Applications
BORDIEU’S SOCIAL THEORY. Define and explain the concepts of symbolic capital, habitus and bodily lexis. The metaphor of symbolic capital establishes a similarity between financial capital and symbolic resources. Bordieu argues that both are unequally divided over groups within a particular population. Symbolic capital, like financial capital, is subject to laws of supply and demand. Certain groups in society posses more symbolic capital, and thus it is easier for them to invest it in a profitable way. Habitus refers to the different ways of thinking, acting and feeling that are originated by the position that a person takes on the social structure. It’s set of dispositions which generate practices and perceptions. Speakers have the ability to put language resources to practical use, as well as to foresee the reaction of their words. The concept of bodily lexis associates linguistic practices with deep-rooted bodily tendencies. According to Bordieu linguistic competence is “a dimension of bodily lexis” in which one’s whole relation to the social world, and one’s whole socially informed relation to the world, are expressed. Bodily lexis disposition varies for example between the members of the upper-social classes and the lower classes. Bourdieu introduced the concept of cultural capital, wealth based on social status and education. The success in school and in society, according to him, depends to a great extent on the on the cultural values, or what he called the habitus, of the dominant class. Bourdieu states that comprehension is not the primary goal of communication; the communicative efficiency is secondary to political efficiency and the desire to dominate and gain profit. Another important idea stated by Bordieu is the fact that the standard language isn’t necessary to gain authority and credibility; what is important, is the ability and the capacity of speakers to impose their criteria. In each interaction the whole social structure is at work and thus this capacity isn’t only determined in linguistic terms.Three concepts are replaced in Bordieu’s sociological critique of linguistics: acceptability instead of grammaticalness, symbolic power instead of relation of communication and symbolic capital instead of linguistic competence. Briefly write about MIKKHAIL BAKHTIN view of language, explaining the concepts of SPEECH GENRE AND HETEROGLOSSIA. Bakhtin was a theorist writing in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era; his works only became influential and achieved recognition after the 1960s when the works were published in the western world.He clearly opposes Saussure’s structuralist linguistic. He argues that language should be studied from a concrete lived reality, and not as an abstract system, since language is essentially social and is rooted in our everyday life. Some of his basic ideas were:Language is dialogic which entails the consideration of the utterance as the basic unit of language, as well as the fact that there is always another responsive voice understood in any utterance. Parting from this idea, utterances can never be isolated form the sequence in which they occur and they always hold a dialogic relationship with previous utterances which have been voiced or which are presupposed. Heteroglossia can be defined as the collection of all the forms of social speech, or rhetorical modes, that people use in the course of their daily lives. We find that some texts are more heteroglossic than others, depending on the only or various voices it is formed by. According to Bahktin discourse is mainly heteroglossic, which fact entails that language is normally patterned into speech genres and that two or more genres normally co-exist in a given discourse. The fact that languages are dialogic and heteroglossic implies, as stated by Bahktin, that our views and our understanding of the world, our relations with others and the sense of our own identity are always evaluative and ideological.Any change or transformation in genre custom will contribute to social change, this is why social changes are first perceived at genre level. The transformations of genre conventions imply changes in the language. ANALYSIS: from a Bakhitinian perspective. IDENTIFY these voices and briefly COMMENT on the function they fulfil: who’s voice it is narrator’s, woman, man, institution, medical voice, a voice of men in general as representatives of a common belief, etc. , the reader, hearer, analyst it is addressed to, what the piece of discourse defends/attacks, chauvinism (wrong thought of being superior), ideologies. Intention of the writing, who sent it, motivations to write it.An internal struggle in language is referred to in terms of a conflict between two different forces: Centripetal forces: associated with political centralization and a unified cultural norm. These forces produce authoritative and inflexible discourses like religious dogma, fathers, teachers or scientific truth. Centrifugal forces: refer to the stratification and diversification of language into varieties associated with different genres, professions, age groups, etc. These forces are more associated with everyday informal conversations and people’s inner dialogue than the centripetal ones. COMPUTER mediated discourse. Differences with speaking and writing. Discourse is dyadic (twofold), which doesn’t mean that it is always reciprocal and there are many different types like political, medical, etc. Nevertheless we must speak about a continuum of discourse types, since no kind belongs to an absolute type. Following Lakoff among other characteristics of discourse we find formal/informal, Dyadic/triadic/group (various part can take a role. Writing is generally non-dyadic, but letters are dyadic), spontaneous/non-spontaneous, face-to-face / telephone conversation. The analysis of computer-mediated discourse (CMD) is fairly recent since this is a recent phenomenon. Herring defined this type of discourse as the communication produced when human beings interact with one another by transmitting messages via networked computers. This communication is classified in two main types: synchronous: a mode in which both sender and addressee(s) must be logged-on simultaneously, e.g. chat. Asynchronous: this mode doesn’t require the users to be logged-on at the same time, e.g. e-mail. CMD is different from speaking and writing for very different reasons, among these we find that: CMD exchanges are normally faster that written exchanges, but slower than spoken ones. CMD allows multiple participants to communicate simultaneously, CMD is considered a private and a public medium at the same time, since even if you send a message privately it can be redistributed publicly. Information is available through the visual channel, normally limited to typed text, although modern systems of communication, allow for video images and sounds, in these cases it comes very close to face-to-face communication.CMD is considered a blending of speaking and writing and can be perceived less correct than the standard language, because it has its own use of it. In CMD many non-standard features can be found, most of them are deliberate choices, among these choices, the most frequent we finds is the use of a mixed style formal/informal- written/spoken, use of acronyms and abbreviations, use of symbols or emoticons, use of Netiquette rules (politeness on the web), etc. CMD is not a uniform medium of communication since language can vary to a great extent, depending on different factors, like gender, age, social class, etc. Even if this type of communication is being mediated by impersonal machines, it still allows us to know about the social and personal circumstances and realities of its users. Herring pointed out that CMD constitutes social practice, the participants joke, negotiate or even get married using this type of discourse.Scholars studying CMD have focused on different aspects of this type of discourse, for example the power asymmetries, the gender asymmetries (e.g. female participants in discussion groups are disproportionately disfavoured) or the dominance of the English language on the Internet. POLITICAL discourse. Define discourse (see computer) The study of political discourse covers a wide range of issues and uses a wide range of analytic methods. The primary goal of political discourse analysis is to discover and point out the ways in which language is manipulated for particular political purposes. Orwell analyses the different ways politicians manipulate the thoughts of an audience through the use of language, and he makes them responsible for the general decline in the use of the English language, because according to Orwell the distort and create a complicated language difficult to understand.There are other works like Edleman’s that point to the symbolic manipulation of reality for the achievement of political goals. Language can be manipulated for political purposes at different levels, since all linguistic levels are involved in characterizing political discourse, for example in the lexical level by using certain words or expressions, on the phonological level to be more appealing to voters. MEDICAL discourse. Define discourse. A great part of the research on medical discourse has been carried out regarding the analysis of power relationships between doctor and patient. Following Madfes we find that there are two types of medical discourse practice, the first is the traditional practice in which the doctor always controls the floor of the conversation, most of the studies have been carried out within this context. The second in the alternative-medicine practice in which doctors interact at a more egalitarian level with their patients, in this practice doctor’s show a more open and understanding attitude on both levels the oral and the body language. Helman describes these patient/doctor encounters as “ritualized” because there is a sequence of phases that normally occurs in them. Ten Have presents six phases in these encounters: 1) opening, 2) complaint, 3) examination or test, 4) diagnosis, 5) treatment of advice, 6) closing. Several major analyses deal with the question of genre, i.e. whether these medical encounters are mainly conversation or interview-like. Another kind of analyses is the one of frames, in which interactive behaviour of participants constitutes the frame. Gender is another aspect studied within the discourse of medical encounters, there are few studies about it, but they show that while women are more likely to be more cooperative in discourse, men are more likely to be competitive. Other studies have focused on the lexicon, for example to explore the use of euphemisms or metaphors.