ELL_P2SB_A_LEVELS_NOTES

ELL P2SB NOTES Language, in general: - Is a social practice because it creates social realities (When counselling, reassuring, pleasing, entertaining, breaking bad news etc. → all actions) - Discourse: language + context → without context, language is meaningless - All discourse is ideologically motivated to serve a particular agenda Concept / Idea What Critical Discourse Analysis Approach Lazar, 2005 In terms of GENDER THEME, Discourse is analysed in order to show the complex and subtle ways in which taken- for-granted social assumptions and hegemonic power relations are discursively produced, perpetuated, negotiated and challenged. Linguistic determinism Wittgenstein Language determines our thought. What we can say will be what we can think. Language change will lead to social change but not the opposite, language precedes thought. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Language relativity) Benjamin Whorf & Edward Sapir Lang influences thought and non-linguistic behaviour

Linguistic reflectionism Fairclough Language reflects our thought. What we can think will be what we can say, Or language = reality Assumes that social change will lead to language change but not conversely, as though precedes language Subject Construction Fairclough, 1995 *seems to be constructed through the use of pronouns & referents Subject positions determine the kind of relations that exist between the writer and reader, accounting for whether these are symmetrical or asymmetrical ones Who is the power skewed towards? Producer of the text or reader? Reader- Response Theory Stanley Fish Meaning adheres not in the text, but in the reader. Knowledge is not objective, but always socially conditioned. All that one thinks and knows is only made possible by the social context in which one lives. → Language choices often take into account the social culture in which the text will be situated in order to cater to the needs of the intended audience

The 5 Metaphors of language effects Phillip Wolff & Kevin Holmes 1. Thinking for speaking: lang influences speaking when we think about how to express something 2. Meddler: linguistic representations conflict w/ non-linguistics representations 3. Augmenter: lang enables and extends certain kinds of thought 4. Spotlight: Directs attention to certain aspects salient in thinking 5. Inducer: lang as a priming mechanism to induce certain ways of thinking Verbal hygiene Deborah Cameron, 1995 Prescription and proscription about what constitutes as proper / correct / acceptable in a range of contexts Can be manifested in both prescriptivist and descriptivist attitudes bc it’s the struggle to control language Euphemism Treadmill Steven Pinker, 2003 When certain words begin as euphemisms to describe culturally taboo / sensitive matters, and end up being dysphemic, thus having to be replaced by othe