledge or context.
  • Prognostic critique : contributes to the transformation and improvement of communication Her notion of discourse is similar to Fairclough’s. Written and spoken language are a form of social practice.

assumes a shared understanding which does not exist. If so, communication could break down. What can we do in this case is repairing communication by questioning. Shared information can be categorized into the following types:

  • Knowledge of certain facts relating to subject matter.
  • Wide cultural knowledge, such as an understanding of major celebratory festivals, religious and/or ethical customs, or the legal system.
  • Knowledge of how people behave with respect to their social roles within social hierarchies.
  • Knowledge of the institutional practices of specialist discourse communities, such as workplace groups, government, clubs and societies and their related genres.
  • Knowledge of the moral values of the groups to which participants belong.
  • Knowledge of the co-text (the elements within the text) and context (anything outside the text) in a specific communicative event.
  • Knowledge of the individuals involved as discourse participants in the immediate communicative event. Each of these categories incorporates issues of identity and power. The value systems of a social group, to which all of the knowledge categories contribute, make up its ideology. Propagandists and advertisers often deliberately assume agreement on a topic in order to take an argument in the direction that they wish. An example concerns attitudes to age, which vary from one society to another: in societies where older people hold – or have traditionally held – relatively more power, age is valued, and the elderly generally receive respect. In other societies, including much of Europe and North America, an assumption is made that everyone agrees that is better to be young than to be middle-aged or old. The idea that looking young is desirable is exploited by both manufacturers and advertisers. The idea that people who use the advertised skin cream will look younger and hence be more desirable to the opposite sex is based on the widely shared cultural notion that ageing is unattractive. Since the advertisements of these type do – in some societies at least – succeed in increasing sales, we must assume that many people share the belief that it is better to look – and possibly be – young. However, this is a socially constructed concept rather than an indisputable fact*. *THERE ARE STILL SOCIETIES, FOR EXAMPLE IN SOME PARTS OF AFRICA, WHERE TO GAIN CERTAIN SOCIAL PRIVILEGES AND RESPECT, ONE MUST BE ELDERLY. EVEN WITHIN EUROPE AND AMERICA, THERE ARE GROUPS THAT DO NOT ACCEPT THIS POSITION, FOR EXAMPLE, IN CERTAIN RELIGIOUS SECTS WHERE POWER IS ENSHRINED IN “THE ELDERS”. However, we rarely see objections raised to the assumption that youth is preferred to age and there is little doubt that advertisements reinforce that view. The value system of a social group, to which all of the knowledge categories contribute, make up its ideology. Everyone absorbs the established values of their own social groups and follows the practices they have learnt (more or less unconsciously) in matters such as age , authority , gender , race , and so on, unless they have contact with other cultures or are exposed to social practices or philosophies that lead to them to reject or rationally question aspects of their home culture. The set of established values held by social groups makes up their ideology. The critical discourse analyst must work to become aware of assumptions that are made in the name of cultural practice or which reflect the ideological basis of the discourse and try to investigate them with a fresh and open mind. Pragmatics – or purposeful communication Certain aspects of language in use are commonly referred to as the pragmatic feature of discourse. Pragmatics is a branch of study related to, but separate from, linguistics, because it purports to explain aspects of language and communication that have not been – or cannot be – explained by linguistic studies.

Systemic functional linguists try to explain in pragmatics in their linguistic theory. In this course, we will generally use the term “pragmatics” when we refer to work published under that name. Discourse features frequently discussed in the literature of pragmatics are:

  • Communicative function
  • Reference
  • Presupposition and implicature From genre to communicative function When we learn language, we also gradually learn to recognize and name a set of discourse events that are common in the social circles we move in. We not only learn the unspoken rules of conversation, but also those rules that are handed down from generation to generation such as the concern for appropriate behavior which may differ from a social group to another (cf. children joining in conversation). Part of our socialization is gaining familiarity with a range of discourse types or genres. Some are learned by exposure, other are taught (cf. phone conversations vs. lab reports). They tend to follow agreed social rules or customs, and we learn the rules of recognition and production slowly, usually through education or sometimes by contact with the discourse community that uses them. Reference, identity, and role The way in which language allows us to substitute pronouns for nouns or other pro-forms for other parts of speech, phrases, or clauses ( here or there for places; that for things) is called reference. Reference in a grammatical sense is extremely relevant in the cohesion of texts because of the way in which language allows us to substitute pronoun for nouns and other pro-forms for other parts of speech, phrases or clauses, such as here or there for places. This is particularly important in CDA because of the special significance attached to the ways in which identity is realized in discourse: people tend to identify themselves with their own social groupings ( Self ) and often place themselves in opposition to the other social grouping ( Other ). We identify with different social groups. To some extent we are able to choose how far we identify with a group. We may each think of ourselves as members of a particular religion and/or a profession. We may choose to identify with our home nation, our favorite football club, and our religious group - but we may decide not to.

Analysis: pronouns in the construction of identity

“Identity” refers to the way people see themselves in relation to others and to society at large. Plural pronouns ( we, us, they, and them ) refer, of course, to more than one person. However, each of them can refer to different collections of people. We can illustrate this by looking at how writers from different backgrounds use the inclusive “we” to place themselves in relation to different social groups. In each of the texts which follow, the authors have similar common sense, they are all “on the same side” (Self). Racists and oppressors are on the other side (Other). In 3a, wo notice how Foster is using the pronoun “we” to

Grice specifies four maxims that underpin normal interaction: Maxim of quantity : accounts for the level of informativeness of the exchange; speakers should provide not too much or too little information than it is required. Maxim of quality : accounts for the truth of the message; speakers should provide information that they believe to be true. Maxim of relation/relevance : accounts for relevance; speakers should provide information which is pertinent (semantically related to / coherent with the topic of the conversation). Maxim of manner : accounts for the clarity and unambiguity of the information: speakers should provide information in a way that is clear and intelligible.

Do we always respect these maxims?

Grice is particularly concerned to account for implicatures , meaning that are evident although they are not explicitly stated. An implicature is the sort of meaning that people refer to informally by such expressions as “reading between the lines” or “dropping a heavy hint”. A: Do you like pasta? B: I think I prefer rice… Speakers may not respect maxims, as long as there are implicatures that allow them to recover missing pieces of information.

Not respecting the maxims

There are four cases of non-respecting a maxim:

  • Flouting: when you emphasize you non respect to GP so as to make it noticeable, easily recoverable. A: Are you hungry? B: I am starving!!!
  • Opting out : when you cannot/do not want to provide the information required and openly manifest your impossibility or willingness not to cooperate. A: Where does Sheila live? B: I am afraid I cannot tell you...
  • Coping with the clash between maxims : when you cannot/ do not want to resect one maxim, but you compensate this by respecting all the others. A: Where does Sheila live? B: Somewhere in the South of France…
  • Violation (exiting the principle of cooperation): when you do not respect a maxim and do not want your non-respect to be noticed. How? By lying, play acting. A: How old are you? B: I am 18 (instead you are 22)

Recovering cooperation

Non respecting a maxim does not disrupt cooperation when implicatures (that is, the result if interferences based on co-text, and situational, background, and interpersonal context) are available to recover the meaning and utterance. Implicatures are the result of a cognitive processing of linguistic/semantic elements ( but, because, in fact, etc. ). Grice’s maxims are fundamental for communicative success. Yet people lie, waffle, digress, refuse to speak and so on. Politicians when interviewed may decide to violate Grice’s maxims by flouting/opt out/clashing. It is up to us CD Analysts to detect what they are doing. The analysis of the context Texts must be analyzed in relation to the co-text (the type of text that comes before and after) and the context. Context is culture and situation. The context of culture includes the traditions, the institutions, the discourse communities, the historical context, and the knowledge base of the participants: it may evolve. The context of situation focuses on the various elements involved in the direct production of elements in a particular instance of communication: the setting (or social environment), identity of the participants, and so on. One approach to analysis that is specific to a given text is to pose a series of questions that relate to the production of the text. For instance, in relation to participants, we need to detect information on such matters as:

  • Their geographical origins (as revealed in dialect or accent)
  • Their social class/classes, and social status
  • Their ages
  • Relative wealth
  • Professions
  • Gender
  • And/or membership of discourse communities Since participants’ social roles directly affect the tenor of the discourse, it is more important to recognize that participants (we ourselves included) play many social roles. CDAnlysis will take into consideration the discourse mode of delivery, such as face-to-face interaction, phone conversation, internet chat, radio broadcast, business report, and so on. Each mode has its own features. We know the script of these modes, when realizing them, using certain styles. The topic dealt with by these scripts has different level of realization technically called levels of delicacy. The combination of the mode, script, and delicacy will determine the type of text we will produce according to the participants, the intention and purpose of the speaker.

When these feelings (mental processes) are expressed as verbs, we normally refer to a human Senser or Sensers , as we can see from the pronouns in “ I was surprised, and “ We were satisfied ” or “ The film meal satisfied us ”. Because the verbs in these clauses are transitive, the human referent can potentially appear in different positions in the clause depending on whether the clause is active or passive. In the active clauses, the persons who are surprised, haunted, and satisfied are realized as Sensers in object position. In the passive clauses, they are referred as Sensers in subject positions. “Senser” is a technical term for the person or animal that suffers the mental process being expressed. “Phenomenon” is another technical term that refers to the event, thing or person that is the source of the mental process, as we can see in the tables: In the review, it is the reviewer who is satisfied , haunted , and surprised , but by suppressing references to herself, she suggests that any readers would experience the same feelings.

Language is one of the tools the individual has to reach his/her goals. The use of verbal [=linguistic] processes is one of the linguistic options that reflects the motives of the speaker or writer.

or spoken before. While in the first part of the letter the writer uses “we” to refer to the company, in the two final paragraphs he switches to “I”, moving away from identifying himself as part of an impersonal company and increasing the effect of intimacy between writer and reader. This is particularly appropriate because he is moving here into an increasingly interactional message: ▪ He suggests a meeting. ▪ He asks the reader to “welcome the letter favorably”. ▪ He warns the reader of an impending telephone call. ▪ He invites the reader to get in touch with him personally. We have a letter that maintains a degree of formality in its layout, sentence length, and vocabulary and yet moves towards establishing business-client relationship that more closely resembles a relationship between friends. This is likely to be company policy rather than individual decision of the man who signed the letter. Unconscious stance in racist and sexist discourse In the following example, neither the genre nor the topic of the text is our particular concern. What is important is that the author’s attitude to the topic he is writing about is colored by his own prejudices. Considering the time it was written (1930), it is possible that the opinions revealed are totally unconscious. Prejudice can pervade discourse and it can often go unnoticed except by those who are its target. Our concern here is with the constructed identity of Baudelaire’s lover, Jeanne Duval. The word half-caste , denotationally indicates someone whose parents are of different race. It is necessary to examine the co- text to see to what ends the term is used. Given the date of publication of this text, it is unlikely that the author would have any conscious perception of possible negative responses or that any accusation would have been forthcoming. Stance in history textbooks

Intertextual analysis

This is mainly a matter found in news report. Events are reported. Journalists write news in the basis of other texts, citing speeches, attributing ideas. Journalists inevitably interpret reality in the basis of the way they view the event or the way they heard about it. Journalists report what “is to” happen. All facts are open to a process of creation or re-creation in text in the light of the changing cultural or historical contexts. Fairclough (2003) defines the re-creation of texts as chain of texts. Where such chains move and re-link across different media and contexts, networks of texts develop. Closely related to text chains is the notion of intertextuality. Intertextuality involves both the intrusion (or adoption by the speaker/author) of aspects of previous texts into a new text either through citation, attribution, or reference. Newspaper often present future events as though they were facts even though the outcome may be in doubt. Often a prediction is fulfilled and sometime later the newspaper reports the same event again, this time as an actual occurrence. At times, headlines predict events which do not actually occur, because the predication is a hypothesis, dependent on some condition which is mentioned or implied in the main text. At other times, headlines predict events which could not possibly occur.

Th uses of Intertextuality

Intertextuality is a discourse process. It is closely linked to the notions of re-creation and interpretation. Within CDA, intertextual analysis has two main functions:

  • It plays an important role in revealing speakers’ and writers’ strategies in reinforcing or re- formulating ideas and beliefs.
  • It can reveal traces of the dominant ideology or evidence of ideological struggle and cultural change.

Sources, referencing and plagiarism

The source is technically the sources of an author’s material. Metaphorically, a source refers to the place or places in which a certain idea or set of ideas originate. Scientists, for example, commonly talk or write about sources in term of quotations or citations that allow readers to find where related ideas came from. This is seen partly as a conventional form of respect for other members of the discourse community and partly as a means of making a “shot-cut” by allowing writers to leave out at least some of the background details of the work in hand. This subscribes to the traditional idea that new ideas are based on what has gone before and that we rely on our forebears for any scientific or artistic achievement. As Newton said: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”, the idea being that we can see further and hence achieve grater success if we built on previous work. The effect of referring to the work of others is a clear and obvious way of introducing “other voices” into a text. These voices may simply contribute additional information or opinions, or they may support or refute the meanings that are created by the main author. The use of other voices can help a writer or speaker to brig extra richness to a text by incorporating different levels of meaning and by evoking, for example, other places and other times. A current issue in intertextuality studies is that of plagiarism (or copying) in students’ work. While students are always encouraged to read widely and to draw on the work of “giants” in their field, there are written conventions that need to be learned about how the ideas that they glean can be incorporated onto their own writing. A basic principle is that, where the exact wording of a previous written text or even spoken text (such as a lecture or broadcast) is used, the exact source should be given. If the accepted conventions of academic genres are not followed, a student may be accused of plagiarism, a “crime” that is punished with disgrace and even dismissal when it appears to be a deliberate act of deception. Students in higher education occasionally fall into the trap of unintentional plagiarism. In some cultures, undergraduate students are expected to reproduce in examinations exactly what they have learned from lectures or

The way in which lay people “see” the natural world is reflected in their use of language. When we speak about scientific language, we have to speak about different forms of narrative, because we may have:

  • Narrative of science (peer-to-peer): refers to what experts address to experts about their work
  • Narrative of nature (laymen): refers to the way lay people speak or write about the world
  • Popularization (expert-to-non-expert)

Expert discourse and the issues of power

An important social consideration in the issue of “expert” discourse is that in most institutional situations the specialist is the holder of power. The experts hold the key both to the expert discourse and to the non- expert discourse as well, while the non-experts and novices are privy only to the non-expert discourse. Another issue is the way in which “expert” discourse is in constant change. New laws are made, new medicines discovered, new technology developed, and all the innovations that is reported involves new terminology and new structures of discourse. Yet the non-expert or the novice is unable to keep up with the changes, either conceptually or linguistically. Every discourse community has its own experts, who control the linguistic capital of that community, and also has its own novices. These discourse communities may operate within one social class or cut across them.

Everyday language and scientific concepts

Even if we are experts in a particular field, our everyday language will not necessarily reflect our expertise. To take a simple example: is it a fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? A little consideration will remind those of us who have studied elementary science that, according to the scientific account, the sun does not rise at all. The earth turns on his axis towards the east, the sun comes into view and appears to rise. We know what we mean when we say, “the sun rises” and yet most of us do not perceive the reality of the situation. What seems to be happening here is that either:

  1. The naïve way we perceive the world is more powerful that our education when it comes to everyday use or
  2. We have inherited an ancient [pre-Galileo] discourse of the state of the universe that pervades our sense of reality Although explanation [2] seems unlikely, there are similar cases in language use as, for example, in the case of Native Americans, commonly and mistakenly called “Indians”.

Figurative language, metaphor, and message

Rhetoric’s

This chapter is about the rhetorical devices that speakers and writers use to construct their messages. Public speakers, advertisers, politicians, journalists, and others deliberately use this resource knowingly to enhance the way they use language. However, we all – even small children – use some rhetorical devices unconsciously in everyday communication

Aristotle’s rhetoric

It is the art of persuasion and argument, particularly with respect to public speaking: it dates back to classical Greek, in particular to Aristotle’s rhetoric. In Aristotle’s opinion, rhetoric is relevant because it functions as a branch of Philosophy and as a component of communication. In this particular aspect, he was fascinated by the way in which audiences interpret discourse and the extent to which they are persuaded by stylistic devices. Hence, part of the academic study if rhetoric involved training in the ability to recognize and analyze such devices, and, as a result, not only to be able to use them but also to be able to see

through them. Aristotle required the rhetorician to make a moral case for his position. As a means to this end, he said that the politician needed to understand character, virtue and happiness, social value, justice, and criminality. He believed that part of the role of the orator was to praise and to argue for what is good for the realm on the basis of “proofs”. Having established his argument, the orator must then consider the stye and arrangement of his speech and to his end Aristotle provided a taxonomy of skills “to render the facts persuasive”. These devices are all in current in the twenty-first century. In addition to concern about the substance of the speech, Aristotle attended to matters of style as revealed in the use of figurative language. Many of the techniques that Aristotle discussed have been incorporated into the study of literature. Figurative language Figurative languages use rhetorical tropes or figure of speech to reach its purposes of persuading people. “A rhetorical figure occurs when an expression deviates from expectation, the expression is not rejected as nonsensical or faulty, the deviation occurs at the level of form rather than content, and the deviation conforms not a template that is invariant across a variety of contents and contexts”. Rhetorical tropes in figurative language The most common tropes used in figurative language are:

  • Metaphor (& simile): the phenomenon whereby we talk (and, potentially, think) about one thing in terms of another. E.g. “the war against drugs”. Metaphors say concisely what in other words would need a long elaborate descriptions or difficult paraphrases. Conventional metaphorical patters also happen in everyday life, e.g. He will go places in life, He has gone through a lot in life. Metaphor – theoretical background The TARGET DOMAIN, that is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The SOURCE DOMAIN, that is the subject from which the attributes are derived. The domain , that is the part[s] of semantic field from which the attributes are selected to create the relationship between the target and the source. YOU ARE A ROSE From the source domain ROSE, we select the attributes to be applied to the target domain YOU. This creates the relationship between the source domain and the target domain.