Politics, Text and Ideology

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Vilnius University

Politics, Text and Ideology What is implied by the use of language?

Vilnius 2014

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

REVIEWERS: Dr. Aušra Janulienė, University of Vilnius Dr. Jurga Cibulskienė, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences

© Liudmila Arcimavičienė, 2014 © Vilnius University, 2014 ISBN 978-609-459-332-1

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Contents Introduction..............................................................................................................................................4 1

The Relationship of Language and Culture...........................................................................................5

2

Language as a Social Practice................................................................................................................16

3

Language and Politics.............................................................................................................................24

4

Language and Ideology..........................................................................................................................31

5

Language and Metaphor........................................................................................................................47

6

Metaphor in Politics................................................................................................................................53

7

Metaphor in Media Political Discourse.................................................................................................62

8

A Case Study of Spy Swap of 2010.........................................................................................................67

9

The Language of Slogans and Posters...................................................................................................73 Concluding Remarks...............................................................................................................................78 References................................................................................................................................................79

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Introduction These teaching materials are about the interrelatedness of politics, text and ideology, written for anyone looking for a brief and accessible guide to the analysis of language use, as related to current social and political matters. It provides the key statements and illustrations that are needed to place politics and ideology in the context of analysing language in the framework of cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. It is deliberately short and makes no claims to being wholly academic. If it can help the readers better appreciate the key mechanisms and concepts of textual analysis in politics, dispel some of the myths that language is just a symbolic use of expressions and politics is above the use of language, it will have succeeded with its mission. As particularly interested in language analysis, I have tried to make sure that all the key dimensions of language use and its implied ideological meaning are covered, from the use of verbs to nominals and pronouns (pragmatic level), word order (syntactic level) and metaphors (semantic level). All these are supplemented by activities that will hopefully contribute to the overall perception of language as a social act determining power relations in society, especially in politics and media. The book Politics, Text and Ideology: what is implied by the use of language intends to help advanced language learners enrich their knowledge of power relations in media and political discourse, it is meant for undergraduate students of Political Science as well as those interested in analysing language as discourse. In this book, I analyse the role language plays in shaping social and political realities. I shortly overview the concept of language, and its cultural and social dimensions (section 1 and section 2). In the following section, I discuss how inseparable language and politics are (section 3). I then examine how the implied ideological meaning can be discerned through language use (section 4). In the following sections, I describe a cognitive approach to metaphor (section 5) and varieties of metaphor in politics (section 6) and media political discourse (section 7). The practical illustration of the provided arguments is given in sections (8) and (9), where two case studies of the US-Russia spy swap of 2010 and Conservative and Labour posters of general elections of 2014 are analysed. Finally, I conclude with some summary remarks.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Section 1: Language and Culture In this section, you will: 

Discuss the concepts of language and culture, and their inter-relatedness.



Analyse different approaches to the interrelatedness of language and culture.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Language



Culture and cultural reality



Community



Language users



Cognition

2. Discuss these questions. 

How many languages do you speak?



Does language affect your thinking?



How is language related to culture? Give reasons for your answer.

What is language? How can we define it? Primarily, we should refer to language as the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives. When it is used in a communicative context, it is linked to culture in the multitude of complex ways. According to Claire Kramsch (1998), there are three major interpretative meanings of languages, as provided below. 

(1) Language expresses cultural reality.



(2) Language embodies cultural reality.



(3) Language symbolizes cultural reality.

The first argument of language expressing cultural reality can be illustrated by the common use of language. The language that we use expresses facts, ideas or events referring to a stock of knowledge about the world that we share. Beside, our language reflects our own attitudes and beliefs. However, by using language we do not only express reality, we create experience through language. This idea is developed by Kramsch‘s second argument. For example, when we speak on the phone, write a blog, send an e-mail, the meaning is created that is understandable to our interlocutors. The experience of writing an e-mail has certain characteristic features of style, i.e. shortened words, fragmental sentences etc. Finally, language has a cultural value. We identify 5

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 ourselves and others through the use of language; thus we view language as a symbol of our social identity and we can say that language symbolizes cultural reality. By all three arguments the central idea of the interrelatedness of language and culture is emphasized. To clarify their close relationship, let us consider the following poem by Emily Dickinson, one of the most prominent American poet.

Reading 1 3. Read the following poem below and comments on its meaning.

Emily Dickinson (1924) Part IV. Time and Eternity LXV Essential Oils—are wrung— The Attar from the Rose Be not expressed by Suns—alone— It is the gift of Screws—

The General Rose—decay— But this—in Lady's Drawer Make Summer—When the Lady lie In Ceaseless Rosemary—

Discussion 4. Discuss the following questions below. 

The poem expresses the relationship of nature, culture and language, how is it manifested, i.e. pay attention to the words in bold?



What do rose, screws and attar symbolize?



How does the poem demonstrate that nature and culture are interdependent?

Comments The Emily Dickinson poem has served to illuminate several aspects of culture:  Culture is always the result of human intervention in the biological processes of nature. 

Culture both liberates and constrains. It liberates by providing meaning, order and rationality to the randomness of nature. Nevertheless, it constrains by imposing a 6

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 structural order on nature and by thus limiting the range of meanings created by individuals. 

Give examples from everyday life to illustrate the above statements.

The way at looking at culture and its relationship to language raises a fundamental question: does language shape our thought? If yes, to what extent?

Reading 2 

As related to the above analysis, consider another famous poem by Emily Dickinson and discuss the implied meaning of the underlined expressions.

Emily Dickinson (1924) Part 1: Life

LXXXIX A WORD is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day [My underline]. 

What kind of metaphor is evoked in the poem? How is it related to the relationship of language and culture?

The above examples have shown that language is seen as a complex faculty inseparable from people‘s thinking, their life and their traditions. In the world of science, this relationship has also been acknowledged and widely discussed. There is a theory dealing with the issue of language and thought relatedness. It is known under the heading of linguistic relativity. Philologists and linguists have been interested in the diversity of language and their meanings since the eighteenth century. The notion of the indissociability of language and culture promoted by German scholars Johann Herder (1744 - 1803) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1762 - 1835), partially as a reaction to the French political and military hegemony of the time. These scholars raised the argument that people speak differently as they think differently, and they think differently as their language offers them different ways of expressing the world.

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Reading 3 5. Read the text below and answer the questions that follow. The text has been adapted from Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (My bolding and underline) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html). THE LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY HYPOTHESIS

Many linguists contend that language in the sense we ordinary think of it, in the sense that people in Lithuania speak Lithuanian, or Germany speak German, is a historical or social or political notion, rather than a scientific one. For example, German and Dutch are much closer to one another than various dialects of Chinese are. But the rough, commonsense divisions between languages will suffice for our purposes. There are around 5000 languages in use today, and each is quite different from many of the others. Differences are especially pronounced between languages of different families, e.g., between IndoEuropean languages like English and Hindi and Ancient Greek, on the one hand, and non-IndoEuropean languages like Hopi and Chinese and Swahili, on the other. Many thinkers have urged that large differences in language lead to large differences in experience and thought. They hold that each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways. This view is sometimes called the Whorf-hypothesis or the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, after the linguists who made it famous. But the label linguistic relativity, which is more common today, has the advantage that makes it easier to separate the hypothesis from the details of Whorf's views, which are an endless subject of exegetical dispute (Gumperz and Levinson, 1996, contains a sampling of recent literature on the hypothesis). The suggestion that different languages carve the world up in different ways, and that as a result their speakers think about it differently has a certain appeal. But questions about the extent and kind of impact that language has on thought are empirical questions that can only be settled by empirical investigation. And although linguistic relativism is perhaps the most popular version of descriptive relativism, the conviction and passion of partisans on both sides of the issue far outrun the available evidence. As usual in discussions of relativism, it is important to resist all-or-none thinking. The key question is whether there are interesting and defensible versions of linguistic relativism between those that are trivially true (the Babylonians didn't have a counterpart of the word ‗telephone‘, so they didn't think about telephones) and those that are dramatic but almost certainly false (those who speak different languages see the world in completely different ways). A PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS

Interesting versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis embody two claims: (1) Linguistic Diversity: Languages, especially members of quite different language families, differ in important ways from one another. (2) Linguistic Influence on Thought: The structure and lexicon of one's language influences how one perceives and conceptualizes the world, and they do so in a systematic way. Together these two claims suggest that speakers of quite different languages think about the world in quite different ways. There is a clear sense in which the thesis of linguistic diversity is uncontroversial. Even if all human languages share many underlying, abstract linguistic universals, 8

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 there are often large differences in their syntactic structures and in their lexicons. The second claim is more controversial, but since linguistic forces could shape thought in varying degrees, it comes in more and less plausible forms. SAPIR AND WHORF

It will help to see why the linguistic relativity hypothesis captivated so many thinkers if we briefly consider the more arresting claims of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Sapir was an American anthropological linguist who, like so many anthropologists of his day, was a student of Franz Boas. He was also the teacher of Whorf, a businessman and amateur linguist. Unlike earlier partisans of linguistic relativism, Sapir and Whorf based their claims on first-hand experience of the cultures and languages they described, which gave their accounts a good deal of immediacy. I will quote a few of the purpler passages to convey the flavor of their claims, for this was partly what galvanized the imagination of so many readers. SAPIR In a paper published in 1929 Sapir tells us: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection (1929, p. 209). Our language affects how we perceive things: Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose. …We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (p. 210). But the differences don't end with perception: The fact of the matter is that the „real world‟ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same worlds with different labels attached (p. 209). WHORF The linguistic relativity hypothesis grained its widest audience through the work of Benjamin Lee Whorf, whose collected writings became something of a relativistic manifesto. Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been. When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, ―Standard Average European‖ or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews. Thus We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. …The relativity of all conceptual

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 systems, ours included, and their dependence upon language stand revealed (1956, p. 214, italics added). We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds (p. 213). …no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free (p. 214). In fairness it must be stressed that these passages come from a single essay, ―Science and Linguistics,‖ of 1940, and in other places Whorf's tone is often more measured. But not always; elsewhere he also says thing like …users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world (1956, p. 221). And in yet a third essay ―facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them‖ (1956, p. 235). The passages from Sapir and Whorf bristle with metaphors of coercion: our thought is ―at the mercy‖ of our language, it is ―constrained‖ by it; no one is free to describe the world in a neutral way; we are ―compelled‖ to read certain features into the world (p. 262). The view that language completely determines how we think is often called linguistic determinism. THE MANY VERSIONS OF LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM

Any serious discussion of the linguistic relativity hypothesis requires us to answer three questions 1. 2. 3.

WHICH ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE INFLUENCE WHICH ASPECTS OF THOUGHT IN SOME SYSTEMATIC WAY? WHAT FORM DOES THAT INFLUENCE TAKE? HOW STRONG IS THAT INFLUENCE?

For example, certain features of syntax or of the lexicon might exert a causal influence on certain aspects of visual perception (e.g., on which colours we can discriminate), classification (e.g., on how we sort things by their colour), or long-term memory (e.g., on which differences among colours we remember most accurately) in clearly specifiable ways. If there is such an influence we would also like to know what mechanisms mediate it, but until we have clearer answers to the first three questions, we are not well positioned to answer this. Human languages are flexible and extensible, so most things that can be said in one can be approximated in another; if nothing else, words and phrases can be borrowed (Schadenfreude, je ne sais quoi). But what is easy to say in one language may be harder to say in a second, and this may make it easier or more natural or more common for speakers of the first language to think in a certain way than for speakers of the second language to do so. LANGUAGE

Various aspects of language might affect cognition. GRAMMAR Languages can differ in their grammar or syntax. To take a simple example, typical word order may vary. In English, the common order is subject, verb, object. In Japanese it is subject, object, verb. In Welsh, verb, subject, object. Languages can differ in whether they make a distinction between intransitive verbs and adjectives. And there are many subtler sorts of grammatical difference as well. It should be noted that grammar here does not mean the prescriptive grammar we learned in grammar school, but the syntactic structure of a language; in this sense, a grammar comprises a set of rules (or some equivalent device) that can generate all and only the sentences of a given language. 10

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Lexicon Different languages have different lexicons (vocabularies), but the important point here is that the lexicons of different languages may classify things in different ways. For example, the color lexicons of some languages segment the color spectrum at different places. Semantics Different languages have different semantic features (over and above differences in lexical semantics) Metaphor Different languages employ different metaphors or employ them in different ways. Pragmatics It is increasingly clear that context plays a vital role in the use and understanding of language, and it is possible that differences in the way speakers of different languages use their languages in concrete settings affects their mental life. THOUGHT Language might influence many different aspects of thought. Most empirical work has focused, appropriately enough, on those aspects that are easiest to assess without relying on language. This is important, since we otherwise risk finding influences of one aspect of language on some related aspect of language, rather than on some aspect of thought. Commonly studied cognitive variables include perceptual discrimination, availability in memory, and classification.

Multiple choice 6. Which of these statements best describes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? A. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis raises the argument of universal grammatical structures and universal thinking patterns. B. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis makes the claim that the structure of the language one habitually uses influence the manner in which one thinks and behaves. C. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis recognizes that language is sometimes affected by cultural experiences, though it is a universal faculty. D. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis emphasizes the importance of language in developing cultural preoccupations.

Discussion 7. Discuss these questions. 

Does the fact that people speak different languages account for the idea that they think differently?



When you learn a foreign language, does it mean that you learn a new pattern of thinking? 11

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 

What is the difference between linguistic determinism and linguistic relativism?

Language and Culture: a case study of birthday wishes In modern approach to language, it is assumed that knowledge acquired by people has experiential, social and cultural bases (see Lakoff & Johnson 1999). Thus, we cannot separate knowledge from the speakers who share it by conflating their physical, social and cultural experiences. Although such cognitive perception to the acquisition of knowledge has been initiated in the times of Ancient Greece, it has been particularly emphasized by the British associanistic philosophers (see James 2005). British associanistic philosophers, also known as empiricists, believed that human experiences throughout life are critical in forming mental associations that define and structure beliefs and understandings of life (James 2005: 23). This assumption has been undertaken by the modern theories of psychology. Cognitive psychologists reject consequence-based explanations of behaviour. Instead, they believe that human organisms learn information processing, mental representations, predictions and expectations through cognitive events (Blumenthal 2001: 63). In the view of cognitive science, the concept cognitive events is associated with human cognition or mind (see Lakoff & Johnson 1999). According to cognitivists, human mind is inseparable from bodily experience (Boroditsky 2000; Boroditsky & Ramscar 2002; Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Johnson 1993). It is argued that human mind crucially depends on sensori-motor apparatus, which enable people to perceive, move and manipulate the environment. Thus, the interaction of human body and mind provides people with ―the mostly unconscious basis of their metaphysics or understanding of life‖ (Lakoff & Johnson 1999: 112). These arguments lead to a number of practical implications, while analysing relations of language, thought and culture as follows. 

Human possibility for conceptualization and categorization (i.e. thinking) is shaped by human bodies;



Concepts and categories established in our brains reflect our perceptions of social reality as shaped by human bodies;



Most of human conceptualization is metaphorical, as it is based on the conflation of experiences (i.e. physical, social, cultural).

To apply this kind of knowledge into practice, let us consider birthday wishes in the American, British and Lithuanian cultures. First, let us clarify the concept, what are birthday 12

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 wishes about? Generally, birthday wishes are associated with positive expressions of desires or feelings towards the person celebrating his/her birthday. As the conceptual domain of feelings of desires is abstract, we should expect to come across various metaphors structuring these categories. More importantly, when we analyse birthday wishes, we also learn about cultural expectations of happiness or desires directed towards another person, celebrating his/her birthday.

Analysis 8. Read the following English birthday wishes below and decide what kinds of metaphor are associated with the underlined expressions. Source: Birthdaywishes.eu 

A birthday wish Sent just for you. Will fill a day With love, its true!



May this special day you share Will be filled with joy and laughter, And may all the year, my dear, Be a very happy after!

Source: Sayingimages.com 

Your birthday is a special time to celebrate the gift of ‗you‘ to the world.



I wish you to celebrate all the wonderful things that make you so special, not just on your special day, but on every day of the year!

Questions 9. Answer the following question below. 

What kinds of metaphor are evoked by the underlined expressions?



What is the key message of the wishes above?

10. Read the translated into English Lithuanian birthday wishes, and compare them to their English counterparts (the original follows the English translation and is provided in brackets). Is there any difference in how the central message is conveyed? Consider the underlined expressions in terms of their metaphorical meaning. Source: Mintys.lt 

Let it happiness shine brightly in the world! (lt: tegul šviečia vien laimė pasauly) 13

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Let it be light to the upmost (lt: Tegul būna be galo šviesu) Happy birthday! (lt: Su gimtadieniu!) 

Go to meet the sun of life, take your smile and happiness along (lt: Eik gyvenimo saulės sutikti, neški šypseną, laimę kartu.) Let nobody dare trample what was dear in your dreams. (lt: Tegul niekas nedrįsta sutrypti kas svajonėse buvo brangu)

Source: Sveikinimaitau.lt 

Let wishes come true, (lt: Te pildosi norai) For the heart to love, (lt: Kad širdis mylėtų) For the dreams not to calm down, (lt: Kad svajonės nenurimtų) For the years not to haste, (lt: Kad metai neskubėtų) For the lips to speak gently, (lt: Švelnumas lūpomis kalbėtų,) For the hatred to be silent! (lt: O neapykanta tylėtų!) Happy Birthday! (lt: Su gimtadieniu!)

Discussion 11. As based on the analysis of the birthday wishes above, let us discuss the following questions below.  

What is the major difference between English birthday wishes and Lithuanian birthday wishes? How can these examples account for the interrelatedness of language, cognition and culture?

Comments The analysis of birthday wishes can help us realize the cultural significance of birthdays in a particular culture. The examples above have demonstrated that birthdays as cultural acts are perceived differently in the English- (British or American) and Lithuanian- speaking cultures. One of the major differences can be detected through the use of the metaphor. English birthday wishes are based on the PERSON IS A VALUE metaphor, i.e. on one‘s birthday a person‘s value is celebrated and that person‘s significance in other people‘s lives (e.g. you are special, what a gift you are). By contrast, the Lithuanian birthday poems are not centred upon the person celebrating one‘s birthday, they are more abstract in that sense and based on the metaphor of LIFE IS A GIFT (e.g. celebrate life, life is a special gift). Thus, it can be presumed that the Anglo-Saxon culture is more anthropocentric in its perspective of happiness, while in the Lithuanian culture birthday wishes are less personalityoriented and more directed towards other aspects of life such as passing time, moments in life etc. 14

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 This could imply that personality cult is more developed and vividly expressed in Anglo-Saxon cultures, while people in Lithuania are more critical in that sense thus less motivational. However, the trend of personality cult also has some negative consequences. One of them is related to high expectations of success and achievement from a person.

Discussion 12. Discuss with your partner the following questions, as provided below. 

What kinds of birthday wishes are popular in your culture?



Which birthday wishes do you find more meaningful: American / British or Lithuanian? Give reasons for your answer.



What kind of language is used in birthday greetings of you culture?

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Section 2. Language as a Social Practice In this section, you will:  Discuss the concept of language and its use.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Language



Society



Accuracy



Political language



Doublespeak



Power



Negative meaning vs. positive meaning

2. Discuss these questions. 

What kind of language do politicians use in your country?



How important is the use of language in politics?



How do you react to the language you cannot understand?



What is more important language or actions? Give reasons for your answer?

3. Make as many collocations connected with the use of language as you can by combining words and phrases from box A with those from box B. A linguistically political speed create lack political social cognitive linguistic carefully designed build

B power relations correctness future perceptions complex discourse accuracy practice code communication processes

4. Complete the following sentences with collocations from Exercise 3. 16

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(1) Language is not just a symbolic code used for individual purposes, it is a socially conditioned act and process that ________________________and ___________________of what is right or wrong. (2) _____________________ can be defined as the language used by politicians or about politics. (3) Politicians using a lot of ________________ are generally blamed for lying to their voters. (4) One way we use ______________________in our daily lives is with learning. Learning is not just something we do in school or in formal settings. We learn every day. Sometimes our very survival depends on how well we can learn. (5) Today, many teachers are facing a problem of teaching in culturally and ________________ classrooms. The term ‗language‘ has been used in different senses. The classical understanding of language distinguished by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1986) is known as the distinction between langue and parole. Langue is understood a system or code shared by all the members of a language community; thus, it can be viewed as a social side of a language. By contrast, parole is determined by individual choices; thus, it is seen as an individual side of a language. Consider the following Figure 1 below (ULR: http://lmdresources.wordpress.com/2013/04/):

Figure 1: The Classical Language distinction

However, today this approach to language is seen as unsatisfactory and incomplete. A famous British discourse analyst and the founder of critical discourse analysis (CDA) Norman Fairclough refers to the langue-parole distinction as too individualistic thus lacking its social importance. Fairclough proposes to focus on the social functions of language, and how power can be exercised through language. He emphasizes the importance of language use that is ―socially determined‖ (2001: 18). This means that at present we are expected to view language as a cognitive process that expresses power relations and contributes to social changes. To illustrate this statement let us

consider

the

following

posters

as

provided

over

page

https://iams.pbworks.com/w/page/26489139/B4%201970s%20Convery;

(Image Image

1. 2.

URL: URL:

http://becomempowered.wordpress.com/feminism-is-for-everybody/ ): 17

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Image 1 (Gettyimages.com)

Image 2 (Carolinethorpe.co.uk)

In Image 1 we can see a group of women participating in the Second-wave feminists‘ march during the Women‘s Liberation parade in 1970. The woman in front holds a poster with the following words: ―Free the female body from pain and inequality‖. These words are not mere symbolic representations but an expression of a social act and determination, which have contributed to creating the reality of a modern woman -

free access to education, equal pay for their jobs and

other benefits. Thus, Image 1 shows how words or language participate in creating a new social reality and shaping power relations (i.e. more power to women). However, today the words ‗feminist or feminism‘ are associated with a negative expression of femininity or a ‗dirty word‘, as in Image 2. Consider Image 2 above, in which Kate Nash, a popular British singer, songwriter, musician and actress opposes the negative meaning of feminism as widely spread among modern people. This is another example, how words and certain acts appropriately change over time in terms of their emotional and moral value. Let us take another example illustrating the social meaning of language use. In linguistics, this phenomenon is referred to as inflated language, while in politics it is known under the label of ‗doublespeak‘. These are the cases of the use of carefully designed and constructed communication. Some people believe that such language use is the product of sloppy and careless thinking; however, in reality, it is a strategically purposeful means of communication aiming to mislead. Consider Table 1 below, and try to explain what the highlighted expressions might mean, e.g.:

Activity 5. What do the highlighted expressions in Table 1 over page mean? Comment on their meaning.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Table 1: The World of Doublespeak  



Professions automotive internists members of the vertical transportation corps career associate scanning professionals

       

Objects & Activities involuntary conversion of property a career alternative enhancement programme a negative patient care outcome a home plaque removal instrument nutritional avoidance therapy energetic disassembly wooden interdental stimulators frame-supported tension structures





Other The airplanes have uncontrolled contact with the ground. President Reagan was in a nondecision making form.

6. Discuss with your partner the questions as follow. 

What do these expressions mean?



What is your reaction to such complex use of language?



Do you feel more secure or insecure when you come across such communicative acts?

The use of the doublespeak can be defined as a social act communicating the complexity and overemphatic importance of a certain issue. It appears to communicate, but in fact it misleads. Frequently, such language use is oriented towards displaying power relations in a community. More powerful community members use complex expressions to address less powerful agents with the purpose to display their overt ‗expertise‘ and control over a situation.

Reading 1 7. Look at these phrases. Discuss your interpretation of their meaning with another student.      

Incomplete success Real counterfeit diamonds Genuine imitation leather Economically non-affluent people Non-decision making form Energetic disassembly 19

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 8. Read the article and comment on the highlighted words and expressions [my bolding], which people might use in doublespeak (William Lutz, 2001).

The Dangers of Doublespeak Double speak is not the product of carelessness or sloppy thinking. lndeed, most of the doublespeak is the product of cleat thinking and is carefully designed and constructed to appear to communicate when in fact it doesn‘t. It is language designed to distort reality and corrupt thought... ln the world created by doublespeak, if it‘s not a tax increase but rather revenue enhancement or tax base broadening, how can you complain about higher taxes? Ii it's not acid rain, but rather poorly buffered precipitation, how can you worry about all those dead trees? If that isn't the Mafia in Atlantic City, but just members of a career-offender cartel, why worry about the influence of organized crime in the city? If Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist wasn't addicted to the pain-killing drug his doctor prescribed, but instead that was just that the drug had "established an interrelationship with the body, such that if the drug is removed precipitously, there is a reaction," you needn't question that his decisions might have been influenced by his drug addiction. If it's not a Titan II nuclear "armed intercontinental ballistic missile with a warhead 630 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but instead, according to air force colonel Frank Horton, it's just a "very large, potentially disruptive re-entry system," why be concerned about the threat of nuclear destruction? Why worry about the neutron bomb escalating the arms race if it's just a radiation enhancement weapon? If it isn‘t an invasion, but a rescue mission or a predawn vertical insertion, you won't need to think about any violations of US or international law. Doublespeak has become so common in everyday living that many people fail to notice it. Even worse, when they do notice doublespeak being used on them, they don‘t react they don't protest. Do you protest when you are asked to check your packages at the desk for your convenience, when it is not for your convenience but for someone else's? You see advertisements for "genuine imitation leather," "virgin vinyl," or "real counterfeit diamonds," but do you question the language or the supposed quality of the product? Do you question politicians who don't speak of slums or ghettos but of the "inner city" or "substandard housing" where the "disadvantaged" live and thus avoid talking about the poor who have to live in filthy, poorly heated, ramshackle apartments or houses? Aren't you amazed that patients don‘t die in the hospital anymore, it's just "negative patient-care outcome"? Doublespeak such as that noted earlier that defines cab drivers as "urban transportation specialists", elevator operators as members of the "vertical transportation corps," and automobile mechanics as "automotive internists" can be considered humorous and relatively harmless. However, when a fire in a nuclear reactor building is called "rapid oxidation," an explosion in a nuclear plant is called an "energetic disassembly," the illegal overthrow of a legitimate government is termed 20

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 "destabilizing a government," and lies are seen as "inoperative statements," we are hearing doublespeak that attempts to avoid responsibility and make the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, something unpleasant appear attractive; and which seems to communicate but doesn't. It is language designed to alter our perception of reality and corrupt our thinking. Such language doesn‘t provide us with the tools we need to develop, advance, and preserve our culture and our civilization. Such language breeds suspicion, cynicism, distrust and, ultimately, hostility. Doublespeak is insidious because it can infect and eventually destroy the 21 function of language, which is communication between people and social groups. This corruption of the function of language can have serious and far-reaching consequences. We live in a country that depends upon an informed electorate to make decisions in selecting candidates for office and deciding issues of public policy. The use of doublespeak can become so pervasive that it becomes the coin of the political realm, with speakers and listeners convince that they really understand such language. After a while we may really believe that politicians don't lie but only "misspeak" that illegal acts are merely "inappropriate actions," that fraud and criminal conspiracy are just "miscertification." President Jimmy Carter in April of 1980 could call the aborted raid to free the American hostages in Teheran an "incomplete success" and really believe that he had made a statement that clearly communicated with the American public, So, too, could President Ronald Reagan say in 1985 that "ultimately our security and our hopes for success at the arms reduction talks hinge on the determination that we show here to continue our program to rebuild and refortify our defences" and really believe that greatly increasing the amount of money spent building new weapons would lead to a reduction in the number of weapons in the world. If we really believe that we understand such language and that such language communicates and promotes clear thought, then the world of 1984, with its control of reality through language, is upon us.

Questions 9. Provide answers to the following questions as based on the text.  What is Lutz‘s THESIS? How is it supported? 

What, according to the writer, are the dangers of doublespeak?



Can you determine from his essay who Lutz believes is responsible for the proliferation of doublespeak? Whose responsibility is it to curtail the use of doublespeak: just those who use it? The schools? The government? The media? We, who hear it?

Writing 10. Write an essay, as based on the article, by incorporating your own ideas on the following topic below. In your opinion should government intervene in regulating the use of language and curtail doublespeak? 21

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience. Write at least 250 words. To summarize the above examples, it should be emphasized that language is not just a symbolic code used for individual purposes, it is a socially conditioned act and process that builds power relations and creates future perceptions of what is right or wrong. This kind of perception requires a broader term for language and this is discourse. In modern language studies, known as Discourse Analysis, language as a social practice is referred to as discourse. To get a closer look at how the discursive functions of language are interpreted, let us consider the following excerpt from Fairclough‘s book ‗Language and Power‘ (2001: 18-19).

Reading 2 11. Read the following excerpt below and give your comments on the highlighted phrases. Paragraph A I have glossed the discourse view of language as „language as a form of social practice‟. What precisely does this imply? Firstly, that language is a part of society, and not somehow external to it. Secondly, that language is a social process. And thirdly, that language is a socially conditioned process, conditioned that is by other (non-linguistic) parts of society, I shall discuss these in turn. Paragraph B It is not uncommon for textbook on language to have sections on the relationship „between‟ language and society, as if these were two independent entities which just happen to come into contact occasionally. My view is that there is not an external relationship „between‟ language and society, but an internal and dialectical relationship. Language is a part of society; linguistic phenomena are social phenomena of a special sort, and social phenomena are (in part) linguistic phenomena. Paragraph C Linguistic phenomena are social in the sense that whenever people speak or listen or write or read, they do so in ways which are determined socially and have social effects. Even when people are most conscious of their own individuality and think themselves to be most cut off from social influences - „in the bosom of the family‟, they will still use language in ways which are subject to social conventions. And the ways in which people use language in their most intimate and private encounters are not only socially determined by the social relationships of the family, they also have 22

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 social effects in the sense of helping to maintain (or, indeed, change) those relationships. Paragraph D Social phenomena are linguistic, on the other hand, in the sense that the language activity which goes on in social contexts (as all language activity does) is not merely a reflection or expression of social processes and practices. For example, disputes about the meaning of political expressions are a constant and familiar aspect of politics. People sometimes explicitly argue about the meanings of words like democracy, nationalism, imperialism, socialism, liberation, or terrorism. More often, they use the words in more or less pointedly different and incompatible ways – examples are easy to find in exchanges between leaders of political parties, or between, say, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. Such disputes are sometimes seen as merely preliminaries to or outgrowths from the real processes and practices of politics. What I am suggesting is that they are not: they are politics. Politics partly consists of disputes and struggles which occur in language and over language. [My bolding]

Discussion 12. As based on the extracts, answer the following questions below:  How does the author define language?  What is implied by the definition?  What kind of relationship is between language and society?  How does the author support his argument of ―linguistic phenomena as social‖?  How does the author support his argument of ―social phenomena as linguistic‖?  What is politics, in the author‘s view?

Vocabulary 13. Find words and expressions in the passage above which mean the same as the following.  discourse (paragraph A)  processes determined by living community (paragraph A)  language experience (paragraph B)  interrelatedness of language and society (paragraph B)  he use of language influences us socially (paragraph C)  arguments about the meaning of words (paragraph D)  social settings (paragraph D)  used linguistically (paragraph D) In the following section, the relations between language and politics will be examined.

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Section 3. Language and Politics Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Language of the powerful



Power and class relations



Hidden power



Freedom



Human rights

Discussion 2. Discuss these questions. Politics as an abstract concept can be defined in a variety of ways. Yet, politics cannot be separated from disputes and struggles that occur in language and over language. Before we analyse the concept of politics, and how it is related to language, let us discuss the following questions below: 

How is language used by those who wish to gain power?



How is language used by those who want to exercise power?



How is language used by those who wish to keep power?

As implied by the questions, language is perceived as one of the primary tools to gain, exercise or keep power in politics. Thus, language and its use are actually politics. Let us analyse the origins of the word ‗politics‘ as follows. The complexity of the concept ‗politics‘ can be traced in its origins. Originally, the word ‗politician‘ (from ‗politic‘ modelled on Aristotle‘s ‗politika‘ ―affairs of state,‖) was first used in 1520s usually in a derogatory sense; while in 1630s the word ‗politician‘ acquired a more positive meaning. For centuries, this word has been used in two different ways: (1) a broader and more positive meaning referring to ―a person involved in the affairs of one‘s state‖ or (2) a narrower and more negative meaning – ―a person serving one‘s own interests‖.

3. Discuss with your partner how politics is perceived in the following excerpts below. 

Shakespeare‘s Henry IV, Part 1 (what Hotspur says of his opponent Bolingbroke), available from URL: www.shakespeare.mit.edu/1henryiv/full.html, e.g.: ―I am whipt and scourg‟d with rods Nettled and stung with pismires [ants], when I hear Of this vile politician.‖ [My bolding] 24

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4



The French president Georges Pompidou‘s (1962) definition of a politician, available from URL: (www.quotes-motivational-inspirational.blogspot.com), e.g.: “A statesman is a politician who places himself at the head of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.‖ [My bolding]



George Orwell‘s in his essay Politics and the English Language (1946) discusses politics as follows: ―All issues are political issues. Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.‖

Both Shakespeare and Orwell use the word ‗politician‘ negatively; while the French president evokes a positive meaning of this word. This can be explained by their experience of politics. Both Shakespeare and Orwell are writers who expressed their view about politics from the perspective of citizens and artists; while George Orwell, as a politician himself, refers to politics from the perspective of an inside participant (i.e. he is a member of the group that he characterizes) and discloses a positive image of politics. In discourse analysis, these concepts are known under the headings of Negative Other Representation vs. Positive Self Representation (Van Dijk 2011). Hence, it can be argued that the concept of ‗politics‘ can evoke both positive and negative meanings, which are related to perspectives, experiences and power relations. In modern society, besides politicians, who are directly involved in exercising power, there is another powerful instrument of keeping power and shaping ideas in society – mass media, which is defined as hidden power (Fairclough 2001, 2005), consider the following image below and make your comments to it:

Image 3 (Cloud.lib.wfu.edu)

This image illustrates what is argued by Fairclough in the following statement below: ―Producers exercise power over consumers in that they have sole producing rights and can determine what is included and excluded, 25

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 how events are represented, and even the subject position of their audiences.‖ [My bolding] (2001: 42) Fairclough discusses media relations with the audience by using the COMMERCE metaphor: media sources produce information, while the audience consumes it. This is how public manipulation and opinion formation are practised in the media. Even more, as noted by Fairclough, the hidden power of the media is language related, as certain interpretations and ‗wordings‘ of events are favoured, while excluding others. Finally, the perspectives offered by the British media support the ideology of the ‗power-holders‘ (2001: 43). To illustrate, let us analyse a few excerpts from the British, the US and the Russian major news agencies on the topic of Ukraine crisis of 2014, and compare how the same issue is described by different news sources.

Reading 4. Read the excerpts below and answer the following questions. 

Compare how the crisis in Ukraine is referred to in the tittles of each excerpt. What are the difference or similarities, if any?



Compare the highlighted phrases in the first sentence of each excerpt. What are the differences or similarities, if any?



How are the two sides of the conflict referred to (Russia vs. Ukraine)?



How is the information sequenced (Who? What? When? How? Where? Why?)

CNN News, 2014 March 1 Russian upper house approves use of military force in Ukraine By Tom Watkins. Laura Smith-Spark and Ingrid Formanek March 1, 2014

Simferopol, Ukraine (CNN) – Russia‘s upper house of Parliament voted unanimously Saturday to approve sending Russian military forces into Ukraine, amid mounting tensions in the country‘s Crimea region and in defiance of warnings from Western powers. The vote followed a request from President Vladimir Putin for approval to send troops into Crimea to normalize the political situation there. Putin cited the ―extraordinary situation in Ukraine‖ in making his request, adding that the lives of Russian citizens and military personnel based in the southern Crimea region had been threatened. Ukraine‘s new government condemned the move.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 ―We perceive Russia‘s actions as direct aggression towards the sovereignty of Ukraine,‖ said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov on the Twitter account of his Fatherland party. BBC News, 2014 March 1 Russian parliament approves troop deployment in Ukraine Russia‘s upper house of parliament has approved President Putin‘s request for Russian forces to be used in Ukraine. He had asked that Russian forces be used ―until the normalisation of the political situation in the country‖. Russia‘s Black Sea Fleet is based in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, where many ethnic Russians live. Ukraine‘s acting President Olexander Turchynov said he had put the army on full alert but urged people to remain calm. In a televised address, he asked Ukrainians to bridge divisions in the country and said they must not fall for provocations. RIA Novosti, 2014 March 1 Russian Parliament Approves Military Action in Ukraine Topic: Turbulence in Ukraine MOSCOW, March 1 (RIA Novosti)

Russia‘s upper house of parliament unanimously approved a request from President Vladimir Putin on Saturday to deploy military forces in Ukraine in a move that could escalate a confrontation in the Crimean peninsula. Putin issued his request in response to what he said was a threat to the lives of Russian citizens and military forces located in naval bases in Ukraine‘s southern peninsula of Crimea. All 90 Senators present in the 116-member Federation Council voted in support of armed action. Ukraine‘s interim President Oleksandr Turchynov told US Secretary of State Kerry that he considered Russia‘s conduct a ―direction act of aggression against the sovereignty of Ukraine.‖

Comments The analysis of the excerpts above clearly shows another problem encountered in media and politics – the problem of a true perspective. In other words, what is the truth? Or can we know what is truth and what is false? Many politicians complain about the bias in the media, while the readership complains about politicised media and false politicians‘ arguments. At this point, the quote of the famous British philosopher A. J. Ayer known for his promotion of logical positivism could help to shed more light on the problem of truth. According to Ayer, ―the terms true and false connote 27

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 nothing, but function simply as marks of assertion and denial‖ (Wilks and Colin 2002). Thus, it can be assumed that truth is both relative and subjective, as it is based on person‘s account of events in a certain context. As a result, the same action or event can be worded and interpreted differently, e.g. the Ukraine crisis in the Russian, British and the American news agencies. As related to the crisis in Ukraine of 2014, let us take a look and analyse the statements of the Ukraine and Russia‘s ambassadors to the UN during the emergency meeting of the UN security council on March 1, 2014 (available from Un.org).

Reading 5. Read and comment on the use of the highlighted expressions in the excerpts below. Statements YURIY SERGEYEV (Ukraine) said the situation in his country continued to deteriorate. A few hours ago the Upper House of the Russian Federation‟s Parliament had authorized the use of force against Ukraine, but the troops were already there and their numbers were increasing, he noted. That constituted an act of aggression, posing a serious threat to Ukraine’s integrity and to peace and stability in the whole region. He said the Russian Federation had rejected bilateral talks under the treaty of 1997, and had also violated the United Nations Charter. Facing the announced military intervention, Ukraine called on the Security Council to do everything possible to stop the aggression. He called for international monitors to observe the situation and urged all Member States to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Ukraine who were being brutally violated by a permanent member of the Security Council. VITALY I. CHURKIN (Russian Federation) said the Council had agreed that only three delegations would speak, yet some members were not following that agreement. Expressing support for the Deputy SecretaryGeneral‘s observation that cool heads must prevail, he said that his Ukrainian colleague had not followed that notion. The situation earlier this year had seen the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine facing serious economic challenges and decisions, including the signing of an agreement on association with the European Union. That association had harmful consequences for Ukraine, he said. Posing a number of questions about the consequent demonstrations, he asked why the protests were being encouraged by people from abroad and why the European Union had attended meetings on Ukraine. While emphasizing that he did not wish to condone the actions of President Yanukovych, he asked why some Western colleagues were trying to spur on the confrontation and what armed militants were doing in the streets. The agreement signed on 21 February by President Yanukovych and the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France and Poland should be implemented, he said. 28

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 He went on to state that the eastern part of Ukraine was concerned about the replacement Government, pointing out that the removal of Mr. Yanukovych from office had been done in an unconstitutional way. The Russian Parliament had considered the situation in making its decision on the use force on Ukraine’s territory, and not against Ukraine, he stressed. The President of the Russian Federation had not taken the decision on the use of armed forces, he said, underlining the need for cool heads and for a return to the 21 February agreement.

    

What is the view of the crisis of Ukraine of each speaker? How is the view presented? The statements offer the opposite perspectives on the crisis in Ukraine. How does the language use show that? Which speaker speaks more emotionally than factually? How is it supported by the language use (sentence order, nominalisation, pronominal use etc.) Which speaker sounds more aggressive? Which speaker sounds less aggressive? How is it supported by the language use? (cf.: word order, nominalisation, pronominal use etc.)

Vocabulary Builder Positive and negative expressions 6. Complete the table below by putting the highlighted phrases into categories according to whether they raise positive or negative meaning associations. More positive 

the need for cool heads

More negative 

the situation in his country continued to deteriorate

Speaking 7. Discus with your partner and present arguments for and against the parliamentary motions as follows.  This House believes that countries and governments have an obligation to protect human rights and their citizens from harm.  The United Nations has a responsibility to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.  This House believes Russia has no right to send troops into Crimea.

Discussion 8. Discuss Article 3 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [Available from URL: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a1 ].

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. 9. Answer the following questions below:  What is safety?  Why is it a human right to feel safe?  What, according to you, is the worst case of violence? a) When you are excluded from a fellowship. b) When you are beaten. c) When a friend of yours is beaten. d) When... (something other than mentioned above).  What are the advantages of being able to live a full life and feeling safe? Is it a human right to live in peace and freedom?  Characterise a safe society. Rank the following factors from most important to the least. - Social structure - Political decisions - Economic power and control - Moral norms and values - Housing market - Employment - Education

Writing 10. Write a problem and solution essay on the following topic below. All over the world, the estimated number of poor people has reached 3 billion. Most governments solve this problem by providing different kinds of humanitarian aid to donor countries. However, in reality, both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account. Even more, most of the foreign aid is wasted on corrupt recipient governments. How could this problem of foreign humanitarian aid to recipient countries be appropriately tackled? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge and experience. Write at least 250 words.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Section 4: Language and Ideology In this section, you will: 

Discuss the concepts of language and ideology, and their inter-relatedness.



Analyse different linguistic means of ideological construal.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Ideology



Positive views vs. negative views



Political correctness



Conservative ideology vs. liberal ideology

2. Discuss these questions. 

Do you trust politicians‘ statements?



What are the characteristic features of conservative views?



What are the characteristic features of liberal views?



Is bi-conceptualism widely spread in the Lithuanian society?



What is truth? Is it possible to factually and objectively interpret actions, events or situations?

In modern society, many people tend to distrust politicians and their language use. Even more, politicians themselves talk about language as something petty and meaningless. We can often hear such arguments that it is politicians‘ actions that should be assessed but not their rhetoric. At the same time, language is one of the primary assessment tools by which politicians‘ performance is constantly measured. For example, whether these are party programmes, manifestos or annual presidents‘ addresses, they serve as a background for evaluation and criticism of political decisions, i.e. the nature and relevance of political decisions are always compared to what has been said in a speech or written in a document. This leads to the problem of expectations, as it happens that frequently words contradict actions or vice versa. However, there is another explanation why this might occur. Let us consider the following figure below and discuss the complexity of the relationship between language and truth.

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Creator (one‘s ideological value)

+

Receiver (one‘s ideological value)

Figure 2. The complexity of the relationship between language and truth

As displayed in Figure 2, the process of evaluation of the presented information is complex, as it involves both the creator‘s and the receiver‘s ideological values. To illustrate the complexity of ideological evaluation, let use consider the two images below reflecting the same political event. In 2009 of September 8, the US president Barack Obama delivered a ―back to school‖ speech aimed the American students with the emphasis on the importance of education. This event was viewed as controversial by some, while others viewed it as just another president‘s speech. 3. Consider how these two different views are characterized by the two cartoons below. Discuss with your partner the ideological meaning of each cartoon (Image 4 available from URL:

http://andersonissues.com/2011/09/26/the-politicization-of-a-non-issue-via-a-rant/;

Image 5 available from URL: http://serr8d.blogspot.com/2009/09/little-jeffy-after-obamasschool-speech.html)

Image 4 (Andersonissues.com) 

Image 5 (Cagle.com)

Why does Image 3 evoke a positive evaluation of Obama‘s school speech? Give reasons for your answer.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 

What kind of ideology is evoked by the Image 3? More liberal or more conservative? Why do you think so? Give reasons for your answer



Why does Image 4 evoke a negative evaluation of Obama‘s school speech?



What kind of ideology is evoked by the Image 4? More liberal or more conservative? Why do you think so? Give reasons for your answer.

Before we continue analysing the complex relatedness of language and ideology, we need to define the concept of ideology. What is an ideology? Let us compare a few definitions across dictionaries, as provided in Table 2 below.

Activity 4. Read and compare the definitions in Table 2 below. Table 2: Dictionary definitions of the word ‗ideology‘ Dictionaries Definitions

Oxford dictionary (Oxforddictionaries.com) Sense 1: A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. Sense 2: archaic The science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature.

Examples

the ideology of republicanism

Origin

late 18th century (in sense 2): from French idéologie, from Greek idea ‗form, pattern‘ + -logos (denoting discourse or compilation). beliefs, ideas, ideals, principles, doctrine, creed etc.

Synonyms

World English dictionary (Dictionary.com) Sense 1: a body of ideas that reflects the beliefs and interests of a nation, politic al system and underlies political action. Sense 2: philosophy The set of beliefs by which a group or society orders reality so as to render it intelligible. It is an alternative ideology , and its advoc ates should be given as much chance. 1790–1800; ideo- + logy; compare French idéologie

Beliefs, outlook, dogma, philosophy, view etc.

5. Complete the sentences below with the words in the box. There is one word you will not need. Ideology

beliefs

doctrine

dogmatism

views

outlook

1. The inability to agree on the principles that underlie our ________________ is at the root of our political discord. 2. It is an unwritten rule: each president gets one foreign policy_________________. 3. The political party system is immature and partisan, characterised by deep-seated factionalism and weak party____________________.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 4. Ignoring science in favour of a preferred ________________ on the world can have devastating consequences. 5. Perhaps the scientific method and democracy replace ________________ and theocracy.

As given in Table 2 above, the word ideology generally refers to a set of beliefs or ideas or views particular of a specific social group. In more specific terms, ideology is defined as general systems of ideas that influence our interpretation of social events and situations and control our discourse and other social practices as group members (see Van Dijk 2011). More importantly, ideologies are not static, as they change overtime, and are closely related to power. Let us read an excerpt from the publication by Teun Van Dijk, whose research interests lie in the study ideology and knowledge in, discourse (2011: 380):

Reading Under specific social, political, economic and historical conditions any group may develop its own ideology in order to defend its interests and guarantee the loyalty, cohesion, interaction and cooperation of its members, especially in relation to other social groups or classes. This may mean that ideologies, as we define them, may be used not only to dominate or oppress others, but also in order to resist or struggle against such domination, as we know of racist vs. anti-racist or sexist vs. feminist ideologies. In the same way, group power may be abused or be used to resist such an abuse – depending on the sociopolitical circumstances. Indeed, what may have been a liberating ideology yesterday may be an oppressive one today. For instance, whereas classical liberalism was once an ideology that advocated individual freedom and motivated the struggle against feudalism, today it may be adhered to by those who are against the freedom of racial or ethnic Others who want to migrate to ‗our‘ country. Similarly, neo-liberalism may advocate the ‗freedom‘ (and hence the power) of the market and oppose the kind of state intervention favoured by social democrats and socialists – who traditionally defended the interests and the rights of the workers, i.e. their freedom from exploitation. [My bolding]

6. Discuss the following questions with your partner.  What is the purpose of an ideology? 

What might cause ideological changes, if any?

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Yes / No / Not Given 7. Read the text one more time and identify the status of the following statements. According to Teun van Dijk ... 1 Ideology is not dependent upon historic, cultural, economic, political or social experiences. 2 Ideology is static and never changing. 3 Ideology is based on power relations in society. 4 Different kinds of ideology are based on binary oppositions: feminism vs. anti-feminism, racism vs. anti-racism etc.

When we discuss the language of politics and ideology, we will attempt to tackle two major issues. First, we will analyse how ideologies are expressed in the language of politics (i.e. by what linguistic means). Second, we will examine how ideologies are reproduced by discourse and what their implications are. The former approach deals with the detailed analysis of language; while the latter discusses the implied meaning of the reproduced linguistic means. Thus, in order to discern ideology, we need to carefully analyse how it is reproduced in language, i.e. what kinds of linguistic means are used by the speaker to express his/her evaluation of an issue. Such kind of analysis can be carried out at three major levels, as provided in Table 3 below (see Chilton and Schӓffner, 2011):

Analysis Table 3: The Linguistic Levels of Analysing Ideology Linguistic Levels Level 1: Pragmatics

Speech acts: 1 2 3

Representatives Directives Commissives

Pronominal Use: 4 5 6 Level 2: Semantics Level 3: Syntax

Pronouns (first / second / third person) Pronouns (singular / plural; inclusive / exclusive) Verbs alongside pronouns

Examples: (1) Lithuania is making more, selling more and exporting more. (2) I don’t want councils selling off school playing field. (3) But what I am doing today is giving you a cast-iron commitment that it will happen.

Metaphor (A IS B / TARGET IS SOURCE) Prevailing source Domains, metaphoric density, implied ideology (if any) Word order (S + V + O + PP)

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 The first level is related to pragmatics as referring to the ways of how interactions between speakers and their hearers are sustained. This kind of approach to analysing language is built on the view that language is action. In other words, when we use language, we actually act. There are different kinds of acts that can be discerned through language analysis. Here, as provided in Table 3 above, we can distinguish between three major kinds of speech acts – representatives, directives and commissives.

The first kind is representatives, which are simple statements, claims or

assertions, as in Example (1). By contrast, the second kind of speech acts refers to directives, which are explicit or implicit orders, as in Example (2). Commissives are the third kind of speech acts invoking promises, threats or offerings, as in Example (3). Besides, when we analyse the pragmatic level of the language use, we should examine pronominal use. The use of pronouns produces a social and political space in which the speaker, the audience and others are positioned. Thus, by analyzing pronouns, we raise the following questions: what kinds of pronouns are used? What are their forms? What kind of verbs are used with ‗I‘? How does the speaker position oneself (e.g. as a messenger / teacher / preacher/ leader / narrator /man or woman of action)? The semantic level is basically related to metaphor analysis that will be discussed in the following chapter in greater detail. Still it is important to mention that the analysis of political discourse in terms of metaphor is particularly valued for the implied ideology and hidden power relations as reflected by metaphors. Most of political language is grounded in metaphor, as in the following statement, e.g. 

BBC News, 11 June 2012 Politicians have been struggling (1) to find a permanent solution to the financial crisis afflicting the eurozone (2), and have yet to come up with one that all the member states can agree upon (3).

This single statement extracted from BBC News illustrates how metaphorical our language is. There are three metaphorical expressions used in a single statement with the reference to politics. In (1) ‗struggling‘ indicates effort, difficulty or lack of success in achieving a goal, namely managing the financial crisis in the EU. Contextually, the abstract conflict is described in terms of physical effort, difficulty and conflict. This is an example of the POLITICS IS WAR metaphor. In (2), the metaphor of ECONOMY IS HEALTH is illustrated by the use of such words as ‗crisis‘ and ‗afflict‘ both referring to health. In (3), we can see an example of the most important conceptualisation in the language of politics – the personification of countries. By the use of this metaphor, a country is seen as a person, by which all human characteristics are attributed to countries. Due to the COUNTRY/STATE IS A PERSON

metaphor, in politics we can talk about neighbouring countries,

friendly or unfriendly states, weak or strong nations, developed, developing or under-developed countries etc. 36

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Finally, the third level of linguistic analysis deals with syntax or the internal organization of sentences. At this stage, we are raising the principle question as follows. Why has X chosen (or why is X obliged) to use such-and-such a wording / phrasing / text-type rather than some other possible one? To be more precise, we have to analyse the word order of a sentence. The regular word order in English corresponds to the following sequence:

• Subject + Verb + Object + Prepositional Phrase. Thus, we have to consider the use of the active and passive voice in the selected text. Let us consider the use of the verb ‗change‘, i.e. its intransitive use (no agent) or transitive use (with a causing agent), the derived nominal etc. in the former British PM John Major‘s statements extracted from his speech delivered at the 11 th Conservative Party Conference (14 October, 1994), e.g.: 

Things are changing…



The world has changed…



We have to change attitudes…



That‟s what our changes are all about…



Change for the sake of change would never appeal to any Conservative…

As can be seen from the examples above, changes are not desirable. This perception is common in the Conservative ideology as based on such underlying concepts as tradition, heritage, uniformity, sameness etc. Hence, anything new is seen by Conservatives as an obstacle or a threat to stability and order. To summarize, there are three essential arguments about the linguistic analysis of politics that we should always keep in mind: (1) the conceptual world is constructed in the text; (2) the relationships between the speaker and others are established during the actual utterance of the text; (3) the strategic functions are enacted by the speaker through linguistic choices. Let us try to apply what we have discussed so far into some practice by analysing the speech delivered by David Cameron at the Conservative Party Conference of 2013, September 30. Before we analyse the speech in terms of the linguistic choices made by the speaker, we have to consider contextual peculiarities. By these are meant both wider and narrower political contexts. The wider context discloses the overall political and economic situation in the world, while the latter describes current home affairs. Before we analyse the speech, let us first consider both wider and narrower contexts via the following questions below.

37

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Questions 8. Before analysing the speech, discuss the questions as follows. 

What are the characteristic features of the world political and economic situation in 2013?



What are the characteristic features of the UK political and economic situation in 2013?

Lastly, before the text analysis, we also need to learn more about the speaker by building his personality profile as based on the official and media statements. Here is an extract from David Cameron‘s official profile provided by Wikipedia.org as follows, available from URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron.

Reading 1 David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. He represents Witney as its Member of Parliament (MP). Cameron studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Brasenose College, Oxford, gaining a first-class honours degree in 1988. He then joined the Conservative Research Department and became Special Adviser to Norman Lamont, and then to Michael Howard. He was Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications for seven years. He was defeated in his first candidacy for Parliament at Stafford in 1997, but was elected in 2001 as the Member of Parliament for the Oxfordshire constituency of Witney. He was promoted to the Opposition front bench two years later, and rose rapidly to become head of policy coordination during the 2005 general election campaign. With a public image of a youthful, moderate candidate who would appeal to young voters, he won the Conservative leadership election in 2005. In the 2010 general election held on 6 May, the Conservatives won 306 seats in a hung parliament. After five days of negotiation, Cameron formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems). Cameron leads the first coalition government of the United Kingdom since the Second World War. The 43-year-old Cameron became the youngest British Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool 198 years earlier. Besides, let us overview a few of the most recent media headlines and extracts with reference to the UK PM David Cameron as follows.

Reading 2 38

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4  BBC News, 10 March 2014 David Cameron has said Russia could face targeted sanctions ―within days‖ if it does not respond to concerns over its incursion into Crimea. He announced that EU representatives would meet in London on Tuesday to discuss measures including travel bans and asset freezes against 18 people linked to Vladimir Putin‘s government. But Downing Street would not name those who could be affected. Labour leader Ed Miliband urged Mr Cameron to exert ―maximum pressure‖. Moscow is continuing to strengthen its grip on Crimea before a secession referendum in Ukraine‘s southern region on 16 March. The UK prime minister said Moscow had to be shown that it could ―not trample over‖ Ukraine. He called the referendum ―illegal and illegitimate‖ and ―farcical‖, as there was no time for campaigning, and movement around Crimea was restricted by the presence of military. Addressing the House of Commons, Mr Cameron said: ―Britain‘s own security and prosperity would be at risk if we allow a situation where countries can just flout international rules without incurring consequences.‖ The prime minister has spoken to US President Barack Obama about the crisis and he held meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday night.

The Guardian, March 10 2014, by Alex Hern David Cameron‘s new Facebook likes show you can put a price on friendship How did the PM go from 60,000 Facebook friends to 130,000 in a month? There are ways – but they don‘t come cheap. Do you like David Cameron? Do you ―like‖ David Cameron? Not in a high-school way: I mean on Facebook. Just a month ago, the prime minister‘s official Facebook page had barely 60,000 likes; it has now got almost 130,000. That‘s 50,000 more than Nick Clegg, and 100,000 more than Ed Miliband. All that raises questions. First and foremost: why do any of them have Facebook pages? Don‘t they have countries and/or parties to run? But also: how did Cameron pick up so many likes, so quickly? It seems the answer is adverts. Conservative party strategists paid Facebook to advertise the PM‘s page on the site; the Mail on Sunday estimates the cost was about £7,500. You can choose to pay for ads on Facebook in a number of ways. Billing per click and per thousand impressions are both popular, as they are on the web in general, but you can also charge per ―interaction‖. That can be 39

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 people clicking ―attend‖ on an event, or liking a page. At about 50p per like, this doesn‘t come cheap. But the brutal reality of Facebook advertising is that it works. For reasons which are too arcane to get into here, Facebook thinks I run a business. As a result, I occasionally get given free money for adverts, to tempt me into using the site to promote my non-existent business. Typically, that money instead gets pumped into low-effort pranks. To date, I have linked several hundred people to a shock website; shown around 250,000 people a poor pun about George Osborne; and, in a particular favourite, targeted an advert exclusively at Conservatives urging them to read the Communist Manifesto. Seventeen clicked through. Facebook gives extremely detailed feedback about how people have interacted with such campaigns. And what you learn, very quickly, is that people do interact with Facebook adverts, in huge numbers. Even if they‘re obviously jokes. At least in buying likes through an advert, Cameron ensured that he‘s probably getting them from actual British voters. If you‘re prepared to go to the shadier corners of the internet, £7,500 will buy you around a million Facebook likes, but – for once – Cameron appears to have gone for substance over style. A million likes would give him a healthy lead over Clegg; but they would come from ―click farms‖, where low-paid workers in developing nations are given as little as $120 a year to click ―like‖ on page after page after page. Or he could have just skipped the middleman, and gone to a site such as Amazon‘s Mechanical Turk to offer a penny for every like. The people who trawl Mechanical Turk looking for paying jobs are frequently just as low-paid as the click-farmers, but the shiny web interface offers the illusion of a future free of exploitation. Of course, Cameron may be perfectly happy with buying a million fans from Bangladesh. It would still be quite unlikely to translate into success at the polls.

Discussion 9. Discuss the following questions with your partner.  How is David Cameron described by two different positively/negatively)?  What are the messages about David Cameron related to?  Which words are used to characterize his decisions or actions?

media

sources

(i.e.

Finally, let us analyse an excerpt from David Cameron‘s speech delivered at the Conservative Party Conference of 2013, December 30. Before you read the speech, answer the following questions below. 40

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Analysing the speech 10. Answer the following questions below. 

What kind of language do you expect from the speech?



What kind of pronominal use might prevail in his speech?



Will he use more active or passive constructions?



Being the leader of the Conservative party, what kind of metaphors can he use? What kinds of concepts might prevail in his speech?



Taking into consideration the current political and economic situation in the UK and across the world, what will the Conservative leader pay most attention to?

Now let us read an excerpt below and analyse both pragmatic and syntactic levels of the language use in David Cameron‘s speech (The Conservative Party Conference of 2013, December 30)

as

follows,

i.e.

the

whole

speech

is

available

from

URL:

http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2013/10/david-camerons-speech-conservative-partyconference-2013-full-text.

Reading 3 Cutting the deficit. Creating jobs. Creating wealth. Make no mistake: it is this Party with the verve, energy and ideas to take our country forward… and I want to thank everyone here for the great week we‘ve had. When we came to office, we faced a clear and daunting task: to turn our country around. In May 2010, the needle on the gauge was at crisis point. People were talking about this country in a way they had not done for decades. But three and a half years later, we are beginning to turn the corner. The deficit is falling. Our economy is growing. The numbers of our fellow countrymen and women in work are rising. We are not there yet, not by a long way. But, my friends, we are on our way. I want to thank the people who have done the most to get us this far. You. The British people. Never giving up. Working those extra hours. Coping with those necessary cuts. You. British business. You kept people on in the hard times. Invested before you knew for certain that things were getting better. Together – we are clearing up the mess that Labour left. But I have a simple question, to the people in this hall and beyond it. Is that enough? Is it enough that we just clear up Labour‘s mess and think ‗job done‘? Is it enough to just fix what went wrong? I say – no. Not for me. This isn‘t job done; it is job begun. I didn‘t come into politics just to fix what went wrong, but to build something right. 41

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 We in this party – we don‘t dream of deficits and decimal points and dry fiscal plans …our dreams are about helping people get on in life…aspiration, opportunity…these are our words, our dreams. So today I want to talk about our one, abiding mission…I believe it is the great Conservative mission… that as our economy starts to recover…we build a land of opportunity in our country today. Now, I know, it‘ll be tough. But I know we‘ve got what it takes in this Party. Some people say ―can‘t be done‖ – Conservatives say ―what‘s to stop us?‖ They said we couldn‘t get terrorists out of our own country. Well – Theresa knew otherwise...and that‘s why Abu Qatada had his very own May Day this year…didn‘t it feel good seeing him get on that plane? Some people said the NHS wasn‘t safe in our hands. Well – we knew otherwise. Who protected spending on the NHS? Not Labour – us. Who started the Cancer Drugs Fund? Not Labour – us. And by the way – who presided over Mid Staff…patients left for so long without water, they were drinking out of dirty vases...people‘s grandparents lying filthy and unwashed for days. Who allowed that to happen? Yes, it was Labour and don‘t you dare lecture anyone on the NHS again. And some people say a lot of things on Europe. You‘ll never be able to veto an EU treaty. You‘ll never cut the Budget. And if you did these things – you‘d have no allies in Europe. Well we‘ve proved them wrong. I vetoed that treaty. I got Britain out of the EU bail-out scheme… …and yes – I cut that budget. And in doing all this, we haven‘t lost respect – we‘ve won allies to get powers back from Europe. That is what we will do... ...and at the end of it – yes – we will give the British people their say in a referendum. That is our pledge. It will be your choice: in or out.

Analysing the Speech 11. Fill in Table 4 over page with the necessary information with regard to the extract of the speech. Provide the necessary examples as indicated by the labels below.

42

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Table 4: Analysing the speech Pragmatics (1) Speech Acts (the meaning of verbs) Representatives Directives Commissives

First Person

(2) Pronominal Use Second Person Third person

Syntax Active Voice

(3) Word Order Passive voice

(5) Metaphor: A IS B

 Pragglejaz Group‘s MIP, 2007 (the analysis of lexical units as based on the interplay of basic and contextual meanings)  Most frequent SOURCE DOMAINS in the language of politics: PERSONIFICATION WAR BUSINESS COMPETITION (SPORTS) NATURE CONSTRUCTION etc.

Transitive

(4) The Use of Verbs Intransitive Derived nominals

Semantics (6) Prevailing Source Domains Implied Ideology Strict Father (Conservative) Nurturant Parent (Liberal) Capitalist

(7) Metaphoric Density Total amount of words against total number of metaphoric expressions (1 me per N words)

Speaking Speech communication: writing a persuasive speech Persuasive speaking is all around us. Any speech is persuasive if its purpose is to convince others to change their feelings, beliefs, or behaviour. For example, a political leader trying to get someone to vote a certain way is speaking to persuade. How to build a persuasive speech? The persuasive speech should be constructed step by step. The persuasive-speech blueprint to create persuasive presentations that are interesting and effective consists of six major steps, as proposed by Paulette Dale and James C. Wolf in their book Speech Communication: Made Simple. According to the authors, the major steps are as follows. 1. Choosing the topic 2. Determining your specific purpose 3. Analysing your audience 4. Gathering information 43

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 5. Preparing visual aids 6. Organizing your speech

After you choose the general topic, you need to form related specific persuasive claims. Consider the following example below. Example A General Topic: Death Penalty Possible Specific Persuasive Claims: 

Death penalty should be abolished worldwide.



Death penalty should be legalized in some countries.



Criminals convicted of mass murder or terrorism should receive the death penalty.

After you think of three possible specific persuasive claims related to the topic, you are expected to choose one for your persuasive speech. Determining your specific purpose should be done with the intention of convincing listeners to change their belief, an opinion, or their behaviour. Changing audience‘s belief is related to the factual nature of information, i.e. that something is true or false. By comparison, changing audience‘s opinion is related to the value of something (i.e. good or bad, important or unimportant, fair or unfair. Finally, changing audience‘s behaviour refers to the specific purpose to convince listeners to change their current behaviour or practice.

Activity 12. Read the following statements below and identify their specific purpose, i.e. belief (BL), opinion (O) or behaviour (BH). 1

Death penalty is the deterrent to crime. BL

2

It is fair for immigrants to pay higher taxes.___

3

National government is corrupted.___

4

Single parents should be allowed to adopt children.___

5

Lower high speed limits save lives.____

6

The government should prohibit all cigarette and alcohol advertising. ____

7

Each person should donate at least fifteen Euros a year to their favourite charity.____

8

The government should fund the arts.

9

There is life after death.____

10 Alcoholic beverages should not be sold on Sundays.____ 44

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

After you gather information and prepare visuals, you have to organize your speech. A good persuasive speech includes the following components (adopted from Dale and Wolf 2006): 

Opener building on areas of agreement with audience (common goals /problems/ experiences) We are all concerned about this particular problem...



Statement of purpose (the specific purpose of your speech) Legalizing death penalty can help prevent the spread of terrorism...



Preview of main persuasive points There are three major reasons why we should consider the legalisation of death penalty... I hope to persuade you to consider the legalization of death penalty for several reasons...



Body (presenting convincing evidence) Interesting, Important, Relevant



Summary I am sure you now realize that death penalty would help to.... As you can now see, legalizing death penalty would greatly benefit/damage our society in terms of.... I hope I have convinced you to consider...



Memorable concluding remarks You might be safe now, but think what might happen in a few months or several years, if the issue of terrorism is not seriously tackled. It is in your best interest to... Remember. There is an alternative of...

Speaking 13. Give a 5 minute persuasive speech by using the Persuasive Speech Preparation Worksheet over page on the one of the provided topics below. Topic 1. The government should fund the arts. Topic 2. Globalisation is in trouble. Topic 3. Solar energy could save the world. Topic 4. The Euro, as a single currency, is dividing Europe and should be abolished. Topic 5. The government should encourage their citizens to marry. 45

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Persuasive Speech Preparation Worksheet 1. Choose the topic that interests you. Topic_________________________________________________________________

2. Determine your purpose for speaking about it. Purpose_______________________________________________________________

3. Formulate a specific statement of purpose for it. Specific persuasive claim___________________________________________________

4. Write the main points of the body by roving at least three reasons that would convince your listeners to change their belief, opinion or behaviour. Reason 1________________________________________________________________ Reason 2________________________________________________________________ Reason 3________________________________________________________________

5. Prepare a summary. ___________________________________________________________________________ 6. Prepare memorable concluding remarks. __________________________________________________________________________

In the following section, the semantic level of the linguistic analysis in terms of metaphor will be examined.

46

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Section 5: Language and Metaphor In this section, you will: 

Discuss the concepts of language and metaphor, and their inter-relatedness.



Analyse different examples of metaphor and their implied meaning.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Conceptual metaphor



Metaphorical expressions



Implications



Mapping

2. Discuss these questions. 

How often do people use metaphor?



Where are metaphors used?



How are metaphors created?



Why is the analysis of metaphor important?

3. Discuss the following metaphorical expressions and their metaphors 

IMPORTANT IS BIG:

big decisions, big day, big time, make a big thing of, gigantic

consequences, a great person etc. 

IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL:

investment was central to our economic success, let‘s go to

the marrow of the problem, the nucleus of the team, the kernel of the argument etc. 

GOOD IS CLEAN/WHITE:

a white knight, her reputation is whiter than white, the future

of the environment is black, he is a black sheep in the family etc.

Metaphors play a decisive role in shaping public opinion. Social and political problems, for instance, gain wide public attention through such distinguished metaphorical expressions as oil spill, ozone hole, Home Office cock-ups, war on terror, financial crisis etc. Metaphors help people to visualize problems that otherwise may remain invisible. Metaphors involve understanding of one domain of experience in terms of another domain of experience (Lakoff 2001 2003 2006 2011, Croft and Cruse 2004, Kövecses 2002, Mussolf 2008). The former domain is generally more abstract, while the latter is more specific (Croft and Cruse 47

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 2004, Lakoff 1996, Kövecses 2005, Chilton 2004 2005). Such metaphorical mappings (i.e. ABSTRACT IS SPECIFIC / TARGET DOMAIN IS SOURCE DOMAIN )

allow people to understand and

visualize global problems better, that is in a more perceptive manner. The specific domains, which are mapped onto abstract domains, provide people with a broader set of images, expectations and explanations. Metaphors are thus effective tools of cultural and social popularization, as they offer perspectives on different issues such as economics, politics, philosophy, morality, education, mathematics, biotechnology, emotions etc. (Turner 2001, Lakoff and Johnson 1999, Lakoff 2001 2006 2011, Hellsten 2002, Kővecses 2002, Goatly 2007, Johnson 1993). These perspectives have wide social, political and moral implications. The implications arise due to the conflated construction of metaphorical meaning, which for the most part remains invisible thus goes unobserved. In this view, such basic mental operations as identity, integration and imagination are ‗the key to both the invention of everyday meaning and exceptional human creativity‘ (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 4). Conceptually metaphor is built on the operation of the afore-mentioned mental operations. Let me give you several examples of linguistic metaphors and their social implications and consequences. Consider the linguistic metaphor of computer virus, which involves the mapping of two conceptual networks: the frame of biological virus (i.e. specific / source domain) is mapped onto the frame of manufactured product – computer (i.e. abstract / target domain). As Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner explain (2002: 275):

Reading 1 ―This invention arose from two unconnected situations. In the first, hackers caused mischief by writing software code that interfered with the operation of computers. In the second, biologists and complexity theorists wrote programmes like ―The Blind Watchmaker‖ to simulate the evolution of organisms on computers. The hacker scenario led to the initial, relatively thin blended concept of computer virus.‖

[My

bolding]

This metaphor has implications as follows. A machine is conceived of as a human being which can have health problems. This synergy, as reflected in the MACHINE IS A HUMAN BEING metaphor, has led to the emergence of a new profession of computer health maintenance providers and a new computational concept of artificial life ( see Fauconnier and Turner). 48

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Another example of social, cultural and moral consequences as caused by metaphors is Darwinian projection of evolutionary theory onto business and science (Baskerville and O‘Grady 2001). The metaphor of survival of the fittest provides with a shared understanding of ongoing competition and succession of the fittest in business, science, politics etc. As based on this assumption, it is observed that ‗those cultures, human artefacts or social processes that survive show essential characteristics of fitness‘ (Baskerville and O‘Grady, 2007: 8). The consequence of this metaphor is expressed through reassurance and hope to succeed even among such unnatural human artefacts as hyped-up dot.com companies in the information technology industry. Even more, such perception allows one to morally justify any means that are used for successfully achieving the ends or targets in order to survive economic, academic or political competition. All this considered, it is due to claim that metaphor analysis ‗provides new insights into the sociological questions of power and ideology‘ (Hellsten 2002: 9). Fairclough (2001 2003) assigns much importance to the power-language relationship in discourse (i.e. immediate communicative contexts, e.g. face-to-face encounters) and behind discourse (institutionalized communicative contexts). In this regard, metaphor analysis in political discourse provides evidence of the existing power-holders whose perspectives and ideology are represented. This view is supported by Fairclough (2003) and Wodak (1983) who claim that (1) power relations are discursive, (2) discourse does ideological work, and (3) discourse is a form of social action. Dijk, on that basis, distinguishes various resources, which are used to exercise power; in case of media political discourse, power is exercised on the basis of knowledge, information or authority (1991: 355). Let us consider how Andrew Goatly regards the importance of reconstructing metaphorical patterns as follows.

Reading 2 Knowledge of the world is mediated through perception, cognition and language / discourse. However, meaning and cognition certainly is grounded in our interaction of a real world and we do experience this real world, especially through the material consequences of our actions. Although we have no direct knowledge of this world, we develop those metaphorical models and categories which are positively adaptive to our environment, both physical and, hopefully, social, too. They are tested against experience, through feedback, and if the models and categories are more or less true they promote our physical and social survival and well-being. If these models are wrong we become sick, endangered, or fail to survive (Goatly 2007: 33) [My bolding].

49

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 A similar argument is made by Fairclough, who maintains that social practices change our reality, and these changes are also reflected in metaphors. Consider Figure 2.3 below, as adopted from Fairclough (2001), e.g.:

Thus, there is a two-way communication or relationship between the social structures and practice or discourse. This trend can easily be traced in the use of metaphor. Let us consider a few of the most widely spread metaphors in the English-speaking world. One of them is the IDEA IS A COMMODITY

metaphor, as in the statements below:



That‟s a great idea, but can you sell ideas like that to people?



Will they buy it, no matter how you package it?

In modern reality, the IDEA IS A COMMODITY metaphor is viewed as a natural linguistic occurrence. While being influenced by capitalist ideology, we perceive many abstract concepts today as commodities. The negative aspect of this metaphor is that it extends to people. Consider the

following

posters

below,

as

related

to

advertising

http://models.com/work/dkny-dkny-be-delicious-fragrance-ss-11;

(Image

Image

6, 7,

URL: URL:

http://larissaexplainsitall.blogspot.com/2011/11/jewelry-commercials-make-my-blood-boil.html), e.g.:

Image 6 (Stylefrizz.com)

Image 7 (Gemnation.com) 50

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 In the poster on your left, a beauty product is advertised; however, the metaphorical expression used in the ad is woman-centred. The metaphorical expression ‗be delicious’ evokes the WOMAN IS FOOD

metaphor. The use of this metaphor implies that it is expected of a woman to attract a man by

being ‗delicious‘ for the smell of the obtained perfume. In gender studies, it has been acknowledged that the use of such metaphors shows the traditional perception of a woman as being controlled by or dependent upon a man. The poster on your right supports the perception of commodified emotions. The expression of love is associated with a diamond ring. By buying a diamond ring to his beloved, a man will prove his love to other people. Hence, the strength of love is tested by an ability to pursue the demands of consumption. To summarize, in cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, i.e. TARGET DOMAIN IS SOURCE DOMAIN,

consider Figure 3 below:

Figure 3: Conceptual Metaphor (TARGET IS SOURCE)

In everyday language, unconsciously we use thousands of metaphors. Their origin is our physical experience, which is conflated with other kinds of experiences, as we grow older. For example, let us take a look how two conventional metaphors of GOOD IS UP and BAD IS LOW are linguistically realised, e.g. GOOD IS UP



Things are looking up.



My spirits rose.



My health is at its peak.

BAD IS DOWN



I‟m feeling down.



He fell into depression.



Her health is declining.

51

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 As seen from the examples above, metaphors are not only deeply entrenched in our mind (i.e. how we conceptualise the world around us) but also in our everyday language. The language of politics is not an exception, as there are deeply entrenched metaphors that control political thought and action. In the following section, conventional political metaphors will be illustrated and Lakoff‘s major arguments, dealing with the importance of metaphor in politics will be discussed.

52

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Section 6: Metaphors in Politics In this section, you will: 

Discuss the use of metaphor in politics.



Analyse different examples of political metaphor and its implied meaning.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Political metaphor



Metaphorical expressions



The effects of metaphor

2. Discuss these questions. 

How often do politicians use metaphors?



Is their use of metaphor conscious or unconscious?



What kinds of metaphor are used by politicians in your country?

The effects of metaphor in political discourse have been analysed by Lakoff and Chilton (1989), Lakoff (1987; 2004; 2006; 2010), Musolff (2004; 2006; 2008), Chilton (2004), Charteris-Black (2004; 2011), Turner (2004) etc. The most widely spread metaphors underlying the language of politics can be assigned to three different groups as follows: (1) human nature, (2) motion and (3) competitive character (see Kövecses, 2002; Lakoff and Chilton, 1989; Lakoff, 1996; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Chilton, 2004; Charteris-Black, 2011; Mey, 2006). The first group refers to the metaphors of human nature, which are mainly of two kinds: personification, as reflected in the STATE IS A PERSON metaphor, and the FAMILY metaphors. The STATE IS A PERSON

metaphor is one of the basic foreign policy metaphors, which allows us to

perceive the world as a community where each state has its own ‗status‘ and ‗responsibilities‘ (see Lakoff and Chilton, 1989; Lakoff, 1996; 2004). By analysing the language used by conservatives and democrats, Lakoff (1996; 2004) outlines the morality underlying their discourse. He claims that one of the reasons, why democrats lose to conservatives, is their inability to reframe their political discourse and reclaim its moral positioning (2004). The morality of the conservatives is grounded in the Strict Farther metaphor, while the democrats‘ morality is based on the Nurturant Parent model (1996; 2004). Lakoff (2006) also

53

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 observes how the same metaphorical family models of strictness and nurturance shape the concepts of freedom as fitting into those systems of thought. While Lakoff mainly adopts a single nation perspective for the FAMILY metaphor, Musolff (2006) analyses the use of this metaphor in a bi-lingual corpus of metaphorical texts in British and German press on the topic of the EU politics. In his study, Musolff notes that the FAMILY metaphor is closely related to the metaphors of LOVE and MARRIAGE, and he proposes that the LOVEMARRIAGE-FAMILY

metaphorical models are common to both English and German samples (ibid.

2006). The FAMILY metaphor has been also discussed by Charteris-Black (2011). In his study of political speeches, he argues that the FAMILY metaphor is one of the most important conceptual mechanisms in Margaret Thatcher‘s discourse. Moreover, he notices that as the first female Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher activates the mental FAMILY script where a woman plays a more central role (ibid.: 191). This mental script allows Margaret Thatcher to exploit the notion of the family budget (i.e. money is safer in woman‘s hands) in the context of the national budget (ibid.: 191-192). Another prominent metaphor in the language of politics is that of MOTION. As noted by Chilton, political discourse draws on spatial cognition, and ‗the perception and conception of space is of major significance‘ (2004: 203). His study also suggests that territoriality is an intrinsic part of the socio-political instinct (ibid.: 203). Simultaneously, movement within a certain territory is then associated with a certain political act. The MOTION metaphor is closely related to the metaphor of LIFE IS A JOURNEY,

which, in Johnson‘s view (1987), is central to human moral systems. Charteris-

Black (2011) notes that this metaphor has become a familiar metaphor rooted in the language of popular imagery, which is in fact an important rhetorical component of the Conviction Rhetoric (2011: 236). Finally, the COMPETITION metaphor is another conceptual frame intrinsic to the language of politics. This metaphor has different representations. It can be realized through the concepts of sports, business and war. This metaphor is based on the perception that politicians are competitors against each other or others in the fields of sport, business or war.

By using this metaphor

politicians divide people or countries into good and evil. Finally, the WAR metaphor has a moral realm (Lakoff, 2006; 2011). Politicians, using the WAR metaphor, actually claim that they do it in the name of ‗good‘, and that any means can be justified in their fight against their perceived ‗evil‘. Let us consider the underlying assumptions of cognitive science that are closely related to the cognitive perception of contemporary politics. They are summarized by George Lakoff in his book

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America‟s Most Important Idea (2006: 10-15) as follows [My bolding].

Reading •

We think with our brains. The concepts we think with are physically instantiated in the synapses and neural circuitry of our brains. Thought is physical. And neural circuits, once established, do not change quickly or easily.



Repetition of language has the power to change brains. When a word or phrase is repeated over and over for a long period of time, the neural circuits that compute its meaning are activated repeatedly in the brain. As the neurons in those circuits fire, the synapses connecting the neurons in the circuits get stronger and the circuits may eventually become permanent, which happens when you learn, which happens when you learn the meaning of any word in your fixed vocabulary. Learning a word physically changes your brain, and the meaning of that word becomes physically instantiated in your brain.



Most thought is unconscious. Because thought occurs at the neural level, most of our thinking is not available to conscious introspection. Thus, you may not know your own reasoning processes. For example, you may not be aware of the moral and political principles that lie behind the political conclusions that you reach quickly and automatically.



All thought uses conceptual frames. ―Frames‖ are mental structures of limited scope, with a systematic internal organization. For example, our simple frame for ―war‖ includes semantic roles: the countries at war, their leaders, their armies, with soldiers and commanders, weapons, attacks, and battlefields. The frame includes specific knowledge: in the United States, the president is the commander in chief and has war powers; war‘s purpose is to protect the country; the war is over and won when the other army surrenders. All words are defined with respect to frames. Thus, declaring a ―war on terror‖ against an elusive and amorphous enemy gave president Bush special war powers that could be extended and used indefinitely, even against American citizens. The Iraq War framed Iraq as a threat to our nation, making anyone against the war a traitor; when the United States marched into Bagdad, the war frame said the war was over – ―Mission Accomplished.‖



Frames have boundaries. Iraqi soldiers, tanks, and planes, and Iraq‘s leader, Saddam Hussein, were inside the war frame, since they fit the semantic roles of the frame. Outside the war frame were ordinary Iraqis – killed and maimed by the tens of thousands – the resentment in Iraqi families caused by those deaths and maimings, the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure, the Iraqi jobs lost because of that damage, the resistance to the American occupation, Iraqi culture and religion, the ―insurgents‖, the ancient artifacts in the Iraqi museums, the relatives of 55

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 American soldiers, American social programs cut, the mounting American deficit, the attitudes towards Americans around the world. When you think within a frame, you tend to ignore what is outside the frame. •

Language can be used to reframe a situation. The Bush administration first framed the Iraq War as ―regime change‖, as though the country would remain intact for who ran the government. Saddam Hussein would ―fall‖ – symbolized by his statue falling, an image played over and over on American TV – and a new democratic government would immediately replace the old tyranny. As the insurgency began to emerge, it became clear that the old frame was inoperative, and a reframing took place: Iraq became ―the main front in the war on terror‖. Fox News used the headline ―War on Terror‖ whenever footage on the insurgency was shown. During the 2004 election, Republicans were advised not to say ―Iraq War‖ but to use ―war on terror‖ instead, whenever possible. At the time of the election, three out of Bush supporters believed that Saddam Hussein had given ―substantial support‖ to al-Qaeda terrorists, as shown in a poll a few weeks before the election by the University of Maryland‘s Program on International Policy Attitudes. The reframing worked. Frames characterize ideas; there may be ―deep‖ or ―surface‖ frames.



Deep frames structure your moral system of your worldview. Surface frames have a much smaller scope. They are associated with particular words or phrases, and with modes of communication. The reframing of the Iraq War as a ―front in the war on terror‖ was a surface reframing. Words are defined mostly in terms of surface frames. Examples are like labels like ―death tax‖, ―activist judges‖, ―frivolous lawsuits‖, ―liberal elites‖, and ―politically correct‖, which are used by the right to trigger revulsion. In politics, whoever frames the debate tends to win the debate. Over the past thirty-five years, conservatives have framed most of the issues in American political discourse. 

Deep frames are where the action is. The deep frames are the ones that structure how you view the world. They characterize moral and political principles that are so deep they are part of your very identity. Deep framing is the conceptual infrastructure of the mind: the foundation, walls, and beams of that edifice. Without the deep frames, there is nothing for the surface message frames to hang on.



Most thought uses conceptual metaphors Metaphorical thought is normal and used constantly, and we act on these metaphors. In a phrase, like ―tax relief‖, for example, taxation is seen as an affliction to be eliminated. Moral and political reasoning are highly metaphorical, but we are usually unaware of the metaphors we think with and live by.



Most thought does not follow the laws of logic Thinking in frames and metaphors is normal and gives rise to inferences that do not fit the laws of logic as mathematical logicians have formulated them. Political and economic reasoning uses frames and metaphors rather than pure laws of logic. Since metaphors and frames may vary from person to person, not all forms of reason are universal. 56

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 

The frames and metaphors in our brains define common sense. Commonsense reasoning is just the reasoning we do using the frames and metaphors in our brains. The conservative domination of public political discourse has been changing what Americans mean by common sense. Our commonsense ideas may not fit the world. Frames and metaphors are mental constructs that we use to understand the world and to live our lives, but the world does not necessarily accommodate itself to our mental constructs.



Frames trump facts Suppose the fact is inconsistent with the frames and metaphors in your brain that define common sense. Then the frame or metaphor will stay, and the fact will be ignored. For facts to make sense they must fit existing frames and metaphors in the brain. Facts matter, and proper framing – both deep and surface – needed to communicate the truth about economic, social and political realities.



Conservative sand progressives think with different frames and metaphors. In Moral Politics, I showed in great detail how complex conservative and progressive systems of thought are organized via metaphor around idealized models of strict father and nurturant parent families. This is hard to see when you think issue by issue, but it becomes clear when we understand how issues are organized across issue areas.



Contested concepts have uncontested cores. Important ideas like freedom that involve values and have a complex internal structure are usually contested—that is, different people have different understandings of what they mean. In general, contested concepts have uncontested cores—central meanings that almost everyone agrees on. The contested parts are left unspecified, blanks to be filled in by deep frames and metaphors. For example, coercion impinges on freedom. But different people mean different things by ―coercion.‖ In the uncontested case, ―coercion‖ is not further specified; it is left vague, a blank to be filled in.



Rational thought requires emotion. It used to be believed that emotion mostly interfered with rationality. But when people lose the capacity to feel emotions, they also lose the capacity to think rationally. Conservatives have learned far better than liberals how to take advantage of the links between emotion and rationality. They are especially adept at using fear to influence voters.

As based on the major arguments of cognitive science related to the analysis of political discourse, provided by Lakoff, let us discuss the following issues.

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Discussion (1) What is particular about human thought? Consider the following metaphors, how they are realized in language use, and explain their physical nature (Goatly 2007), e.g.: IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL Investment was central to our economic success. Consumerism is the heart of modern economic system. The kernel of the argument is in the last two sentences. ACTIVITY IS MOVEMENT FORWARDS The cut in interest rates was a wise move. The play went forward despite the last minute changes to the cast. My watch isn‟t going. SUCCESS IS SPEED Maud and Andrew are involved in a race for promotion. Gore ran in the last presidential election. The government is trailing the opposition in opinion polls etc.

Image 8 (URL: https://hungarianspectrum.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/hungarianpolitical-scientists-as-spin-doctors/) (2) What kind of language use, according to Lakoff, has the power to change brains? Consider the election posters below as an example (Image 9 available from URL: http://action.labour.org.uk/with-us; Image 10 available from URL: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O155820/be-afraid-be-very-afraid-poster-centurionpress/), e.g.:

Image 9 (Labour.org.uk)

Image 10 ((Labour.org.uk) 58

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(3) How can we explain the perception that most thought is unconscious? (4) How can we explain the argument that most thought is metaphorical? As an example, consider the following political cartoon below, aiming to criticize Barack Obama‘s social security policies. What kinds of metaphors are evoked in the cartoon (available from URL: http://www.teapartytribune.com/2011/11/28/obamas-safety-net/)?

Image 11 (Conservativedailynews.com) (5) According to Lakoff, the Conservative ideology is governed by the Strict Father Family metaphors, while the Liberal ideology is guided by the Nurturant Parent Family metaphors. Let us analyse in more detail each of the metaphorical models and its characteristic features, as provided below. (6) Compare the ideological models in terms of their underlying FAMILY metaphors (i.e. Strict Father Model vs. Nurturant Parent Model) as provided below.

Strict Father Model •

Every moral adult has a strong will to serve one‘s individual interests and discipline for self-protection.



Strict ‗father‘ is an authority figure that expects obedience in return.



Undisciplined ‗children‘ should be punished.



Free market is seen as unconstrained by any regulations: the free pursuit of personal self-interests maximizes the self-interests of others



Individual initiative & Individual responsibility



A clear division between right and wrong actions. There are rules that determine which actions are right or wrong.



Men and women‘s role in life.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 •

Represented by such metaphors as POWER IS ABOVE, POLITICS IS WAR, CORPORATIONS ARE PERSONS, GOVERNMENT IS A STRICT FATHER, CITIZENS ARE OBEDIENT CHILDREN, HUMAN IS A COMMODITY, LABOUR IS A RESOURCE, NATURE IS A RESOURCE, TAXES ARE BURDEN, EDUCATION IS COMMERCE etc.

Nurturant Parent Model •

Every moral adult has both individual and social responsibility.



Nurturant parents guide and care for their children.



Empathy and recognition of systematic causation are the guiding principles of nurturant morality.



The social necessity to build a shared infrastructure is necessary for the achievement of individual goals.



Represented by such metaphors GOVERNMENT IS A NURTURANT PARENT, CITIZENS ARE RESPONSIBLE CHILDREN, CORPORATIONS ARE GOVERNMENTS, TAXES ARE TOOLS, POLITICS IS AN EXCHANGE, EDUCATION IS A RESOURCE etc.

As based on the above models, let us analyse how Conservatives and Liberals perceive the issues of stem cell research and abortion, and why. Conservatives are clearly against both stem-cell research and abortion, while the Liberals support these initiatives. Compare

political

cartoons

(Image

12,

nuevoscomienzosnuevashistorias.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html; http://saved4life.com/index.php?main_page=products_all) URL:

URL: Image

http://lilith13,

URL:

and a poster below (Image 14,

http://stopabortioncensorship.wordpress.com/tag/joyce-arthur-kim-zander-everywomans-

health-centre/) and identify the metaphors evoked by conservative and liberal views to stem cell research (Image 12) and abortion (Images 13, 14).

Image 12 (Sites.psu.edu)

Image 13 (Saved4life.com)

Image 14 (Wordpress.com)

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 All three images evoke the ESSENCE metaphor that is characteristic of the conservative ideology. This metaphor is built on the principle of direct causation from NATURE (B) to PEOPLE (A), i.e. the metaphor A IS B, THE ESSENCE OF A PERSON IS THE SUBSTANCE ITS MADE OF. In other words, the patterns of change as inherent of natural phenomenon are ascribed to people‘s changes and developments. For example, in nature the oak is in the acorn; since the pattern of change is inherent on the acorn, meaning it will gradually develop to the oak. The same parallel is drawn to people: the person is there in the fertilized egg – at conception – since the fertilized egg, in the womb, will naturally develop into a child. This explains why Conservatives emphatically use the phrase ‗embryonic stem cell research‘, i.e. to raise negative associations with stem cell research by evoking the surface frame of ‗killing a human being‘ or even worse ‗a child‘. Even more, in the conservative framework, in case of abortions, the focus of metaphor is shifted from a woman‘s freedom to choose to a woman‘s intention to kill her own child. In Image 13, the WAR metaphor is also evoked, by which a woman is presented as a communist fighter aiming to defeat a tiny ‗child‘. (7) How do you understand Lakoff‗s distinction between surface and deep frames?

Writing Write an academic paragraph (6-8 sentences) on one of the topics as provided below. 

The implied meaning of the LABOUR IS A RESOURCE metaphor



How metaphors shape political thinking: the case of social programmes



Two kinds of political reasoning: the case of tax reforms

Use the Paragraph Checklist as provided below:  Topic Statement (1): TOPIC (what the paragraph is about, i.e. the main idea) + Controlling Idea (specifying / narrowing the main idea)  Supporting Statements (2—7): sufficient, relevant, specific support of the CI (developing the argument, illustrating the trend, providing specific points of information)  Concluding Statement (8): SUMMARY (paraphrase of the TS)+ IMPLICATION (raising an implication or a rhetorical question, forecasting a future trend, adding your own opinion about the described problem or issue in the body part of the text)

In the following section, metaphors in media political discourse will be discussed in more detail.

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Section 7: Metaphors in Media Political Discourse In this section, you will: 

Discuss the peculiarities of media political discourse, especially its metaphorical construal.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Media



Politics



Discourse



Negative vs. positive opinion



Metaphor

2. Discuss these questions. 

Do you think there is too much time devoted to the coverage of political events in the media? Why/why not?



How in-depth is the coverage of political events?



Do you think you are provided with enough information and analysis by journalists, or would you like to see more detailed coverage?



How often do you listen to or watch political programmes on the radio/on television/Internet?

3. Discuss to what extent you agree with these statements, and explain why.

All political groups have equal access to the media.

Media political discourse.

Politicians should be medialiterate and be able to make effective use of media.

Media political discourse is a complex interactive frame, which

captures the relations between politicians, the media and the public. The nature of their relationship is characterized by the roles politicians, media personnel and audience are performing. As noted by Blumer and Gurevitch their functions can vary from informatively neutral to informatively forceful 62

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 or entertaining (in Lauerbach and Fetzer 2007: 6). For example, politicians can play the role of gladiators, while the media serves the function of an editorial guide and the audience becomes the partisan (i.e. informative forcefulness). In other instances, politicians become actors, while the media plays the role of an entertainer, and the public enjoys the show (i.e. informative entertainment). Despite the variability of roles, there is a unifying link which allows one to discern the roles performed by the participants. This can be done by analysing the use of language. Fairclough refers to language as ‗a socially conditioned process‘ in the sense that language use is inseparable from social contexts (2001: 19). Moreover, linguistic means do not only reflect social processes and practices but also discern power relations in a given society. Power relations, in their turn, disclose the hierarchy of relationships and the moral nature of authority between social groups. As observed by Fairclough, ‗language is both a site of and a stake in class struggle, and those who exercise power through language must constantly be involved with others to defend (or lose) their positions‘ (2001: 29). In the case of media political discourse, all three parties are powerful in their own terms: the media has the power to inform and critically analyse, politicians have the power to govern the state, while the public has the power to moralize and elect politicians. These power relations are disclosed in the language use. One of the clues to discerning power relations is the analysis of metaphorical expressions and the reconstruction of metaphors underlying media political discourse. In the view of cognitive approach, it is assumed that metaphor is one of the basic cognitive tools of organizing human experience and knowledge by means of systematically conflating different experiential domains (see Lakoff & Johnson 1999, Lakoff 2002 2003, Johnson 1993, Fauconnier and Turner 2004, Boroditskij 2000, Mussolf 2008). More importantly, by analysing metaphors we can learn more about the ideology underlying both modern media and politics. According to Hart, ‗metaphorical expressions in text reflect and effect underlying construal operations which are ideological in nature‘ (2011: 270). Similarly, Goatly puts forward an argument that ‗conventional conceptual metaphors construct and reproduce ideologies‘ (2007: 30). He claims that by reconstructing metaphors the awareness of the latent ideologies is raised, as well as their influence on our personal, social, environmental, and political behaviour (ibid.: 25-33). As Paul Chilton (2004: 203) puts it, ‗cross-domain metaphorical mappings make it possible to draw inferences that could not be drawn on the basis of direct evidence or the basis of direct experience‘. In the framework of the cognitive approach, metaphor is seen as a mechanism that construes and reproduces ideologies, and justifies or reproduces certain behaviours (Gibbs 1999, Mey 2006, Goatly 2007). Chilton (1996 2005) claims that metaphors enter into policy decisions and thus affect 63

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 policy actions. Thus, it is right to claim that metaphors, as one of a primary means of conceptualising the world and reflecting ideologies, shaping and justifying political behaviour and decisions. The most widely-spread metaphors in the language of politics are of human nature and competitive character (see Chilton and Lakoff 1989, Lakoff 1996 2006). One of the basic foreign policy metaphors is that of STATE IS A PERSON. Such personified states are seen as members of a ‗world community‘, where treaties between states are perceived as promises, and keeping one‘s word is seen as the base of political trust (see Chilton and Lakoff 1989, Lakoff 1996). Another metaphor which structures and legitimizes political policies and programmes is that of ‗body politic‘. To illustrate, if a state is perceived as a person, it has a body which can grow, and be healthy, strong or weak etc. Appropriately, metaphorical foreign policy is metaphorically structured in terms of military force and national wealth. One more important metaphor is that of FOREIGN POLICY IS COMPETITION, as based on the perception that power-hungry people (i.e. STATES) seek domination. For example, Chilton and Lakoff describe the nature of the relation between the US and the Soviet Union, where the latter is perceived as a bully and the US as a heroic fighter having enough strength and rationality to stand up to this ‗bully‘ and protect the world from its provocations (1989: 8-10). In addition, the metaphor of FOREIGN POLICY IS A GAME is widely spread in the language of diplomacy. This metaphor derives from the common use of the mathematical theory of games with a winner and a loser in a zero-sum game. For instance, American policymakers analysed the Vietnam War as ‗an unwinnable game‘, hence an absolute victory was not aimed at by the US (Chilton and Lakoff, 1989: 9). Chilton and Lakoff (1989) notice that CONTEST metaphors have long been at the centre of the US nuclear policy, where the nuclear victory over the Russians (e.g. ‗to beat the Russians‘) has been long seen as a foreign policy priority. There are two main expressions of political discourse. Its primary source is generally associated with direct political speeches and debates. Media discourse usually plays a secondary role, as its status is recognized through the reported speech. Meanwhile, with the growth of media, metaphor is becoming increasingly persuasive and ideologically significant in the media as a secondary discourse. Koller (2008: 7) refers to metaphor analysis in a secondary discourse as a means of ‗taking its readers‘ inside the minds of journalists‘. She also makes an important observation that both primary and secondary discourses are similar in the effect their metaphors have on text recipients (ibid.: 6). Therefore, by analysing media discursiveness through metaphor we are able to construe at least two realities: the reality of the reported as perceived by journalists, and the reality of the reported as expected by journalists to be perceived by their readers. As based on the assumptions above, let us consider the following assignment over page. 64

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Analysis 3. Read a media collage of different political and economic issues and analyse it in terms of the implied meaning / ideology of metaphors. The metaphors are given in bold and italics, e.g. Conservatives were lagging behind in the last opinion poll.

Table 5: Media Collage BBC News, 15 December 2013 Huge rally in Kiev in support of closer ties with EU The EU's frustration at the Ukrainian president's position on reaching a deal with the bloc was evident in a tweet from EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele announcing the suspension of talks. "Work on hold," he tweeted, adding that he had told Deputy PM Serhiy Arbuzov that Ukraine needed to show a "clear commitment to sign". Mr Yanukovych has said he fears the association and trade agreement will put at risk many enterprises dependent on trade with Russia. The president - who says he eventually aims to sign the deal - has also admitted being under heavy pressure from Moscow, which wants Kiev to join a Russianled customs union instead. He has said the EU would need to provide at least 20bn euros (£17bn; $27bn) a year to upgrade Ukraine's economy. Moscow has already put economic pressure on Ukraine, with customs delays and a ban on Ukrainian chocolates, and there are concerns it could escalate such measures if Kiev drew closer to Brussels. (162 words)

CNN News, December 13, 2013 Democrats lose on budget deal To resolve America's ongoing, bruising battle over the debt and deficit, House Republican Paul Ryan and Senate Democrat Patty Murray announced a deal on December 10 to halt spending cuts -- mostly in defence -- and lock in a two-year budget agreement to avoid another government shutdown on January 15. But in eagerly seeking agreement with the Republicans who shut the government down in October, Democrats risk hurting the economy's fragile recovery by accepting too much budget austerity embedded in the newly adopted budget. President Obama and the Democrats won big over the Republicans in October's budget fight. Instead of pressing their advantage, Democrats took tax increases for the rich off the table, agreed to cut federal pensions and did not get unemployment benefits extended. The Democrats basically threw away their political gains. (133 words)

BBC News excerpt analysis________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 65

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

CNN News excerpt analysis_________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

Discussion 4. As based on the above arguments and analysis of the media sources, let us discuss the following questions below. 

How can the language tell us about the ideology of those who use it?



What is the implied meaning of metaphor?



How do we detect metaphors?



Why is it important to analyse metaphors in media political discourse?



How can we learn about the expectation from readership and for readership, while analysing the linguistic features of various media sources?

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Section 8: A Case Study of Spy Swap of 2010 in the Western Media In this section, you will: 

Consider the case of the spy swap of 2010 as depicted in the UK and US media sources.



Analyse the prevalent metaphor and its implied ideological meaning.

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Media political discourse



Spying



Spy swap



Super powers



Pragmatic politics



Rational politics



Metaphor

2. Discuss these questions. 

What do you think about countries‘ spying on each other?



What about modern cyber warfare? Is its threat overrated?

To illustrate the significance of metaphor analysis in media political discourse, let us consider a case study of the US-Russia spy swap of 2010 as described in both the US and British media sources. First, we need to clarify the contextual background of the selected issue by providing answers to the following questions below. 

What is the spy swap of 2010 about?

The US-Russia spy swap of 2010 has been perceived controversial by its nature. First, it has been viewed as an evidential fact of Cold War methodology employed by Russia towards the US. Second, the swap was initiated by the US. Even more, the US swapped 2 Russian people for 10 Russian spies spying on the US. This kind of swapping received different kinds of attention and reaction (both positive and negative) from Western media sources.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 

What do we know about the relations between the US and Russia in general and in particular, i.e. 2010?

One of the reasons why we might be attracted to the nature of the US-Russia relationship is undoubtedly the use of metaphorical expressions characterizing this political liaison, to mention but a few: cold-war style pragmatism, overloaded relationship, striking a warm tone, in need of a new reset, pushing a reset button, promises of a fresh start, a growing rift in the relationship. What unites all of these expressions is their implied meaning: the US and Russia are always competing, or their relationship is of a competitive nature, full of dynamicity and various tensions. This ongoing and never-ending competition between the two states blends the conceptual scheme of Survival-of-the-Fittest onto the transactional scheme of Struggle-for-Superiority. This on-going and never-ending competition between the two states blends the conceptual scheme of Survival-of-the-Fittest onto the transactional scheme of Struggle-for-Superiority. It seems that Machiavellian and Hobbesian perceptions of the human nature are still true for modern political behaviour. In other words, it seems that both the US and Russia are involved in the ideological competitive struggle for the status of the most powerful and privileged state in the world - the status of the Superpower. This can be linked to the cognitive system of the Strict Father Morality dominating contemporary American and global post war politics (see Lakoff 1996). Lakoff claims that political thinking in the US is dominated by the metaphor of SOCIETY IS A FAMILY.

In his view, conservative political thinking invokes the metaphoric system of the Strict

Father Morality, while liberal thinking is based on the metaphors derived from the moral system of Nurturant Parent (1996). More importantly, he observes that the conservative (Strict Father) and liberal (Nurturant Parent) moral priorities create two different systems for categorizing moral actions (1996: 162-176). It seems that the US-Russia political relationship is based on the metaphorical model of the Strict Father Morality, as both countries are competing against each other for the status of the strongest thus most authoritative nation in the world (the Moral Strength metaphor). As a consequence, major disagreements between the two states arise on the issues of military ties and proliferation. These two spheres of influence deal with the expansion of territorial and military control. As noted by the American journalist Helene Cooper (2009), the US-Russian relationship has suffered in recent years over a series of issues, from missile defence to NATO expansion to Russia‘s invasion of the Georgian territory of South Ossetia. This view is supported by the Russian political analyst Mykhail Trotsky (2012), who claims that the timeline of the US-Russia relations has been pierced by pragmatism with a low level of expectations for a positive ground. He also notices that the objective contradictions between the two countries are predetermined by mutual distrust and 68

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 inability to prove the absence of offensive intentions to each other. Despite that he believes that ―based on political will, long-term strategic thinking and experience of former disenchantment the knot of contradictions can be untangled in a far shorter time than many expect.‖ Another opinion deals with ‗a need of a new reset‘ in the relationship of the two countries. Simon Shuster (2010) argues that the Obama administration and the president himself made attempts at pushing a button to reset the ―overloaded‖ relationship. Even more, he notices that the US president Barack Obama and the former Russian president Dmitrij Medvedev were in the position of trust towards each other. Despite the shared feeling of trust between the leaders, the Russian Government has a different perspective on the relationship. Simon Shuster (2010) quotes Sergei Markov, a conservative parliamentarian from Putin's United Russia Party, according to whom ―What Russia wants is to be recognized as a great power in the region, a power that defends all its regional interests. But Washington is so far denying Russia this status." It seems that without the mutual perception of the need of a new reset, the US-Russia relationship might thus remain in the position of fierce competition with unexpected political outcomes. 

Why do media perspectives matter?

The British and American media referred to this event as a ‗Cold-war style prisoner exchange‘ (BBC News, 9 July 2010; CCN News, 10 July 2010) and ‗a spy scandal‘ (The Guardian, 10 July 2010), and noted its significance for its novelty (the first public spy swap in for more than 25 years) and oddity (the 10-for-4 spy exchange). Naturally, one of the main arising questions is related to the US-Russia relationship: how does the spy swap, as perceived by the media, reflect this relationship? This is where Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) in the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics can provide a valuable help and empower our knowledge of the US-Russia foreign policy with some revealing insights. 

What kinds of metaphors prevail in British and American media sources?

Read the following statements extracted from various media sources and restore the metaphors of the identified metaphorical expressions.

Analysis 3. Analyse the following statements extracted from various media sources and restore the metaphors of the identified metaphorical expressions provided in Table 6 overpage.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 Table 6: Statements from British and American Media Sources British Media Sources

The US Media Sources

The Guardian, 9 July 2010 Because they were not high-value assets in Russian foreign intelligence, the deep-cover agents were not expected to get a heroic welcome in Moscow.

The New York Times, 9 July 2010 The Russians considered the swap for two days and then agreed to negotiate. Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, negotiated the details with his S.V.R. counterpart, Mikhail Y. Fradkov, in three phone calls, sealing the deal on July 3.

BBC News, 9 July 2010 Matt Spetalnick, on Reuters.com, warns that President Obama may face harsh criticism from the right for what unfolded during negotiations with the Russians: "The flipside for Obama is that, by agreeing to a spy swap, he will give opposition Republicans an opening for further criticism that the Democratic president has been too soft on Russia and weak on national security."

The Associated Press, 10 July 2010 The 10 Russian agents and their families traded ordinary but fictional American lives for the realities of modern Russia. They were flown to Moscow with no hero's welcome.

CNN, 10 July 2010 In a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials said the agents The Economist, 8 July 2010 agreed never to return to the United States In the shadows, disgruntled muttering is without permission from the U.S. audible. Did America bargain too softly? government. Holding them would have conferred no security benefit to the nation, The Economist, 8 July 2010 they said. This "clearly serves the interests of Yet, questions linger. Who benefits from the the United States," one official said. scandal? The American hawks, of course, Russians answer. But some suspect a more The Associated Press, 10 July 2010 sinister plot, for the Russian hawks benefit State Department spokesman Mark Toner from it, too. They do not really like said the speed of the swap agreement presidential "reset" games – after all, the US reflects an improvement of U.S.-Russia is still listed as Russia's main opponent and relations. "It was done a lot more quickly the main threat for Russia in the most recent than ever before," he said, alluding to Cold security document, Strategy of the National War-era spy swaps. Security of the Russian Federation. CNN News, 9 July 2010 The Reuters, 9 July 2010 The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said The Russian-American spy swap deal agreed the move was made "in the general context of this week is the first one of such a scale in improving Russian-American relations, and modern times, where Moscow and the new dynamic they have been given, in Washington are no longer foes. the spirit of basic agreements at the highest level between Moscow and Washington on the strategic character of Russian-American partnership."

Comments As shown by the examples above, the underlying metaphor in the British and American media sources is that of FOREIGN POLICY IS A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION. This construal is invoked in the British and American media on the US-Russia spy swap of 2010 through repeated lexicalized metaphorical patterns which seem to have inherent in their conceptual representation a component 70

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 of commercial transaction between the two countries. This is a complex metaphor that involves other metaphors such as STATES ARE TRADERS, SPIES ARE GOODS, SPYING IS A LOSS, SPY SWAP IS A GAIN, SPY SWAP IS A PROFIT.

These findings illustrate that the spy swap is based on the ideology of cooperative foreign policy and the US and Russia can compete rationally when they find that necessary. The restored CT metaphor allows us to draw the ideological implications as follows. The primary implication is that the US-Russia foreign policy is conceived in micro-economic terms. This implies that both the US and Russia‘s political leaders can solve their problems rationally by seeking mutual benefits and cooperation. This also means that the well-being of the US-Russia relationship is viewed through the value of the exchange. Nonetheless, the use of the STATES ARE TRADERS

metaphor is related to the metaphor SPIES ARE GOODS which shows a negative aspect of

the exchange. Despite that, the spy swap is generally conceived of as a gain, especially to the US, while Russia‘s attempts to spy are construed as a loss in both commercial and moral terms. Finally, it is generally assumed by the media that the spy swap is profitable for both countries, as it has helped to sustain and improve their relationship at least temporarily. The CMA shows that the media positively evaluate the spy swap of 2010 and associate the USRussia foreign policy with rational competitiveness and even moral support. Nonetheless, there is a view that the US and Russia are pragmatic foes, thus are unable to cooperate. As the spy swap was initiated by the President‘s Obama administration, the rational competitiveness frame is primarily associated with the US. By contrast, Russia is generally viewed as a pragmatic competitor. These ideological expectations should not be associated only with journalists‘ perceptions of the spy swap. They also mirror what journalists expect from their readers‘ reaction to the spy swap. Hence, the analysis of a secondary discourse is two-functional. First, it shows the level of ideological expectations of the US-Russia foreign policy among journalists. Second, it construes what journalists perceive of their readers‘ ideological expectations. This study has demonstrated that both British and American journalists think that modern foreign policy should be more rationally competitive and cooperative. It has also implied that modern business is perceived as more advanced, qualified and productive than modern politics. This explains why politics is construed through the source domain of business. Finally, the CT metaphor is positively evaluated, and this explains the ideological preference for the STATE-AS-TRADER metaphor to the STATE-ASFIGHTER

metaphor in public discourse.

In addition, the results supports George Lakoff‘s (2011) argument that Mr. Obama is a pragmatic Democratic president conceptually committed to competitiveness. As noted by Lakoff (2011), Mr. Obama‘s national policy fits the competitiveness frame. Finally, this study discloses that the US 71

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 foreign policy under the president Obama is grounded in the competitiveness narrative which actuates strategic rationality over pragmatic interests thus ‗gains‘ over ‗losses‘..

Discussion 4. Discuss the following questions with your partner. 

What is the ideological potential of the identified metaphor of FOREIGN POLICY IS A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION?



Why do governments of many countries spy on each other? Is it a sign of weakness or strength on the part of that country‘s government? Give reasons for your answer.



How should media react to countries‘ spying on each other?

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Section 9: The Language of Slogans and Posters In this section, you will: 

Discuss the peculiarities of the language of slogans and posters.



Compare Conservative and Labour posters of general elections of 2010 in the UK

Getting Started 1. How do you understand the following concepts below? Discuss them with your partner. 

Election poster



Political party



Popularity rates



Slogans



Opinion polls



Political spin

2. Discuss these questions. 

What kind of language is generally used during the election campaign?



What kind of language is used in election posters?



Do different parties use different language in their posters? Why / why not?



What kind of language might attract voters?

In a democratic nation, to gain power you must win elections. Persuading people to vote for you is a vital part of the political processes. As has been discussed earlier, much of political discourse is grounded in military and competitive metaphors (POLITICS IS WAR, POLITICAL OPPONENT IS AN ENEMY, POLITICAL ARGUMENTATION IS A BATTLEFIELD

etc), and this is especially the case with

elections: both winning elections and winning wars involve running successful campaigns. Linguistically, political campaigns are of interest, as they show what kind of language is used for such a clearly stated purpose of winning the elections. Although political campaigns are expected to provide information about significant issues, they are designed to persuade people to vote in a certain way. There are two major ways how this persuasive purpose can be carried out, e.g.: (1) Negative Other Presentation or so-called negative campaigning where candidates attack opponents rather than promote themselves.

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 (2) Positive Self-Representation or so-called positive campaigning where candidates, usually not yet in power, promote themselves as a much better choice, as related to new hopes and new beginnings, than the old government. Language is a vital process of promoting one‘s candidacy. Let us consider and compare a number of persuasive texts in election posters used by British Conservatives and the Labour Party at the general elections of 2010. Their analysis will show how the use of language contributes to the process of persuasion, and what kind of ideological differences might prevail, if any.

Activity 3. Analyse the linguistic means used in the slogans. Consider the following aspects: 

Grammatical structures,



Reference to time/place,



The use of metaphor,



The use of pronouns,



The use of verbs / nouns,



Negative Other Presentation vs. Positive Self-Representation.

The UK General election of 2010, Party Posters Background information The UK general election of 2010 was held in May 6 to elect members to the House of Commons. It took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system (i.e. the election won by the candidate receiving more votes than any other). None of the parties achieved the 326 seats needed for an overall majority. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, won the largest number of votes and seats but still fell twenty seats short. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the second general election since World War II to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election. Unlike in 1974, the potential for a hung parliament had this time been widely considered and predicted and both the country and politicians were better prepared for the constitutional process that would follow such a result. The coalition government that was subsequently formed was the first coalition in British history to eventuate directly from an election outcome. The governing Labour Party had campaigned to secure a fourth consecutive term in office and to restore support lost since 1997. The Conservative Party sought to gain a dominant position in 74

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 British politics after losses in the 1990s, and to replace Labour as the governing party. Let us consider how the election campaign is reflected in the language of the Conservative and Labour election

posters,

the

images

of

which

are

available

from

URL:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/gallery/2010/mar/30/general-election-2010labour#/?picture=361880890&index=30. Labour (Government Party)

Image 15 (Labour.org.uk) Conservative (Leading Opposition Party)

Image 16 (Conservativehome.com) Labour (Government Party)

Image 17 (Labour.org.uk) Conservative (Leading Opposition Party)

Image 18 (Conservativehome.com) 75

POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4

Comments Visually, each poster has from two to four lines of text in large block print. Today, especially in Aglo-Saxon culture, most of the posters concentrate on negatively representing their opponents. For that purpose, the third person singular pronoun is used. Its use implicitly intimidates the opponent. This kind of negative other representation implies that such party just cannot be elected again, otherwise the overall situation will worsen. Interestingly, many posters are created in reaction to the opponent‘s poster, as in Image 14 and Image 15. These posters share the same background and style, i.e. the use of third-person singular (i.e. he) and negation (i.e. won‟t be, not for you). Besides the Negative-Other-Representation technique, we can find instances of a combined pattern as follows: (1) Negative-Other-Presentation / NOP + (2) Positive Self-Presentation / PSP, as in Image 16 of the Labour Party. The message is centred on the metaphor STATE IS A BUILDING, where alongside the leader‘s photo (i.e. Gordon Brown), it is stated that Labour is ‗building the foundation‘ of the state, while their opponents are ‗wearing it‘. Another possibility is to use a single method of PSR (i.e. Positive-Self-Representation), as in Conservatives‘ Image 17. The message is multi-dimensional, as the words ―Let‘s cut benefits for those who refuse work‖ are supported by the leader‘s image (i.e. David Cameron) and the support provided by the crowd behind his back. The image of the leader intensifies the conveyed message of ‗ready for work‘, as implied by his rolled-up sleeves or unrestricted collar of his shirt. This kind of advertising is especially meaningful for the party in opposition, as its members can openly criticize the present government and promise better future, as based on the present mistakes of the present government. We should not forget about the use of language and its importance, as it is ideologically powerful. For instance, the use of first-person plural ‗we‘ and the indicative mood implying about a collective call for action. The slogan is based on the metaphors TAX IS A BURDEN and LABOUR IS A RESOURCE, which are based on the conservative ideology, i.e. people who are unemployed should not be supported by tax-payers. Thus, unemployed people are seen as a burden to the state and tax-payers. For that reason, Conservatives generally refer to unemployed people as those who are or ‗refuse‘ to work, as in the slogan of Image 17.

Activity 4. Identify the following metaphors in the posters above.  Conservative: POLITICS IS A JOURNEY, ECONOMY IS ETHICS (TAX IS A BURDEN)  Labour: COUNTRY IS A BUILDING, POLITICS IS ETHICS (Labour is Moral)

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Discussion 5. Discuss the following questions with your partner. 

In the General elections of 2010, Labour as the Government party lost to Conservatives as the Leading Opposition party. How can we account for this fact?



What about advertising? Could it have contributed to Labour‘s defeat and Conservatives‘ victory? In your opinion, what kind of language is more ideologically prominent in election campaigns?

Project Work 6. Divide into the teams of three and collect at least ten posters of one of British, US or Lithuanian political parties and analyse the following linguistic features, as below: 

The use of command verb forms and progressive aspect; reference to place / time; meaning associations (ambiguity & implication); ellipsis; pronominal use; comparative forms; the list of three; antithesis.



Metaphor analysis: prevailing source domains, implied ideology (if any);



Choose a party of your own preference or the one from this list as follows: British Conservatives, British Labour, British Liberal-Democrats, Scottish National Party, The US Green Party, The US Republicans, The US Democrats, Lithuanian Conservatives, Lithuanian Labour, Lithuanian Social-Democrats, Lithuanian Liberals etc.

Use the following Research Questions Checklist, while preparing for this project work:  How is a brand identity established in the poster?  What are the linguistic features used to establish the identity?  How do linguistic techniques of persuasion contribute to the process of sustaining positive /negative political images?  As based on the analysis of the linguistic features (syntactic, semantic and pragmatic), what is the level of persuasiveness (very high / high /medium / low / none) in the collected posters?

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Concluding Remarks I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that, and how, language use, especially via metaphors, can construe perceptions of social and political events in the English-speaking countries, such as Britain and the US. The linguistic construal can be evoked through syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of language use. The analysis of language use reveals the ideological potential of discourse, and supports the major argument that language is not just a symbolic act of utterance but rather a socially conditioned communicative performance. Thus, by examining how speakers use their language, we learn about their experiences, perceptions and ideology. As we have seen, in modern politics, most of the ideology is oriented towards conservative populism as based on the concepts of competition, individual self-interest, direct causation and vertical power relations. Despite this negative trend in modern politics, the interdisciplinary approach to language studies could positively affect future ideologies. The approach based on the perception that language is central to establishing power relations could make people seek for more peaceful and liberal ways to solve social and political problems. Without any doubts, the most peaceful way of solving any problematic issue whether in politics or life in general is a dialogue and shared communicative goals, and this is language.

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FIGURES 1. Figure 1. The Classical Language Distinction. http://lmdresources.wordpress.com/2013/04/ [Accessed 10 September 2013]

URL:

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POL2IT0I1 CS, TEXT AND IDEOLOGY 4 IMAGES 1. Image 1. URL: https://iams.pbworks.com/w/page/26489139/B4%201970s%20Convery [Accessed 6 October 2013]. 2. Image 2. URL: http://becomempowered.wordpress.com/feminism-is-for-everybody/ [Accessed 12 November 2013]. 3. Image 3. URL: http://www.personal.psu.edu/bfr3/blogs/asp/2013/03/media-influence-stopit-or-use-it.html [Accessed 5 November 2013]. 4. Image 4. URL: http://andersonissues.com/2011/09/26/the-politicization-of-a-non-issue-viaa-rant/ [Accessed 6 October 2013]. 5. Image 5. URL: http://serr8d.blogspot.com/2009/09/little-jeffy-after-obamas-schoolspeech.html [Accessed 6 October 2013] 6. Image 6. URL: http://models.com/work/dkny-dkny-be-delicious-fragrance-ss-11 [Accessed 7 September 2013]. 7. Image 7. URL: http://larissaexplainsitall.blogspot.com/2011/11/jewelry-commercials-makemy-blood-boil.html [Accessed 12 September 2013]. 8. Image 8. URL: https://hungarianspectrum.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/hungarian-politicalscientists-as-spin-doctors/ [Accessed 11 January 2014]. 9. Image 9. URL: http://action.labour.org.uk/with-us [Accessed 8 April 2014]. 10. Image 10. URL: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O155820/be-afraid-be-very-afraid-postercenturion-press/ [Accessed 8 April 2014]. 11. Image 11. URL: http://www.teapartytribune.com/2011/11/28/obamas-safety-net/ [Accessed 26 January 2014]. 12. Image 12. URL: http://lilithnuevoscomienzosnuevashistorias.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html [Accessed 12 November 2013]. 13. Image 13. URL: http://saved4life.com/index.php?main_page=products_all [Accessed 23 October 2013]. 14. Image 14. URL: http://stopabortioncensorship.wordpress.com/tag/joyce-arthur-kim-zandereverywomans-health-centre/ [Accessed 11 January 2014]. 15. Images 15-18. URL: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/gallery/2010/mar/30/generalelection-2010-labour#/?picture=361880890&index=30

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