Once upon a time there was a class called

Language…

Prof. Daniel Ferreyra Prof. Fernando Mortoro

• Language as a “culture” characterized by a set of regulatory beliefs and semiotic practices

• “Language culture” is not monolithic or homogeneous but heterogeneous and polyphonic.

• Like all other cultures, there are dominating (hegemonic) discourses that regulate teaching-and-learning social practices at TTC

• Hegemonic Discourse (Mancuso: 190)

• Regulation of semiotic practices, both linguistic and non-linguistic

• Hegemonies regulate aesthetic, ethical and scientific standards in a (sub)culture

• Legal aspect of Language ergo Language “prescribes” what is scientifically, ethically and aesthetically “right” or “wrong”

• “Aesthetic component” is important in the construction and instantiation of hegemonic beliefs.

Hegemonic discourses can be “good” or “bad,” “effective” or “ineffective,” “beneficial” or “detrimental,” etc.

HD have cracks and fissures. All discourses (hegemonic and non-hegemonic) have counter-discourses (Mancuso: 141-144)

Via “deconstruction” we can look into the beliefs that have dominated the EFL scene so that we can come up with workable solutions to problems

• Language has historically (last 20 or 30 years approximately) been dominated by a “VG logic.”

• V-based: the acquisition of lexical items contributes to the effective production of texts both in spoken and written forms

• G-based: the acquisition of grammatical items contributes to the effective production of texts both in its spoken and written forms

• Architecture Metaphor (aesthetic component):

• V-based practices – Words are the building blocks of language learning

at TTC

– Learning as a process of brick laying

• G-based practices – Clauses and sentences are the pillars of EFL

teaching-and-learning practices at TTC

– “Building” (i.e. brick/word-laying and clausal architecture) as a metaphor of Language Learning

• Architecture as a metaphor of EFL learning

• EFL Learning at TTC as “Architecture”

• METAPHORS

• Teachers as “Walking dictionaries”

• Lakoff: Several metaphors may contribute to the construction of a semantic field/discourse/social practice

• Metaphors have an aesthetic component; they are beautifully or aesthetically palatable ways of spelling out complex semiotic processes

• Metaphors (Lakoff) have impact on Language, cognition and behavior: performativity.

“While a great deal of energy and imagination is going into the teaching of grammar, comparatively little is being done to teach words.”

“Students often know many grammatical frames but have very little to put into them.”

“As this [giving answers to the exercises instantaneously] will be a similar situation to spontaneous speech.”

The focus is still on the word or grammatical structure. (Will that enable students to produce texts?)

Students focus their attention on words and grammatical structures but are then required to produce texts.

The VG aesthetic can be complemented by an aesthetic of the “text” that will enable students to learn both VG-based Language and T(EXT)-based Language.

Knowledge of the “logic” of the text as a semiotic process

FOCUS ON WORDS SYNONYMY

The aim of working with texts is to learn words (in bold) or their synonymous counterparts (listed on the left)

What do students learn about the structure of texts? What do they learn about its structure, its social function? What do they learn about text production and reception?

LOGIC OF CHART BUNDLE OF FEATURES

Sections devoted to arbitrarily selected semantic features of words, not core semantic concepts such as aspectual notions

The visual grammar of the text promotes an organization of the text that differs from the composition and structure of narrative or argumentative writing

MIND MAPS TRANSLATION

EXPECTED?

Visual grammar does not match the visual, culturally determined and conventionalized generic and structural composition of argumentative and narrative texts.

The focus is not on the text (i.e. what students are required to produced in the end). Translation?

LOGIC OF ENUMERATION TRANSLATION?

Translating lists into composition can be compared to the task of translating any other “logic” (in this case, the “logic of enumeration”) into the logic of narrative or argumentative

composition

What is a text?

What is it that we do when we read or write texts?

What are the features of a text?

What can students do that can help them learn about the texts that they need to produce?

How can a T(ext)-based approach complement a VG-based approach?

Ideology in text

Intertextuality and Genre

Dialogical or responsiveness

“To speak of language without speaking of power is to speak meaninglessly. Language is everywhere imbricated with asymmetries of power...There is no neutral utterance; language is shot through with intentions and accents.”

Mikhail Bakhtin

“The apparent empyting of the ideological content of discourses is paradoxically, a fundamental ideological effect.”

Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (1991)

“The “dictionary” as the authority on word meaning is very much a product of the process of codification of standard languages and thus closely tied to the notion that words have fixed meanings . . . Meanings can vary between social dialects, but they can also vary ideologically.”

◦ Norman Fairclough, Language

and Power (1991)

The naturalization of meanings: CLOSURE

A restriction of the plenitude of potential meanings.

Words and utterances become TRANSPARENT and UNEQUIVOCAL

Giggle: to laugh in a nervous, excited or silly way that is difficult to control: The children whispered and giggled all the way though the film; She giggles at the smallest thing; The sound of giggles came from the girls’ room.

Macmillan English Dictionary (2002)

Actors? Symbolic construction Advocating and

promoting a sexist, gender-biased ideology/practice

Cohesive connections Evaluations Performativity

Innocent taxonomy? Or sexist, gender-biased, ideological statement?

Needlework Taxonomy (stem stitch, cross stitch,

chain stitch, etc.)

Labores Femeninas

Ideology Sexist language Performativity

“Gender (is) a complex network of power formations, a complex mechanism which defines the subject as male or female in a process of normativity and regulation of what the human being is expected to become…”

GENDER AS: ◦ A NETWORK

◦ NORMATIVE

◦ HIERARCHICAL

◦ REGULATORY

Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Slaughter VS Demise

Verb – Nominalization

Backgrounding: AGENCY CAUSALITY VOLITION DYSPHEMISM VS

EUPHEMISM

Intertextuality is "a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another." Kristeva:124

“The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace…”

Let us brave once more the icy currents and endure what storms may come…when we were tested we refused to let this journey end.

THE JOURNEY as FOUNDATION MYTH

The Pilgrim Fathers The Manifest Destiny The Journey Westwards The City Upon a Hill The Puritan Work Ethic

“The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens.”

Slaughter: Lamb to the slaughter The sacrificial lamb SELF-OTHER:

Exculpating the SELF Demonizing the OTHER

“All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen, Metaphors We Live By.

SOURCE and TARGET DOMAINS

SYSTEMATICITY

FOREGROUNDING and BACKGROUNDING

CULTUAL-SPECIFIC METAPHORS

A METAPHORICAL CONCEPTUALIZATION OF REALITY AS CONTINGENT

“In 1930 John Maynard Keynes imagined that richer societies would become more leisured ones, liberated from toil to enjoy the finer things in life. Yet most people still put in a decent shift. They work hard to afford things they think will make them happy, only to discover the fruits of their labour sour quickly. They also aspire to a higher place in society's pecking order, but in so doing force others in the rat race to run faster to keep up. So everyone loses.

In such a society, everyone can hope to come top of his particular monkey troop, even as the people he looks down on count themselves top of a subtly different troop. To find the market system wanting because it does not bring joy as well as growth is to place too heavy a burden on it.

A

CAPITALIST

SOCIETY IS

A JUNGLE

RAT RACE

MONKEY TROOP

PECKING ORDER

SOCIAL DARWINISM

CUIT-THROAT

COMPETITION

DETERMINISM

IRRATIONALITY

DEHUMANIZATION

Hegemony Resistance

“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it”

(Morrison: 135)

The Afro-American discourse of resistance to a hegemonic discourse.

Ideology: two different ways of conceptualizing love:

“Love as falling” VS “Love as rising”

Dialogicality: the debate

between two cultures, one hegemonic, the other non-hegemonic.

Clash between two cultures Performativity

A focus on TEXT/DISCOURSE can enhance students’ understanding of the compositional, stylistic and aesthetic components of texts

Thus, aiding comprehension and production of texts

Texts are responsive, intertextual, generic and ideological

Meaning making is collaborative. Leaving out any of these aspects on the text will reduce understanding and production of text to understanding and production of a few words that appear in the text.

VG-based approaches can be complemented by Text/Discourse based Approaches

Bakhtin (2001) Estética de la Creación Verbal, Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI

Fairclough, N. (1991) Language and Power, London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2004) Analysing Discourse, Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.

Kristeva, ( ) Word, Dialogue and Novel

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Mancuso (2010) De lo Decible. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sb

Thanks!

“My words mean but only with others […] at times in chorus, at best of times in dialogue”

Bakhtin (2001: 122)