Transcript GE3A unit 3x - criticalliteracycommunication

Critical Literacy, Communication
& interaction 1 (GE3A)
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UNIVERSITY OF ARUBA
FAS: SW&D / OG&M
SEPTEMBER 22, 2009
UNIT 3
Today's Program:
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 Questions about the first assignment?
 Reflection on where we are now, connecting the dots
between units 1, 2 and 3
 Focusing on the theme of unit 3
Reflection on where we are now [1]:
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 [UNIT 1] Human beings are social, they communicate
and make sense of their selves and their world through
codes (codes represent here messages, ideas,
conventions, rules etc.)
 Properties of communication process :
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Is dynamic
Is contextual (multilayered effect of diverse contexts)
Is both intentional (with a specific purpose/function) and
unintentional (focus course: intention)
Ubiquitous (omnipresent)
Cultural
Shapes and re-shapes our identities
Reflection on where we are now [2]:
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 Special focus on the following properties of
communication process in this course:
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Is interactive and transactive
Is symbolic in nature
 Interactive and transactive:
 Sender and receiver interaction is based on encoding and
decoding of messages
 Messages are composed of codes
 Negotiation of meaning, interpretation and identity
Reflection on where we are now [3]:
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Symbolic in nature:
 Symbolic = an arbitrarily selected and learned
stimulus that represents something else. There isn’t
a natural relationship between the symbol and what
with it represents. Both verbal as non-verbal symbols
are arbitrary!
 Symbols are the vehicle by which the thoughts and
ideas of one person can be communicated to another
person.
 We approach these symbols in the form of codes
Reflection on where we are now [4]:
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 Sender and receiver [in the broad sense of the
concept] communicate with each other through a
process of encoding and decoding messages
(dynamic, transactive, interactive and symbolic)
 Messages are composed by codes
 Properties of codes (Fiske, 1991, see next sheet):
Properties of Codes (Fiske, 1991)
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1.
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Codes are systemized (language, sentences, words, alphabet,
agreement upon meaning of arbitrary signs: A B etc.)
(verbal/non-verbal codes)
All codes convey meaning: they are vehicles for messages,
ideas, rules
Codes depend upon agreement amongst their user and upon
a shared sociocultural background
All codes perform an identifiable social or communicative
function
All codes are transmittable by their appropriate media or
channels of communication
Reflection on where we are now [5]:
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Bridging Unit 1Unit 2
 [UNIT 2] Being ‘literate’ means here, being aware
of and being able to deal with these codes (coding
and decoding process) (understanding the world and
who you are in this world)
 Concept Literacy:
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Not merely approached as a basic cognitive skill implying
reading, writing, speaking and listening
But as a broader concept : interdisciplinary
How people use literacy is tied up with the particular details of
the situation and that literacy events are particular to a
specific community at a specific point in history
When approaching Literacy:
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 Literacy practices are situated in broader social
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relations
Literacy is a symbolic system used both for
communicating with others and for representing the
world to ourselves
Attitudes and awareness are important aspects of
literacy
Issues of power are important
Current literacy events and practices are created out
of the past
Changing definitions in time (new times call for new
literacies)
CL: Taking a ‘Critical Stance’
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 Our quest in becoming literate involves reaching the
state of critical literacy:
 CL: the ability to be aware of, analyze, understand
and evaluate communication utterances. It entails
the ability to interpret the intentions (of the sender),
the contents and the effects that messages have on
receivers.
 CL involves an active, challenging approach to
reading and textual practices. CL involves the
analysis and critique of the relationship among texts,
language, power, social groups and social practices
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Focus: Language as the system of codes
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UNIT 1UNIT 2UNIT 3
 [UNIT 1] We communicate through ‘codes’
 [UNIT 2] Being ‘Literate’ means being able to
understand these different ‘codes’
 [UNIT 3] When addressing the verbal code in this
course, we focus on language. Language as a system
of symbols used solely to communicate
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UNIT 3:
The verbal code,
Human Language
LANGUAGE
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The study of language provides a window into the
workings of the mind, and bears on issues of how the
mind represents meaning, how we interpret and
understand the world
Mind
Language
Communication
Meaning
Menu Unit 3:
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 The phenomena Language, Language as a (tangible,
physical) system for communication
 Language as a window to the mind (internal
representations of the world)
 (Metaphorical nature of the mind (conceptual
metaphors next UNIT)
 ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’: with the words and
sentences we leave the domain of language as a
system of signs and enter into the another universe,
that of language as an instrument of communication,
whose expression is discourse
[SEMANTICS]
the study of meaning
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 Popular expression: “It’s a case of mere semantics”
To capture and study the intangible process of
meaning [and its negotiation] we have to work on
the level of language
Steve Pinker defines ‘semantics’ (2007):
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 “ Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it is also
about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is
about the relation of words to reality –the way speakers commit
themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way
thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world. It is
about the relation of words to a community (“) how a new word, which arises in a act of creation by a single
speaker, comes to evoke the same idea in the rest of a population, so
people can understand one another when they use it.
 (“) It is about the relation of words to emotions: the way in which
words don’t just point to things but are saturated with feelings,
which can endow the words with a sense of magic, taboo, and sin.
 (“) And it is about words and social relations –how people use
language not just to transfer ideas from head to head but to
negotiate the kind of relationship they wish to have with their
conversational partner” (extracted from ‘The stuff of thought’ Steve
Pinker, 2008)
Functions of Language (Jackobson, 1960):
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The constant engagement with meaning relies on the
assumption that people do not produce texts at
random and without any purpose but have specific
intentions to communicate and certain goals to
achieve. Language is capable of realizing numerous
functions:
1. Referential function: conveying information
2. Emotive function: expressing inner states
3. Phatic function: establishing or maintaining a
channel of communication (‘Ta hasi calor awe’)
Functions of Language (Jackobson, 1960):
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4.
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Poetic function: when the choice of the form is the
essence of our message
Metalinguistic function: when the language talks about
itself (e.g. The word ‘computer’ means…)
Directive function: seeking to affect the behavior of the
addressee (e.g. ‘Come back’)
Contextual function: framing communication as a
particular kind (e.g. ‘Let’s start our discussion by…’)
In additional to these functions, there are numerous
others such as: requesting, offering, apologizing,
pleading, complimenting, advising, warning etc.
“WE DO THINGS WITH LANGUAGE.
LANGUAGE IS (SOCIAL) ACTION”
The structure of Human Language (1)
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 = a systematic set of sounds, combined with a set of
rules, for the sole purpose creating meaning and
communicating.
 These sounds are representing symbolically in the
language’s alphabet, this is called phonemes. There is no
natural relationship between sounds and their
accompanying alphabet (e.g. there is no natural
relationship between the letter ‘c’ and the sound ‘see’)
 When combined, phonemes become words
(=morphemes). (There is also no natural relationship
between the word cat and the fuzzy little animal)
The structure of Human Language (2)
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 All languages have a set of rules for combining the
sounds to create meaning. This set of rules is called
syntax or grammar
 Through syntax, sentences are generated. Through
syntax, sound and meaning are connected.
 Chomsky: although the approx. 5000 languages that
are spoken in the world today appear to be very
different, they are in fact, remarkably similar. “All
languages spoken today are all dialects of one
common language –human language (Universal
Grammar)
Universal Grammar (1)
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 Chomsky argues that all human languages share a
universal grammar that is innate in the human
species and culturally invariant.
 Every normal child is genetically programmed for
human language. (just like humans are programmed
to walk upright, so are humans programmed for
human language) (in this sense, language is as much
part as the human brain as the thumb is part of the
hand)
 Humans come to the world according to Chomsky
already equipped with language.
Universal grammar (2):
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 Humans are not born with any specific language
such as English, Spanish or Papiamento.
 They are born with universal grammar, that is, a
deep-seated set of rules (i.e. syntax) that all
languages in the world follow in some way or
another.
 Humans do, however learn a specific language. The
acquisition of a particular language (e.g.
Papiamento) is influenced by the specific cultural
environment in which a child is born/raised.
“Down the rabbit hole”
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Introducing Discourse
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Language as social practice:
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Reality=Social Practice
(action, experience)
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Represented in Discourse
The study of discourse
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 Language as a means of constructing realities.
 Unit of analysis for this: Discourse.
 Discourse as actual instances of communication in the
medium of language. Discourse as “socially constructed
knowledges of some aspect of reality” (Foucault)
 Discourse analysis offer the possibility of understanding
how language permeates human affairs.
 Discourse= an extended stretch of connected speech or
writing, a text.
 Discourse Analysis: the analysis of an extended text, or
type of text
[Socially constructed knowledges]
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 These knowledges have been developed in specific social
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contexts, and in ways which are appropriate to the interests of
social actors in these contexts
Contexts: large ( e.g. a company, the socialistic ideology) or small
(e.g. family, between best friends) or institutionalized (e.g. mass
media).
Discourses are resources for representation, knowledges about
some aspect of reality, which can be drawn upon when that
aspect has to be represented.
Frameworks for making sense out of things
Plurality of discourse: there can be several different ways of
knowing -and hence also of representing- the same ‘object’ of
knowledge. Different ways of making sense of the same aspect of
reality, which can include or exclude different things, and serve
different interests.
[Socially Constructed Knowledges]
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 Evidence for the existence of a given discourse comes
from texts, from what has been said or written.
 More specifically it comes from the similarity
between the things that are said and written in
different texts about the same aspect of reality
 It is on the basis of such similar statements, repeated
or paraphrased in different texts and dispersed
among these texts in different ways, that we can
reconstruct the knowledge which they represent
e.g. Discourses about Animals
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1.
Animals as living creatures, cute creatures, pets.
They have feelings (anti abuse of animals)
Animals as petsAnti abuse of Animals
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Animals as delicious food
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Totem power of Animals
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 Evoking the spiritual power of animals (shamanic
cultures)
Properties of Discourse (1)
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Discourse are finite:
 “ Discourse contain a limited number of statements
(Foucault, 1977)
 (‘’) Bits of knowledge are shared between many
people and recur time and time again in a wide range
of different types of texts and communicative events,
even if they are not always formulated in the same
way and not always complete.
 (‘’)But, once you know a discourse, a single part of it
can trigger the rest…
1.
Properties of Discourse (2)
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2. Discourses have a history
3. Discourses have a social distribution (=discursive
formation)(belong to a certain relating theme: e.g.
‘animals as pets’ is not the same theme as ‘animals
as food’)
4. Discourses can be realized in different ways (can be
realized through action (e.g. animals have feelings
 anti animal abuse attitude) or through the
representation of such way of life (e.g. being a
vegetarian)
Social constructed?
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 There is a relation between discourses and social
activities
 Understanding is ultimately based on doing, our
understandings derive from our doings. But
discourses transform these practices in ways which
safeguard the interests at stake in a given social
context.
 DiscourseDoing: What? Why? Plus ideas and
attributes
 Actual example: Status Aparte: LGO?
UPG?influences the social act voting
Discourse  Doing: What? Why? Plus ideas and attributes
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Ideas and attributes:
1. Evaluations: a value
2. Purposes
3. Legitimating: reasons why particular things should
be done in particular ways, by particular people,
etc. (advertising, political discourse  the art of
persuasion )
The Anatomy of Discourse (1)
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 Actions: the things people do, the activities that make up
the social practice and their chronological order
 Manner: the way in which (some of or all of) the actions
are performed. (e.g. slowly, energetically, graciously,
based on anger)
 Actors: people (also animals) involved in the practice,
and then different roles in which they are involved (for
instance active and passive roles)
 Presentation: is the way in which actors are dressed and
groomed. All social pratices have their rules of
presentation, although they differ in kind and degree of
strictness
The Anatomy of Discourse (2)
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 Resources: the tools and materials needed to enact a social
practice
 Times: Inevitably social practices are timed, they take place at
certain times, and they last for certain amounts of time
 Spaces: the spaces where the social action takes place,
including the way they should be arranged to make the
practice possible
 In reality all these elements must be part of the way a social
practice is actually enacted. But texts/discourses may include
only some of them, and so do the discourses on which these
texts draw their content. Knowledge is selective and what it
selects depends on the interests and purposes of the sender(s)
(institutions) that have foster the knowledge
Social practices represented inWritten texts:
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 Written texts include only 2 elements of the social
practice, the actions and the medium through which
they are realized.
 Not represented are the writer and the reader, and
the circumstances of writing and reading –time,
place and grooming etc-
How is reality changed into discourse?
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4 basic types of transformation of reality:
1. Exclusion: discourses can exclude elements of social
practice
2. Rearrangement: Discourses can rearrange the elements
of social practices, for instance when it ‘detemporalizes’
elements which in reality have a specific order, or when
it imposes a specific order on actions which in reality
do not need to take place in any specific order
3. Addition: discourses can add elements to the
representation (purposes, evaluations, legitimations)
4. Substitution: discourse substitutes concepts with other
concepts