Discourse and the World PDF

1 MODULE 2 DISCOURSE AND THE WORLD You remember, of course, that the first important facet of discourse is that “discourse is shaped by the world and dis...

1 MODULE 2 DISCOURSE AND THE WORLD You remember, of course, that the first important facet of discourse is that “discourse is shaped by the world and discourse shapes the world.” It means, that discourse imitates the world, and creates the world at the same time. In other words, discourse both reflects and forms people’s worldviews. In Module 2, thus, you will examine how this is made possible through the medium of language by talking, writing, and signing. At the end of the module, you are expected to: 1. Define relevant terms 2. Describe how language and thought, language and culture, and discourse and society are interrelated 3. Analyze a sample text Lesson 1. Discourse imitates and creates worldviews Let’s Read. You will read Chapter 2, Discourse and the World (pp. 32-36) of Barbara Johnstone’s Discourse Analysis. Let’s Remember. After reading, try to recall the following points: ! What you know is not only that which exists in the world, but rather an idea that is created and contested as people name it and talk about it. ! Example the idea of abortion, which in its neutral context refers to termination of pregnancy, has given rise to fighting definitions as pro- life or pro-choice because of on-going discourse (the way of talking about it). ! Another example is human sexuality, which from the biological point of view, refers only to male (man) or female (woman). Discourse has traditionally portrayed or reflected only man and woman being sexually attracted to each other. But as people began to question and debate over this binary classification, you now know of the LGBT+ labels and see human sexuality as being fluid instead. Consequently, to read about two men or two women falling in love and making love, or see them in films for instance, does not anymore cause alarm because a new knowledge has been formed.  2 ! Thus, the interest groups that acquire the right to decide, as to whether abortion is pro-life or pro-choice, for instance, get to shape the future. That is why, in certain parts of the world, abortion has become legal. Or, lately in our country, buildings now include a third comfort room because of the rejection of the man-woman categorization. Let’s Think about This. Can you think of other examples to illustrate this first facet of discourse? Share your ideas to the class. Lesson 2. Language and Thought Let’s Read. You will read Chapter 2,Discourse and the World (pp. 36-42) of Barbara Johnstone’s Discourse Analysis. Let’s Remember. These are the important points that you need to remember from your readings. ! Sapir-Whorf’s “linguistic relativism” theory is one way of explaining the relationship between language and thought. It says that categories of language influence, but not necessarily determine, how people construe the world. ! Linguistic relativism is, therefore, a softer version of “language determinism” which claims that categories of language determine categories of perception, so that a person would not be able to imagine things in any way dictated by her/his language. That is why, Bikolnons jokingly say that, there is no “sibang” in the US because there is no word for it in American English. This is incorrect, however, but illustrative of the theory. ! Here are examples to illustrate how language influences perception or thought. Italian language has a grammatical gender system for nouns which consists of maschille e femminile (masculine and feminine), so that, gatto e’ maschille e tazza e’ femminile ( cat is masculine and cup is feminine). It is argued that this categorization system encourages speakers to view biological sexes and cultural sex roles as  3 categorical and binary, instead of being a matter of degree that can fluctuate and change (fluidity). French language, also Indo-European, follows a masculine- feminine grammatical gender for nouns like in la lait (the milk) and le bouteille (the bottle). The gender of noun is said to be based on form rather than meaning. But most linguists, along with French speakers, would deny that milk seems to be more masculine or bottles more feminine. It could be argued that binary systems like this predispose speakers to imagine that people are either essentially male or female. The Burmese system of classification is complex which seem to create a “linguistic image of nature” and highlighting certain aspects of the referent of the noun in question and inviting hearers to think about it (example, “a pair of” can be used with buffalos but not with horses because buffalos are yoked in pairs for agriculture, while horses are not). ! Facts about grammar (grammar as level of language, not the prescriptive rules) are related to habits of perception. Bits of language, like noun classifiers, typically originate as bits of meaning but with repeated use become “bleached” and come to serve purely grammatical functions. That is, they may come to be used to connect parts of phrases and sentences, and to show how words in discourse are related. The process is called “grammaticalization.” Let’s Think about This. Can you think of similar examples of habits of perception derived from our Bikol language? Share your examples to the class. Lesson 3. Language, Culture and Ideology Let’s Read. You will read Chapter 2, Discourse and the World (pp. 43-53) of Barbara Johnstone’s Discourse Analysis.  4 Let’s Remember. As a synthesis, pay attention to these points. ! Language is a set of syntactical rules and words that exists before and outside of talk (discourse) which a group of people shares completely and accesses in the same way. But language is this sense (autonomous and shared) is found only in dictionaries, grammar books, and then, incompletely. Each individual’s knowledge is different, and each individual’s actual utterance is also different. ! Thought refers to a variety of processes, such as visual perception, memory, or performance of a logical operation. These processes are however incomplete and inaccurate. ! A certain level of reality (world) according to Whorf, like that of the world of Physics, is said to be independent of language. To the relativists, reality is relative. To a solipsist, the external world outside of the mind is unknown. Because of incomplete and inaccurate definitions of language, thought and the world (reality), one way to think about the relationship between language and the world is to think about discourse and NOT language. Therefore, do not ask about how language affects and are affected by the speaker’s worldview or ways of thinking about the world. Instead, ask about how speaker’s discourse (what they do when they talk, sign or write) is influenced by their knowledge about language and the world as they experience it. So what does a speaker do about the world she or he is creating? They are making careful choices. Examples of these choices might include: Choices on noun modifications: like describing things by size (“a whole big cart”) or color (“little gold ones”) to portray the narrator as a child instead of classifying by period or style (“Louis XVI side chairs”) to portray an adult narrator. Choices on cohesions (how sentence connections are signaled): like showing no logical relationships between sentences (“The flowers came. And then, the chairs came”) to sound like a child. Choices on agency: like the inexplicitness of the agency (entity that is responsible for the action that affects others) in “The  5 chairs came,” which creates the effect that the narrator who is a child does not know or does not need to know. ! Fiction writers use language to create fictional words, which to some extent, mirror one or more fictional worlds. Each time a choice is made, the possibility of making that choice is highlighted. In other words, each use of the element of grammar makes it more salient or more available for use or a slightly different use, in another text. Also, each time a world is created in discourse, it becomes easier to create that world again in a subsequent discourse. ! Particular choices can come to stand for whole ways of seeing things, whole ways of being, and those ways of seeing things can come to seem natural, unchallengeable, and right. (This reminds me of rape jokes perpetuated by big names, and which have become normalized that the unthinking masses have become less offended). ! Three approaches to discourse and world: 1. Cognitive Metaphor, 2. Patterned parallelism, and 3. CDA Cognitive metaphor theory sees all language use as figurative. (Metaphor, in this sense, is not the metaphor as a common figure of speech). The concepts are structured by complex cognitive metaphors that are reflected in everyday “literal” language. Elements of the source domain are mapped out into the target domain. (See examples again on page 47-49). " Theories are buildings – The argument is shaky. " Ideas are food – What he said left a bad taste in the mouth. " Life is a container – Her life is full of shit. " Patterned Parallelism. Discourse has the potential to call attention to the way it is structured and the words it contains. When two words or phrases occur each other in the same or similar grammatical context, we are led to wonder about the relationship between the two. Patterns of parallelism both create and highlight relationships among the items that vary in the pattern (patterns and deviations). CDA or Critical Discourse Analysis. The theoretical idea behind CDA is that text, embedded in recurring discursive practices for their production, circulation and reception which are themselves embedded in “social practice,” are among the principal ways in which ideology is circulated and reproduced.  6 The goal of CDA is to uncover the ways in which discourses and ideology are intertwined. Ways of talking produce and reproduce ways of thinking and can be manipulated via choices about grammar, style, wording and every other aspect of discourse. Ideologies are embedded in discourses and are used by the dominant to make oppressive social systems seem natural and desirable and to mask the mechanisms of oppression. o Linguistic choice – every choice about how to produce discourse and how to interpret it – is a choice about how the world is to be divided up and explained. 1. Choices about representation of actions, actors and events (semantic roles, nominalizations) 2. Choices about the representations of knowledge roles (epistemic/evidential adverbials such as clearly, without a doubt; use of be in the present tense to present a universal/inconvertible truth, epistemic verb forms like know, claim, think; use of syntactic claims to certainty like in “We hold this truth to be self-evident; use of verb be in the present tense; use of descriptions or reconstructions, etc.) 3. Choices about naming and wording. Deciding what to call something constitutes a claim about it. (euphemisms/rewording like “war on drugs” for EJK, friendly fires; dysphemism like ethnic cleansing for murder; “overwording”; metaphorical representations 4. Choices about incorporating and representing other voices (about what is said and how, use of “quotatives”) Let’s Try This. In representing and creating meaning in this discourse, what linguistic choice/s is/are made? What is/are example/s of this/these? What new knowledge is created? A one-paragraph analysis, of not more than 10 sentences, is required to demonstrate your understanding of discourse analysis. Be direct and concise.  7 (This example is culled from “Women are not born to be baby-makers” posted by SUSG Advocacy Committee on August 21, 2020 in their FB Account.) A woman’s essence is not just in childbirth, to think otherwise, is very objectifying and misogynistic. Their decision to not carry a child does not make them less of a woman. Accept it, respect it, because at the end of the day, it will always be their choice to make, not mine, not yours, and certainly not the world’s. Lesson 4. Language Ideology and Silence Let’s Read. You will read Chapter 2, Discourse and the World (pp. 66-72) of Barbara Johnstone’s Discourse Analysis. Let’s Remember. After reading, remember the following concepts which are also possible areas for research using discourse analysis as a methodology. ! Language ideology includes such aspects as beliefs about how language and reality are interrelated, about how communication works, beliefs about language correctness, goodness and badness, articulateness and inarticulateness, beliefs about the role of language in a person’s identity, beliefs about how languages are learned, beliefs about how languages are learned, beliefs about what the functions of language should be, beliefs on who the language authorities are, beliefs on whether language should be legislated or not, and so on. This is an area of interest because beliefs about what language is and how a language works affect languages as well as social relations among speakers. ! Silences are things that are not present (“**implicatures,” suppositions, translations). Learning to notice silence means learning to “de- familiarize.” It requires learning to imagine alternative worlds and alternative ways of being, thinking, and talking. **Do you know Grice’s Maxims of Conversation?  8 Let’s Think about This. Students are taught to distance themselves from the text they study, to approach what they read analytically, to make statements about the text rather than how the text affects them, not to use the personal pronoun I. It is suggested that this makes it difficult for students to develop their own voice, their own authority for meaning. What do you think? 9