Volosinov Notes from 1.31 class
Translation - written text - "transparent tool"
Interpretation - synchronous -
Repeating a joke - completely different from original -- take statement from one context, put it into another. You can't repeat it in a "simple" transfer
Recontextualizing -- should we worry about "original meaning"?
context/ utterance - social situation and utterance
Yolo
What changes with the Livestrong bracelet
stereotype as social system:
You only live once (rallying cry)............stop and smell the roses
language structure
Saturday Night Live - group - makes fun of the group - not often heard
Volosinov - language can be built upon (constantly becoming) -- language changes by use of individuals (theoretical) -- change
29 IDEOLGOGY
Van Dyk coordinting - mental representations - (verb vs. noun) shared group understanding - basis of social cognition and are derived from group membership
Possibility of many mental representations
Volosinov
idealist (ideologies systems of ideas located in individual consciousness) vs. materialist conceptions
hammer points beyond that -- John Henry
ideologies embedded in a pink hammer (gender) - reflects & refracts/ a kids hammer
tool as "means of production" - designated function OR - hammer/sickle - Soviet Union
tool to sign that has ideological value
bread and wine -instrumental & sign purpose
Reflect and refract
ideological signs - are BOTH
without signs, there is not ideology & a sign is something that acquires meaning beyond its given area
PINK HAMMER -
physicality - design - reflective
pink - refracting (how ppl will respond) - many will respond to this - metacommentary
Hammer, for example, can also modify the "pink"
ideology in consciousness - sign us embedded in material conditions
materially/ ideology - coming together - interaction w/in society -- not purely in our head
Even if you don't see it as ideology - it still is! Buildings w/ histories...we don't often think of these
something is a sign when it acquires meaning beyond function/ particularity
signal - different than sign
ideological - value beyond the material sign
individual consciousness - socially constructed - developed through social interactions
if you take Van D - ideologies only exist if you are in that group - so V says you also think of affect the ideology functions BEYOND the individual.
Ideology must be taken up in some manner.
Focus - what should study of language be? Looks to past frames - critique
individualistic subjectivism.................................abstract objectivism
- language in psyche
- source of creativity comes soley from individual
- creativity about taste (indv.style) (50)
-48 - 4 principles of subjectivism
#4 language is inert "hardened crust" - ready made instrument - what speaker does is up to them.
Grammar - you LEARN how to manipulate English (individual as volcano - langauge is byproduct - emergent from what individual does - ATOMIZED individual
52
abstract objectivism
language is a stationary trend -- rainbow (normative principles; phonetic / grammatical/ lexical/) over the everflowing stream (or ever spurting volcano).
rainbow is OVER the stream - controls...indivudals pronounce sounds differently...doesn't matter.
"correctness" NOT a conception of creativity
Violations of norms don't impact systems (examples - adverb ppl still can make sense of it)
stream - movement
rainbow - ephemeral - but described as stationary in class?
Saussure - structuralist semiotics
synchronous - looking at a particular moment in time (his preference)
lange (abstract language as a structure) = parole (individual usage within a system)
arbitrary vs. motivated
Volosinov instead says: diacrhonic - exists in time/ history - that we can look at change across time
* DOES NOT OFFER explanations as to why language changes
59
66
objectivity - if only looking at it from the ground (constantly moving/ changing) -
HOWEVER...it is not the case that the individual can do what they want to do (says Volosinov)
AGENCY - social semiotic; agent -- issue of "choice" - individual does have an impact on the system
we can make choices about a system appropriate to the situation
67
Individual subjective
"The speaker's subjective consciousness
does not in the least operate with language as a system of normatively
identical forms. That system is merely an abstraction arrived with a good deal of
trouble and with a definite cognitive and practical focus of attention. The system
of language is the product of deliberation on language, and deliberation of
a kind by no means carried out by the consciousness of the native speaker
himself and by no means carried out for the immediate purposes of speaking...
In point of fact, the speaker's focus of attention is brought about in line with
the particular, concrete utterance he is making. What matters to him is applying
a normatively identical form (let us grant there is such a thing for the time being)
in some particular, concrete context. For him, the center of gravity lies not in
the identity of the form but in that new and concrete meaning it acquires in the
} particular context. What the speaker values is not that aspect of the form which
1 is invariably identical in all instances of its usage, despite the nature of those
\ instances, but that aspect of the linguistic form because of which it can figure
\ in the given, concrete context, because of which it becomes a sign adequate to
~the conditions of the given, concrete situation." Language depends on situation.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Kress - from S. to Critical Sociolinguistics
Notes from class:
correlational approaches
vs. choice approaches
"individuals know how to speak given a certain situation"appropriateness (normative - grammar)
CHOICE - trying to achieve something in language - TRYING TO ACHIEVE A KIND OF FUNCTION (Halliday - syntagmetic/ paradigmatic systems)
Critical perspective -- we can look at choices and trace back "traces" of production context (social environment of what it comes out as)
29
turn to - what are we turning from?
social view of language
language as system
Western thought - Indo-European basis - language - creation of principles - family
30
what does language look like? Freeze it
structuralist (frozen)
"Saussure himself gave a complex
answer in which the focus was on the sign, and on the all-encompassing entity
in which signs exist, language as such or langue. I will return to the latter in a
moment."
-internal -relations outside of sign
axis of association (signs) - axis of combination (outward) paradigmatic and syntagmatic planes
you sit on:paradigm
paradigm combined to styntagmatic - easy chair, coffee table
Bizarre structuring of things...
31
types of chairs - meaning - and possibilities
"A second kind of meaning arises
from the fact that different types of chairs are, in fact, cultural encodings of
different possible forms of behaviour: A stool asks me to sit differently to an easy
chair. Setting up the room for a job interview with a stool for the interviewee and
easy chairs for the interviewers - to make a ridiculous example - would set the
tone decisively. "
signifier (form)/ signified (meaning) - expression
"A connection is made between an
element in the system of language, and an element in the system of culturally
salient values. The former 'refers' to the latter."
32
"convention. Given the power of convention the
individual is unable to exett any influence on this arbitrary relation: the sign is
there to be used, but cannot be altered. In Saussure's schema, this is so, both for
the individual sign and for the collection of signs, for language as a whole." Interesting, in terms of grammar
Individual cannot change language
"However, the
significant point here is that Saussure's views on the characteristics of systems,
structure, signs, on langue and parole, shaped the development of mainstream
and non-mainstream linguistics in the twentieth century. In the mainstream these
views allowed emphasis to be placed on relations within the system rather than
on reference; on structure rather than on function; on arbitrariness, thus
eliminating the force of individual agency, whether from the individual sign or
from the system of signs, the langue; and to treat langue as a phenomenon not
directly connected to the social. After all, if individual action in and with the
system has no effect, then how can there be connections to the minutiae of social
life, or of its organization in larger systems?"
surface structure/ performance/ deep structure/ competence
33
Potential for individual:
"If, like Saussure, we think that what speakers do parole - has no effect
on the system, then we have no serious reason for investigating it If, however,
we think that what people do needs to be understood, then we have a series of
questions. These are, as I said earlier, questions around the role of the social,
about the possibilities of real action by an individual acting in social
environments. Here I will outline three relatively distinct approaches to such
questions. I will characterize them as that of correlation, that of choice, and
that of critique."
"The first approach is the correlational. It points to the fact that certain forms of
linguistic behaviour can be shown to correlate quite clearly with certain aspects of
social organization."
Labov --looked at this in reading class - bird
34
communicative competence Dell Hymes - static?
Choice - Halliday
ideational function
interpersonal function
textual function
"Speakers choose simultaneously from options in each of these functions. So
for example, I might choose, within the ideational function, to have a clause-type
which highlights agency [rioters burn ten cars]; within the interpersonal
component of the grammar I might choose a statement, so that the speaker has
the role of someone who gies information (rather than asks a question or gives
a command) which would make a quite different social relation between the
people interacting within the textual component; I might choose"
different than correlational - individual selecting range of options!!
Halliday - critique - speakers actions - choice by options
35
Power
social, individual choice, power
(seems a bit..clunky ...did romantics do this much more elegantly long ago?)
choice/ power
36
This makes me laugh: "Critical linguistics has been subjected to much criticism, and this has been, in
my view, one of the telling critiques."
"begin to answer this by a brief recapitulation of my argument so far. For Saussure
the system was all-powerful, individual action was confined to usage which had
no effect on the system. For sociolinguists, such as Gumperz and Labov, the
linguistic is linked with, yet autonomous from, the social. The individual has the
knowledge of codes including codes which link the social and the linguistic. For
Halliday, the linguistic is a socially shaped resource, organized as a system of
choices, in which the action of the individual in making choices produces
meaning. In critical linguistics the social is prior; it is a field of power; and power
(and power differences) is the generative principle producing linguistic form and
difference. Individuals are located in these fields of power, but the powerful
carry the day, and the forms which they produce are the forms which shape the
system."
text - social
"Let me give a very brief example. In Australia the issue of relations between
the indigenous population and the British and others who arrived after 1788 has
been enormously contentious. Notice that in the sentence I have just written, I
avoided the term 'the British settlers' as that implies the innocuous act of 'settling'
in a, presumably, vacant, empty bit of space. I also avoided the term 'the British
invaders' because that assumes yet another view, entirely opposed to that of
'settler'." - very interesting!
37
social in the sign - invasion
"In a plausible social view of language, sign-makers transform the cultural/
linguistic resources available to them in their social environment and always
within fields of power. 'Interest' factors in the power of the sign-maker in relation
to the power of those who are the imagined audience/recipients of the sign-asmessage
(or utterance). Yet emphasis on 'interest' ensures that there is real
agency, transformative action, work agency in relation to and working with
historically shaped resources."
"The sign, the linguistic utterance (and this is the case for signs in all modes,
whether image, gesture, music or 3D object) is the carrier of the meaning of the
environment in which it was made; the meaning which represents the interest
(social and personal) of the sign-maker. Once we adopt this position we have a
social view of language in its fullest sense: the meanings of signs and the signcomplex
are open to view as a hypothesis about the environment in which a
sign was made, the structurings of power which obtained, and the interest of
the sign-maker."
critique - taken for granted stance towards language
Notes from class:
correlational approaches
vs. choice approaches
"individuals know how to speak given a certain situation"appropriateness (normative - grammar)
CHOICE - trying to achieve something in language - TRYING TO ACHIEVE A KIND OF FUNCTION (Halliday - syntagmetic/ paradigmatic systems)
Critical perspective -- we can look at choices and trace back "traces" of production context (social environment of what it comes out as)
29
turn to - what are we turning from?
social view of language
language as system
Western thought - Indo-European basis - language - creation of principles - family
30
what does language look like? Freeze it
structuralist (frozen)
"Saussure himself gave a complex
answer in which the focus was on the sign, and on the all-encompassing entity
in which signs exist, language as such or langue. I will return to the latter in a
moment."
-internal -relations outside of sign
axis of association (signs) - axis of combination (outward) paradigmatic and syntagmatic planes
you sit on:paradigm
paradigm combined to styntagmatic - easy chair, coffee table
Bizarre structuring of things...
31
types of chairs - meaning - and possibilities
"A second kind of meaning arises
from the fact that different types of chairs are, in fact, cultural encodings of
different possible forms of behaviour: A stool asks me to sit differently to an easy
chair. Setting up the room for a job interview with a stool for the interviewee and
easy chairs for the interviewers - to make a ridiculous example - would set the
tone decisively. "
signifier (form)/ signified (meaning) - expression
"A connection is made between an
element in the system of language, and an element in the system of culturally
salient values. The former 'refers' to the latter."
32
"convention. Given the power of convention the
individual is unable to exett any influence on this arbitrary relation: the sign is
there to be used, but cannot be altered. In Saussure's schema, this is so, both for
the individual sign and for the collection of signs, for language as a whole." Interesting, in terms of grammar
Individual cannot change language
"However, the
significant point here is that Saussure's views on the characteristics of systems,
structure, signs, on langue and parole, shaped the development of mainstream
and non-mainstream linguistics in the twentieth century. In the mainstream these
views allowed emphasis to be placed on relations within the system rather than
on reference; on structure rather than on function; on arbitrariness, thus
eliminating the force of individual agency, whether from the individual sign or
from the system of signs, the langue; and to treat langue as a phenomenon not
directly connected to the social. After all, if individual action in and with the
system has no effect, then how can there be connections to the minutiae of social
life, or of its organization in larger systems?"
surface structure/ performance/ deep structure/ competence
33
Potential for individual:
"If, like Saussure, we think that what speakers do parole - has no effect
on the system, then we have no serious reason for investigating it If, however,
we think that what people do needs to be understood, then we have a series of
questions. These are, as I said earlier, questions around the role of the social,
about the possibilities of real action by an individual acting in social
environments. Here I will outline three relatively distinct approaches to such
questions. I will characterize them as that of correlation, that of choice, and
that of critique."
"The first approach is the correlational. It points to the fact that certain forms of
linguistic behaviour can be shown to correlate quite clearly with certain aspects of
social organization."
Labov --looked at this in reading class - bird
34
communicative competence Dell Hymes - static?
Choice - Halliday
ideational function
interpersonal function
textual function
"Speakers choose simultaneously from options in each of these functions. So
for example, I might choose, within the ideational function, to have a clause-type
which highlights agency [rioters burn ten cars]; within the interpersonal
component of the grammar I might choose a statement, so that the speaker has
the role of someone who gies information (rather than asks a question or gives
a command) which would make a quite different social relation between the
people interacting within the textual component; I might choose"
different than correlational - individual selecting range of options!!
Halliday - critique - speakers actions - choice by options
35
Power
social, individual choice, power
(seems a bit..clunky ...did romantics do this much more elegantly long ago?)
choice/ power
36
This makes me laugh: "Critical linguistics has been subjected to much criticism, and this has been, in
my view, one of the telling critiques."
"begin to answer this by a brief recapitulation of my argument so far. For Saussure
the system was all-powerful, individual action was confined to usage which had
no effect on the system. For sociolinguists, such as Gumperz and Labov, the
linguistic is linked with, yet autonomous from, the social. The individual has the
knowledge of codes including codes which link the social and the linguistic. For
Halliday, the linguistic is a socially shaped resource, organized as a system of
choices, in which the action of the individual in making choices produces
meaning. In critical linguistics the social is prior; it is a field of power; and power
(and power differences) is the generative principle producing linguistic form and
difference. Individuals are located in these fields of power, but the powerful
carry the day, and the forms which they produce are the forms which shape the
system."
text - social
"Let me give a very brief example. In Australia the issue of relations between
the indigenous population and the British and others who arrived after 1788 has
been enormously contentious. Notice that in the sentence I have just written, I
avoided the term 'the British settlers' as that implies the innocuous act of 'settling'
in a, presumably, vacant, empty bit of space. I also avoided the term 'the British
invaders' because that assumes yet another view, entirely opposed to that of
'settler'." - very interesting!
37
social in the sign - invasion
"In a plausible social view of language, sign-makers transform the cultural/
linguistic resources available to them in their social environment and always
within fields of power. 'Interest' factors in the power of the sign-maker in relation
to the power of those who are the imagined audience/recipients of the sign-asmessage
(or utterance). Yet emphasis on 'interest' ensures that there is real
agency, transformative action, work agency in relation to and working with
historically shaped resources."
"The sign, the linguistic utterance (and this is the case for signs in all modes,
whether image, gesture, music or 3D object) is the carrier of the meaning of the
environment in which it was made; the meaning which represents the interest
(social and personal) of the sign-maker. Once we adopt this position we have a
social view of language in its fullest sense: the meanings of signs and the signcomplex
are open to view as a hypothesis about the environment in which a
sign was made, the structurings of power which obtained, and the interest of
the sign-maker."
critique - taken for granted stance towards language
Holborrow Studies in Language and Capitalism
"Putting the social back into language"
Social - Marx, Volosinov & Vygotsky
1
Move from language as "stand alone system" - refute Pinker/ Saussure - nothing outside of text?
2
"For those like Pinker, the autonomy of language arises from its physiological roots in “a
distinct piece of the biological make-up of our brains”; language has its own spontaneous
impulses (Pinker 1995: 18). Humans are genetically hardwired to produce language;
linguistic capacity is an “instinct”, embedded in the brain that becomes manifest more or less
independently of social or cultural factors. Pinker bases his work on Chomsky who, from the
1950’s, proposed that language depended on an innate “grammar module” in the mind."
at issue - biological determinism
"In
this way of thinking, the direction is from language to the social and manages to give
language reality-creating powers quite as formidable as those to be found in claims that
language is society-free. For example, Foucault, maintained that ‘discursive practices’ were
all-encompassing. For him, discourse itself constituted and reproduced power relations in
society. Foucault’s view of language has remained influential in studies of language and
power. The discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis owes much to Foucault, as Fairclough
confirms (Fairclough 1995)"
ideology - distinction "Foucault, in point of fact,
carefully chose not to use the term ideology which he saw as being too directly connected
with the economic infrastructure, and too Marxist (Foucault 1979:36)."
3
article - reinstate language in a social setting.
3 writers -exploring them does so!
Marx
fragments - but point to this!
4
"Marx identified the origins of language
as being inextricably linked with the emergence of consciousness. In the 1844 Manuscripts,
he saw language as ‘the vital element’, of consciousness (Marx 1975: 356). In The German
Ideology, written in 1846, he sketches a fuller picture of the materialist basis of historical
development and how human relations are determined both by their own needs and by the
mode of production." How do visual artists resist this? Another kind of language that is not being accounted for...a spirit?
Language response to social problems
"In so far as both language and consciousness involve the ability to generalize beyond the
particular and the present and to process abstract thought, they overlap and are
interconnected."
5
"But Marx does not proceed in this way: consciousness and language are intertwined
because of the social basis of the origins of both. Language and consciousness are not two
essential faculties running along their own tracks, but specifically human attributes which
came into being and evolved together within a particular material and historical context." Reminds me of great divide theories
"Labour is an exclusively human characteristic which sets humans apart from animals. It
allows humans to establish a relationship with nature, rather than be dominated by it. Nature
then becomes something that humans, unlike animals, can change." This freaks me out.
Bees - language - Marx: "Man not only effects a change
in form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials.
(Marx 1976: 284)" sort of priveledged - is that good?
Also - animal relationships - recently shown on PBS; clear there is something else going on there
Why are we so worried about language?
6
limitations of calling this "language" - biological determinism
Invention vs. programmatic
" Animal
and insect instincts do not have these infinite outcomes and their behaviour is uniform and in
reaction to a limited range of circumstances. Human labour has to change constantly to
meet new needs and this is only possible because humans are able to stand back from the
task and reflect, looking back and forward in time, on what they do. Human language makes
this process possible." Hmmn. other systems in nature do so as well; I don't like this depiction of nature. Casts nature systems itself as static
displacement
" Beakin describes the same development with language: “As we learn to speak we
enter the world of consciousness, a world created by others before us, to which our own
consciousness can contribute” (Beakin 1996:26)."
7
herd conciousness to entering into relations with others
"At a further stage, alongside an increased division
of labour, the distinction between ‘material’ and ‘mental’ labour appears. Thus abstract
thought, “consciousness emancipated from the world”, capable of transforming material life,
not just experiencing it, emerges alongside social production. From these developments in
human society, the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, ethics etc.” becomes
possible (Marx and Engels 1974:52)." Just Marx
Darwin - resists labour
"
Engels,
by contrast, stresses the significance of upright gait and the freeing of hands for human
labour in the development of speech. “When after thousands of years of struggle, the
differentiation of hand from foot and erect gait were finally established, man became distinct
from the ape and the basis was laid for the development of articulate speech and the mighty
development of the brain that has since made the gulf between man and ape unbridgeable”"
Engels Language - part of emerging consciousness
8
Engels notes here the unity of material social activity and language. The genesis of
language is in human labour — “the point at which humans have something to say to each
other”.
More to language?
9
Thoughts
"that ideas seem cut loose of reality, as if free-floating, above the constraints of the
material world. Human mind over matter is a powerfully seductive idea. Instead of history
being seen as part of a dialectical process between humans and the material world, mind
comes to be seen as the prime mover of historical change. With the development of society,
the growing complexity of human endeavour, the specialization of labour, social organization
became codified into law and politics, the human mind came to be seen as the supreme
organizer of these things. “Men became accustomed to explain their actions as arising out of
their thoughts instead of their needs” (Marx and Engels 1970:72)." I like this because it gets back to isues in attitudes towards nature.
10
Again - economics complicated part of a system
"“also exercise their influence upon the course of their
historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form” (Marx and
Engels 1970: 487). In other words, while the social relations of production set limits to
developments in the superstructure, there is an interaction of all elements."
Reminds me of Friere: "Conversely, social consciousness for those without power in society suffers from the
distortions of powerlessness."
3. "Marx saw that ideological forms were terrains
to be contested, arenas “in which men become conscious of. . . conflict and fight it out”
11
Volosinov
" Vološinov’s starting point is the ideological nature of all signs, including language. He
defines a sign as that which “represents, depicts or stands for something outside itself”
(Vološinov 1973: 9)."
12
Different symbols lead us in different directions
"For Vološinov, this signing process is the means by which consciousness takes shape and is
socially constructed. Signs emerge in the process of interaction between one individual
consciousness and another; not just any two human beings but between two who are
‘organized socially’, and part of a social group (1973: 12)." Consciousness through signs
But we are something...consciousness w/o language? How can we know?
"Seeing language as part of human consciousness, Vološinov stresses the changing and
generative nature of language." refutes individualistic subjectivism "Croce, to mean that
language was primarily a question of individual style. Such a view was, according to
Vološinov, untenable because it relied on the subjective concept of ‘linguistic taste’,"
abstract obectivism "Saussure effectively converted language into “an inviolable, incontestable norm which the
individual can only accept”. This view robs language of any creative dynamism;"
13
"Vološinov sees the weakness of Saussurean linguistics as being twofold. First, he criticizes
the arbitrariness of a methodology that sets up self-contained categories of language system
(langue) from utterance (parole), and which then casts aside the latter as being too randomly
individual to merit scientific study"
" A child
does not just inherit a language which she then has to learn. She uses language in a social
context and thereby fashions it. Language is socially distinctive because each speaker
brings his or her social experience to it. The langue/parole distinction artificially breaks up
the linguistic whole, and fails to capture the interaction of both aspects in the actual practice
of language." TOtally reminds me of organic farming movement - permaculture
"Second, Vološinov sees Saussure’s abstract objectivism as an ideological stance. “What
interests the mathematically minded rationalist is not the relationship of the sign to the actual
reality it reflects, nor to the individual who is its originator, but the relationship of sign to sign
within a closed system already accepted and authorized” (1973: 57—58). Abstract
objectivism places language on a pedestal removed from its users."
focus on dead language
14
Language and verbal interaction
" The meanings and different connotations for a
word or a piece of language are constructed by the speakers, who give each utterance their
particular evaluative accent.
The importance of this observation that language changes and that users shape language
has been borne out by later developments in discourse studies and pragmatics"
"I'm hungry"
15
V - common knowledge - 2 ppl in room "well"
"speakers, in what is common to them. This common ground he lists as (1) the physical
space, (2) the common knowledge and understanding of the situation and (3) their common
evaluation or assessment of the situation. "
"Vološinov’s view of language and its different elements — the ideological,
the social, the unstable and the creative aspects — gains theoretical unity through his
concept of verbal interaction. This goes to the heart of the social nature of language which,
for Vološinov, is not just one dimension of language, but its sine qua non. Language is made
for an addressee. (a listener or a reader); there is no such thing as language into a vacuum."
Again, similar to environmental perceptions
variations - themes
meanings - smaller constituants
"‘Theme’ is not merely a combination of smaller ‘meaning’ units but something which
is more than the sum of its parts formed in verbal interaction and in a social and historical
context. Theme is an instance of the generative process of language. It is verbal interaction
in operation."
16
evaluative accent
ideologies:
"It was certainly the case the
nineteenth century when imperial rivalry gave birth to intense ideological representation in
language. Today too, almost anywhere where English is spoken (and where it is not) this
particular ideological contest is played out with intensity, often in response to the daily official
war-speak of “axis of evil”, “coalition of the willing” “precision bombing” “islamo-fascists”"
class struggle
inner speech
"Inner speech
represents the identification of language with consciousness and the social element of both.
The term reappears in Vygotsky as a component of consciousness and psychology, as we
shall see. Vološinov examines the phenomenon from a linguistic standpoint. For him, words
are the building blocks of thinking. Consciousness is “bathed by and suspended in, and
cannot be entirely segregated or divorced from the element of speech” (1973: 15). Words
are the means by which consciousness is accessed and signs are part of the inner psyche
and inner speech is thinking, “the skeleton of inner life” as Vološinov terms it. (1973: 29).
The piecing together and distilling of experience takes place through signs, and signs are the
means of mental processing (1973: 85)."
17
"Only the inarticulate cry of an animal can be said to be organized from the inside
because of its nature as a behavioural reflex. By contrast the organizing centre of human
utterances is not within but outside — the social context. The social context is both the
immediate situation of the utterance and the broader aggregate of conditions in which the
speakers are living (1973: 93)."
Against great divide stuff:
"Vološinov is interested in reported speech forms for another reason: for what they can reveal
about grammatical forms and how they vary and change. Grammatical terms associated with
indirect speech are as paradigmatic as they are different across languages. In Latin, strict
concordance applies; in Russian it is less rigid. Reviewing these, Vološinov describes how
reported speech has historically changed from strict syntactic enclosing of reported speech
to a more fluid approach where the boundaries of the message are weakened and where
reporter and reported overlap."
Russian flexibility
18
Grammatical forms in constant state of adaption and change
Grammar and style!! Japan (West always privileges itself?)
"But his literary examples allow him to reveal the difficulties of categorizing style and
grammar as separate entities, thus revealing at the same time the shifting sands of grammar
itself. A demarcation between grammar and style for Vološinov is spurious since “[t]he
borderline is fluid because of the very mode of existence of language, in which,
simultaneously, some forms are undergoing grammaticization while others are undergoing
degrammaticization” (1973: 126). Elsewhere Vološinov notes that style and grammar
overlap. In the case of highly elaborate categories of address in Japanese, for example,
compared to relatively few in English, he makes the claim that “we might say that what is still
a matter of grammar for the Japanese has already become for us a matter of style”"
19
Vygostsky
"Vygotsky’s rediscovery of the dialectical relationship between social activity and
language became his method. He explained it thus:
I don’t want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a lot of quotations. I
want to find out how science has to be built, to approach the study of mind having
learnt the whole of Marx’s method. (Vygotsky 1978: 8)
Vygotsky elaborated on Marx’s theme of language as ‘practical consciousness’ and
described the organic interconnections of thought and language."
20
disagrees with static - we have language metalese - Pinker
"Vygotsky, however, demonstrated that language is the means by which reflection,
generalization and thought processes take place and that these cognitive processes are
socially formed. Vygotsky’s writings describe both the highly personal and at the same time
profoundly social facets of language."
Tools!
" Tool use was the mediated activity by
which humans changed nature and the world around them. This was externally orientated
activity that produced effects in the material world. Vygotsky saw parallels between physical
tools and humans’ psychological tools, or signs. Both mediated human activity, but one was
orientated externally and the other internally; one was a means of managing nature, the
other aimed at mastering humans’ own behaviour. While qualitatively different, nevertheless
the two sets of tools overlap and together produce new forms of behaviour. Tools and
speech provided the means of meeting human’s needs and were therefore crucial to
humans’ unique intervention in nature. The development of the use of signs paves the way
for the development of higher mental processes and internalized"
21
Speech stages and socialization
rather than fixed - language is "formative".
Important - language does NOT construct reality
22
Inner speech and thought : "Thought and word’, he notes that word meaning is an
instance of the unity of thought and word — one cannot be separated from the other. “The
meaning of word represents such a close amalgam of thought and language that it is hard to
tell whether it is a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought” (1986: 212). But
central to a word meaning is that word meanings change."
23
abbreviated thought - words - Anna Karenina & Hamlet
Individual!!
24
1. "emergence of language in early human society
show that language arises from a complex, two-way process in which, through social labour
and interaction, humans gradually increase their mastery of the environment.
What Marx noted for human consciousness in general, Vygotsky reformulates at the level of
the individual. The development of child language carries the same social components that
are present in the development of language at the beginning of human society."
2. "Second, and as a consequence of this social rootedness, language overlaps with ideology.
The generalizing potential of signs, from which language is built, the way that signs, in
Vološinov’s terms, refract and reflect reality, makes them a critical aspect of the ideological
process. But, while the weight of the dominant class in society can skew ideological
significance, including language, towards their world view, there is nothing predetermined
about the outcome of these ideological accents. They are constantly contested by speakers."
3. "Third, Vološinov’s pioneering study of an aspect of grammatical change sheds light on the
unstable nature of language. He overturned assumptions about the hard-and-fast rules of
grammar."
4."But the evolution of grammar has wider implications. It is evidence of a different
interpretation of language. Over-biological and over-ideological approaches ignore the
central dynamic of language: that it is made by speakers in unpredictable ways. Vološinov
grasped that the generative nature of language emanated not just from individual creativity
but from the shifts and alterations in society. “In the vicissitudes of the word are the
vicissitudes of the society of word-users” (Vološinov 1973: 157). It is this crucially social
nature of language that explains why language is such a political question."
22
"Putting the social back into language"
Social - Marx, Volosinov & Vygotsky
1
Move from language as "stand alone system" - refute Pinker/ Saussure - nothing outside of text?
2
"For those like Pinker, the autonomy of language arises from its physiological roots in “a
distinct piece of the biological make-up of our brains”; language has its own spontaneous
impulses (Pinker 1995: 18). Humans are genetically hardwired to produce language;
linguistic capacity is an “instinct”, embedded in the brain that becomes manifest more or less
independently of social or cultural factors. Pinker bases his work on Chomsky who, from the
1950’s, proposed that language depended on an innate “grammar module” in the mind."
at issue - biological determinism
"In
this way of thinking, the direction is from language to the social and manages to give
language reality-creating powers quite as formidable as those to be found in claims that
language is society-free. For example, Foucault, maintained that ‘discursive practices’ were
all-encompassing. For him, discourse itself constituted and reproduced power relations in
society. Foucault’s view of language has remained influential in studies of language and
power. The discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis owes much to Foucault, as Fairclough
confirms (Fairclough 1995)"
ideology - distinction "Foucault, in point of fact,
carefully chose not to use the term ideology which he saw as being too directly connected
with the economic infrastructure, and too Marxist (Foucault 1979:36)."
3
article - reinstate language in a social setting.
3 writers -exploring them does so!
Marx
fragments - but point to this!
4
"Marx identified the origins of language
as being inextricably linked with the emergence of consciousness. In the 1844 Manuscripts,
he saw language as ‘the vital element’, of consciousness (Marx 1975: 356). In The German
Ideology, written in 1846, he sketches a fuller picture of the materialist basis of historical
development and how human relations are determined both by their own needs and by the
mode of production." How do visual artists resist this? Another kind of language that is not being accounted for...a spirit?
Language response to social problems
"In so far as both language and consciousness involve the ability to generalize beyond the
particular and the present and to process abstract thought, they overlap and are
interconnected."
5
"But Marx does not proceed in this way: consciousness and language are intertwined
because of the social basis of the origins of both. Language and consciousness are not two
essential faculties running along their own tracks, but specifically human attributes which
came into being and evolved together within a particular material and historical context." Reminds me of great divide theories
"Labour is an exclusively human characteristic which sets humans apart from animals. It
allows humans to establish a relationship with nature, rather than be dominated by it. Nature
then becomes something that humans, unlike animals, can change." This freaks me out.
Bees - language - Marx: "Man not only effects a change
in form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials.
(Marx 1976: 284)" sort of priveledged - is that good?
Also - animal relationships - recently shown on PBS; clear there is something else going on there
Why are we so worried about language?
6
limitations of calling this "language" - biological determinism
Invention vs. programmatic
" Animal
and insect instincts do not have these infinite outcomes and their behaviour is uniform and in
reaction to a limited range of circumstances. Human labour has to change constantly to
meet new needs and this is only possible because humans are able to stand back from the
task and reflect, looking back and forward in time, on what they do. Human language makes
this process possible." Hmmn. other systems in nature do so as well; I don't like this depiction of nature. Casts nature systems itself as static
displacement
" Beakin describes the same development with language: “As we learn to speak we
enter the world of consciousness, a world created by others before us, to which our own
consciousness can contribute” (Beakin 1996:26)."
7
herd conciousness to entering into relations with others
"At a further stage, alongside an increased division
of labour, the distinction between ‘material’ and ‘mental’ labour appears. Thus abstract
thought, “consciousness emancipated from the world”, capable of transforming material life,
not just experiencing it, emerges alongside social production. From these developments in
human society, the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, ethics etc.” becomes
possible (Marx and Engels 1974:52)." Just Marx
Darwin - resists labour
"
Engels,
by contrast, stresses the significance of upright gait and the freeing of hands for human
labour in the development of speech. “When after thousands of years of struggle, the
differentiation of hand from foot and erect gait were finally established, man became distinct
from the ape and the basis was laid for the development of articulate speech and the mighty
development of the brain that has since made the gulf between man and ape unbridgeable”"
Engels Language - part of emerging consciousness
8
Engels notes here the unity of material social activity and language. The genesis of
language is in human labour — “the point at which humans have something to say to each
other”.
More to language?
9
Thoughts
"that ideas seem cut loose of reality, as if free-floating, above the constraints of the
material world. Human mind over matter is a powerfully seductive idea. Instead of history
being seen as part of a dialectical process between humans and the material world, mind
comes to be seen as the prime mover of historical change. With the development of society,
the growing complexity of human endeavour, the specialization of labour, social organization
became codified into law and politics, the human mind came to be seen as the supreme
organizer of these things. “Men became accustomed to explain their actions as arising out of
their thoughts instead of their needs” (Marx and Engels 1970:72)." I like this because it gets back to isues in attitudes towards nature.
10
Again - economics complicated part of a system
"“also exercise their influence upon the course of their
historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form” (Marx and
Engels 1970: 487). In other words, while the social relations of production set limits to
developments in the superstructure, there is an interaction of all elements."
Reminds me of Friere: "Conversely, social consciousness for those without power in society suffers from the
distortions of powerlessness."
3. "Marx saw that ideological forms were terrains
to be contested, arenas “in which men become conscious of. . . conflict and fight it out”
11
Volosinov
" Vološinov’s starting point is the ideological nature of all signs, including language. He
defines a sign as that which “represents, depicts or stands for something outside itself”
(Vološinov 1973: 9)."
12
Different symbols lead us in different directions
"For Vološinov, this signing process is the means by which consciousness takes shape and is
socially constructed. Signs emerge in the process of interaction between one individual
consciousness and another; not just any two human beings but between two who are
‘organized socially’, and part of a social group (1973: 12)." Consciousness through signs
But we are something...consciousness w/o language? How can we know?
"Seeing language as part of human consciousness, Vološinov stresses the changing and
generative nature of language." refutes individualistic subjectivism "Croce, to mean that
language was primarily a question of individual style. Such a view was, according to
Vološinov, untenable because it relied on the subjective concept of ‘linguistic taste’,"
abstract obectivism "Saussure effectively converted language into “an inviolable, incontestable norm which the
individual can only accept”. This view robs language of any creative dynamism;"
13
"Vološinov sees the weakness of Saussurean linguistics as being twofold. First, he criticizes
the arbitrariness of a methodology that sets up self-contained categories of language system
(langue) from utterance (parole), and which then casts aside the latter as being too randomly
individual to merit scientific study"
" A child
does not just inherit a language which she then has to learn. She uses language in a social
context and thereby fashions it. Language is socially distinctive because each speaker
brings his or her social experience to it. The langue/parole distinction artificially breaks up
the linguistic whole, and fails to capture the interaction of both aspects in the actual practice
of language." TOtally reminds me of organic farming movement - permaculture
"Second, Vološinov sees Saussure’s abstract objectivism as an ideological stance. “What
interests the mathematically minded rationalist is not the relationship of the sign to the actual
reality it reflects, nor to the individual who is its originator, but the relationship of sign to sign
within a closed system already accepted and authorized” (1973: 57—58). Abstract
objectivism places language on a pedestal removed from its users."
focus on dead language
14
Language and verbal interaction
" The meanings and different connotations for a
word or a piece of language are constructed by the speakers, who give each utterance their
particular evaluative accent.
The importance of this observation that language changes and that users shape language
has been borne out by later developments in discourse studies and pragmatics"
"I'm hungry"
15
V - common knowledge - 2 ppl in room "well"
"speakers, in what is common to them. This common ground he lists as (1) the physical
space, (2) the common knowledge and understanding of the situation and (3) their common
evaluation or assessment of the situation. "
"Vološinov’s view of language and its different elements — the ideological,
the social, the unstable and the creative aspects — gains theoretical unity through his
concept of verbal interaction. This goes to the heart of the social nature of language which,
for Vološinov, is not just one dimension of language, but its sine qua non. Language is made
for an addressee. (a listener or a reader); there is no such thing as language into a vacuum."
Again, similar to environmental perceptions
variations - themes
meanings - smaller constituants
"‘Theme’ is not merely a combination of smaller ‘meaning’ units but something which
is more than the sum of its parts formed in verbal interaction and in a social and historical
context. Theme is an instance of the generative process of language. It is verbal interaction
in operation."
16
evaluative accent
ideologies:
"It was certainly the case the
nineteenth century when imperial rivalry gave birth to intense ideological representation in
language. Today too, almost anywhere where English is spoken (and where it is not) this
particular ideological contest is played out with intensity, often in response to the daily official
war-speak of “axis of evil”, “coalition of the willing” “precision bombing” “islamo-fascists”"
class struggle
inner speech
"Inner speech
represents the identification of language with consciousness and the social element of both.
The term reappears in Vygotsky as a component of consciousness and psychology, as we
shall see. Vološinov examines the phenomenon from a linguistic standpoint. For him, words
are the building blocks of thinking. Consciousness is “bathed by and suspended in, and
cannot be entirely segregated or divorced from the element of speech” (1973: 15). Words
are the means by which consciousness is accessed and signs are part of the inner psyche
and inner speech is thinking, “the skeleton of inner life” as Vološinov terms it. (1973: 29).
The piecing together and distilling of experience takes place through signs, and signs are the
means of mental processing (1973: 85)."
17
"Only the inarticulate cry of an animal can be said to be organized from the inside
because of its nature as a behavioural reflex. By contrast the organizing centre of human
utterances is not within but outside — the social context. The social context is both the
immediate situation of the utterance and the broader aggregate of conditions in which the
speakers are living (1973: 93)."
Against great divide stuff:
"Vološinov is interested in reported speech forms for another reason: for what they can reveal
about grammatical forms and how they vary and change. Grammatical terms associated with
indirect speech are as paradigmatic as they are different across languages. In Latin, strict
concordance applies; in Russian it is less rigid. Reviewing these, Vološinov describes how
reported speech has historically changed from strict syntactic enclosing of reported speech
to a more fluid approach where the boundaries of the message are weakened and where
reporter and reported overlap."
Russian flexibility
18
Grammatical forms in constant state of adaption and change
Grammar and style!! Japan (West always privileges itself?)
"But his literary examples allow him to reveal the difficulties of categorizing style and
grammar as separate entities, thus revealing at the same time the shifting sands of grammar
itself. A demarcation between grammar and style for Vološinov is spurious since “[t]he
borderline is fluid because of the very mode of existence of language, in which,
simultaneously, some forms are undergoing grammaticization while others are undergoing
degrammaticization” (1973: 126). Elsewhere Vološinov notes that style and grammar
overlap. In the case of highly elaborate categories of address in Japanese, for example,
compared to relatively few in English, he makes the claim that “we might say that what is still
a matter of grammar for the Japanese has already become for us a matter of style”"
19
Vygostsky
"Vygotsky’s rediscovery of the dialectical relationship between social activity and
language became his method. He explained it thus:
I don’t want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a lot of quotations. I
want to find out how science has to be built, to approach the study of mind having
learnt the whole of Marx’s method. (Vygotsky 1978: 8)
Vygotsky elaborated on Marx’s theme of language as ‘practical consciousness’ and
described the organic interconnections of thought and language."
20
disagrees with static - we have language metalese - Pinker
"Vygotsky, however, demonstrated that language is the means by which reflection,
generalization and thought processes take place and that these cognitive processes are
socially formed. Vygotsky’s writings describe both the highly personal and at the same time
profoundly social facets of language."
Tools!
" Tool use was the mediated activity by
which humans changed nature and the world around them. This was externally orientated
activity that produced effects in the material world. Vygotsky saw parallels between physical
tools and humans’ psychological tools, or signs. Both mediated human activity, but one was
orientated externally and the other internally; one was a means of managing nature, the
other aimed at mastering humans’ own behaviour. While qualitatively different, nevertheless
the two sets of tools overlap and together produce new forms of behaviour. Tools and
speech provided the means of meeting human’s needs and were therefore crucial to
humans’ unique intervention in nature. The development of the use of signs paves the way
for the development of higher mental processes and internalized"
21
Speech stages and socialization
rather than fixed - language is "formative".
Important - language does NOT construct reality
22
Inner speech and thought : "Thought and word’, he notes that word meaning is an
instance of the unity of thought and word — one cannot be separated from the other. “The
meaning of word represents such a close amalgam of thought and language that it is hard to
tell whether it is a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought” (1986: 212). But
central to a word meaning is that word meanings change."
23
abbreviated thought - words - Anna Karenina & Hamlet
Individual!!
24
1. "emergence of language in early human society
show that language arises from a complex, two-way process in which, through social labour
and interaction, humans gradually increase their mastery of the environment.
What Marx noted for human consciousness in general, Vygotsky reformulates at the level of
the individual. The development of child language carries the same social components that
are present in the development of language at the beginning of human society."
2. "Second, and as a consequence of this social rootedness, language overlaps with ideology.
The generalizing potential of signs, from which language is built, the way that signs, in
Vološinov’s terms, refract and reflect reality, makes them a critical aspect of the ideological
process. But, while the weight of the dominant class in society can skew ideological
significance, including language, towards their world view, there is nothing predetermined
about the outcome of these ideological accents. They are constantly contested by speakers."
3. "Third, Vološinov’s pioneering study of an aspect of grammatical change sheds light on the
unstable nature of language. He overturned assumptions about the hard-and-fast rules of
grammar."
4."But the evolution of grammar has wider implications. It is evidence of a different
interpretation of language. Over-biological and over-ideological approaches ignore the
central dynamic of language: that it is made by speakers in unpredictable ways. Vološinov
grasped that the generative nature of language emanated not just from individual creativity
but from the shifts and alterations in society. “In the vicissitudes of the word are the
vicissitudes of the society of word-users” (Vološinov 1973: 157). It is this crucially social
nature of language that explains why language is such a political question."
22
Hodge and Kress - Social Semiotics
294
negotiating term "semiotics"
"The smallest semiotic form that has concrete existence is the message. The
message has directionality - it has a source and a goal, a social context and
purpose. 1t is oriented to the semiotic process, the social process by which
meaning is constructed and exchanged, which takes place in what we will call
the semiosic plane."
discourse
"The message is about something, which supposedly exists
outside itself. It is connected to a world to which it refers in some way, and its
meaning derives from this representitive or mimetic function it performs.We will
call the plane in which representation occurs the mimetic plane."
text
message clusters
Distinguish between "text" and "discourse"
Sign systems - not as static as may have been revealed through "mainstream"
295
continued :
"So texts are both the
:aterial realization of systems of signs, and also the site where change
ntinually takes place" -texts change to exist - system
Discourse:
"Discourse in this sense is the site where s?cial forms of
organization engage with systems of signs in the production of texts, thus
reproducing or. changing th~ se.ts ~f meaning~ ~nd values which ~nake up a
culture. So for mstance the mst1tut1on of med1cme defines a spectfic set of
meanings which are constantly involved in the social processes which are
appropriate to that institution, and engaged in by significant classes of
participant, such as patient, surgeon, researcher and so on."
Genre:
"
Such systems often operate by specifying genres of
texts (typical forms of text which link kinds of producer, consumer, topic,
medium, manner and occasion). These control the behaviour of producers of
such texts, and the expectations of potential consumers. Genre-rules are
exemplary instances of logonomic systems, and are a major vehicle for their
operation and transmission."
"Genres only exist in so far as a social group declares and enforces the rules
that constitute them. For instance, there are clear rules which regulate the
interactions among participants that are called a committee meeting."...committee meeting:
"The texts which are formed in the process of a
committee meeting therefore have a form which codes the set of practices,
relations of participants, their expectations and purposes. The form of such texts
-whether as 'full transcript', or as 'minutes of the meeting' -themselves become
recognized as , and become potent as a semiotic category."
295-196
Novel -
"The 'Rise of the Novel', so
is a history that traces a set of historically specific relationships that
involves the position of classes, definitions (and discourses) of gender, the stateof technology, leisure and education, class-based notions of the family, and so
on. The history of the genre of 'novel' since its 'rise' equally traces shifts in these
relations, the appearance as salient factors of new discourses and of shifts in
existent discourses. Genre therefore represents one semiotic category that codes
the effects of social change, of social struggle."
296
Dominant discourse - normative behavior
"Processes of struggle and resistance are themselves decisive
aspects of social formations, and affect every level of semiotic systems. At the
micro level, power is put to the test in every exchange, and the logonomic
system typically is a record of this by classifying large areas of semiosis as
'private', to be treated as beyond the reach of the 'public'/social."
resistance/ power - moving back and forth
296-297
Gender - ideology - body talk "in so far as it conditions actual behaviours, its
most potent form of expression is when it is inscribed in and organized through
spatial codes and their transforms."
298
Miss Seductress Miss Winner - restraint is valued
description - signals w/ o ideological effect
Men/ women in business-sexualization
who is the writer writing to? What assumptions does the writer make? Where does this position reader in terms of what is going on?
"
Ms Winner, is not only described differently, but set in
a different semiotic transaction. Ms Winner's signals are so characterized by
multiple contradictions that she is hard to categorize. The author lists some of the
codes- mannerisms, clothing, posture, manner of speech- but hardly bothers to
indicate how the clusters of contradictory messages are put together or how the
contradictions will be resolved. The problems of different audiences for her
signals are resolved by suppressing their receivers, half suppressing even the fact
that she is producing the signals ('she knows [her abilities] will shine through
anyway'). By these means the transactions she is represented as being engaged
in are left vague but comfortably distant."
"The ideological potency of the text is established by the semiotic transaction on
the semiosic plane interacting with the semiosic relations of the represented
world. There is a double reception-position, offering different possibilities of
solidarity and power or submission to the author/authority. The represented
world contains conventional signals for different versions of social relations, two
contradictory ideologies of gender relationships, one characterized by power, the
other by intimacy."
Reminds me of high school principal - recent hire - criticisms
Amish
Discussion - patched sleeve tweed jacket - harder to identify for women
Men - powerful - sexualized - particularly business men
Hilary
Irony - what not to wear - pi shirt - made her throw it away. No men on the show - except for gay sidekick ...or the husband who put her up to the show.
restraint
create & own style beyond sweatpants...why do men not need to do this? Have this journey? Body issues - negotiated through fabric combinations? Something more there.
Rise of choosing dress - "this is it" - that moment - weeping. Laugh. Had to go look w sisters mother...ran away, found one on own for 100. No weeping.
294
negotiating term "semiotics"
"The smallest semiotic form that has concrete existence is the message. The
message has directionality - it has a source and a goal, a social context and
purpose. 1t is oriented to the semiotic process, the social process by which
meaning is constructed and exchanged, which takes place in what we will call
the semiosic plane."
discourse
"The message is about something, which supposedly exists
outside itself. It is connected to a world to which it refers in some way, and its
meaning derives from this representitive or mimetic function it performs.We will
call the plane in which representation occurs the mimetic plane."
text
message clusters
Distinguish between "text" and "discourse"
Sign systems - not as static as may have been revealed through "mainstream"
295
continued :
"So texts are both the
:aterial realization of systems of signs, and also the site where change
ntinually takes place" -texts change to exist - system
Discourse:
"Discourse in this sense is the site where s?cial forms of
organization engage with systems of signs in the production of texts, thus
reproducing or. changing th~ se.ts ~f meaning~ ~nd values which ~nake up a
culture. So for mstance the mst1tut1on of med1cme defines a spectfic set of
meanings which are constantly involved in the social processes which are
appropriate to that institution, and engaged in by significant classes of
participant, such as patient, surgeon, researcher and so on."
Genre:
"
Such systems often operate by specifying genres of
texts (typical forms of text which link kinds of producer, consumer, topic,
medium, manner and occasion). These control the behaviour of producers of
such texts, and the expectations of potential consumers. Genre-rules are
exemplary instances of logonomic systems, and are a major vehicle for their
operation and transmission."
"Genres only exist in so far as a social group declares and enforces the rules
that constitute them. For instance, there are clear rules which regulate the
interactions among participants that are called a committee meeting."...committee meeting:
"The texts which are formed in the process of a
committee meeting therefore have a form which codes the set of practices,
relations of participants, their expectations and purposes. The form of such texts
-whether as 'full transcript', or as 'minutes of the meeting' -themselves become
recognized as , and become potent as a semiotic category."
295-196
Novel -
"The 'Rise of the Novel', so
is a history that traces a set of historically specific relationships that
involves the position of classes, definitions (and discourses) of gender, the stateof technology, leisure and education, class-based notions of the family, and so
on. The history of the genre of 'novel' since its 'rise' equally traces shifts in these
relations, the appearance as salient factors of new discourses and of shifts in
existent discourses. Genre therefore represents one semiotic category that codes
the effects of social change, of social struggle."
296
Dominant discourse - normative behavior
"Processes of struggle and resistance are themselves decisive
aspects of social formations, and affect every level of semiotic systems. At the
micro level, power is put to the test in every exchange, and the logonomic
system typically is a record of this by classifying large areas of semiosis as
'private', to be treated as beyond the reach of the 'public'/social."
resistance/ power - moving back and forth
296-297
Gender - ideology - body talk "in so far as it conditions actual behaviours, its
most potent form of expression is when it is inscribed in and organized through
spatial codes and their transforms."
298
Miss Seductress Miss Winner - restraint is valued
description - signals w/ o ideological effect
Men/ women in business-sexualization
who is the writer writing to? What assumptions does the writer make? Where does this position reader in terms of what is going on?
"
Ms Winner, is not only described differently, but set in
a different semiotic transaction. Ms Winner's signals are so characterized by
multiple contradictions that she is hard to categorize. The author lists some of the
codes- mannerisms, clothing, posture, manner of speech- but hardly bothers to
indicate how the clusters of contradictory messages are put together or how the
contradictions will be resolved. The problems of different audiences for her
signals are resolved by suppressing their receivers, half suppressing even the fact
that she is producing the signals ('she knows [her abilities] will shine through
anyway'). By these means the transactions she is represented as being engaged
in are left vague but comfortably distant."
"The ideological potency of the text is established by the semiotic transaction on
the semiosic plane interacting with the semiosic relations of the represented
world. There is a double reception-position, offering different possibilities of
solidarity and power or submission to the author/authority. The represented
world contains conventional signals for different versions of social relations, two
contradictory ideologies of gender relationships, one characterized by power, the
other by intimacy."
Reminds me of high school principal - recent hire - criticisms
Amish
Discussion - patched sleeve tweed jacket - harder to identify for women
Men - powerful - sexualized - particularly business men
Hilary
Irony - what not to wear - pi shirt - made her throw it away. No men on the show - except for gay sidekick ...or the husband who put her up to the show.
restraint
create & own style beyond sweatpants...why do men not need to do this? Have this journey? Body issues - negotiated through fabric combinations? Something more there.
Rise of choosing dress - "this is it" - that moment - weeping. Laugh. Had to go look w sisters mother...ran away, found one on own for 100. No weeping.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Widdowson - Text and Discourse
Class - discourse -- anything beyond the sentence
Text - what exactly does this mean?
Move beyond text linguistics - beyond formalism
space etc is very important (P in certain location)
social structures - purposeful/ shared experiences/ shared symbol systems
History - language in use
3
Harris " discourse analysis is a set of procedures for establishing underlying formal equivalences withing a text...."Language does not occur in stray words or sentences, but in connected discourse"
4
Harris - focused on author's intent
equates discourse with text
5
Stubbs - same issue - as is with others
6
public notices
Chafe criterion
7
P - parking - changes meaning NYPD- depends on context - even place (P in country vs. city)
"It depends on....relating to something outside of itself that is to say context....point away from itself to the context, and so indicated where meaning is to be found elsewhere"
Indexicality! Locate meaning contextually.
Discourse - uttering relates to something beyond itself (social)
8
social intent
socialization - Trains/ tresspassers will be prosecuted
interpreting text - "you may recognize intentionality but not know the intention. This is where discourse comes in, and why it needs to be distinguished from text."
"It is this activation, this acting of context on code, this indexical conversion of the symbol that I refer to as discourse. Discourse in this view is the pragmatic process of meaning negotiation."
"you may recognize intentionality but not know the intention"....text is the product
Intention (individualistic) as cognitive process....
recognize something is a communicative act...but we may not know what ppl meant (think history - did we know what intent was? Can't read intention off of a page! See p. 9 & 10
traces - what is on the page is just a trace (mediated by a lot of other things
Sojurner Truth - "Ain't I a Woman?"
Intentionality - take out "individuality"
Noun vs. Verb -discourse process of creation of a symbol (text - the communicative unit)
9
recording issues/ transcription
10
textual record - generally poor representation
11
Why disparities in transcription?
What writer intends may be very different from what readers derive
12
escalator ha ha
13
reading reminds me of reading theory - much more situated in social
Class - discourse -- anything beyond the sentence
Text - what exactly does this mean?
Move beyond text linguistics - beyond formalism
space etc is very important (P in certain location)
social structures - purposeful/ shared experiences/ shared symbol systems
History - language in use
3
Harris " discourse analysis is a set of procedures for establishing underlying formal equivalences withing a text...."Language does not occur in stray words or sentences, but in connected discourse"
4
Harris - focused on author's intent
equates discourse with text
5
Stubbs - same issue - as is with others
6
public notices
Chafe criterion
7
P - parking - changes meaning NYPD- depends on context - even place (P in country vs. city)
"It depends on....relating to something outside of itself that is to say context....point away from itself to the context, and so indicated where meaning is to be found elsewhere"
Indexicality! Locate meaning contextually.
Discourse - uttering relates to something beyond itself (social)
8
social intent
socialization - Trains/ tresspassers will be prosecuted
interpreting text - "you may recognize intentionality but not know the intention. This is where discourse comes in, and why it needs to be distinguished from text."
"It is this activation, this acting of context on code, this indexical conversion of the symbol that I refer to as discourse. Discourse in this view is the pragmatic process of meaning negotiation."
"you may recognize intentionality but not know the intention"....text is the product
Intention (individualistic) as cognitive process....
recognize something is a communicative act...but we may not know what ppl meant (think history - did we know what intent was? Can't read intention off of a page! See p. 9 & 10
traces - what is on the page is just a trace (mediated by a lot of other things
Sojurner Truth - "Ain't I a Woman?"
Intentionality - take out "individuality"
Noun vs. Verb -discourse process of creation of a symbol (text - the communicative unit)
9
recording issues/ transcription
10
textual record - generally poor representation
11
Why disparities in transcription?
What writer intends may be very different from what readers derive
12
escalator ha ha
13
reading reminds me of reading theory - much more situated in social
Fairclough Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research
Actively critiquing
critical approach to language
Very much based on data
Taken Halliday's notions; tweaked them
21
Texts - part of social events - "One way in which people can act and interact in the course of social events is to speak or to write."
ALSO...action (football game) vs. action in lecture - "what the lecturer says, what is written on overheads and handouts, the notes taken by people listening to the lecture"...
22
but also physical action (operation of an overhead projector)
relationships between texts, social events, social practices & social structures - participants in events
globalization/ media/ mediation/ governance in new capitalism/ re contextualization (Bernstein), hybridity (blurring of boundaries - post modernity)
"Social agents are not 'free' agents, they are socially constrained, but nor are their actions totally socially determined."
- structure and agency of agents
23
textured relationship - negative culture - Liverpool
Social structures - abstract - complex relationships (what is structurally possible and what actually happens)
"events are...mediated- there are intermediate organizational entities between structures and events"
"intermediate organizational practices" - social event
Very cool for environmental studies
maps out a terrain of interaction - NOT deterministic approach to social structure/ event.
economy - capitalism - private property - what is done
retirement (put money in yourself or have other system)
Education -
Social Agent - (president/ teacher/ etc. etc.) - enabled and constrained - still room for creativity; dialectical notion of how these things work. Can be agents of change.
Social events - what actually happens? Expectations that go along with certain social structures
Language (abstract/ broad sense) - social structure
* possibility and potentiality
Language is not a structure of rules - it is a resource for meaning making and a potentiality. Enables kinds of meanings, configurations of text etc.
Texts made up of active forces -not passive rules - language can mean different things in different situations - leading to different possibilities
Social Structure
Social Practice -
Event
24
"social practices are networked together in particular and shifting ways"
"orders of discourse" go beyond structural -- they "can be seen as the social organization and control of linguistic variation"
Makes it hard to separate language from other social elements
"orders of discourse are the social organization and control of linguistic variation" - elements not purely linguistic
"it becomes difficult to separate out the factors shaping the texts"
25
Social practices
action and interaction
Social relations
Persons (w beliefs, attitudes, histories etc.)
The material world
Discourse
For example - look at dialect in the social practice of a classroom - discourse and social practice integrated
26
Discourse can figure as:
Genres (ways of acting) - interviewing
Discourses (ways of representing) - abstract/ or concretely: count noun - particular ways of representing world - ex. political discourse of New Labour
Styles (ways of being) - style of a 'manager'
Foucault & genre - across fields (useful in social scholarship)
genre - acting (students know where to go in class) - non discursive activity (handing back papers etc. phenomena - identification of a "good" writer - style guide - representational scheme "good writing"
SCALE!!!
discourse - representative - something more concrete - discourse of "science"
style- identification, being
ALL DIALECTICALLY related
analytic scheme- framework/ theme
27
connect ppl together (see top of 27)
texts also multi functioning - ways of acting, ways of representing, ways of being
Major types of text meaning
Action - interpersonal function
Representation - Halliday - ideational function
Identification - relates it to interpersonal/ action
Cool example - manager
28
"When we analyze specific texts as part of specific events, we are doing two interconnected things: a. looking at them in terms of the three aspects of meaning, Action, Representation and Identification, and how these are realized in various features of texts & b. making connection btwn concrete social event and more abstract social practices
Dialectical Relations
Dialectics - Foucault - axes:
interconnections - "control over things, relations of actions upon others, realtions w oneself"
"Representation is to do with knowledge but also thereby 'control over things'; Action is to do generally with relations with others, but also 'action on others' , and power. Identification isto do with relations with oneself, ethics, and the 'moral subject'."
29
Bordieau - "habitus" of persons involved in text analysis
"particular Representations (discourses) may be enacted in particular ways of Acting and Relating (genres)
Dialectics of discourses
Discourses (rep meaning) enacted in genre (actional meaning)
Discourses (rm) styles (identificational m)
Actions and identities (genres/ styles) rep. in discourses (rep meanings)
example - appraisal
30 mediation
texts "mediated" - how is it shared (print, television, etc.)
"chains/ networks of texts"
"Complex modern societies involve the networking together of different social practices across different domains or fields of social life (the economy, education etc. etc.)
transformation
globalization
31
genre chain - renovation of mental hospital (uses much that I wold use to look into envrionmental policy -- stakeholders etc. etc.)
translation a part of the language use (speech vs. written) - "participants in the meeting build up to the well-argued, formal logic of the report - a characteristic of the official report genre"
32
Genres governance
institutions, genres - interlocking elements in govt (look at word)
Jessop - contemporary governance: markets, heirchies, networks
'practical genres' - "genres which figure in doing things rather than governing the way things are done"
33
"Recontextualization" - see example - business manager - trust - to academic talk to official guideline
"appropriation, transformation, and colonization"
"promotional genres" - selling - new capitalism - seeing a lot.
stakeholder - move from local to global to create a report that can "accomodate endless specific local reports"
- predominance of media
genre mixing - Budapest Sun - Hungarian town- effort to 'sell' itself - new capitalism - tourist brochure: report, newspaper, self evaluation, corporate ad
interdiscursivity - incorporation of corporate advertising into a local authority genre (reminds me of fracking)
36-37
Relational Approach to text analysis
social structures
social practices
social events -- see all
discourse
semantics
grammar and vocabulary
phonology/ graphology
internal relations - semantics (meaning relations - words and longer expressions)/ grammatical relations/ vocab (lexical) - work - New Labour party/ phonological - spoken language - prosodic relations intonation/ rhythm
p.
38 - review - ch. 2
p. 39
Interxtuality and assumptions
broad - "presence of actual elements of other texts in text"
40
less obvious - texts added without attribution
texts make assumptions
social difference - many different identities
41
hegemony - "achieving hegemony entails achieving a measure of success in projecting certain particulars as universals"
in what ways do different voices meet? (intertextuality) or not (assumption)
power
42
difference heuristic
discourses - durable
43
sample manager - tries to show pts of view (union workers) - interextuality
Bakhtin - dialogic
44
Look at trade policy paper - no qualifiers - assumptions
45
public sphere - can be treated as
61
"We began by distinguishing five orientations to difference in social interactio, and in texts as parts of social interaction, and we used this as a basis for assessing the relative degree of 'diolgicality ' of a text, and discusssed what sort of orientation to difference would characterized an effective 'public sphere'. Laclau - hegemony - universality of particulars - entails reduction of dialogicity
scale of dialogicality
intertextuality - question of which relevant "external" texts and voices are included in the text, and which are ...exculded
direct reporting
indirect reporting
- both -consider - relationship to reported origninal - & how they are recontextualized w/in reporting text
- assumptions - ideologies - distinguished from other types of implicit meanings
65
Genres
Genres and linguistic features of texts
Pre-genres, disembedded genres, situated genres
formats
genre analysis: activity, social relations, communication technology
generic structure
dialogue
argument
narrative
Social research issues
globalization and disembedding
communicative and strategic action
societal information
the public sphere
social change and technological change
ideaology
news
p. 80 - excellent pts about limitations of dialogue
p. 81 "consultation" - nuclear weapons disposal etc.
p. 81 - Toulmin - globalization - look at assumptions
p. 84 - fabula - firefighters - focalization - normalcy - who focuses on what? Even when it is a "free" media?
Actively critiquing
critical approach to language
Very much based on data
Taken Halliday's notions; tweaked them
21
Texts - part of social events - "One way in which people can act and interact in the course of social events is to speak or to write."
ALSO...action (football game) vs. action in lecture - "what the lecturer says, what is written on overheads and handouts, the notes taken by people listening to the lecture"...
22
but also physical action (operation of an overhead projector)
relationships between texts, social events, social practices & social structures - participants in events
globalization/ media/ mediation/ governance in new capitalism/ re contextualization (Bernstein), hybridity (blurring of boundaries - post modernity)
"Social agents are not 'free' agents, they are socially constrained, but nor are their actions totally socially determined."
- structure and agency of agents
23
textured relationship - negative culture - Liverpool
Social structures - abstract - complex relationships (what is structurally possible and what actually happens)
"events are...mediated- there are intermediate organizational entities between structures and events"
"intermediate organizational practices" - social event
Very cool for environmental studies
maps out a terrain of interaction - NOT deterministic approach to social structure/ event.
economy - capitalism - private property - what is done
retirement (put money in yourself or have other system)
Education -
Social Agent - (president/ teacher/ etc. etc.) - enabled and constrained - still room for creativity; dialectical notion of how these things work. Can be agents of change.
Social events - what actually happens? Expectations that go along with certain social structures
Language (abstract/ broad sense) - social structure
* possibility and potentiality
Language is not a structure of rules - it is a resource for meaning making and a potentiality. Enables kinds of meanings, configurations of text etc.
Texts made up of active forces -not passive rules - language can mean different things in different situations - leading to different possibilities
Social Structure
Social Practice -
Event
24
"social practices are networked together in particular and shifting ways"
"orders of discourse" go beyond structural -- they "can be seen as the social organization and control of linguistic variation"
Makes it hard to separate language from other social elements
"orders of discourse are the social organization and control of linguistic variation" - elements not purely linguistic
"it becomes difficult to separate out the factors shaping the texts"
25
Social practices
action and interaction
Social relations
Persons (w beliefs, attitudes, histories etc.)
The material world
Discourse
For example - look at dialect in the social practice of a classroom - discourse and social practice integrated
26
Discourse can figure as:
Genres (ways of acting) - interviewing
Discourses (ways of representing) - abstract/ or concretely: count noun - particular ways of representing world - ex. political discourse of New Labour
Styles (ways of being) - style of a 'manager'
Foucault & genre - across fields (useful in social scholarship)
genre - acting (students know where to go in class) - non discursive activity (handing back papers etc. phenomena - identification of a "good" writer - style guide - representational scheme "good writing"
SCALE!!!
discourse - representative - something more concrete - discourse of "science"
style- identification, being
ALL DIALECTICALLY related
analytic scheme- framework/ theme
27
connect ppl together (see top of 27)
texts also multi functioning - ways of acting, ways of representing, ways of being
Major types of text meaning
Action - interpersonal function
Representation - Halliday - ideational function
Identification - relates it to interpersonal/ action
Cool example - manager
28
"When we analyze specific texts as part of specific events, we are doing two interconnected things: a. looking at them in terms of the three aspects of meaning, Action, Representation and Identification, and how these are realized in various features of texts & b. making connection btwn concrete social event and more abstract social practices
Dialectical Relations
Dialectics - Foucault - axes:
interconnections - "control over things, relations of actions upon others, realtions w oneself"
"Representation is to do with knowledge but also thereby 'control over things'; Action is to do generally with relations with others, but also 'action on others' , and power. Identification isto do with relations with oneself, ethics, and the 'moral subject'."
29
Bordieau - "habitus" of persons involved in text analysis
"particular Representations (discourses) may be enacted in particular ways of Acting and Relating (genres)
Dialectics of discourses
Discourses (rep meaning) enacted in genre (actional meaning)
Discourses (rm) styles (identificational m)
Actions and identities (genres/ styles) rep. in discourses (rep meanings)
example - appraisal
30 mediation
texts "mediated" - how is it shared (print, television, etc.)
"chains/ networks of texts"
"Complex modern societies involve the networking together of different social practices across different domains or fields of social life (the economy, education etc. etc.)
transformation
globalization
31
genre chain - renovation of mental hospital (uses much that I wold use to look into envrionmental policy -- stakeholders etc. etc.)
translation a part of the language use (speech vs. written) - "participants in the meeting build up to the well-argued, formal logic of the report - a characteristic of the official report genre"
32
Genres governance
institutions, genres - interlocking elements in govt (look at word)
Jessop - contemporary governance: markets, heirchies, networks
'practical genres' - "genres which figure in doing things rather than governing the way things are done"
33
"Recontextualization" - see example - business manager - trust - to academic talk to official guideline
"appropriation, transformation, and colonization"
"promotional genres" - selling - new capitalism - seeing a lot.
stakeholder - move from local to global to create a report that can "accomodate endless specific local reports"
- predominance of media
genre mixing - Budapest Sun - Hungarian town- effort to 'sell' itself - new capitalism - tourist brochure: report, newspaper, self evaluation, corporate ad
interdiscursivity - incorporation of corporate advertising into a local authority genre (reminds me of fracking)
36-37
Relational Approach to text analysis
social structures
social practices
social events -- see all
discourse
semantics
grammar and vocabulary
phonology/ graphology
internal relations - semantics (meaning relations - words and longer expressions)/ grammatical relations/ vocab (lexical) - work - New Labour party/ phonological - spoken language - prosodic relations intonation/ rhythm
p.
38 - review - ch. 2
p. 39
Interxtuality and assumptions
broad - "presence of actual elements of other texts in text"
40
less obvious - texts added without attribution
texts make assumptions
social difference - many different identities
41
hegemony - "achieving hegemony entails achieving a measure of success in projecting certain particulars as universals"
in what ways do different voices meet? (intertextuality) or not (assumption)
power
42
difference heuristic
discourses - durable
43
sample manager - tries to show pts of view (union workers) - interextuality
Bakhtin - dialogic
44
Look at trade policy paper - no qualifiers - assumptions
45
public sphere - can be treated as
61
"We began by distinguishing five orientations to difference in social interactio, and in texts as parts of social interaction, and we used this as a basis for assessing the relative degree of 'diolgicality ' of a text, and discusssed what sort of orientation to difference would characterized an effective 'public sphere'. Laclau - hegemony - universality of particulars - entails reduction of dialogicity
scale of dialogicality
intertextuality - question of which relevant "external" texts and voices are included in the text, and which are ...exculded
direct reporting
indirect reporting
- both -consider - relationship to reported origninal - & how they are recontextualized w/in reporting text
- assumptions - ideologies - distinguished from other types of implicit meanings
65
Genres
Genres and linguistic features of texts
Pre-genres, disembedded genres, situated genres
formats
genre analysis: activity, social relations, communication technology
generic structure
dialogue
argument
narrative
Social research issues
globalization and disembedding
communicative and strategic action
societal information
the public sphere
social change and technological change
ideaology
news
p. 80 - excellent pts about limitations of dialogue
p. 81 "consultation" - nuclear weapons disposal etc.
p. 81 - Toulmin - globalization - look at assumptions
p. 84 - fabula - firefighters - focalization - normalcy - who focuses on what? Even when it is a "free" media?
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Johnstone ch.1 "What is Discourse Analysis"?
1-3
Journal - African American - language trial/ difference - English & Japanese/ newspaper coverage prison scandal England/ metaphor/ identity in athabaskan student writing/ poem/ epitaph spiritual master - Muslim sect...etc.
discourse "meaningful symbolic behavior"
"discourse" vs. "discourses" see the way "music" is used
"discourse analysis" vs. "language analysis" - not focused on language as an abstract system - what happens when people draw on knowledge they have about language -
"Discourse is both the source of this knowledge (ppls generalizations about language are made on the basis of discourse they participate in) and the result of it"
Foucault - "count noun" - conventional ways of thinking "patterns of belief and habitual action as well as patterns of language"/ Ideas
Gee - Discourse - D & d
4
Analysis (chemical analysis)
analysis of language structures (linguists) and/ or social roles and relations
"What distinguishes discourse analysis (from other types of language study) lies not in the questions discourse analysts ask but in the ways they try to answer them; by analyzing discourse - that is, by examining aspects of the structure and the function of language in use."
discusses familiar use of word "analysis" -- taking apart.
examples - differing grammatical patterns when "superiors" are present/ topic changes by "special " signal markers.
OR analysis as looking at something in a variety of ways (systematically taking several theoretical perspectives)
5
"(What is persuasive discourse like?....How do psychotherapists talk?...What goes on in classrooms? ...How do people create social categories like "girl"?
6
"What is involved with "knowing a language"? How do words, sentences, and utterances get associated with meanings? How does language change?..."
Linguists - word structure (morphology)/ sentence structure (syntax)
Language scholars - meaning (semantics), syntax, stretches of talk longer than phrases, "shhed light on how speakers indicate their semantic intentions and how hearers interpret what they hear, and on the cognitive abilities that underlie human symbol use"
"helped describe the culturally-shaped interpretive principles on which understanding is based and how people ...are thought to perform actions by means of utterances."
change
- how do new words enter language?
-external causes of change - geographic isolation (remember songcatcher)
- also contributed to research on language acquisition
7
talk used for children (reminds me of reading model we learned at SRU - attach reading to what you know -- that is often language). -- wars in phonics
-- more than just knowing grammar and vocab -- "but also knowing how to structure paragraphs and arguments and participate in conversations in the ways speakers of the language do"
discourse studies have always been a part of:
- literary studies
-rhetorical studies
- useful in fields that focus on human life and communications (psychology, anthropology, etc. etc.):
aging (language), "anyone who wants to understand human beings has to understand discourse"
- investigate "questions about social relations, such as dominance, and oppression or solidarity"
-personal identity and social identification
-focus on meaning making
8
why museum example? "ways in which a systematic analysis of discourse can help illuminate facets of communication"
Makes me think of the way Phipps has changed over time - Also, the implications of the Egypt display in Philly
Blockbuster event - Egypt - accompanying texts
9
heuristic
methodology:
Question "Why is this stretch of discourse the way it is? Why is it no other way? Why theyse particular words in this particular order"?
- what text is about
- who said it
- what motivated the text
- the text's structure
- categories - source constraint and resource for creativity
10
- discourse is shaped by the would and discourse shapes the world
- discourse is shaped by language and discourse shapes language
- discourse is shaped by participants and discourse shapes participants.
- shaped by prior discourse and shapes possibilities for future discourse
- shaped by its medium and shapes possibilities of its medium
- shaped by purpose - shapes possible purposes
can put these together in different ways
11
Human worlds are shaped by discourse: Foucault, Burke, Sapir, Whorf
"Ancient Egyptian world seen through the lens of "Western Oreintalism"
visual design "highlights the most exotic and anthropomorphic of the artifacts and make strategic use of layout and typography"
12
ha ha - this "other" culture is more similar to Western world than writers realized
silence on Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
The doer of the action - on placards is missing -- experts Big Brother - discourage others from challenging claims
13
" Thank you for being a member of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston"
"When did John stop drinking" - presuppositions!
14
Paser
Remove object from original context -- English labels vs. Egyptian ones -- seeing painting in Rome vs. the Cleveland Museum of Art/ seeing an American satirical play in the forum
"glossing" that occurs with naming - History, precedes craftsmanship - place comes last
15
Shabits - written for children - but in persona of adult - jumpy (feature of speech of children)
16
expectations - Book of the dead (we have very different books now)/ spells - not an Arab culture/
intertextuality - needed for placards
17
Mixes of media - advertisement
Magazine ad - rhythms
Visual imagery - prevalent and repeated
Images - used as writing in Egypt are used as images in Western - cartouche reminds me of art ed - move to be multicultural encouraged students to make stuff - uneasy - would they have had students create a chalice of Christ - probably not!
- heiroglyphics even extended into footrace ads
18
habits of thought - accept what the expert educator has to say
Really hits home - what happened in Philly
- simplified modern analogs
19
competing discourses - on loan from German museum - discourses different
- high culture/ commerce (MFAH uses show to make money)
20
texts of discourse - texts (letter, book) but are changing - shift to records of discourse
online discourses - printouts, screenshots
transcripts of audio/ video recording
- turn them into book-like texts - "entextaulize" - researchers decisions of what to make into book-like texts
21
"a book is a complete text only if it is treated as relatively independent of other texts"
such boundaries or pulling out chunks are often artificial - but essential "open ended interpretation rather than fact-finding, more like reading than identifying data points that bear on pre-formed hypotheses"
"It is crucial to be able to uncover the many ways in which texts are shaped by contexts and the many ways texts shape contexts"
22
number of texts - issue is more about "why or how (something) occurs in the data at hand, and suggestions they make about the liklihood that the same thing will occur in other data..."
Coupland et al - research aging/ elderly - issues with qualitative research
23
Transcripts - different conventions (research) - "any way of representing speech in writing is necessarily selective."
"the most useful transcriptions in discourse analysis research are those which highlight what the researcher is interested in and do not include too much distracting extraneous detail. "
"The most literal way to represent a speaker's speech may not be the most desirable way to represent the speaker"
24 - 26 examples of transcripts
27
Description:
"1. That it is possible to describe the world...2. proper role of scholar is to describe status quo first, and only later, if at all, to apply scholarly findings in the solution of practical problems.
28
Pike, Grimes, Halliday, Hasan - anthropologists/ sociologists add to this
Relativism - people have different realities - different shared systems of beliefs. - calls into question "scientific truth"
"Critical social theory describes the human world not as a system in, or tending to, equilibrium, but as a system characterized by dominance, exploitation, struggle, oppression, and power" - research into power structures
1. valid description
2. critical of status quo - concerned w using work to change things for the better.
critical linguists (Flower, Hodge and Kress)
critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, van Dijk, Wodak)
1-3
Journal - African American - language trial/ difference - English & Japanese/ newspaper coverage prison scandal England/ metaphor/ identity in athabaskan student writing/ poem/ epitaph spiritual master - Muslim sect...etc.
discourse "meaningful symbolic behavior"
"discourse" vs. "discourses" see the way "music" is used
"discourse analysis" vs. "language analysis" - not focused on language as an abstract system - what happens when people draw on knowledge they have about language -
"Discourse is both the source of this knowledge (ppls generalizations about language are made on the basis of discourse they participate in) and the result of it"
Foucault - "count noun" - conventional ways of thinking "patterns of belief and habitual action as well as patterns of language"/ Ideas
Gee - Discourse - D & d
4
Analysis (chemical analysis)
analysis of language structures (linguists) and/ or social roles and relations
"What distinguishes discourse analysis (from other types of language study) lies not in the questions discourse analysts ask but in the ways they try to answer them; by analyzing discourse - that is, by examining aspects of the structure and the function of language in use."
discusses familiar use of word "analysis" -- taking apart.
examples - differing grammatical patterns when "superiors" are present/ topic changes by "special " signal markers.
OR analysis as looking at something in a variety of ways (systematically taking several theoretical perspectives)
5
"(What is persuasive discourse like?....How do psychotherapists talk?...What goes on in classrooms? ...How do people create social categories like "girl"?
6
"What is involved with "knowing a language"? How do words, sentences, and utterances get associated with meanings? How does language change?..."
Linguists - word structure (morphology)/ sentence structure (syntax)
Language scholars - meaning (semantics), syntax, stretches of talk longer than phrases, "shhed light on how speakers indicate their semantic intentions and how hearers interpret what they hear, and on the cognitive abilities that underlie human symbol use"
"helped describe the culturally-shaped interpretive principles on which understanding is based and how people ...are thought to perform actions by means of utterances."
change
- how do new words enter language?
-external causes of change - geographic isolation (remember songcatcher)
- also contributed to research on language acquisition
7
talk used for children (reminds me of reading model we learned at SRU - attach reading to what you know -- that is often language). -- wars in phonics
-- more than just knowing grammar and vocab -- "but also knowing how to structure paragraphs and arguments and participate in conversations in the ways speakers of the language do"
discourse studies have always been a part of:
- literary studies
-rhetorical studies
- useful in fields that focus on human life and communications (psychology, anthropology, etc. etc.):
aging (language), "anyone who wants to understand human beings has to understand discourse"
- investigate "questions about social relations, such as dominance, and oppression or solidarity"
-personal identity and social identification
-focus on meaning making
8
why museum example? "ways in which a systematic analysis of discourse can help illuminate facets of communication"
Makes me think of the way Phipps has changed over time - Also, the implications of the Egypt display in Philly
Blockbuster event - Egypt - accompanying texts
9
heuristic
methodology:
Question "Why is this stretch of discourse the way it is? Why is it no other way? Why theyse particular words in this particular order"?
- what text is about
- who said it
- what motivated the text
- the text's structure
- categories - source constraint and resource for creativity
10
- discourse is shaped by the would and discourse shapes the world
- discourse is shaped by language and discourse shapes language
- discourse is shaped by participants and discourse shapes participants.
- shaped by prior discourse and shapes possibilities for future discourse
- shaped by its medium and shapes possibilities of its medium
- shaped by purpose - shapes possible purposes
can put these together in different ways
11
Human worlds are shaped by discourse: Foucault, Burke, Sapir, Whorf
"Ancient Egyptian world seen through the lens of "Western Oreintalism"
visual design "highlights the most exotic and anthropomorphic of the artifacts and make strategic use of layout and typography"
12
ha ha - this "other" culture is more similar to Western world than writers realized
silence on Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
The doer of the action - on placards is missing -- experts Big Brother - discourage others from challenging claims
13
" Thank you for being a member of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston"
"When did John stop drinking" - presuppositions!
14
Paser
Remove object from original context -- English labels vs. Egyptian ones -- seeing painting in Rome vs. the Cleveland Museum of Art/ seeing an American satirical play in the forum
"glossing" that occurs with naming - History, precedes craftsmanship - place comes last
15
Shabits - written for children - but in persona of adult - jumpy (feature of speech of children)
16
expectations - Book of the dead (we have very different books now)/ spells - not an Arab culture/
intertextuality - needed for placards
17
Mixes of media - advertisement
Magazine ad - rhythms
Visual imagery - prevalent and repeated
Images - used as writing in Egypt are used as images in Western - cartouche reminds me of art ed - move to be multicultural encouraged students to make stuff - uneasy - would they have had students create a chalice of Christ - probably not!
- heiroglyphics even extended into footrace ads
18
habits of thought - accept what the expert educator has to say
Really hits home - what happened in Philly
- simplified modern analogs
19
competing discourses - on loan from German museum - discourses different
- high culture/ commerce (MFAH uses show to make money)
20
texts of discourse - texts (letter, book) but are changing - shift to records of discourse
online discourses - printouts, screenshots
transcripts of audio/ video recording
- turn them into book-like texts - "entextaulize" - researchers decisions of what to make into book-like texts
21
"a book is a complete text only if it is treated as relatively independent of other texts"
such boundaries or pulling out chunks are often artificial - but essential "open ended interpretation rather than fact-finding, more like reading than identifying data points that bear on pre-formed hypotheses"
"It is crucial to be able to uncover the many ways in which texts are shaped by contexts and the many ways texts shape contexts"
22
number of texts - issue is more about "why or how (something) occurs in the data at hand, and suggestions they make about the liklihood that the same thing will occur in other data..."
Coupland et al - research aging/ elderly - issues with qualitative research
23
Transcripts - different conventions (research) - "any way of representing speech in writing is necessarily selective."
"the most useful transcriptions in discourse analysis research are those which highlight what the researcher is interested in and do not include too much distracting extraneous detail. "
"The most literal way to represent a speaker's speech may not be the most desirable way to represent the speaker"
24 - 26 examples of transcripts
27
Description:
"1. That it is possible to describe the world...2. proper role of scholar is to describe status quo first, and only later, if at all, to apply scholarly findings in the solution of practical problems.
28
Pike, Grimes, Halliday, Hasan - anthropologists/ sociologists add to this
Relativism - people have different realities - different shared systems of beliefs. - calls into question "scientific truth"
"Critical social theory describes the human world not as a system in, or tending to, equilibrium, but as a system characterized by dominance, exploitation, struggle, oppression, and power" - research into power structures
1. valid description
2. critical of status quo - concerned w using work to change things for the better.
critical linguists (Flower, Hodge and Kress)
critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, van Dijk, Wodak)
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