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COM 370—Psychology of Language
Def: “Controlling and constraining the contributions of non-[less]powerful participants” (Fairclough 2001, p. 38-39)
Contents: what is said or done, i.e. “access” to “communicative resources”
Relations: social relations of people in discourse
Subjects: “subject positions” of others (e.g., in mediated discourse)
Language form: what channel, dialect, register (e.g., level of formality) is/can be used?
Individual-Level Power(French & Raven)
Social-Level Power
• Coercive• Reward• Referent (liking)• Legitimate (assigned)• Expert (knowledge/info)http://changingminds.org/explanations/power/french_and_raven.htm
• Money (including government)• Influence (national)• Political• Status
Purpose: to study “the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text in talk and the social and political context” (including media) (van Dijk, 2003, p. 352)
“Discourse” and “discourse” Discourse: A form of talk (e.g., discussion,
conversation) Discourse: The placing of ideas together in a
way that supports a particular way of thought.
Ideology: A set of interlocking assumptions about some aspect of reality—the “basis of social representations shared by members of a group” (van Dijk, 1998, p. 8) Ex: ideology of beauty Ex: ideology” of success
Hegemony: the dominance or influence of one group over another (political, economic, etc.)
MICRO•Ways of speaking (van Dijk, p. 356)•Phonemes•Syntax/morphemes•Genre/speech act•Pragmatics, rules of particular “discourses”•Narrative rules, face rules •Definition of the situation or context
•Personal and social cognitions (mind control): If you can control the ideologies, you will not need prisons or pink slips!
MACRO•Group identities•Institutions•Group-based power (e.g., sex-, race-, sexual orientation)
Ideology: A set of ideas, not a single idea Held by groups, not by individuals Often “naturalized” by language
Hegemony Not total or absolute Seldom absolute! Not just economic (à la Marx) Often implicit, not overt (p. 358)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMdiRkiYREU&feature=related
http://pietothemediaecologist.blogspot.com/2009/04/after-years-of-drinking-beer-and.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u6G5hiA5_s
But: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/184184/women_in_beer_commercials.html
Three approaches to “power” in discourse: The “classic” model (no power, or IP power
only) The “hegemony” model (groups striving for
group-based power, or one group holding more power than others)
The “fragmented” model (postmodern)— “combining discourse elements in ever new ways to achieve momentary impact” – pastiche (p. 223)
Democratization: “the removal of inequalities and assymetries in the discursive and linguistic rights, obligations, and prestige of groups of people” (p. 201) Changing relations between social dialects Access to prestigious discourse types (e.g.,
managerial comm) Elimination of overt power markers in
institutional discourse types Tendency towards informality of language
(private public; conversation > literary/book) Changes in gender-related language processes
E.g., “topic pick-up” (whose topics are “picked up” M/W?)
But…are these real changes, or only cosmetic!?
Commodification: “the process whereby social domains and institutions, whose concern is not producing commodities in the narrower economic sense of goods for sale, come nevertheless to be organized and conceptualized in terms of commodity production, distribution, and consumption” (p. 207) Institutional “colonization of everyday life”
(Foucault/Deetz) We increasingly talk about various aspects of
life that both reflect and support capital economy and our “work” lives and goals
Things NOT commodities BECOME commodities!
Commodification
Educational Discussion
Consumers “Skills” Advertising
Funding
Relationships
Leisure, etc.
Technologization: Discourse technologies are when communication aspects have “the character of transcontexutal techniques, which are seen as resources or toolkits that can be used to pursue a wide variety of strategies in many diverse contexts” (p. 215) Interviewing, Teaching, Counseling,
Advertising The blurring of technologies and discourse
type Fragmentation: hybrid types of discourse
Do technologization and hybridization empower or disempower the everyday person?
How do the three forces work together?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJfS1v-fU0