DISCOURSE AND WORLD M.A (ENGLISH) DR. ABDELRAHIM HAMID MUGADDAM

PARAPHRASING Paraphrasing.. Saying what a text is “about” a kind of text analysis performed almost everyday. How is that book?.. Very good, interesting.. It is about… To say something is about… presupposes that there is a world outside of the text to which the text refers.

Young boys and older women in the “real world” that novel represents in words. “about Europe during the Second World War”.. Presuppose that there is a previously existing geographical area called Europe & a previously existing historical event referred to as “Second World War”.

Translation shows how words and world are related!... Eva who moved from Poland to Canada describes the terrifying difficulty not only of talking but of thinking, seeing, and even living when one’s “interior” language is changed.

Learns to talk in English Able to trace the outlines of things in the Canadian World in which she now lives English gives her verbal categories that function as frames and boxes into which to fit people, objects, and events and thereby differentiates them and give them edges and shapes.

Eva’s lack of language when she first came to Canada does not just limit her access to the world. Not having a language means that she doesn’t have a world at all and thus doesn’t “really exist” Acquiring a language means acquiring a world

“Exuberance” when a choice has to be made in a language that does not have to be made in the original.. Adding elements of meaning, omitting things in the translation or paraphrase that were present in the original (the new version is deficient). Paraphrasing is not really a process of “saying something a different way”, but of evoking and creating a different “something” in different world.

LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES, MINDS AND WORLD VIEWS Words are responsible for our expectations that categories of things can be defined in terms of the features shared by all members of that set… leaves : leaf (is used to refer to all leaves). The way in which a given language categorizes things might influence how speakers of that language are forced, or at least tend to conceive of things. In English, experiencing thing is treated grammatically as if it were the same as possessing it… have a headache.

Linguistic relativism (Sapir/Worlf): the ways in which people categorize things in the world are affected by the ways in which their language categorizes these things grammatically. Sapir “the fact of the matter is that the real world is to a large extent unconsciously built up by the language habit of the group”

Noun classification: how categories of nouns reflects and creates categories of objects. English categories of Nouns is minimal: singular/plural, define /indefinite.. Mass/count Other Indo-European languages: masculine/feminine Burmese: choosing a noun must be accompanied with particles called “classifiers” e.g dogs & Cows must have the same classifiers.

DISCOURSE, CULTURE AND IDEOLOGY Discourse, language and ideology are connected Sapir/worlf hypothesis If there is a short simple “basic” word for a colour, it is easier to remember having seen that seen that colour in a variety of places.

A way to think about the relationship between language and world is to think about discourse rather than about language: to study the actual instances of talk, singing, writing rather than an idealized description of how people, talk, sing and write.

DISCOURSE, LANGUAGE AND VERBAL ARTS Joel sherzer (1987); It is discourse which creates, recreates, modifies, and fine tunes both culture and language and their intersection, and it is especially in verbally artistic discourse such as poetry, magic, verbal duelling, and political rhetoric that the potentials and resources provided by grammar, as well as by meanings and symbols, are exploited to the fullest and essence of language culture

DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY Discourse is one of the major principal activities through which ideology is circulated and reproduced (Foucault, 1972). Ways of talking produce and reproduce ways of thinking, and ways of thinking can be manipulated via choices of grammar, style, wording and every other aspect of language. CDA is to uncover the ways in which discourse and ideology are intertwined

CHOICES MADE! 1.The representation of actions, actors, and events 2.The representation of knowledge status 3.Naming and wording 4.Incorporation and representing other voices

LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY! Language ideology has to do with the ways in which language is conceived of as and thought to articulate with other aspects of social life. How language corresponds to reality, how communication works, linguistic correctness, goodness, and badness, articulateness and inarticulateness are all aspects of language ideology.

SILENCE! Absence and presence of things. Foregrounds and backgrounds Silence may have to do with how languages group things in grammar (second person in Arabic & English) Learning to notice silence means learning to “de-familiarize” the familiar (Becker, 1989). In other words, it requires learning to imagine alternative worlds and alternative ways of being, thinking, and talking.