Riassunto esame lingua inglese, prof Demata, libro consigliato Representations of war and terrorism, Demata

The ideology and language of George W. Bush

Preface

To impose a language is to impose a worldview. A hegemonic language is hard to challenge, often self-perpetuating: language is no neutral medium though, yet determines the value of its objects and our capacity to judge them. The aim of this study is that of providing analytical tools on language by discussing G. W. Bush's political brand of language, which dominated the Western scene in the period the book was published in. It’s crucial to understand how language necessarily presents not Truth, but one version of a truth that the speaker chooses to convey: language must be understood in terms of representations, as a medium embedded in society, thus partisan. Society and language are strongly tied by political texts, that shape the way of speaking and offer themselves as shortcuts, ultimately shaping public opinion and thought. This is particularly true in the USA, and Bush’s discourse exemplifies the hegemonization of one political language and its representation of things.

From Bush's election, American political language had taken a new turn: Bush’s simple and everyman's language was clear and utterly different from the complexity of his predecessor's — Bill Clinton's. Bushisms are an example. His presidency’s character was shaped by 9/11 and Afghanistan and Iraq wars, generating a language of patriotism and nationalism, bellicose overtones, often messianic. His ideology was defined as "Neo-Conservative”, yet the intricacies of his language need deeper analysis. Wars of the period were word wars too, opposing languages and paradigms, making words embody ideological conflicts et similia.

The book's approach is top-down, stemming from discussing theoretical aspects of the relationship between language and ideology, then focusing specifically on Bush’s discourse looking at his ideological framework, including the role of religion. Once this allows a better vision of Bush’s discourse’s relevance in the global context, the book moves to a further analysis of Bush’s discourse through the grammatical and lexical aspects, with special attention to the keywords ”terrorist" and "freedom". In the last part, fifteen speeches analyzed by the study are provided.

1. Introduction to ideology and language

1.1. Ideology

Language choices are influenced by social and cultural aspects — and vice versa. A useful definition of ideology may be a system of values and beliefs, shared by a group, regulating the way individuals know and judge the world and the events that take place in it. Ideology must be considered as a regulator of our way of thinking and acting within society — far beyond awareness.

Marx defined “ideology" as having a regulating function too, determining and legitimizing the organization of power relations within society, in particular. As argued by Roland Barthes, what we believe is natural or common sense is indeed our ideology. It cannot be described as a mere false consciousness, nor even false. It is not false nor true - it is selected.

Hegemony was defined by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci as leadership — intellectual and moral — by a dominant group and its institutions over a society, not to be confused with the concept of “dominion”. Hegemony controls via ideological state apparatuses (Althusser) like family, media, education, church, that create and reproduce hegemonic class ideology achieving consent in a pacific way that is always open to challenge.

Eagleton defines indeed organized religion as the perfect example of an ideological formation, with its hierarchical system of discourses and socially prescriptive behavior, etc. Althusser also points out the existence of a repressive state apparatus, which does use coercion to maintain control and hegemony. Ideology is also defined by Thompson as not fully understandable ignoring the ways it serves to sustain domination, true for every kind of discourse. It's to keep in mind that all utterances are potentially ideological, as they can bear influence, sustain or challenge those asymmetrical relations of power that found societies' base.

1.2. Language and use context: the concept of discourse

Ideology shapes our thought because not only speech acts are ideological products, but most importantly because language (re)produces and shapes ideology just as social relations, maintaining ideological profiles and being the same locus for social differences and struggles. As argued by Halliday, language is produced in a social context and determined by social factors inscribed in the structure of language itself and precisely in lexico-grammatical levels.

Unlike Halliday, Chomsky points out that not those factors, but competence and performance should be the objects of linguistics, defining competence as rules of grammar as known by speakers and performance as the actual language use — this eradicates the need to look at socio-cultural factors, excluding that language does have social origins and implications; this connection (text— society) is manifested through discourse.

This notion got different definitions, like any extended stretch of language, text, performative use of language... the most famous definition was given by Foucault, who defines discourse as the group of statements that belong to a single system of formation, that can be assigned particular modalities of existence. Discourse is, to Foucault, constitutive to meanings for reality, not mirroring it at all.

A wider one is given by Gee, as a meaningful utterance or stretch of language, but also ways of being in the world integrating linguistic, cultural, social, and ideological signs — thus discourses always include discourse, as a knowledge body to use and master in society. Discourse is thus a social marker. Not only do the discourses have rules and regulated systems of texts, but so do discourse communities (social groups whose members share ideas, beliefs, goals, etc. so they are often identified on the basis of a shared profession, discipline, etc.).

To Van Dijk, discourse is text in context, both a specific language use form and social interaction form, a complete communicative event in a social situation. This perspective is very close to the one adopted by Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, which attempted to integrate social and linguistic theories, expanding Gramsci and Althusser views by affirming all text and discourse are ideological as language operate to maintain hegemony of groups over other groups and via encoding social values and beliefs in its structure, it naturalizes social relationships based on the unequal distribution of power.

To Fairclough, discourse is too both a mode of action and a mode of representation, and he distinguished constitutive aspects of discourse as social identities, social relationships, knowledge, and belief. He draws the connection between social order and discourse through his concept of order of discourse: there is a direct interdependence between the two orders with their own structures, the social one structured along different social practices conditioning actions and made visible by actual practices, while parallel to this the discourse one is constituted by types of discourse made visible through actual discourse. Critical views of discourse are based on the aim to sustain unequal relations of power by institutional and hegemonic discourses.

Wodak defined as disorders of discourse the attempt to avoid clarity and seek obscurity and incomprehension via discourse, that causes frame conflicts where the winners will inevitably be the ones with linguistic power as well as institutional.

1.3. Relationships between texts, relationship between discourse

Discourse analysis requires the aim to understand text and components intersection with socio-cultural factors, following two complementary analytical dimensions: linguistic analysis to show ways components, elements, and structures are used, and intertextual analysis, that shows the dependence of the text on resources available through the order of discourse (other texts, discourses, etc.).

1.3.1. Genre

Empirically used to mean a classification of text that share common features (formal and structural similarities). Genres dictate structure imposing texts a pattern and a succession of stages each of those contributing to the overall meaning. Formation and acquisition of genres depends, to Swales, on schemata - formal and experimental organization of knowledge shaped into text. There are experiential domain and prior texts to enable us identifying the genre of a text, and the analysis of genres is crucial to discourse and text analysis. The book analyzes how Bush uses a specific set of generic conventions typical of political discourse but subverting the same standardized conventions by including different genres' elements and features.

1.3.2. Intertextuality

Besides genre, it is through intertextuality that relationships between texts become visible. It always entails a recontextualisation process as the “old" text merges into the “new" text (movement of texts through different chronological or situational contexts). Culler states it’s intertextuality that makes texts exist and be intelligible. It would be misleading to consider intertextuality a mere analysis of textual sources: it leads to the assessment of the text’s place within a given culture’s set of discourses.

Bakhtin affirms each text refers in one way or another to both previous and future texts; each utterance naturally presents dialogic overtones which link it to other utterances in a chain of speech communication. Attitude determines lexical and grammatical choices, so do existing utterances. Bakhtin also defines the concept of social languages of heteroglossia: texts are the products of specific social conditions and worldviews yet marked by (intertextual) contrasts/similarities with other — often hostile - social conditions and worldviews.

Kristeva further develops this concept by arguing the implicit ambivalence or dialogism present in any utterance implies history (society) insertion into a text and vice versa. Historicity belongs to every single utterance, even familiar and informal ones, this making intertextuality a powerful tool to exercise one's own meaning and authority as well to deny others’. Intertextuality thus has serious social implications being a matter of power and hegemony (ability = degree of control over available meanings to society).

Fairclough distinguishes between manifest (see quotations) and constitutive intertextuality (or interdiscursivity), the latter indicating an incorporation of discourse types or conventions not typical of that text. Quotation has a crucial role in discourse, especially political, as repeating reputable authors’ words can gain persuasive force to the speaker, they can be a validating factor for otherwise controversial arguments. In our particular case, one must know that Bush's discourse analysis hugely bases itself on intertextual recontextualisation of texts, being his utterances either constructed as dialogues with other texts or played out against them at advantage of Bush’s own (hegemonic) values.

1.4. Language: social semiotics and language functions

Discourse as text: ideology is encoded in certain key aspects of language structure (funding elements of Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics). Social semiotics: meaning = semantic system is encoded in language = lexicogrammatical system, while grammar articulates meaning along well-defined structures set; then meanings encoded in language spread in the social context — language influences our relation with society.

To Halliday, there is an intimate connection between language and thought/behavior modes. Thus language always depends on social goals and roles of speakers, and it is also used to shape social hierarchies by a weapon against alternative values that may threaten ours. (Hasan). This in mind, approach to language must include both internal structure and non-linguistic aspects. Semantic and lexical changes have social roots, including all components of the (social) situations, reshaping existing signifiers — so to Halliday it is crucial to know language is social semiotic. He integrates society, language, context, and text in a unified theory by re-elaborating Malinowski’s concept of context of situation, in which register has a pivotal role: the question is which kinds of situational factors determine which kinds of selection in the linguistic system; the notion of register is thus a form of prediction. Register is the particular situational-semantic configuration (the range of available semantic choices according to social context/situation).

Halliday then defines three register variables that define this relation:

• Field = subject matter of the language,
• Tenor = social relations between those who interact in the text,
• Mode = role and impact of the text itself in the interaction, including characteristics and features.

Each of these also constitute the kind of meanings or metafunctions (= meanings) expressed by texts:

• Field is realized by ideational metafunction, broken down in experiential and logical metafunctions;
• Tenor is realized by interpersonal metafunctions;
• Mode is realized by textual metafunctions.

Metafunctions are realized each by a grammar area. He also defines clause as the most important linguistic unit as in it meanings of different kinds are mapped into integrated grammar structures, so his three metafunctions and their respective patterns of realization are simultaneously present in the clause.

Scheme:

• Register variable -> Metafunction -> Grammar area -> Clause elements/aspects

FIELD is realized by the IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTIONS (experimental and logical) = the way the speaker or writer expresses his or her own perception and experience of the real world. They are realized through two main series of lexico-grammatical patterns: and TENOR is realized by the INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTIONS = meanings related to the speaker’s or writer’s attitudes to reader/hearer or to the reality around him or her. They are realized through patterns of mood and modality. MODE is realized by the TEXTUAL METAFUNCTION = it is realized through those components of the linguistic system which create texts and hold them together. It is made visible through patterns of theme and cohesion. Overall meaning of the clause is given by the total configuration of these three aspects. The three sets of meaning or functions performed by the linguistic structure of texts and clauses are a linguistic phenomenon yet in the way they are defined they both encode and get shaped by non-linguistic aspects. Both CL and CDA expanded H.'s argument on language being a system contemplating a range of options available to the speakers whose choice will reflect social position/context.