Appunti lezioni di Discourse Strategies in Contemporary English, prof. Demata

A.y. 2018/2019 Discourse strategies in contemporary English

M. Demata

Discourse Strategies in Contemporary English – M. DEMATA 2018-2019

Sommario

• I-Using corpora in discourse analysis.................................................................2
• Chapter 1 - Introduction......................................................................................................2
• Chapter 2 Corpus Building.................................................................................................9
• Chapter 4 Concordances.................................................................................................11
• Chapter 5 Collocates........................................................................................................15
• II-The evaluation of risk in institutional and newspaper discourse. The case of climate change and migration......................................................18
• III-The language of Brexit – How Britain talked its way out of the European Union............................................................................................................41
• Chapter 1 ‘The EU isn’t much cop but . . .’. Remain supporters’ use of coordinative constructions....................................................................................................................45
• Chapter 2 Hedging and modality versus strident claims and apparent absence of doubt..........................................................................................................................................45
• Chapter 3 More to imperatives than meets the eye.........................................................47
• Chapter 4 Inclusive we, the former City broker as champion of the common man, and good old Bojo: How the pro-Brexit press created the illusion of a classless alliance......47
• Chapter 5 Democracy myths and facts: A double defeat for David Cameron.................49
• Chapter 7 Nominalization, presupposition and naturalization..........................................50
• Chapter 8 The language of racism lite, and not so lite.....................................................52
• Chapter 9 Comparison with the Scottish independence referendum of 2014: How Project Fear worked in 2014 but not in 2016................................................................................54
• Chapter 10 Leave’s appointment with history and Remain’s another day at the office...55
• Chapter 11 Little Englanders on reaching out to the world beyond Europe? Comparison with the 1975 referendum on remaining a member of the European Economic Community.......................................................................................................................57
• Chapter 12 From “Up Your Delors” (1990) to “Stick it up your Junker” (2016). Was it The Sun wot won it once again?.............................................................................................57
• Chapter 13 Dirty tricks: Lies, personal attacks and the Queen supports UKIP...............59
• Chapter 14 The Day after: How could this happen?........................................................61
• IV-Language of fear. Communicating threat in public discourse..........65
• Introduction.......................................................................................................................65
• Chapter 1 Cognitive, Social and Psychological Issues of Public Discourse and Threat Communication.................................................................................................................65

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• Risk communication and legal mining conflicts in Australian media discourse – K. E. Russo............................................................................................................................66
• Chapter 2 - Proximization: A Threat-Based Model of Policy Legitimization.....................69

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I-Using corpora in discourse analysis

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Corpus linguistics is the study of language based on examples of real life language use. As Bieber points out, corpus-based research actually depends on both quantitative and qualitative techniques.

Corpora are generally large, representative samples of a particular type of naturally occurring language, so they can therefore be used as a standard reference with which claims about language can be measured.

Discourse = different aims, one preliminary point to make to avoid misunderstanding: discourse is NOT the equivalent of “discorso” (speech = usually spoken language)!!!

Discourse can be spoken, written, digital, visual. Discourse may include speech. Analysis of written discourses and digital discourses.

Example: contextualizing use of language “venire a mancare” meaning of the idiomatic expression: it is not the meaning of the single word “venire” and “mancare” but is “passing away”. It is not “morire” because it is stronger. This is soft.

“Quasi eufemistico, venire meno a qualcuno, o venire meno in senso assol., quindi morire”. (treccani.it) It is used when a family member dies, a friend. We use it in specific context. It literally means to die but we use it only in some specific discourse. It is associated with some discourses.

Gianni Pittella’s tweet about Allende’s death (11 set 2018): we use it also for a relationship of inspiration like a political person and a normal citizen. He takes inspiration from this politician. It is “not said” that Allende has been killed in a “golpe”. The meaning is always the same, he died. This fact was presented under a certain light hiding a certain fact. Language gives you something but also hides something. This is not a lie, he is just presenting something under a certain light. Language is about representation.

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Discourse analysis allows us to discover what is behind language. It implies discovering something hidden. What is written and said, why it is written and said. We choose what to say with a correlation with context.

What is discourse?

It is not spoken language.

Discourse is a certain way of speaking. It is language in use.

In a broader sense, “discourse” can be used to refer to a system of language use and other meaning-making practices that form ways of talking about social reality.

1. “Linguistics” definition: discourse is any extended stretch of language (generally longer and more complex than a sentence). Discourse analysis is therefore text analysis.
2. “Linguistics” definition: discourse is spoken language. Discourse analysis is therefore conversation analysis.
3. Discourse is “language in use” (Brown and Yule 1983).
4. Discourse is a way of defining, structuring and signifying certain areas (or objects) of knowledge and social practice (Foucault).

Discourses are evident through “statements” (affermazioni), and discourse analysis consists of the analysis of such statements.

“Discoursive formations”: the system of rules which make certain statements possible under certain social, cultural and institutional circumstances and not in others.

Discourse is “the group of statements that belong to a single system of formation” and these statements “can be assigned particular modalities of existence” (Foucault 1972).

E.g. clinical discourse, legal discourse, economic discourse, etc.

Discourse is constitutive: discoursal practices are constitutive of knowledge, but discourse also both represents and constructs social entities and relations because it is related to power.

5. Discourse vs. Discourse (Gee, 1989): “discourse” (with lower case “d”) is a meaningful utterance (enunciato) of stretch of language, such as a story, an essay, a conversation, etc.

Discourse (with capital “D”) are “ways of being in the world”, which integrate linguistic, cultural, social and ideological signs. Hence, Discourses always include discourse, as linguistic acts are always part of wider social and cultural significations.

(Manca slides big D)

A Discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbolic expressions and “artifacts”, of thinking, feeling, valuing and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or “social network”, or to signal a socially meaningful “role”. (Gee, 1990)

Discourse is both a “mode of action”, according to which people act into the world, and a “mode of representation”, which people use in order to represent a certain reality around them according to certain (cultural, social, ideological) parameters. (Fairclough)

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Discourse has 3 constitutive aspects

• Social identities
• Social relationships
• Knowledge and belief

(Fairclough)

Texts realize these 3 aspects and include them in varying degrees, and in more or less explicit ways. As such, texts are shaped by, and in turn shape, these three aspects, which are constitutive not only of discourse, but generally of culture and society as well. Texts as discursive practices are affected by social, institutional and situational settings, but at the same time they are also instrumental in shaping these settings. (IMPO!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Cumulative effect of texts. We form our ideas on the basis of the language that is common in our society. We know reality around us through discourses.

Some key concepts

• Society
• Ideology: system of ideas in what we believe and so also values
• Representation
• Language
• Discourse
• Discourse analysis
• Critical discourse analysis

Ideology

Ideology speaks with the voice of nature (Roland Barthes).

Ideology comprises the habits of behavior and belief which combine to make any social world appear to those who inhabit it as the natural world. Ideology operates to make people forget that their world has been historically constructed (Michael Billig).

The critical discourse analysis unmasks historical construction.

Nobody would claim that their own thinking was ideological. Ideology, like halitosis, is in this sense what the other person has (Terry Eagleton).

To study ideology is to study the ways in which meaning, or signification serves to sustain relations of domination (John B. Thomson).

Hegemony

Gramsci argues that the ruling class is able to maintain its dominance or hegemony over the masses using various instruments like civil society, media, education system, interest groups and other such means. Through such means, ruling class disperse its political, social, moral and cultural values to be spread in the society in such a way that the masses or ruled tend to accept or embrace them as their own. This is practicing the hegemony by consent.

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In society hegemonic and non-hegemonic discourse.

Representation of migrants: how do we conceptualize in language migrants and their arrival? “sbarcati”, “illegal status”, “invasion”, “clandestine”, “ondata, tsunami, marea”. Only “sbarco” is more or less neutral. Arrival of migrants as if it was a war. Metaphor of war.

Ideology is related to common sense.

Ideological common sense is in the service of unequal relations of power, but it also maintains solidarity within a certain group.

Common sense is naturalized through discourse, what would otherwise be artificial is presented as and therefore becomes natural.

Ideological struggle takes place mainly in language but also over language.

Changes in society = changes in language. Two-way process.

Language is the house of being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

Representation

Representation of reality through images, language, media, etc. is NOT reality. Re-formulate reality in language.

Representation involves selection and creation: it also requires interpretation; it constructs commonsense as well as “deviations” from norms.

Words also have certain connotation which contribute to the meaning.

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By the public sphere we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens; a portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. (Difference of opinion is essential for the public sphere freedom of discuss. If you talk about general issues you have also taking part in that public conversation).

Only when the exercise of political control is effectively subordinated to the democratic demand that information be accessible to the public, does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through the instrument of law-making bodies. (Habermas)

Social media: interaction; Mass media: no interaction, one to many communications. One way.

Internet has changed things a lot.

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The control of a certain discourse is important in spreading a certain idea. By analyzing language, we will have an idea of what kind of strategy is behind.

Discourse analysis studies as:

1. Specific form of language use
2. Use of language seen as a form of social practice

(Fairclough)

Critical discourse analysis considers the ways ideologies and social structures determine the production of language.

The structures of language contain the imprint of social structures. The way you use language tells us something about who you are.

Discourse is a two-way process!!!

Critical discourse analysis

Language operates as an instrument to maintain certain power relations within society (including the hegemony of certain groups over others) by encoding social values and beliefs in its structure, and in doing so it “naturalizes” social relationships based on an unequal distribution of power. Furthermore, not only is language instrumental in wielding ideologies and in “naturalizing” common sense, but texts themselves become both the target and the “locus” of social struggle, a fact that is continually reflected in their linguistic features: ideological struggles are always inscribed into texts.

Society --- discourse --- (language as) text

Social order and order of discourse

Fairclough argues that there is a direct interdependence between two orders, the social order and the order of discourse, each having its own structure: the social order is structured along different types of social practices which condition our actions and are made visible through actual practices; in a parallel and interconnected way, the order of discourse is constituted by certain types of discourse, which are made visible through actual discourses (which include actual texts).

The use of power by the ruling classes aims at ensuring that the discourses structured within the order of discourse are always homogeneous and, at least potentially, controllable and in line with certain ideological constructs. And yet, the relationship between the order of discourse and the social order is never fixed or static: rather, it is always flexible and dialectic, as there is a constant, continuous process of interaction between them. Accordingly, discourses within a certain order of discourse can only be restructured and renewed when social relations, which are inevitably relations of power, change. (Fairclough)

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Discourse – historical approach (Ruth Wodak)

The Discourse-Historical approach is an approach which analyses texts by explaining and “historicizing” their discoursal importance in terms of their social collocation. Discourse analysis consists of four levels, which are somehow implicit in her definition of discourse:

1. The linguistic analysis of text.
2. The analysis of the intersection, within texts, of different texts, different genres (genre: group of conventions that make a book, a movie recognized between the others) and different discourses (intertextual and interdiscoursal analysis).
3. The analysis of the “extralinguistic social/sociological variables and institutional frames of a specific “context of situation”.
4. “The broader socio-political and historical contexts”, in which the “discursive practices” (that is, texts) are embedded, and to which they contribute.

Intertextuality is to make a reference to a previous text.

N. 3 and 4 are implicit. We will focus on the n.1 and 2.

The discourse analysis (1-2) of a text has to be pursued through two complementary analytical dimensions:

1. Linguistic analysis, which will show how certain elements and structures from the linguistic system are used within texts.
2. Intertextual analysis, which will show how texts depend on resources made available to them through the order of discourse, i.e. discourses, genres, other texts, etc.

These two levels are interdependent: “the intertextual properties of a text are realized in its linguistic features” (Fairclough)

Intertextuality

Texts circulate within a discourse community (a group of people who share a certain discourse and so a certain language) only if and when speakers themselves can somehow relate to their meaning, that is to say, when meanings address certain fields of experience shared by a sizeable community of speakers or indeed a discourse community. This “social” view of meaning derives from the speakers’ ability to recognize texts and to associate, often unconsciously, each text with other texts and their constitutive and discoursal values. Each text has some kind of relationship with other texts, as the meaning of a text is always “constructed” in relation to other texts, both past and future. Furthermore, each text appeals to a set of values, beliefs and knowledge shared