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Scarica Linguistica inglese e più Slide in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity! Prima lezione di linguistica inglese 08/10/21 Theoretical approach Applied Critical Discourse Analysis to various text types: - HOWS and possible WHYS of language use in longer stretches of naturally occurring language (text), - Texts are analysed according to various levels of context: we are interested in what is both inside and outside the text (the specific genre, production factors, society, history, and culture of text production, etc.), - A “critical” approach to text analysis is adopted, operating under the assumption that language is a powerful tool for (re)producing social practices (both positive and negative), - Powerful speakers (and writers), such as politicians, journalists, media organisations, representatives of legal institutions, international organizations, etc., wield power and ideology through text production and propagation. Powerful speakers Powerful speakers (and writers) wield power and ideology through text production and propagation: - Politicians: Presidents and Prime Ministers, Members of Parliament, Members of Congress, Local politicians, etc., - Journalists & media: Newspapers (print and online), Online news sites, New media, TV news, All-news stations (e.g. CNN, Fox News), - International organizations: the European Union (EU), the United Nations Organisations (UN), FAO, NATO, OECD, etc., - Members of the judiciary: Judges, prosecutors, lawyers, expert witness (struggle between professional vs. non-professional (lay) knowledge of the legal system and the language used therein). Typologies/discourses Different text typologies (discourses) and genres: A. Language of newspapers and broadcasting (media discourse): news reports, news analyses, editorials, special topic news, evening news, etc. B. Language of politics and political institutions (political discourse): political speeches, debates, parliamentary debates, press conferences, etc., C. Language of the law and the judiciary (legal discourse): contracts, wills, statues, court proceedings, lawyer consultations, jury instructions, judgements, etc. CDA: Norman Fairclough 1 According to Fairclough, one of the founders of the CDA movement, the aims of CDA are to: systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggle over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony. 1 CDA: Norman Fairclough 2 “The analysis of texts is concerned with the linguistic forms of texts, and the distribution of different linguistic forms across different types of texts. One might attribute casual effects to particular linguistic forms (or more plausibly to a strong tendency to select one form in preference to other alternative forms in a significant body of texts), but… one has to be cautious and avoid any suggestion that such effect work mechanically… They depend upon meaning and context. For example, a linguistic form which is heavily used in accounts or narratives about the “global economy” is nominalization: instead of representing processes which are taking place in the world as processes (grammatically, in clauses or sentences with verbs), they are represented as entities (grammatically, through nominalization, i.e. transforming a clause into a nominal or noun-like entity). EXAMPLE: Tony Blair: “The modern world is swept by change”. One common consequence of nominalization is that agents of processes, people who initiate processes or act upon other people or objects, are absent from texts. For instance, a different way in which others might formulate the process Blair is referring to is: “Multinational corporations in collaboration with governments are changing the world in a variety of ways”. In this case, agents are textualized. CDA: Teun Van Dijk “Crucial for critical discourse analysts is the awareness of their role in society. Continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a “value-free” science, they argue that science and especially scholarly discourse, are part of and influenced by social structure, and produced in social interaction. Instead of denying or ignoring such a relation between scholarship and society, they plead that such relations be studied and accounted for in their own right, and that scholarly practices be based on such insight. Theory formation, description, and explanation, also in discourse analysis, are socio-politically constructed”. CDA: FAIRCLOUGH & RUTH WODAK (1997) Main tenets of CDA: 1. CDA interested in social problems, 2. Power relations represented and expressed through discursive practices, 3. Discourse embody the notions of what society and culture are, 4. Discourse is ideological, and it does ideological work, 5. Discourse is to be understood historically, 6. The link between text and society is mediated, 7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory, 8. Discourse is a form of social action. What is language? Edward Sapir (1884-1939) Sapir’s view of language embraced not only cultural studies but a whole range of human science including psychology, sociology, and philosophy. “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols”. 2 - 1 sound can be represented by a variety of letters: meat meet city key ceiling evil quay, - 1 letter can represent a variety of sound: damage educate picked, - Letter(s) can represent no sound at all: honour psychologist knee receipt, - 2 or more letters can represent 1 sound: throne chain edge nation, - A letter can sometimes be used to indicate the quality of a neighbouring sound: diner / dinner – dine / din, - A single letter can indicate more than one sound: /ks/ taxi, - Some sounds have n graphic representation: universe one. A NOTE ON orthography 3 Aspects of language that writing can express but speaking cannot - Historical changes in the language, older pronunciations which are preserved only in the spelling, e.g comb, gnat, taught, - Separate words vs. single words: nitrate/ night rate, syntax /sin tax, homemade /home aid, - Homophones: bear / bare, meat / meet, maid / made - Related words: photograph, photographer, photographic, photography; past tense suffix - ed, rated/ walked / robbed - Greater range of vocabulary, more complex syntax, more refinement of style, - No “performance errors”, - Standard language vs. dialect differences, - It remains as a permanent record. Levels of linguistic analysis II MORPHOLOGY: is the study of the internal structure of word; rules of morphology focus on how words and parts of words are structured, MORPHEME is smallest unit of meaning in language. Morphology is interested in INFLECTION: syntactically motivated word formation, e.g. go – goes – went / play – plays – played, DERIVATION: creates new lexical items, e.g. boy – boyhood; mature – immature, GRAMMATICAL VS LEXICAL WORDS: grammatical or functional words viewed as syntactic units vs lexical or content words. Form, function, meaning We cannot only rely on meaning in order to recognize word classes. It is best to see the definition of a word class as a combination of form, functions, and meaning. FORM: we can determine a word class partly by looking at its stem and affixes: 1. derivation suffixes are characteristic of certain word classes, e.g. electric-ity (noun); electr-ify (verb), electric-al (adjective), 2. inflectional suffixes can be added to change the word from (according to grammatical function): box  box-es; work  work-ed; tall  tall-er, 3. rarely there are inflections that change some part of the word: man – men, sing – sang, go – went. FUNCTION: we can tell the class of the word by the way it occurs in certain positions or structural contexts, e.g. The cook does not actually cook the meat. 5 MEANING: if you learn to recognize certain semantic types of word, such as action verbs, stative verbs, abstract nouns, this will help you to check the purely structural criteria, those of form and function. Levels of linguistic analysis III SYNTAX: the way linguistic forms combine according to grammatical rules to form utterances (or phrases and clauses), which is the largest level of structure in the morphosyntax or grammar. Some key processes in (English) syntax Clause functions: main, subordinate, etc., Negation, Question formation, Coordination and subordination, Passivation. Levels of linguistic analysis IV SEMANTICS: The study of semantics cuts across all the other levels of linguistic analysis. This is because meaning is at the core of human communication. Despite this semantics usually focuses on Meaning of individual words (lexical semantics), or semantic meanings which are encoded into the lexis and grammar, and the ability of words to refer to points in time or individuals in the external world (deixis). This is also part of pragmatic meanings which provide the meaning according to a certain situations and contexts. Levels of linguistic analysis V PRAGMATICS: concerned more with why grammatical constructions have structure rather than how they are structured. Levels of linguistic analysis VI How language is structured also depends on context (= aspects of a situation which are relevant to communicate the inferences we make from the situation we are in): Situational context, Contextual meaning. Levels of linguistic analysis VII TEXTUAL LINGUISTICS: it is important to study the linguistic context and its effect on how language is structured, which involves studying language at the level of text (= anything beyond the sentence that involves language use, and that is a product of a broader range of social practices). Cohesion, coherence, reference etc. are all important when considering the text or discourse level of analysis. Levels of linguistic analysis VIII Discourse: a stretch of language in use, of any length and in any mode, which achieves meaning and coherence for those involved. 6 Discourse analysis: the use and development of theories and methods which elucidate how meaning and cohesion is achieve > DA is concerned not only with language but with all elements and processes which contribute to communication. DA embraces all aspects of language in use, eclectically developing insights from a variety of traditions to arrive at a rounded and rich interpretation of language in use. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) investigates how language use many affirm and reproduce the perspectives, values, and ways of talking of the powerful, which may not be in the interests of the less powerful. The relationship between language, power, and ideology is a crucial focus point. CDA consists of an interdisciplinary set of approaches which attempt to describe, interpret, and explain this relationship. Describing English grammar: Word classes (Verbs) VERBS: express actions or states. Action (dynamic) – verbs that show qualities capable of change: physical, mental, perceptual, social, Stative – states of being or processes in which there is no obvious action. Some verbs can have both a dynamic and a stative meaning. Lexical (verbs) – express meaning in the verb phrase and can function only as the main verb, and they carry the real-world and semantic meaning. Auxiliary (verbs) – used to construct different timescales, questions, and negatives, as well as to add emphasis or give information about the mood or attitude of a speaker/writer; they are the helping verb. Describing English grammar: Word classes (Modality) MODALS – convey a range of attitudes and mood about the likelihood and/or necessity of an event taking place. Generally divided into two groups: one to do with degrees of certainty or necessity (epistemic) and others to do with obligation or freedom to act (deontic) He must be there by now. // He must be there by tomorrow at noon. Possible meanings Ability (He can speak English almost fluently.) Intention (I think I will go to the movies tonight.) Necessity/obligation (You have to be here by 9AM.) Permission (May I go to the toilet?) Prediction (That could be Tom. He was supposed to call at this time.) Possibility (He may arrive on time.) Palmer defines modality as “semantic information associated with the speaker’s attitude or opinion about what is said”. 7 Common Proper Abstract Concrete Count vs. Non-count (uncountable) Plurals Regular Irregular Possessives Describing English grammar: word classes (ADJECTIVES) ADJECTIVES: provide extra information about nouns by giving details of physical quantities like colour and shape and of psychological qualities like emotions, and by providing evaluative judgements. Attributive Predicative GRADING Superlative Comparative Describing English grammar: word classes (ADVERBS) I ADVERBS: are difficult to define but they give information about time, place, and manner. They can modify: a) verbs b) adjectives and other adverbs c) Sentences (as linking words) disjuncts (attitude or stance adverbs) – express speakers’ attitudes, conjuncts (connecting adverbs) – like sentences Describing English grammar: Word classes (PRONOUNS) PRONOUNS Personal Object Possessive Reflexive Demonstrative Interrogative 10 Relative Indefinite Describing English grammar: Word classes (DETERMINERS) DETERMINERS: function words which are used to specify the reference of a noun, Articles Possessive Demonstrative Indefinite Numbers Cardinal Ordinal Terza lezione di linguistica inglese 22/10/21 Traditional Grammar 1 “Loose “umbrella term” covering a range of approaches to the study of language” (Coffin & O’Halloran) > focuses more on single sentences than on sentences combined into texts, Historically based on classical descriptions of Greek and Latin grammar, The main goal of creating traditional grammars was to reform and standardize language, which led to codification “official rules for grammar, orthography, pronunciation, and vocabulary”, Criticism is directed primarily at the prescriptive recommendations of authors, as opposed to the descriptive emphasis of linguistic studies. Traditional Grammar 2 Some “rules” of prescriptive English grammar: 1) Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction (and, but etc.), 2) Don’t end a sentence with a preposition: “Who did you talk to?” vs. “To whom do did you talk?”, 3) Use the predicative nominative form of the pronoun: “This is him” vs. “This is he”, 4) Avoid split infinitives: “Are you sure you want to permanently delete the files?” > “to delete permanently…” 5) That vs. which (restrictive/non-restrictive clause): “that” can also be used in non-restrictive clauses. Structural linguistics 1 Developed in the 1930s in both North America and Europe as an empirical, scientific, and objective approach to the study of language and linguistic features in terms of structures and systems, Describes languages without the preconceived notions of what a language should contain and how it should operate (prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar), 11 Language is a linguistic system made up of various subsystems: from phonological, morphological, lexical to sentences, Greater emphasis on the structural characteristics of linguistic elements: form (lexical = vs. function (grammatical) words; sound system; focus on sentence patterns (syntax) e.g. Villager | s | search | ed | the | country | side | for | many | day | s. Structural linguistics 2 Based on Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics which portrayed language as “a static system of interconnected units”, General shift from diachronic to synchronic analysis, Sign > signifier > signified Transformational Generative Grammar 1 An alternative to structural linguistics’ focus on surface forms: TGG instead analyses the deep structures of language, which underlie all human languages and are genetically programmed in the human brain. Grammar is an abstract device used for producing and understanding sentences in any and all languages (universal grammar), Sentences are labelled according to hierarchical relations between component parts, but such a tree structure does not indicate the function of a particular constituent. Example: NPI – Aux – V -NP2  NP2 – Aux + be + en – V – by+NPI (where be is a form of the verb to be, and en represents the past-participle ending of the lexical verb). The rule is said to “operate” on the first, underlying phrase-maker, converting it into a second, “derived”, phrase-marker. Transformational generative grammar 2 Generative Phonology is concerned with the development of the rules that will deal with the pronounceability of the strings “generated” by the syntactic component of the grammar. Phonology is concerned with answering the questions: a) What are the general principles underlying the pronunciation of words, phrases, and sentences? b) How far do these principles reflect the general principles underlying natural language? - Distinctive features: begun by Roman Jakobson its incorporation into generative phonology brought out the general use of distinctive feature analysis as the centre of phonological descriptions. Corpus linguistics The study of large bodies of language data with electronic software: demonstrated that native speaker intuitions about general language usage are not reliable, Corpus-based grammars provide information on the frequency of different types of language use, Languages are more patterned that previously thought, which can be seen in collocations highlighted by concordances, Allows one to compare what occurs in individual texts with a large number of texts. Systemic-functional linguistics 1 12 CDA is different from previous approaches which use discourse analysis as a means from certain groups to gain access to texts or genres. While discourse is determined by social conditions, it also reproduces and perpetuates those condition. CDA stresses the need for a close linguistic analysis of discourse-as-text in order to develop in detail the way that discourse can contribute to exploitation and marginalisation of certain groups, or discourse as discursive and social practice. CDA typically takes into consideration news texts, political discourse, advertisements, schoolbooks, “exposing strategies that appear normal or neutral, on the surface but which may in fact be ideological and see to shape the representation of events and persons for particular ends”. Multimodal critical discourse analysis 1 MULTIMODAL SOCIAL SEMIOTICS: interested in non-verbal semiotics > it is interested “not just in the means for making meaning, but in what these means are, so whether we choose to use language, images, gestures, sounds, etc”. Scholars felt that they needed the same tools to be able to study visual features that CDA allowed for the study of lexical and grammatical choices in language. MCDA is “interested in showing how images, photographs, diagrams and graphics also work to create meaning, in each case describing the choices made by the author”. Multimodal critical discourse analysis 2 “When represented participants look at the viewer, vectors, formed by participants” eyelines, connect the participants with the viewer”. Image can be considered a demand because it asks something of the viewer, “in an imaginary relationship, so they feel that their presence is acknowledged and, just as when someone addresses us in social interaction, some kind of response is required”. Demand is strengthened by the fact the represented participant is looking down on the viewer, thereby “exercising symbolic power over us”. How to read a text First read for general meaning: look up any words you do not know. Then read for understanding: look up any intertextual reference. Finally, read the text for specific features: how is stance/opinion expressed? - Verbs, - Modality, - Evaluative lexis. Quinta lezione di linguistica inglese 05/11/21 Superstructures 1 Texts have recognizable parts that are organized according to conventional patterns. NEWSPAPER REPORT = headline + by-line + journalist + (lead) + body of text - Story = the chronological sequence of episodes, - Plot = the order through which the text presents the events, 15 - Even when stories are scrambled, texts retain their cohesion and coherence by means of the tense system and other markers that indicate the time at which events take place relative a) to one another and b) to the time of writing or speaking. Superstructure 2 – Van Dijk Schematic superstructures are conventional forms that characterize a specific discourse genre. They order textual sequences of sentences and assign specific functions to such sequences. They are not directly related to words or sentences (or their meanings), since they organize higher level units such as “episodes”. Since many participants in Western culture are regularly confronted with news discourse in the press (or on television), such news articles perhaps also can be assigned a conventional superstructure. Theme and rheme 1 Clauses consist of a THEME, which establishes what the clause is about, and a RHEME, which says something about it. In English the THEME is at the beginning of the sentence, while the RHEME is everything that follows in written English we signal thematic status by putting it first, but of course it does not always correspond to the grammatical subject of a sentence. Tom likes dancing Smoking is harmful for your health Suddenly, it started to rain. Theme and rheme 2 There are various ways to bring things into focus (FRONTING DEVICES). How does the THEME change what is being implied by the speaker? Newspapers – background Newspapers differ according to geographical reach and readership: In UK there are generally “quality/elite” such as The Times and The Guardian, and “popular” such as The Sun and Daily Mirror. There is not such a division in the US, with the exception of The New York Post, which is similar to a UK tabloid. The function of newspaper language is - To inform and entertain people, - To present them with a particular ideology and interpretation of events, even in articles that might appear to be objective. Tabloids and broadsheets In the UK there is a traditional distinction between tabloids and broadsheets; the former sells many more copies. - Tabloids: The Daily Mail; The Daily Express; The Daily Mirror; The Star; The Sun, - Broadsheets: The Guardian; The Independent; The Daily Telegraph; The Times; The Financial Times. 16 The news and power structures 1A “The news stories we read or hear are structured in a certain way, following a set of reporting, writing, and editing rules that mainstream journalists by and large follow as a matter of course, rules of communicative practice that are taught explicitly in the classroom and the newsroom and reinforced implicitly through daily doing” (Coleen Cotter) The news and power structures 1B Specific constrains of newspapers affect the structure. Journalists take into consideration audience and how to interact with them - Whom to talk to, - What to talk and report about, - What is relevant to the community of coverage. This also affects the structure and language attitudes. The news and power structures 2 News is usually selected by journalists and editors, on the basis of the interests and priorities of the target readership. Journalists (and editors) decide what to leave in or leave out of the news thereby legitimating the existing power structure and ways of doing things. - News reporting reduces a complex series of events into a story, imposing a narrative order upon them, - While news stories are generally based on things that were really said or happened, journalists play an important role in representing those speech acts; importantly they can decide exactly what to include in their stories and what to exclude, - Editors also play a role in deciding what should be written/reported about. The news and power structures 3 The media, according to Fairclough, “is a predominantly establishment view of the world” and what discourse analysis aims to do is “to show how language is instrumental in constructing this view and to challenge it through deconstruction”. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) generally views media discourse from the perspective of a unidirectional flow of powerful and dominant discourses of news outlets to a compliant readership. By analysing media discourse we uncover how existing power structures are legitimized as a reflection of underlying social, economic, and ideological values. Recontextualization The news reports themselves rely on extensive recontextualization of elements taken from other texts, genres, and discourses. News texts are remediated, remixed, and transformed from one context to another. The choice of these elements is determined by the goals, values, and interests of the journalist and newspaper (text producer), This produces a sort of “layering” effect that calls on earlier events according to the priorities of the current situation. 17 Purpose > “to evaluate events, to establish the corporate view and to elicit the support and agreement of a readership – at the very lowest level, for financial or political reasons – and it uses lexis as well as structure to achieve this end”. Ideological role: - Forming and formulating public opinion, - Criticize, support, or provide advice to authorities on the other, - Traditionally used to promote a certain ideology (espoused by the newspaper) to propagate the corporate view and to induce support and agreement from its readership. Newspaper’s ideology: “clarified and re-established, reasserted in relation to troublesome events”. Function of editorials > “accusation” or “recommendation” vs. Function of news report > “assertation” Features of editorial 1 Use of certain discourse-linguistic features “to create favourable or unfavourable bias”. Four-move discourse structure: case, argument, verdict, and action. Three-move structure: initiation (situation), response (development) and follow-up (recommendation). Features of editorial 2 Linguistic features: predominance of present tense, time adverbials, discourse adjuncts (for topic introduction and contextualization), modal forms, etc. Pronouns: can establish and maintain an institutional voice of the newspaper; create closeness and solidarity with the reader, or “signal explicitly to the readers that they have switched from fact- based reporting to purely opinion writing”. Headlines 1 Headlines have three main functions, but in a limited amount of space (which explains their peculiar characteristics): - To attract potential readers, - To indicate the topic of the story (often with a small summary), - To provide the approach that will be taken to the relative event reported, in terms of tome evaluation, ideological slant, etc. Headlines 2 Some characteristics of headlines: - Geographically larger, but also different colours and fonts: - Grammatical “simplifications” as in other forms of “block language” (notices, titles, adverts, slogans, etc.) which can create a “telegraphic” effect: - Article, - Copular/auxiliary verbs, - Connective, - Possessive. Headlines 3 Lexis is relatively short and dramatic, which combine brevity with effectiveness. 20 Stylistic and rhetorical devices are used to attract and intrigue readers: - Puns and word play, - Alliteration, rhyme, or other play on sound, - Metaphor, - Proverbs, - Intertextuality, - Loaded language, - Grammatical class shift. Headlines 4 Many of these characteristics can be seen in Italian headlines, though not always to the same extent and there are some main differences: - The headlining is more elaborate in Italian consisting of a pre-headline, a headline proper and a sub-headline, - The Italian headlining system allows more room for directly quoting direct or indirect speech. Sesta lezione di linguistica inglese 12/11/21 Lead 1 Lead: opening paragraph of a news report: it is the most important part of any news story. With so many sources of information – newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and the internet – audiences simply are not willing to read beyond the first paragraph (and even sentences) of a story unless it grabs their interest. The lead provides the “micro-story” which is the gist of the issues or events. This may include the 5 Ws: - Who, - What, - Where, - When, - Why, - Plus How > How. Often written in a different font or in bold. Lead 2 Purdue University provides the following tips for writing a good lead. The Five W’s and H: before writing a lead, decide which aspect of the story – who, what, when, where, why, how – is most important. You should emphasize those aspects in your lead. Wait to explain less important aspects until the second or third sentence. Conflict: good stories have conflict. So do many good leads. Specificity: though you are summarizing information in most leads, try to be specific as possible. If your lead is too broad, it won’t be informative or interesting. Brevity: readers want to know why the story matters to them, and they won’t wait long for the answer. Leads are often one sentence, sometimes two. Generally they are 25 to 30 words and should rarely be more than 40. 21 Active sentences: strong verbs will make your lead lively and interesting. Passive constructions, on the other hand, can sound dull and leave out important information, such as the person or thing that caused the action. Incomplete reporting is often a source of passive leads. Audience and context: take into account what your reader already knows. Remember that in today’s media culture, most readers become aware of breaking news as it happens. If you’re writing for a print publication the next day, your lead should do more than merely regurgitate yesterday’s news. Honesty: a lead is an implicit promise to your readers. You must be able to deliver what you promise in your lead. Inverted pyramid Inverted-pyramid structure: the most important items of information in any newspaper report are presented first, at the top of the “pyramid”, in the various headlines, lead and in the opening sentences of the text. This structure has implications on the THEME/RHEME structure of the journalistic text. Rather than referring back to the previous sentence, clauses in the text refer back directly to the headline and lead, thus creating HYPERTHEME. Stereotyping: readers (vs. journalists) 1 Mass media communication is impersonal > both readers and speakers work with a stereotyped image of the other. Readers’ perspective: they usually know little about the journalist who wrote the article. - Highly unlikely that readers take the journalist “as a person” as the presumed “principal” of the article, - It is more likely that they identify the newspaper as the definite, or ultimate source of what they are reading, since they presumably know that journalists have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their employers, - In other words, the journalist is seen by them as merely an “institutional voice”, - Every newspaper carries with it a particular prestige or a stereotyped image. Stereotyping: journalists (vs. readers) 2 The addressee (reader) in media communication is not known: - s/he is envisaged/expected, - a considerable amount of shared knowledge, beliefs, norms, values, etc. must therefore be presupposed, - writers and readers work with stereotypes of the supposed Other, - the “stereotyped” speakers and readers stand in contrast to the actual producers and actual receivers of the message. In fact, stereotyped readers exist both in the minds of the communicators as well as in the text, i.e. they are (partly) constructed or construed through the text. It is not actual, individual readers that are addressed, but “the reader” as a social group. Linguistic forms for analysis 1 Linguistic means which are important in the presentation of people and events are presented, evaluated and, in some cases, obscured: 22 - Word order (theme/rheme): THEME is the “topic” of a particular stretch of discourse, as opposed to what is said about the topic (the RHEME). Specifically, you should be interested in certain language means used in the presentation of people and events and in their evaluation, which, in some cases, can be used to obscure them. More about theme/rheme There are several ways of defying THEMES (Topics): - We could say that the SUBJECT is also the theme, - Or we could focus on the position of the theme within a stretch of discourse, - A distinction can be made between themes at the level of discourse and at the level of clause. More about nominalization Nominalization refers to the conversion of processes into nominals (or verbs into nouns) for example: 1. Move (verb)  movement (noun), 2. Difficult (adjective)  difficulty (noun) This has the effect of backgrounding the process itself and can sometime omit the participants who are the agents in the processes. Fairclough notes that medical and scientific text favour nominalization, possibly to appear “objective”. In other cases, nominalization may be used in order to obscure blame or serve to dehumanize certain groups. Examples of transitivity Material process - Joseph is kicking a ball (transitive), - Joseph is running (intransitive). Mental process: always attributed to “human or human-like” participants who do the sensing. - I am worried by your silence. Relational process: represented as attributive or existential patterns and can be realized in three types of clauses: 1. Intensive: I am tired, 2. Circumstantial: I am in my forties, 3. Possessive: I have two children. The choice of representational clause (whether it is transitive or intransitive for material processes) for a real-life process may be ideologically or culturally significant. In addition, a consistent choice of mental processes in representation may indicate a writer/speaker’s perceptions rather than an objective account of events. More about passives and agency Agency is an important aspect of the REPRESENTATION of SOCIAL ACTORS. A grammatical agent is a participant in a situation who carries out an action. 25 Linguistic agency refers to how characters or objects are represented in relation to each other. - The policeman attacked the woman. (the policemen are the agent, while the woman is the patient). - The woman was attacked by the policeman (the agent is the still the policeman, although the subject is the woman). Passive agent deletion refers to the conversion of an active pattern to passive voice which results in the agent of the process being omitted or backgrounded. More about modality Ways of expressing possibility (epistemic modality) or necessity (deontic modality). Modality can be expressed via a set of verbs known as modal verbs, including should, would, will, could, can, may, must and shall. In addition, “semi-modals” such as have to, need to, and want to are increasingly used to express modality. Modal adverbs include perhaps, probably, necessarily, and inevitably. Aspects of modality are sometimes focused on in CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS particularly because modal verbs often highlight POWER inequalities or IDEOLOGY: - Deontic modality can be used to express authority, - Epistemic modality can construct different representations of the world. On media discourse (Fairclough) 1 According to Fairclough analysis of the language of media texts (in both broadcast and written news) can help us to understand three key things: 1. How is the world (events, relationships, etc.) represented? (REPRESENTATION), 2. What identities are set up for those involved in the program or story (reporters, audiences, “third parties” referred to or interviewed)? (IDENTITIES), 3. What relationships are set up between those involved (e.g. reporter-audience, expert-audience, or politician-audience relationships)? (RELATIONS) On media discourse (Fairclough) 2 Fairclough sees two tensions that affect contemporary media language: 1. The tension between information and entertainment, 2. The tension between public and private sphere. This has led to two different processes: 1. Public affairs are becoming more conversationalized, 2. Media language is moving increasingly in the direction of entertainment, to become more marketized (i.e. promoting a certain aspect of social life, etc.). Conversationalization Conversationalization = “A restructuring of the boundary between the public and private orders of discourse” (Fairclough). It involved the use of language that is normally associated with conversation: 26 - Colloquial vocabulary, - Use of certain accents, - Use of certain paralinguistic features, - Particular genres (e.g. conversational narrative) With conversationalization language is used to create and maintain an often-synthetic relationship between a speaker and a hearer rather than just being informational, so it involves emotional, subjective, linguistic strategies, vagueness, repetition, first- and second-person pronouns, informal terms of address, slang, swearing, humour, and irony. Bad news News deals typically with most recent events of public scale and importance. Focus is often negative: concerning war, famine, accidents, and disasters. It favours the immediate, the concrete and the personal rather than an abstract and complicated process. Ideology Ideology can be defined in two different ways: 1) “The general (and relatively neutral) sense of common beliefs, assumptions and opinions of a determinate group, 2) or “in a mor narrow sense of the specific frameworks of meaning that serve to underpin (and routinely disguise) relations of power in particular socio-historical circumstances”. Broadcast news Broadcasters use the codes (semiotics) of image, language, and symbol to organise and convey meaning. For TV visual codes are often more important than linguistic one, since the images provide messages which are not transmitted by the words: radio can use no visual codes and relies exclusively on linguistic ones. On TV body language, the use of colour or props can be symbolic, while on radio sound effects and prosodic features fulfil the same function, Broadcast news is “evanescent”. Multimodality Communication (whether through language, images, or sounds) is accomplished through a set of semiotic resources options and choices. - Such semiotic choices can signify broader sets of associations that may not be overtly specified. A choice of word or visual element might suggest kinds of identities, values, and activities: - In visual communication semiotic resources are used to communicate things that may be more difficult to express through language, since images tend not to have fixed meaning or at least the producer can always claim that it is more suggestive and open to various interpretations, 27 Language of broadcast 3 Language of broadcasting has many different functions: - To inform (documentaries, news, and discussion programmes), - To educate (educational TV and school services), - To entertain, - To persuade (advertisement). TOPICS a programme may have one or more topics, depending on its goal. TOPIC SHIFTS will be clearly marked where more than one issue is addressed and the END OF A TOPIC is also carefully organised. Language of broadcasting 4 STRUCTURE of a programme depends on what kind of programme it is. Generally, though, there will be an OPENING and a CLOSING (especially in the news programme). Some programmes use TURN-TAKING among participants. The structure of a typical news programme: a. opening signature visuals, b. opening social greeting, c. headlines: summary of the programmes main topics, d. news items: more detailed coverage of headline events; each topic will be introduced by the news reporter followed by interviews, on-the-spot reports, or comment by “experts”, e. leave-taking and closing visuals. Language of broadcasting 5 There are some differences between broadcast and newspaper headlines: - Newspaper headlines : immediate and close spatial juxtaposition of headline and story, with the newspaper headline acting as an invitation to read the story, - Broadcast headlines : there may be an interruption of several minutes between a headline and its corresponding news item; also known as trailers “projecting forward temporally into the programme, providing clues to its overall structure and providing the audience with reason to keep viewing or listening” (Montgomery, 2007). Language of broadcasting 6 The following also play an important role: PROSODIC FEATURES INTONATION PATTERNS (to reinforce word and phrase meanings, to indicate changes of attitudes and moods, to mark grammatical structures and to help to establish a rhythm by drawing attention to grammatical boundaries). - PITCH VARIATIONS (loudness), STRESS PATTERNS and PAUSES. POSTURAL SHIFTS by the news presenter. SEMIOTIC SIGNALS, such as caption replacement and shifts of visual frame (such as those entailed by switching from the news field to the news studio and from subsidiary recorded footage or live two-way to studio presentation). Conversation analysis 30 Some features we may look at specifically when analysing broadcast media: 1. How speakers decide when to speak during conversation, i.e. the rules and systematicity governing turn-taking, 2. How speaker turns can be related to each other in sequence and might be said to go together as adjacency pairs, 3. How turns are organised in their local sequential context at any given point in an interaction and the systematicity of these sequences of utterances, 4. How seemingly minor or mundane changes in placement within utterances and across turns are organized and meaningful. Decima lezione di linguistica inglese 25/02/22 CONTEXT gauge = valutare In discourse analysis it is important to understand the CONTEXT on many different levels. Van Dijk makes a distinction between local contexts and global contexts: 1. Local contexts = properties of the immediate interactional situation in which a communicative event takes place. 2. Global contexts = defined by the social, political, cultural, and historical structures in which a communicative event takes place. Wodak in her Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of CDA makes a 4-way direction: 1. Co-text = the immediate language or what is inside the text, 2. Intertextual relationship between utterances, texts, genres, and discourses, 3. Extralinguistic social/sociological variables and institutional frames (context of situation), 4. Broader socio-political and historical contexts. DISCOURSE Discourse is a representation that is part of the material world, of other social practices, or reflexive self-representation of the practice in question. Discourse can be used in two different senses: 1. (Uncountable) Language and other types of semiosis as elements of social life, 2. (Countable) Particular ways of representing the world (e.g. the political discourse of populism). ORDERS OF DISCOURSE (FAIRCLOUGH) Orders of discourse = networks of social practices in the aspects that control linguistic variability for particular areas of social life (e.g. text, discourse, genre). Text can be viewed as “the observable product of interaction” and discourse “what is spoken or written about ideas, knowledge, opinions, believes”. - Such a distinction distinguishes between the observable material of a completed product and the ongoing process of making it, - E.g. the discourse of medicine > a body of knowledge, practices and social identities that has developed historically: such discourse also “determines who has the power to define, in the social identities it bestows, that is to say, it positions people as experts or not”. 31 Genre refers to a categorization of a particular type of text or social practice, often divided into sub- genres (Fiction > historical, adventure, mystery, romance, spy): - Fairclough: different ways of (inter)acting discoursally, - Genre hybrids are created by removing particular networks of social practices and putting them in a new one (e.g. interview > celebrity interview, political interview). VERBS In any process there are three components that can be changed: - The participants involved (usually realized by noun phrases in a clause), - The process itself, which is expressed by the verb phrase, - The circumstances associated with the process, which is usually expressed by adverbial and prepositional phrases. Process > there are four main types of verbs (verbal, mental, relational, material) Th process can be constructed in different ways: active or passive constructions with possible agent deletion (e.g. he considered the proposal vs. the proposal was considered). - Any transformation in which an active agent is deleted removes a sense of specificity and precision from a clause. MODALITY Modality is used by speakers to express judgements, comments, and attitudes and also to express the degree to which a speaker or writer is committed to the claim he/she is making. Modality verbs and expressions are more common in opinionated genres (such as commentaries, op-eds, editorials) that do not just report an event (information) but also provide a judgement of that event (evaluation, comment). Modality can be epistemic (possibility and necessity with regard to knowledge or truth) or deontic (permission, obligation, or duty). REPORTED SPEECH Reported speech is a “central building of news reporting”. A news report can include elements of a press release, a quote from a source involved in the reported event or commenting on it, background information from archives. There are different ways of reporting what has been said or claimed by somebody else: - Direct reporting: the actual words used (purportedly) in quotation marks, - Strategic quotation: quotations are often used to indicate a contentious nature, - Indirect quotation: reporters provide a summary of “the content of what was said or written, not the actual words used”, - Transformed indirect quotation: no direct quotation but reporting verbs are used such as “accused”, “alleged”, “said”, “revealed”, etc, - Ostensible direct quotation: the structure entails direct speech, but it is conceptually different from direct quotations. COHESION Cohesion refers to the way that a text makes sense syntactically: 32 part of their frame some notion of the special characteristics of the self’s group. It will follow those linguistic choices of particular kinds are made”. POSITIVE & NEGATIVE FACE 1 Goffman breaks down the notion of politeness into “positive” and “negative” face: - In interpersonal communication, people pay attention to, and have to achieve a balancing act between, the positive need to be accepted as an insider and to establish “common ground” on the one hand and on the other hand the negative need to have freedom of action and not to have one’s “territory” encroached upon. - Brown and Levinson adapted Goffman’s explication of face-threatening acts (FTAs) as performed through speech acts, constructing a detailed classification of the linguistic formulations (syntactic and lexical) with speakers draw on, in order to mitigate their FTAs. - The effect of various mitigation strategies is a function of the relations of power and intimacy between speakers. POSITIVE & NEGATIVE FACE 2 Some examples of balancing positive and negative face: - A classic example in the repeated use of the first-person plural inclusive pronoun. On the other hand, such a politician will have to address negative-face risks – seeking to minimise the dangers to the freedom and security of both the collectivity and of the individuals that constitute it. - This motivation will be matched by verbal behaviour of particular kinds - simply not referring to threatening referents, for example, or referring to them obliquely or by euphemism. IMPORTANT FEATURES OF PD 1 Some important features of political language Use of euphemism or euphemizing strategies - Changing linguistic reference in order to soften or change perception of reality, - Used to legitimise or delegitimize someone or something, - “Euphemism has the cognitive effect of conceptually “blurring” or “defocusing” unwanted referents, be they objects or actions”. - Euphemism versus hyperbole, e.g. slay (hyperbole), kill (normal), murder (normal), slaughter, exterminate, collateral damage (hyperbole) vs. civilian deaths vs. massacre (hyperbole). IMPORTANT FEATURES OF PD 2A (CHILTON) Ideology can be expressed through lexical choice, accent, forms of address, etc. which always signal some political distinction: - For example: choosing to speak one language rather than another, choosing a regional accent, or accent associated with a social class, choosing words associated with particular political ideologies, choosing forms of address (and in some languages, pronouns) that express distance or solidarity. Group boundaries and bonding can be express indexically. Indexicality: “Indexical expressions” or “deictic expressions” are linguistic resources used to perform deixis – this is, to prompt the interpreter to relate the uttered indexical expression to various situational features. - Language is used and interpreted in relation to the situation in which the utterer(s) and interpreter(s) are positioned > i.e. the speaker’s and/or hearer’s relationship to their 35 interlocutor(s), to their physical location, to the point in time of the ongoing utterance, and to where they are in the ongoing discourse. IMPORTANT FEATURES OD PD 2B (CHILTON) “Indexical expressions” or “deictic expressions” are linguistic resources used to perform deixis – that is, to prompt the interpreter to relate the uttered indexical expression to various situational features. - Pronouns : for example, in political discourse the first-person plural can be used to induce interpreters to conceptualise group identity, coalitions, parties and the like, either as insiders or as outsiders, - Social indexicals arise from social structure and power relations, and not just from personal distance, - Spatial indexicals relate to political or geopolitical space, - Temporal indexicals can require one to assume a particular historical periodisation – for example, nowadays, today, or just now could require to be understood as “after the revolution”, “after the fall of the Berlin Wall”. IMPORTANT FEATURES OF PD 3 Metaphorical reasoning is common in political discourse (as in the use of other rhetorical tropes such as metonymy and synecdoche) - In cognitive terms metaphor is understood as a part of human conceptualisation and not simply a linguistic expression: a well understood source domain of experience is mapped onto more schematic ones, - For example: political concepts involving leadership and political action conceptualised by movement or journey metaphors. This is why, for example, political discourse often includes systematic expressions like coming to a crossroad, moving ahead towards a better future, overcoming obstacles on the way, not deviating from its plans, and so forth. - Use of formulaic utterances or institutionalized procedures in specific situations (Parliamentary discussions, speeches, question & answer sessions, debates, etc.) - Modal forms are used by politicians to remain vague, or frame claims for truth, confidence, trust, credibility, and legitimization: - Epistemic modality: having to do with a degree of certainty. - Deontic modality: having to do with permission and obligation, - Negation. - Use of informal language to change the tone or to stress the manner (such as an apparent closer relation between speaker and public). IMPORTANT FEATURES OF PD 4 Prominent use of pronouns to reflect personal and ideological points of view (creating closeness, distance, a sense of responsibility, group identity, coalitions, parties, etc.) - Pronouns can indicate (or obscure) collectivity and individuality, or they can be used for (positive) “self” or (negative) “other” referencing or as a way to polarize representations of in-groups an out group, - Most important pronominal distinctions are I vs. we, inclusive vs exclusive-we and us vs them. The use of I/we is marked depending on how much responsibility the speaker wants to claim: I is used “to gain the people’s allegiance” while we are often used to evade complete 36 responsibility. Third-person pronoun can be used for distance, a relation of contrast and other referencing from the so-called “deictic centre”. The naming of politicians or other social actors by linguistic means (nomination). The framing of questions to stress the availability of alternative models (in a democracy). Repetition and other rhetorical means to reinforce a message. IMPORTANT FEATURE OF PD 5 The first-person plural pronoun we (as well as its other forms) are the most complex among the pronouns and “can encompass all other personal “pronouns”. - Addressee-inclusive and -exclusive, - Speaker-inclusive and -exclusive, - Synecdochal realizations of “we” - Editorial “we”, - Modest “we” or author’s “we”, - Royal “we”, - Paternalistic “we” (doctors to patients, parents to children), - Metonymic realizations of “we”: e.g. if “we” pretends to include the speaker and perhaps also the addressee as well as third persons who are not present, - Historical “we” or historically expanding “we”, - “Person for country”. LINGUISTIC MEANS IN DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION Political DA is interested in linguistic means that serve to construct unification, unity, sameness, difference, uniqueness, origin, continuity, gradual or abrupt change, autonomy, heteronomy, etc. - Personal reference: anthroponomic generic terms, personal pronouns, quantifiers, - Spatial reference: toponyms, adverbs of place, spatial reference through people, - Temporal reference: time prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, - Vagueness in referential or other expressions, - Euphemisms, - Linguistic hesitation and disruptions, - Linguistic slips, - Allusions, - Rhetorical questions, - Mode of discourse representation. SELMA SPEECH 1 The quote is illustrative of the issues that CDA embrace when investigating PD. Dimension of power clearly reflected in dominant role of speaker – the president of United States. The quote (and the entire speech) focuses on political and cultural change among African Americans in US society over the past 50 years. This commemorative speech > an example of a discourse practice that aims SELMA SPEECH 2 37 - The persons involved in the utterance: person deixis, - The social or attitudinal relationships among utterers and interpreters: social deixis, - The place of uttering: spatial deixis, - The time of uttering: temporal deixis, - The ongoing discourse: discourse deixis. Chilton’s (2004) cognitive approach to political discourse Chilton interprets political texts as the “intersecting” of various cognitive and deictic dimensions exploited through language use. The three axes – space, time, and modality – combine to form spatial metaphors “conceptualising the speaker’s and/or hearer’s relationship to the interlocutor(s), to their physical location, to the point of time of the ongoing utterance, and to where they are in the ongoing discourse”. How these coordinates are accessed by speakers and/or hearers occurs through the (strategic) use of linguistic expressions, such as prepositions, pronouns, and modals in combination with “frame- based (cognitive) knowledge”. (Political) speeches 1 Speeches are one of the most important genres of political discourse. Many political speeches (examples of individual texts) have become famous and are often cited: - Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream, - Winston Churchill’s Blood, Sweat and Tears, - Barack Obama’s A More Perfect Union. What exactly is a speech? “A structured verbal chain of coherent speech acts uttered on a special social occasion for a special purpose by a single person and addressed to a more or less specific audience”. (Political) speeches 2 Speeches can differ from each other in many ways: - In length, - In terms of the occasion (which includes the time and place of the speech), - The main and secondary topics, - The speaker’s surface and underlying function; the identity and function of the speaker, - The addresses (target audience), - The form of presentation, - The degree of preparedness, - The speech’s style and structure, - Culture, - Political position and ideology of the speaker and the audience. Classical rhetoric Classical rhetoric distinguished among three classes of oratory: judicial, deliberative, and epideictic. Judicial rhetoric generally is focused on the past and on the themes of justice and injustice, and it is used as a way to accuse or defend something (and/or someone), Deliberative rhetoric is linked to the future and focuses on expediency or harmfulness, while exhorting or dissuading, 40 Epideictic rhetoric is tied to the present and the themes of honour and disgrace with the function of attributing praise or blame. In modern political speeches these three forms do not occur in pure form and there is generally a mixing of the three in the same speech. Speeches and the media It should be remembered that now, more than ever, political events are mediated by the mass media (and new media such as YouTube). Meanings are transferred between social practices, texts, and genres. Politicians are transformed into media personalities due to the importance of the media in reporting the events, and politics is becoming more and more staged. Speechwriters Important speeches are not, for the most part, written by the politicians themselves but by speechwriters (or ghost-writers). Their role is “(to) develop a rhetoric that reinforces the myths that assist in creating a politician’s image. Speechwriters only choose words that fit in the politician’s image and what is important is how the politician is presented”. Some features od speeches 1 The introduction of a speaker and those who are present (and not, as part of the extended audience on the mass media) at the event. Repetition (reiteration) - Three-part lists (the rule of threes), - Use of pairs of clauses with matched syntax and lexis, - Lexical repetition. Some features of speeches 2 Use of contrastive pairs and antithesis: - “The old Britain of the 1970s, with its strikes, poor productivity, low investment, winters of discontent, above all its gloom, its pessimism, its sheer defeatism – that Britain is gone” (Thatcher). Rhetorical questions: - “Just why did we win? I think it is because we knew what we stood for; we said what we stood for. And we stuck by what we stood for” (Thatcher). Some features of speeches 3 Inclusive strategies for self-presentation: - “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beached, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender” (Churchill). Exclusive strategies for other presentation. 41 Some features of speeches 4A Biblical and historical allusion - “Far be it from me to decide the sinner that repenteth. The trouble with Labour is they want the benefit of repentance without renouncing the original sin. No Way!” (Thatcher). - “Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Line anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”. (MLK). Some features of speeches 4B - “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union. Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had travelled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787”. (Barack Obama) Some features of speeches 5A Rhetorical tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, etc.) Political discourse becomes more “persuasive” when “metaphors interact with other linguistic features to legitimise policies”; and “metaphor can provide a conceptual structure for a systematized ideology that is expressed in many texts and much talk. It provides contextual coherence… (and) intracontextual coherence”. (Chilton & Schaffner, 2001) “Synecdoche metonymy and personification or metaphor are employed to create sameness between people and are primarily used in connection with constructive discourse strategies”; metonymy may hide responsible agents or move them to the background; personification gives a human form to an abstract entity, etc. (Wodak et al., 2009) LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor (CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY): - “The road to victory may not be so long as we expect. But we have no right to count upon this. Be it long or short, rough, or smooth, we mean to reach out journey’s end”. (Winston Churchill) Personification: - “The atrocities in New York and Washington were the work of evil men. Men who distorted and dishonoured the message of one of the world’s great religions and civilisations. Their aim was to stimulate militant fundamentalism; to separate the United States from its allies; and to bring our way of life and our economics to their knees.” (Tony Blair) Cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) Lakoff and Johnson > Metaphor treated as basic mechanism of the mind rather than purely linguistic or (rhetorical) literary phenomenon. (Metaphors We Live By, 1980); “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”. 42 - The illness may be the effect of disease-carrying and -spreading agents, e.g. “parasites” that live off the state’s body until it is destroyed and “decomposed”. A nation state is a human body 2 What is relevant in this analysis from a CDA viewpoint is the argumentative advantage that the metaphor gives users when they want to (dis-) qualify political developments, social groups or even individuals as threatening the identity or continued existence of a nation state. - Instead of laboriously having to demonstrate and support their claims with facts, which could be critically tested and challenged, the speaker/writer invites the hearer/reader to accesso knowledge about the undesirability of illness and the necessity for therapy by referring to generally known illness and agents of disease. - The respective conceptual item also carries social, emotional, and aesthetic values that influence the interpretation of the utterance. A nation is a family (Lakoff) 1 In Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t, George Lakoff analyses the worldviews underlying political thinking in the United States. - In his view, the conceptual metaphor of the family stands at the centre of a system of conceptualizations of society in the US politics. The general metaphor looks like the following: - A community is a family, - Moral authority is parental authority, - An authority figure is a parent, - Moral behaviour by someone subject to authority is obedience, - Moral behaviour by someone in authority is setting standards and enforcing them. A nation is a family (Lakoff) 2 The family metaphor of Morality is not an isolated concept > it is systematically connected to other concepts such as, for instance, WELL-BEING IS WEALTH, MORAL ACTION IS GIVING SOMETHING OF POSITIVE VALUE, IMMORAL ACTION IS GIVING SOMETHING OF NEGATIVE VALUE. When applied to the “target” concept of the nation state, this system of source concepts provides a frame of reference that “allow us to reason about the nation on the basis of what we know about a family”, based on the (metaphorical) equations “THE NATION IS A FAMILY, THE GOVERNMENT IS A PARENT, THE CITIZENS ARE THE CHILDREN”. A nation is a family (Lakoff) 3 2 versions of the NATION-AS-FAMILY metaphor in US political discourse show that the same source domain can be employed to argue opposite political positions. The conservative and liberal sub-communities of the US public use one central element of the source domain family in particular – i-e- that of the parent-child relationship – to advance, buttress and defend contrasting worldviews, belief systems and attitudes. Thus, while the basic metaphor THE STATE IS A FAMILY is the same for both sides, the political and social conclusion drawn from this mapping are diametrically opposed to each other and are complemented by fitting sub-concepts – that is, the STRICT FATHER and the NURTURANT PARENTS models. 45 Dodicesima lezione di linguistica inglese 11/03/22 Language of politics 3 Example 3: GW Bush on Saddam Hussein’s capture “May God bless America” = recontextualization/relocation. “The war on terror” = terror is more abstract. “A swift raid conducted with no casualties” = deagentivization “Good afternoon. Yesterday, December the 13th” = temporal reference “A dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived” = comparison between dark and light Bush mentions Saddam Hussein only three times like he wants to take distances from him. “Torture chambers and the secret police” = metonymy Bush tries to mark a new beginning. Iraq is not an enemy anymore, most of the Iraqi’s are America’s friends. “And I congratulate ‘em” = down shifting Quattordicesima lezione di linguistica inglese 25/03/22 Conceptual metaphor in political discourse analysis: strict father vs. nurturant parent Political discourse Linguistic forms employed to frame political messages, ideology, and moral world-views. As in other fields of political actions, candidates make use of various rhetorical “appeals” and stylistic devices such as metaphor and metonymy. Other linguistic forms used strategically in interactive genres such as debates: Pronouns (which can also be used metaphorically), Terms of address and personal reference, Modals, Lexis. Treating illness as war Health metaphors seen as a powerful means of encouraging concern and action by invoking universal experiences of health and illness. Source Domain = war // Target domain = illness, treatment, medicine > virus. - THE DISEASE IS AN ENEMY - INFECTION IS AN ATTACK BY DISEASE - MEDICINE IS A WEAPON - WINNING THE CURE IS BEING CURED OF THE DISEASE This can be combined with the NATION AS A PERSON METAPHOR > A NATION IS A BODY THAT MUST BE PROTECTED FROM DISEASE/INFECTION Strict father modality 46 Strict father (SF) model shapes the conservative worldview (for US). Based on notion that a child should never be coddled so that the development of certain morals (or virtues) is encouraged by a strict authoritarian parent: self-discipline, self-reliance, and respect for legitimate authority. A child raised in such an environment will naturally become self-reliant later in life. Natural disdain for meddling parents (=government) who assert their authority when they have no business doing so. Strong belief that the rich should have moral authority over the poor. The American Dream myth: “America is truly a land of opportunity whereby anyone with self- discipline and can, through hard work, climb the ladder of success” (Lakoff 2002). Strict father morality 2 In a well-ordered world there should be a moral hierarchy: - God above Man, - Man above Nature, - The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), - The Rich above the Poor, - Employers above Employees, - Adults above Children, - Western culture above other cultures, - American above other countries. Strict father morality 3 Lakoff has recently proposed a split among different types of conservatives: - (1) white Evangelical Christians: God is ultimate strict father, - (2) laissez-faire free market conservatives: not only shaped by the political power of the white evangelical churches but also by the power of those who seek free markets where wealthy people and corporations set market rules in their favour with minimal government regulation, - (3) pragmatic conservatives (who are not bound by evangelical beliefs): they want to be strict fathers in their own domains, with authority primarily over their own lives. Nurturant parent morality Nurturant Parent model shapes the liberal (or progressive) worldview. Moral values very different from SF model. Model strongly based on basis childhood experiences of being cared for and cared about by a nurturant emphatic parent. A child grows (or is nurtured) through interaction and care, thereby instilling a strong sense of empathy for others and potential for achievement and enjoyment. Empathy is viewed metaphorically as “the capacity to project your consciousness into other people so that you can feel what they fell” (Lakoff 2002). Children raised according to such a model develop a strong sense of community and, consequently, feel responsibility for those members of the community who need held (Lakoff 2002). 47 - Little direct interaction between the two candidate and with audience, - Topics, questions, and times always predetermined, - Highly regulated by two campaign teams and Committee for Presidential Debates (Myers 2008). Considerations 1: conceptual metaphors “JTP” is recontextualized according to different worldviews: For McCain: “JTP” is a metaphor for all working-class Americans trying to realize the American Dream. - “JTP” represents all small business owners and “millions of others like him”, who are self- disciplined and hard-working. - Obama is a meddling parent who, immorally, wants to take JTP’s money away through taxation by “spreading the wealth around”, thus keeping “JTP” from realizing che American Dream. Considerations 2: conceptual metaphors For Obama: “JTP” naturally fits within his all-encompassing vision of America. - “JTP” is the same as others (“The plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the entrepreneur” vs. McCain’s “small businesses”): particularizing synecdoches serve a “levelling” function (Reisigl 2006), which allows Obama to extend his message of unity to everyone, - Anyone who needs help deserves it and should be helped but not without first making “some difficult choices,” which is an “investment” for the future. Conclusions “Joe the Plumber” was recontextualized by McCain and, consequently, recontextualized by Obama to represent two fundamentally different moral views of American politics. In the turns dealing with Joe in the debate the differences between how the SF and NP morality models conceptualize MORALITY AS FAIRNESS come to the forefront. Strategic use of pronouns, terms of address and personal reference combine to further underline these differences as well as to frame the candidates’ individual (political) messages and moral worldviews. Future research should concentrate on the use of conceptual metaphors in the entire debate (as well as the other two debates) to establish how conceptual metaphors are used to reflect the two models. Considerations 3: pronominal use Pronouns used strategically by both candidates to frame and legitimize their political message and moral worldview (in their presentation of “JTP”): McCain uses pronouns more strategically (and more deliberately) than Obama. Both 3rd person and 2nd person pronouns use for both distance and negative other-presenting (vs. Obama) and closeness and positive self-presenting (vs. “JTP” and the audience). Pronominal choice highly tied to terms of address and personal reference, which allow McCain to distance himself further from Obama (Sen. Obama, he, You) and create more closeness to Joe (Joe, my friend, my old buddy). 50 Considerations 4: strategic use of pronouns Obama use of pronouns seems to fit with his general use of pronouns in the debates and his campaign speeches: He tends to use 1st person PI over Sg pronoun: positive self, and other, presenting within an overall empathy-building message of unity (Boyd 2009; Suleiman & O’ Connell 2008). 2nd person you is used to both legitimize and (re)contextualize: to frame his original exchange with the real Joe; to recontextualize McCain’s Joe discourse and to directly address an extended (all- encompassing) Joe group. 3rd person Sg pronouns are often having a plural (or collective) meaning McCain: “Of course, I’ve talked to people like Joe the plumber and tell him that I’m not going to spread his wealth around”. News, power, and misinformation 1 “Through its power to shape issue agendas and public discourse it (the news) can reinforce beliefs; it can shape people’s opinions not only of the world but also of their place and role in the world; or, if not shape your opinions on a particular matter; it can at the very least influence what you have opinions on; in sum, it can help shape social reality by shaping our views of social reality.” (Richardson 2007). News, power, and misinformation 2 In right-wing populism there is a prevalence of collective stereotypes as part of populist rhetoric; this can lead to the creation of an enemy through scapegoating. Furthermore, in such populist discourse “racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism reinforce each other and converge into one exclusionary nativism belief system” (Wodak 2015). Fake news 1 Fake news is “the deliberate presentation of (typically) false or misleading claims as news, where the claims are misleading by design” (Gelfert 2018). McIntyre (2018) argues that fake news may be part of certain political leaders’ agenda to establish an authoritarian rule by inducing a target population to believe that they have “authority over the truth itself”. Cognitive biases may explain why people are reluctant to discard beliefs when confronted with evidence that goes against them, because they tend to avoid inner disharmony induced by beliefs at odds with the beliefs they already entertain (“cognitive dissonance) or because they prefer their beliefs to accord with those by their peers (“social conformity”). Fake news 2 Fake news can actually refer to one or more of ten types of “misleading news” which differ in terms of their motivation and impact: - Propaganda, clickbait, sponsored content, satire and hoax, error, partisan, conspiracy, theory, pseudoscience, misinformation, and bogus (Steinberg 2017). - Three of these types of fake news (namely, propaganda, partisan, and conspiracy theory news) from a special cluster of propagandistic news: they display an affective dimension and involve power relations in a way that the other types of fake news do not. Propaganda 1 51 Walton (2007) defines propaganda as the concerted effort of a social group “to get an audience to support the aims, interests, and policies of a particular group, by securing the compliance of the audience with the actions being contemplated, undertaken, or advocated by the group”. Propaganda unfolds as communicative discourse which involves a proponent, or participant who initiates communication by disseminating propagandistic information, and a respondent or the participant who receives that information. The respondent, however, does not have to be just a passive receiver of proponent’s messages. Propaganda 2A “Vertical” propaganda refers to the effort of a higher-order entity (such as a State or organization) to subvert an existing government, political enemies within the same country or system, or external foes, by influencing public opinion (e.g. German Nazi or Soviet Russian propaganda). “Horizontal” propaganda involves individuals who interact as peers within small groups; it aims to secure their voluntary “conscious adherence” to the group ideals by engaging then “in a genuine and lively dialogue”. It is in this process of mutual exchange that an individual can “gradually discover how own convictions (which also will be those of the group)” (Ellul 1973). Through repeated distribution of “deliberately falsified” information, horizontal propaganda ensures that all the members of the group ultimately discover “the correct line, the anticipated solution, the “proper” convictions”. Propaganda 2B Examples of “vertical” propagandistic uses of fake news in cases of reputation smearing: - Khaldarova & Pantti (2016) discuss the propaganda war Russian agencies have waged against Ukraine, especially after the 2014 Ukrainian elections. They note that fake news has been used strategically as “propaganda entertainment (kompromat), a combination of scandalous material, blame and denunciations, dramatic music and misleading images taken out of context”. - Oates (2017) explores the kompromat phenomenon in more detail in the context of Russian agencies’ use of social media during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Propaganda 3 An active respondent is central to “horizontal” propaganda because conversation is the indispensable medium through which alone the individual can acquire the beliefs, develop the attitudes, or engage in the actions the propagandist desires. Communication acts involving fake news stories display a similar structure: - On one hand, there is an author, writing under a real name or a pen name, and usually affiliated with a media outlet, - On the other hand, we have an intended (or ideal) audience that is supposed to interact with the author’s messages and develop a certain reaction or response. Propaganda 4 Given the current affordances of social media, the audiences’ reactions or responses are readily available to the propagandist and can be decoded in terms of acceptance and rejection, as well as excitement, surprise, sadness, or anger. 52 Often there is no reference in a text as to the language in which an interview, speech, etc. was actually conducted, a source text then may be a language that is not the original. “Once produced, translations as texts lead a life of their own, and are the basis on which people acquire information and knowledge”. Schaffner notes that the selection of information in a news text that has been translated or interpreted “whether due to lack of linguistic competence or to carelessness, nevertheless, fits into a traditional way of reporting about” a certain people or culture (she is speaking about Germany as reported in the UK press that “seems to reveal deep-seated perceptions and stereotypes about the Germans”. PDA and translation 4 Fairclough and Wodak (1997) see the main goal of CDA as that of making the “ideological loading of particular ways of using language and the relations of power which underlie them” more visible. - In CDA, this is usually done on the basis of discourse in one language and one culture. - In the case of translation, however, textual features, ideological contexts, and underlying relations of power apply both to the source text and culture and to the target text and culture. CDA and interpreting 1 Lexicalization = “the act of putting into words the concepts that we use to refer to particular entities”. Overlexicalization is the proliferation of lexical items that refer to a specific actor or object; according to Fairclough it is an indication of a preoccupation with a particular concept in discourse. Political stance/ideology can be seen in the use of “positive and negative labels” which are used “to indicate positioning and classification” of a certain group or agent. Bakhtin’s “multivoiceness”: centripetal (towards the centre, unitary or authoritative) vs. centrifugal (towards the periphery, hetereoglossic or hybrid) forces in discourse > according to Beaton-Thome, this can be applied to multilingual institutional settings. Interested in how Guantanamo detainees are lexicalised in the English and German versions of European Parliament debates, exploring “the impact the simultaneous interpreter has on negotiating ideological positioning via lexicalisation” > “how particular potentially controversial lexical items are perpetuated and contested via simultaneous interpretation”. CDA and interpreting 2 Beaton-Thome discusses out-group positioning in the English version of a EP debate: “in the use of the determiner “these” particularly in the collocations “these people”, “these individuals”, and “these suspects” (… which creates) a distancing effect by allocating the detainees (at Guantanamo) outsider status and underlining the us/them dichotomy”. The basic good/bad evaluative dichotomy conveyed by the use of negative and positive labels comes out when speakers employ qualifying adjectives in defining group membership and to serve rhetorical ends: - On the one hand, they have a legitimising and softening function and are “used by those speakers who wish to imply that the group under discussing is a group that never should have been labelled as detainees, prisoners, and inmates in the first place”. 55 - On the other hand, there is also the use of qualifying labels such as some detainees and low- risk Guantanamo detainees “to indicate that particular subgroups within these groups could potentially qualify for resettlement”. Russia- Ukraine war 2022 – background Ukraine became a sovereign state on 16 September 1991. Before that it was part of the URSS (fully from 1921) and part of the Warsaw Pact (in opposition to NATO). In 1999 & 2004 NATO expanded to include former Eastern Bloc/Warsaw Pact countries. Putin claims that Russian and Ukraine are one nation, and that modern Ukraine is a product of Russia. Twitter 1 Like many other social network sites, Twitter allows members to create an account and the communicate with other members of the site via short updates (known as “tweets”) or through private messages (known as “Direct Messages”). Twitter is a means of microblogging “clearly a highly social activity involving communicative practices in which conversational reciprocity is central” (Zappavigna). Microbloggers as individuals do not necessarily have to interact directly in order to align around a common value. Instead they may signal alignments indirectly by displaying particular patterns of evaluation, or they can do so directly through resources such as hashtags that are used to signal the evaluative target of a post. Twitter 2 Microblogging posts are limited to 280 characters, and they are posted on a platform in which posts can easily be missed by an intended audience. “Users therefore have to dram on existing resources in new ways or develop new resources such as the hashtag. In addition, meanings that might otherwise be expressed paralinguistically must be expressed via other means, such as through the use of punctuation or capitals”. Twitter is distinct from many other contemporary social networks sites in two ways: - The default for Twitter communication is public; although you must be a member of Twitter to post content, anyone with access can view the content available in Twitter’s public timeline. - The relationship between a Twitter updater and their followers is non-reciprocal. In other words, if member A chooses to follow member B, there is no guarantee that member B will follow member A in return. Sedicesima lezione di linguistica inglese 08/04/22 Ukraine War: full Sky News interview with Vladimir Putin’s spokesman The interviewer doesn’t mention about special military operations in Ukraine made by Russia. Peskov doesn’t say directly that it is a war. Everything that happened in Ukraine was directed to Russia. Russia lost a significant troupe. The interviewer is saying that Peskov is lying, but he isn’t saying it directly. Language of political institutions Definition of institutional discourse 56 A social institution is an apparatus of verbal interaction or an “order of discourse”. Each institution has its own set of speech events, its own differentiated settings and scenes, its cast of participants, and its own norms for their combination. It is, I suggest, necessary to see the institution as simultaneously facilitating and constraining the social action of its members: it provides them with a frame for action, without which they could not act, but it thereby constrains them to act within that frame. (Fairclough, 1995). Language of political institution 1 Institutions can be seen as “conventions that are self-policing”. - Historical accretions of past practices and understandings that set conditions on action through the way in which they gradually acquire the moral and ontological (i.e. “showing the relations between the concepts and categories in a subject area or domain) status of taken-for-granted facts which, in turn, shape future interactions and negotiations. What differentiates institutions from other social entities that are constituted in discourse are the self-regulating, socially constructed mechanisms that enforce their application. POLITICAL INSTITUTION TEXTS fulfil different functions according to different political activities related to the political world: political activities, political ideas, political relations, etc. Each political text is embedded in a wider political discourse (INTERTEXTUALITY) and can display different degrees of CULTURE-BOUNDEDNESS. Some texts reflect in a specific way the social context and the historic period of their production (e.g. policy statements of a particular government, or of a particular political institution). Language of political institutions 2 Some texts are multilingual but equally authoritative: such as documents of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, EU, NATO, UN, etc. which reflect specific production conditions and internationalization process (as do all EU texts). In UN there are six official languages (EN, FR, SP, Chinese, Arabic, Russian). In multilingual political institution, translation tends to reinforce the “standard” national languages, together with the dominance of English as both a national language (of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, etc.) but as and international lingua franca (ELF). English has remained the lingua franca of the European Union. Language of political institution 3 The kinds of (national) language used in these institutions is limited by the subject matter and/or register, genre. Language and communication are absolutely crucial to our understanding of the public sphere. However, in the public sphere in general the use of language (and understanding it) determines who is “in” and who is “out”: inclusion and exclusion. Language of political institutions: EU In the European Union: before 2000 English and French were used as drafting languages almost equally > since 2004 enlargement use of English has grown significantly: today, it is the EU institutional lingua franca. 57 Ideally, terms should be defined analytically, fixing their meaning in a hermetic way in relation to all other associated terms. The creation of a legal new system in the EU has also led to the coining of new terminology to express original concepts of the EU; there is an attempt to maintain neutrality to avoid terms that are “closely associated with the content of the legal order of any one Member State”. (Mattila 2006). EU lexis The most common ways of adopting terminology can be seen in these two examples: 1. Acquis communataire, from French and referring to the body of EU law. 2. Principle of subsidiarity. Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level. The institutions of the Union shall apply the principle of subsidiarity as laid down in the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. National Parliaments ensure compliance with the principle of subsidiarity in accordance with the procedure set out in that Protocol. Discourse features of EU language 1 a. Impersonal forms impersonal subject it often used, and absence of agent can give the idea that obligations are anonymously imposed from above: A person domiciled in a Member State may also be sued: I, where he is one of a number of defendants, in the courts for the place where any one of them is domiciled, provided the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgements resulting from separate proceedings. Discourse features of EU language 2 b. Negative constructions use of negative constructions can sometimes be unnecessary and make the message difficult to understand: Without prejudice to any more favourable provisions of national laws, persons domiciled in a Member State who are being prosecuted in the criminal courts of another Member State of which they are not nationals for an offence which was not intentionally committed may be defended by persons qualified to do so, even if they do not appear in person. However, the court seized of the matter may order appearance in person; in the case of failure to appear a judgement given in the civil action without the person concerned having the opportunity to arrange for his defence need not be recognised or enforced in the other Member States. Discourse features of EU language 3 c. Standardized formulas EU legal texts have a conservative structure and are composed of standardized parts and formulaic utterances: 1. document title and publication date. 60 2. name of enacting institution 3. “citation” formula (Having regard to) which refers to treaties, conventions, etc. and give document a sound legal basis. 4. “Recital” providing general motivations on which legal act is grounded. 5. Formulaic predicate depending on the specific type of document. 6. Chapters, articles, paragraphs. Discourse features of EU language 4 d. Nominalization Use of nouns instead of verbs to express actions such as, e.g. promote > promotion; develop > development. This can allow for an easier flow of information: This programme shall contribute to the promotion of a Europe of knowledge through the development of the European dimension in education and training. (…) it is necessary and appropriate that the rules governing jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgements be governed by a Community legal instrument which is binding and directly applicable. Discourse features of EU language 5 e. Complex syntactic structure with a high incidence of parataxis and hypotaxis: The distortion of competition within the internal market due to imbalances with regard to the functioning of the procedural means afforded to creditors in different Members States entails the need for Community legislation that guarantees a level playing field for creditors and debtors throughout the European Union. This Regulation shall apply, in cross-border cases, to civil and commercial matters, whatever the nature of the court or tribunal where the value of a claim does not exceed EUR 2000 at the time when the claim form is received by the court or tribunal with jurisdiction, excluding all interest, expenses and disbursements. Diciassettesima lezione di linguistica inglese 22/04/22 Language of the law case law = giurisprudenza Jurisprudence = the philosophy of law Legal language: introduction 1 Sentence = condanna judgement = sentenza “Language is medium, process and product in the various arenas of the law where legal texts, spoken or written, are generated in the service of regulating social behaviour” (Maley 1994). “Modern legal English is a set of linguistic features (mainly lexical in nature) that are superimposed on everyday speech” (Tiersma 1999). “Because the law relies on interpretation of language, the standards by which words are interpreted are inevitably different for the legal profession and the lay public, and it is inevitable that judge and jury will use language differently. People interpret discourse according to their own conventions, and it is therefore very likely that the jury are not always able to suspend their common-sense interpretations of language in ways the court may require of them” (Stubbs 1996). Legal language: introduction 2 A country’s legal system may create confusion among non-experts due its hermetic nature. Such uncertainty can be even greater when substantially different legal systems are being discussed. 61 - “The scrupulous attention paid to making sure that legal text is hermetic and unambiguous is one of the main reasons for its seemingly impenetrable, syntactically complex nature, full of apparent redundancy” (Taylor 1998). “Legal discourse is different from most other professional discourses, in that the nature of its interpretation process, whether spoken or written, is very much dependent on the context in which it is likely to be applicable. In most professional and disciplinary contexts interpretation of discourse is larger hearer, or reader-based, in that there is some freedom for variable interpretation, of course, with some relevance to the context in which it has been used, but interpretation of legal discourse is most often based on its relevance and hence application to critical moments in specific “sites of engagement” (Scollon 1998), and is often irrespective of the participants involved, and every effort is made to ensure consistency of interpretation” (Bhatia 2010). Common law 1 (U)nderstanding differences and subtleties between the legal tradition of the English-speaking world and, in the European context, of Continental law, which constitutes the basis of legal practices in many countries of the EU, has become a necessary practice, which involves unravelling the differences between their legal genres, as products of very different law traditions (Ort Llopis 2009). Common law 2 Because of its peculiar history, apparently identical terms in English law can refer to totally divergent concepts in continental Europe: “A legal culture is inseparable from a national mentality and acts on the model citizens have of behaviour in society” (Villez 2010). - The distinction between English legal discourse and ordinary English discourse is greater than that between Italian legal language and ordinary Italian, so balancing of registers is more complex than in e.g. scientific text (Taylor). Common Law is founded on a system of case law or judicial precedent. The key features include a case-based system of law that functions through analogical reasoning and a hierarchical doctrine of precedent. - Civil Law “is marked by a tendency to use abstract legal norms, to have well-articulated systems containing defined areas of law, and to think up and to think in juristic constructions (Zweigert and Kots 1992). The underlying difference between the Anglo-American Common Law vs. continental Civil Law is that of fact patterns vs. legal principles. Legal language: Stubbs Legal professionals (practitioners) play an important role as do lay public (in interpreting legal discourse). The jury often lacks much of the knowledge required to fully understand what is being said by both the judge and the lawyers who are arguing the case: but need to understand what is being discussed by legal practitioners, who include the judge and legal counsel. - “Standards” determined and defined by the system of law within which legal language is used, be it the Anglo-American common law system or the continental European tradition of civil law > “Each society has different cultural, social and linguistic structures developed separately according to its own conditioning” (Cao 2007). What defines legal language 62 6. Proper names, 7. Jargon Some features of legal language 1A Lexis I: subject specific lexis Tort = a body of rights, obligations and remedies that is applied by the courts in civil proceedings to provide relief for persons who have suffered harm from the wrongful acts of others. The person who sustains injury or suffers pecuniary damage as a result of tortious conduct is known as the plaintiff, and the person who is responsible for inflicting the injury and incurs liability for the damage is known as the defendant or tortfeasor. Alibi Bail = the temporary release of an accused person awaiting trial, sometimes on condition that a sum of money is lodged to guarantee their appearance in court; money paid or for someone in order to secure their release on bail. Some features of legal language 1B Lexis I: subject specific lexis Relief = compensation for a wrong, Harm = any harm done to a person by the acts or omissions of another. Injury may include physical hurt as well as damage to reputation or dignity, loss of a legal right, or breach of contract. Injury = physical hurt as well as damage to reputation or dignity, loss of a legal right or breach of contract. If the arty causing the injury was either wilful (intentionally causing harm) or negligent then he/she is responsible for payment of damages for the harm caused. Some features of legal language 3 Lexis I: ordinary words which have a different meaning according to the specific legal context (Legal homonyms). - Damage(s) = (damages) a sum of money claimed or awarded in compensation for a loss or an injury, - Malice = wrongful intention, especially as increasing the guilt of certain offences, - Valid = legally binding due to having been executed in compliance with the law. Some features of legal language 4 Lexis: interpersonal metafunction/ repetition Legal language is generally not concerned with the creation of mood (or the interpersonal metafunction) nor with the description or evaluation of information so pre-modifiers are rarely used except when they provide exact information: Tiersma’s operative and expository text typologies; in persuasive text types we can find the interpersonal metafunction. Lexical repetition is often used, especially in operative texts such as contracts (in contrast to pro- forms) to avoid any chance of ambiguity. Some features of legal language 5B Lexis adverbials 65 Many genres in legal English use compound prepositions and adverbs, such as “herein” (which means “in this document” or “mentioned here”), “hereby” (“by this document) or “thereafter” (“after that, in the future”). Some adverbial combinations with here and there: - Hereby, herein, hereof, heretofore, hereunder, herewith, - Thereafter, therefore, thereinafter thereinbefore, thereinunder, thereof, thereto, theretofore, therewith. Some features of legal language 6A Lexis suffix pairs and terms used exclusively in legal English Suffix pairing -or/-ee Terms used exclusively or predominantly, within a legal context. Some features of legal language 6B Lexis binomials/trinomials Frequent use of twinned terms (or binomials and even trinomials), reflecting the influence of both French and Latin on the legal system and the need to be all-inclusive. Some features of legal language 7 Lexis: binomials (binomials) appropriate and proper: deem and consider; due and owing; final and conclusive; liens and encumbrances; null and void. - An encumbrance (also spelled incumbrance) is any right or interest that exist in someone other than the owner of an estate and that restricts or impairs the transfer of the estate or lowers its value. This might include and Easement, a lien, a mortgage, a mechanic’s lien, or accrued and unpaid taxes. (trinomials) give, devise, and bequeath; name, constitute and appoint. Some features of legal language 8 Lexis: Latinisms Latin (and mixed Latin) terms - Actus, reus; writ of certoriati, habeas corpus; mens rea; res giudicata; ultra vires; onus probandi, - Divorce a viculo matrimonii; divorce a mensa et thoro; donation inter vivos; trial de novo; res ipsa longitur rule of evidence; residium rule; super sedeas. Some features of legal language 9 Lexis: UK/US differences Culture-bound legal terminology Some features of legal language 10 Grammar Common use of conditional clauses: if/should/where 66 Present (Present Perfect) tenses used often Use of shall for obligations of law: “Upon receipt of any order by the agent for goods the said agent shall immediately transmit the above mentioned order to the principal…” Passive voice: “If the Insured Vehicle has been owned by one owner only since the date of its first registration as new…” Complex prepositional phrases: for the purpose of, in respect of, in pursuance of. Some features of legal language 11 Syntax/Discourse Subordinate clauses almost universal: sentence structure usually complex, compound or compound- complex: strings of dependent clauses are used to provide precise information about the legal conditions attached to each transaction, whether it is life insurance, a will, or a property sale. Formal paragraph organization. Formulaic expressions to link discourse. Some features of legal language 12 Punctuation, typography, and layout Typographical features are designed to draw attention to key elements in the text. Capital letters. Punctuation used sparingly: less use of commas (to avoid ambiguity), more use of colons, semi- colons, numbers and spacing. Language of courts 1 The spoken legal language of the courts follows complex rules and the whole setting is “special”: Setting: - Judges are dressed in a special way, - The room is set up in a special way, - The parties are arranged in a special way. Interaction/speaking are governed by “special” rules: - Witnesses are not allowed to say what other people have said, - They are not allowed to evaluate, - They cannot show emotions, etc., - All contributors must only respond directly to questions. Language of courts 2 Lawyers are advised to vary the way they ask questions in order to draw more from witnesses and to use different questioning approaches for different kinds of people. Repetition can be used (but not overused) as a rhetorical device. Rhythm, pitch, and pace are also important if the jury are to be persuaded to agree with the particular interpretation of events put forward. Language of courts 3 67