Review: Understanding the place of language in hierarchical societies

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Review Understanding the place of language in
hierarchical societies
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Language and society

• Language and ideology
• --ideology part of discourse
• Language and social status
• ---status and authority non-partial

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Power and language

• Coercion
• --through force or threat of force
• --institutions instruments for power
• --ExampleApartheid, dictatorship
• Consent (Democracy)
• --winning approval through discourse
• --less costly, less risky
• --discourse the instrument of power
  institutional settings

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Discourse

• Is Language (speech) as a form of social practice
• Embodies Ideological assumptions
• Social conditions determine properties of
  discourse

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Assumptions and common-sense

• Implicit
• non awareness
• Authority and hierarchy as natural
• Aura of authority
• Assumptions embedded in language

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Example Hierarchical assumptions embedded in
language

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

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Language and Ideology

• Language Belief systems social orders
• Inherent superiority and inherent inferiority
• Messages ? social order ? consciousness

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Development of ideologies about language

• Standard languages
• Naturalization of language
• Only one correct form of language
• Standard language and nation-states
• Language and social control

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Non-standard languages

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

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When standard languages become naturalized

• Common-sense unquestionable
• Deviation as backwards, incorrect
• Part of everyday thinking political
• Uncritical thinking
• Manipulative usage of language

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The Power of Language

• Transmit culture
• At the center of cultural, political and economic
  struggle
• Potent instrument of control

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Resistance

• Rejection of dominant language for a local
  language
• Appropriation of a colonial language realization

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Language always political

• Identified structures of languages as enforcing
  structures of power
• Identifying languages as important for nation

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Language and status

• Rights and values manifested in language
• Power of naming, classifying, etc
• The power of defining others
• Definire to limit
• Right to speak and the right to name (correlated
  with higher social positions)

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Language is not neutral

• Exposes attitudes, intentionalities (social
  positions)
• Conveys authority or subordination
• Talk is part of social and cultural meanings
• Beliefs systems serve specific functions (gaining
  and maintaining political and economic control)

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Construction of language

• Non-arbitrary
• Determined by social conditions
• Particular to social and cultural environments,
• institutions
• and society as a whole

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Social conditions determine

• properties of discourse (the parts that
  constitute it)
• and types of discourse (valuable and
  less-valuable discourses)

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Discourse connected to the whole of society
implies that

• 1. Language is part of society and not something
  external to it
• 2. That language is a social process
  interconnected, regulated
• 3. Language is a socially conditioned process
  conditioned (by other non-linguistic)parts of
  society

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Text and discourse

• Text (a product of the process of text
  production) the product of social interaction,
  utterance
• Discourse the whole process of social
  interaction including text

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The conditioning of discoursive language

• MR (members resources)
• Cognitive but dependent on social relations
• Internalized and naturalized
• MR part of the individuals psyche
• Resources for life

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Social conditions and levels of social
organization

• 1. Social situation the immediate social
  environment in which the discourse occurs
• 2. Social institution wider contexts
• 3. Society as a whole Structures of capitalist
  society

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

• It forces us to be critical thinkers
• It help us understand social structures
• It help us understand our position in the world
• It help us understand the non neutrality of
  discourses

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Cultural capital

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

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Discourses carry particular knowledges and power

• Institutional system
• Reproducers of structures of power
• Limited access

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Constraints on less powerful participants

• Constraints on contents
• Constraints on relations
• Constraints on subjects

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Text is ideologically creative

• Individual
• Commonsensical
• Related to ones position in society
• Develop knowledge about ourselves (technologies
  of the self)

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Discourse types

• Ideologically particular or ideologically
  variable (one position or another)
• Determined by different economic and political
  realities (elite and dominant block, resistance)
• Naturalization and universality of discourses
  (sustaining power in social institutions)

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Alternative discourses

• Conscious (against dominant discourse)
• Oppositional (resistance)
• Marginal to political and economic dominance

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Presentation of experiential values through words

• Coded in vocabulary
• Significance of ideology in words (subversive,
  democratic forces, etc)
• Example of the Contra war in Nicaragua freedom
  fighters or murderers

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Relations between words in discourse

• Ideologically contested
• Meaning depending on the discourse
• Depending on the relation of some words with
  others (Evil Empire)

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Institutional Settings and Discourse

• Educational, health, judiciary, the media, etc.
• Transmit and maintain societal structures
• Involves participants separated in place and time
• Involves hidden power relations

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Differences face-to-face discourse and media
discourse

• 1. One-sided nature of media discourse
• --sharp division producer and audience(
  interpreter)
• --no room for contestation
• 2. Lack of close interaction in media discourse
• --adaptability of face-to-face discourse
• --mass media design for mass audiences

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Why do we need to understand media discourse?

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

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The assumption of neutrality Media Discourse

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

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Syntactic Constructions and Media Discourse

• Agents of actions and subjects
• Example
• --Anna ate a pizza
• --The pizza was eaten by Anna
• Shifting focus from agent of action to recipient
  of action
• --The pizza was eaten

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Two headlines The Times and the Guardian

• RIOTING BLACKS SHOT DEAD BY POLICE AS ANC LEADERS
  MEET
• Eleven Africans were shot dead and 15 wounded
  when Rhodesian police opened fire on a rioting
  crowd of about 2,000 in the African Highfield
  township of Salisbury this afternoon.
• POLICE SHOOT 11 DEAD IN SALISBURY RIOT
• Riot police shot and killed 11 African
  demonstrators and wounded 15 others here today in
  the Highfield township on the outskirts of
  Salisbury.

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TV, Film

• Similar hidden messages
• Focus on particular topics
• Sounds influences moods
• Organization of images

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Why do we need to understand media discourse?

• Influence of media unquestionable
• Construct and reconstruct particular realities
• Aura of partiality of media is deceiving
• Expressed bias they highlight some items and
  ignore others
• Syntactic Constructions and Media Discourse
• Agents of actions and subjects --Anna ate a
  pizza, --The pizza was eaten by Anna

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Then

• The nature of mass media is often not clear
• There are differences between face-to-face
  interactions
• Lack of feedback
• Media discourse designed with mass audiences in
  mind construction of ideal subject
• Involves grammatical constructions, vocabulary
  and language

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Two ways of colonization of peoples lives

• Consumerism(economy and commodity markets)
• Institutional control (bureaucracy, social order)

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Social tendencies

• Imposed by the dominant block
• They change according to the change of these
  tendencies
• Discourse of consumerism re-structuring of other
  discourse types
• Strategic discourse

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The dimensions of ideological work in advertising

• 1) The relationship advertising discourse
  construct
• between the producer/advertiser and the consumer
• 2) The way advertising discourse builds an
  imagine
• for the product (predicated on the ideology
  (freedom, richness, efficiency, etc)
• 3) The way it constructs subject positions
• for consumers

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Advertising construct consumption communities

• Through ideology
• Superficial view of the relationship between
  truth and fiction
• Commons sense assumptions

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Works ideologically through

• Building relations
• Building images
• Building the consumer

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Types of constraints in discourse

• Contentswhat can be part of types of discourse
• Relations who can participate in types of
  discourses
• Subjects who can acquire a type of discourse