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BIENNALE 2ND YEAR. A.A.2012-13: OUTLINE OF LESSONS 1-10
LESSON 1
Part 1 (see THEORIES OF ENGLISH, CHAPMAN, CHAPTER 1):
1) THE NATURE OF ‘THEORY’ (Chapman pp.7-14): ASSUMPTIONS (explicit or implicit) about which aspects of the language are essential; e.g., a language is a form of behaviour, a set of grammatical rules, etc. A theory should do something more than simply describe the relevant facts. The theory has to be proven and tested with reference to examples.
2) TYPES OF DATA (Chapman pp.14-16): introspective, empirical
3) TYPES OF THE THEORY (Chapman pp.16-23): prescriptive, descriptive (‘inductive’ vs. ‘deductive’).
Part 2 (see JEFFRIES ,CHAPTER 1, 4-16)
1) THEORY: (5)> ideologies, that is, ideas that are shared by community or a society are communicated, reproduced constructed and negotiated using language. (6)> Aim of this book is to give the reader a clear set of analytical tools to follow in carrying out the critical analysis of texts, with the aim of uncovering or discovering the underlying ideologies texts.
2) ASSUMPTIONS OF THE THEORY:
1) Language represents the world by doing the things listed on the contents page and p. 15 — end with present participle: these are concepts.
2) (9)> These representations of the world in language can become naturalised as self evident or common sense. (10) They allow people to relate new communications and texts to existing expectations and ideologies.
3) Use deductive approach: first of all say language does things such as naming, describing, negating, prioritising, etc. Then we’re going to look in texts for evidence of that.
Part 3 (see Jeffries CHAPTER 2, 17-36) NAMING AND DESCRIBING
1) Choice of nouns to denote and connote.
2) (21) noun modification the nominal component (noun phrase) does not form the proposition of the sentence but instead labels something that is already assumed to exist. For example:
‘Janie ate the biscuit’ : proposition of the sentence = there are entities known as ‘Janie’ and ‘the last biscuit’ and it is asserted (claimed as true) they have a particular relationship in which one eats the other.
21) But this process /action can be put into a nominal structure. It is no longer asserted but assumed. Thus the sentence: ‘Janie’s eating of the last biscuit was a scandal’ changes the focus from what Janie ate to the to the question of this action being a scandal.
3) 25, NOMINALISATION
Process turned into a nominal: verb turned into a noun.
Text analysis : Shell /Friends of the Earth (p.26-27)
END OF LESSON 1
LESSON 2
THEORY: CHAPMAN, CHAPTER 2 (P.P.25 -68)
25-6) What is language? A type of behaviour?A state of mind? Communication?
1) LANGUAGE IS A TYPE OF BEHAVIOUR (27>)
- Data: observable forms of behaviour
- Method: Bloomfield ‘The only useful generalisations about language are inductive generalisations’ (from the data). (28)
- Influence of behaviourism (Skinner Verbal Behaviour 1957).
- QUINE: ‘semantic scepticism’:
- QUINE: the ‘principle of indeterminacy of translation’:
- QUINE: ‘bachelor’ vs. ‘unmarried man’: two types of behaviour with no ‘meaning’ in common
- Integrational linguistics: linguistic signs do not exist prior to or independently of the context in which they occur.
2) LANGUAGE IS A STATE OF MIND (38>)
- See quotation from Chomsky (top of p.39)
- Rejection of behaviourism
- Creative aspect of language: it ‘provides finite means but infinite possibilities of expression’.
- Data: introspection: the intuitions of a native speaker – his or her judgements about what is or is not grammatical.
- Universal grammar:
- Relationship between language and use of language (“competence” and “performance”
- Generative grammar
- Deep structure versus surface structure
3) LANGUAGE IS COMMUNICATION (54>)
- This approach has a strong commonsense appeal
- High value placed on “authentic data”: attested examples of language use
- Halliday’s functional grammar.
- Halliday’s three metafunctions:
1)Ideational metafunction
2)Interpersonal metafunction
3)Textual metafunction
- Corpus linguistics: The approach is empirical: theories, which have been arrived at inductively or deductively, are tested by comparing frequencies of occurrence and by performing statistical analyses of the language (66).
CONCLUSION
There is disagreement not only about how best to study language, but also about what language actually is. Yet each of these approaches has something significant to say about language and language study. (68)
Lesson two, JEFFRIES, pp. 36-50.
REPRESENTING ACTIONS/EVENTS/STATES
Last week looked out how entities (people, places and things) are named and identified in language, focusing particularly on nominalization. Today look at how the actions and processes that take place between these entities.
1) World markets are falling
2) The Honourable member has ruined the economy
3) The world economy is in crisis
1)What is happening / action in progress
2)PAST action with consequences NOW
3)What is: a relation of equivalence (static)
______
Traditional grammatical notion of transitivity:
1)The Prime Minister gave me an ultimatum
2)Nelson Mandela went to Cape Townfor the festival
3)The temperature dropped
4)The waiter dropped my soup
In 1) a ditransitive verb requires two objects (direct and indirect)
In 2) verb requires some kind of adverbial
In 3) and 4) the same verb can be intransitive or transitive
Hallidayan model of transitivity introduces more nuanced choices.
1) MATERIAL ACTION VERBS
Intentional:
He walked out of the meeting / The government postponed the enquiry
Unintentional:
She lost her temper
Inanimate actor:
The sun shone / The tree fell on my car
2) VERBALIZATION PROCESSES (any action which uses language)
The President claimed that the war was justified
He invited us to the party
3) MENTAL PROCESSES
I saw / heard it
The interviewer realised her mistake
I know how to do it
She believed it would never happen
He was feeling ill
4) RELATIONAL VERBS (static relationships between two entities)
She was in the room.
He had little money.
What is worrying is that…
She became angry
Attributive : class membership (X is a member of Y):
Every student here is Italian
Sarah is wise
Wise is Sarah
Identifying: the order of the two components can be reversed
Sarah is the leader
The leader is Sarah
Over to You:
Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen: BBC history documentary
The Heart and Stomach of a King, C. Levin, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1994.
END OF LESSON TWO
LESSON 3
EQUATING AND CONTRASTING (Jeffries pp.50-65)
EQUATING
- relational equivalence
- appositional equivalence
- metaphorical equivalence
- similes
- overlapping meanings of words in the same lexical field: WALK: shuffle, stroll, strut, swagger, etc.
- near synonyms with different grammatical structure: e.g., I raise my hand (transitive); the sun rises in the morning (intransitive)
CONTRASTING
- negated opposition
- transitional opposition
- replacive opposition
- concessive opposition
- explicit opposition
- parallelism
- contrastives
- contextual opposition
- conventional opposition
- complementary opposition
Examples in text: page 1 (first and second paragraphs), A Tale of Two Cities(Charles Dickens)
LINK: FILM A Tale of Two Cities:
End of Lesson 3
LESSONS 4
More work on material from chapter 3
LESSON FIVE. BIENNALE 2
Jeffries: chapter 6: prioritising.
Chapman: chapter 3: sense and reference
Exemplification and text analysis: Blair’s political speech (see photocopy)
PRIORITISING
Default structure: in English new and important information is usually put into the final position of a clause:
Simon saw a new car
The sun shone
The car was full
I took all my books to Cornwall
I took all my books to Cornwalllast summer
Adverbial information, even in final position in the clause, can seem less important (= an optional clause element):
Simon saw a new car outside his neighbour’s house
The above assumes neutral word stress and intonation. Deliberate word stress or intonation can change the focus:
I took all my books to Cornwall
However, in English there are three main syntactic possibilities for prioritising some information: 1) changing information structure; 2) transformational options; 3) subordination.
1) Changing information structure
a) fronting: main clause element is put at the beginning of the sentence:
August was the month when I went to Cornwall
Tired he felt and and tired he was
Brightly shone the sun
b) cleft:focus immediately after ‘it + be’
It was in August that I went to Cornwall
It is Tom who is old
(84) Both fronting and clefting are based on the notion of some kind of underlying structure/sentence, from which fronting and clefting are derived:
Tired he felt (He felt tired)
It is Tom who is old (Tom is old)
Chomsky: deep structure? See lesson 2; Chapman chapter 2 (pp.38-54)
2) Transformations:
The government reduced unemployment benefit
Unemployment benefit was reduced (by the government)
- Subject of passive sentence is affected by the action instead of enacting it.
- Agent performing the action can be deleted (= potential for moving attention away from person(s) / thing(s) responsible for the action)
Transformations are not only verbal (as above). They can also be adjectival.
Sometimes the difference seems insignificant:
This woman drives a car.
This woman car-driver.
But the adjectival predeterminer of a noun phrase can trigger presuppositions:
There was a car accident. A woman car-driver was involved
3) Subordination
(86) Putting information at a higher syntactic level makes it more susceptible to questioning. Putting information at a lower syntactic level makes it less susceptible to questioning:
He said that he was honest.
The man, who said he was honest, arrived late.
The honest man arrived late.
The greater the level of subordination, the more difficult it is to question the assertion (i.e., the information that the reader/listener assumes the writer/speaker is presenting as true).
SENSE AND REFERENCE (Chapman, chapter 3. Seems difficult but you only need to know the difference between sense and reference, and not who Gottlob Frege was.)
Reference = extension of the word / denotation: the meaning explained entirely in relation to the world outside language. (To explain the denotational meaning of ‘an apple’ it is sufficient to point to an apple). Such meaning has also been described as ‘truth conditional’ (see Chapman, chapter 4.)
Sense = connotation
Both ‘Cox’ and ‘Golden Delicious’ share the same reference and extension (an apple). But they have different senses / connotations (which are known within a culture/speech community/discourse community).
The same applies to:
Neil Armstrong
The first man to set foot on the moon
Text analysis (of prioritising, and sense and reference) in political speech by Tony Blair.
END OF LESSON FIVE
LESSON SIX: BIENNALE 2 YEAR
EXEMPLIFYING AND ENUMERATING (JEFFRIES 67-76)
66: difference between:
EXEMPLIFYING (= some / A category or group represented by a few cases)
ENUMERATING (= all / A category or group represented by each member)
67: example of ENUMERATING: lists of symptoms and side effects on medicines: medicines are obliged by law to list ALL the symptoms that the product could cause.
68: EXEMPLIFICATION is often made explicit by phrases such as “for example”, “for instance”, and “to exemplify”
68: Both enumerating and exemplification often involve lists. 69. In written language these are separated by commas except for the penultimate and final items which are joined by “and”:
Sugar, milk, water and salt.
70: two part lists: communication of opposites: black and white. ‘To be or not to be’
70: three and four part lists can give a sense of completeness: (In French: freedom, liberty and equality.) ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’
71: apposition (two words, phrases or clauses with the same reference but with possibly different senses) can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from listing. ‘John Smith, the English teacher’ (easy to distinguish). ‘My brother, the Duke of Devonshire’ (more difficult to distinguish)
LESSON 6 (continued)
HOW DOES LANGUAGE RELATE TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD? (CHAPMAN 80 – 90)
Correspondence Theory: Concerned with Truth
81: ‘Your house is in Cagliari’: this proposition is true if and only if your house is in Cagliari. Language mirrors the world. In other words, if the description of the world expressed by sentence corresponds to how the world really is, then the sentence is true. This philosophical theory of language corresponds with commonsense understanding of the relation between language and the world.
Analytic and synthetic sentences
84 – 85. Analytic sentences. Red cars are cars. Speaking involves speech. Business is business. The first noun in these sentences contains the meaning of the second noun. There is no need to go out into the world and check the truth value of these sentences.
85: Synthetic sentences: ‘she is an intelligent student’. The meaning of ‘she’ is not necessarily contained in the meaning of ‘intelligent’. There is no necessary connection between ‘she’ and ‘intelligent’.
85: ‘The idea of an analytic sentence relies on the belief that words have meaning independent of any use. It assumes that just by knowing the language you know enough about the meaning of words, to analyse an analytic sentence and see that it is true’.
86 Analytic sentences are true by definition: for this reason they are usually uninformative. In contrast, synthetic sentences can give interesting information because they bring together two or more entities that do not go together just by necessity. You hear more synthetic than analytic sentences in everyday language.
86 Synthetic sentences are statements about the world that we can compare with how things really are. Analytic sentences do not need to be tested.
86 Logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. They divided all the possible sentences in a language into two sets: those that have meaning and those that are meaningless. One problem was that they were interested only in declarative sentences to make observational statements about how the world was (e.g., your car is red). They were not interested in the everyday use of language to invite, advise, command, ask people.
87: Ayer and the criterion of verifiability. 89 Ayer’s standpoint, which reflected that of logical positivism in general, was that a lot of the ways in which people use language in everyday situations was imprecise, illogical and not verifiable.
Dissatisfaction with the above points led to Austin’s theory of speech acts. Truth conditional theories of language do not tell us everything we need to know about meaning.
END OF LESSON 6
LESSON 7
2nd year biennale: Lesson 7: IMPLYING AND ASSUMING (Jeffries Chapter 7)
93 ‘… One of the main powers of language in general and English in particular is the ability to use assumptions and implication to make [questionable] ideologies appear to be [self-evident, non-questionable] common sense’
93 Presuppositions or implications are not structured into the main proposition of the utterance, and are therefore less susceptible to scrutiny or questioning.
**Identify the presuppositions and (possible) implicature in: I enjoyed working with Mary when she was a student.
PRESUPPOSITIONS
He asked another question. || When did she eat the cake? || I wonder what he’s thinking about. || Thank-you for not smoking here.
Once encoded into the text, presuppositions can be difficult to identify, let alone deny. They can be TRIGGERED by:
DETERMINERS IN NOUN PHRASES:
The computer age || Where is my/that pen? || All/Some of John’s children are tall. || Sorry for the delay = existential presuppositions
CHANGE OF STATE VERBS
He stopped smoking after he found a job. ( he smoked before he…
He started smoking after he became a student. ( he didn’t smoke before..
FACTIVE VERBS (followed by a presupposition contained in a subordinate clause which is not necessarily introduced by the subordinator ‘that’)
He now regrets [that] he murdered his neighbour.
She realised [that] it was too late.
They knew [that] they were right.
When did they start to understand [that] they had lost the war?
COMPARATIVE STRUCTURES
Your dog is as ugly as an Alsatian dog.
Peter is more popular than John.
CLEFT SENTENCES (presupposition introduced in the post-modifying relative complement):
It was John that telephoned the man.
It is the attitude of such people that is ruining this country
PSUEDO CLEFT SENTENCES (presupposed subordinate clause is in the grammatical subject position)
What he failed to do was your fault || What John said to Mary is none of your business.
APPOSITIONAL NOUN PHRASES (relational equivalence triggers existential presupposition)
The Honourable Member, the lying scoundrel, should answer the question.
- It is generally agreed that presuppositons survive negation:
I (don't) regret that I wanted to murder my neighbour. In both cases the presupposition is that….
- There can be a scale from clearly presuppositional at one end to clearly not presuppositional at the other (Grundy 120):
When there is a fire, leave the building. Presupposition triggering
In the event of fire, leave the building. Presupposition triggering
In case of fire, leave the building. Non-presupposition triggering
If there is a fire, leave the building Non-presupposition triggering
- Presuppositions embedded in questions to witnesses in court rooms or to politicians in Parliament can be particularly damaging because the addressee is supposed to answer (i.e., accept rather than contest) the presupposition(s) embedded in the question:
When did your government realize that Iraq had no nuclear arms?
Did you inform your husband that you had no wish to continue with this marriage?
OVER TO YOU: Identify the presuppositions in Shakespeare:
In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband (All's Well That Ends Well)
Come here my varlet, I’ll unarm again (Troilus and Cressida)
When shall we three meet again, lightning, or in rain (Macbeth)
Who keeps the gate here? ho! (Henry IV, Part III)
Who's there (Hamlet)
I wonder how the king escaped our hands (Henry VI, Part III)
If music be the food of love, play on (Twelfth Night)
IMPLICATURES
Jefferies builds on the model of implicature provided by the Gricean maxims of cooperation (truth, quantity, relevance, clarity). When a text flouts or violates one or more of these maxims, its meaning is still interpreted under the assumption that the speaker/writer is remaining generally co-operative. That is why the listener/reader will not interpret the following utterance as a straightforward lie:
The Honourable gentleman in question is a monkey and should answer the question.
There must be an implicature here that the person is like a monkey (i.e., cheeky or troublesome). (Jeffries 99)
Did you get your jacket back from the cleaners?
- You're not borrowing it. (Relevance)
_____
A (father) How old are you, George?
B (son) I'm 16
- I know how old you are, you fool. (Quantity)
_____