Discourse, Grammar and Ideology

Functional and Cognitive Perspectives

Christopher Hart

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781441104854
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachliche Semantik

Researchers in critical discourse analysis (CDA) have often pointed to grammar as a locus of ideology in discourse. This book illustrates the role that grammars as models of language (and image) can play in revealing ideological properties of texts and discourse in social and political contexts. The book takes the reader through three distinct grammatical frameworks – functional grammar, multimodal grammar and cognitive grammar. Using examples taken from a range of discourses relating to globalisation, including discourses of immigration, war, corporate practice and political protests, the book demonstrates the individual utility and the interconnectedness of these models inside CDA. A key argument advanced is that the cognitive processes necessarily involved in making sense of language are based in visual experience. This position offers new ways of understanding the ideological effects of grammatical choices in texts and suggests a reassessment of the relationship between linguistic and multimodal grammars in CDA. The book will appeal to students and researchers interested in CDA and the relationship between discourse, cognition and social action.

Part 1

Functional Perspectives

1

Representation

1. Introduction

In the introduction, we identified a number of different dimensions of discourse where ideology may lurk. In this chapter, we address the ideological potential of linguistic representation. Representation concerns the depiction of social actors, situations and events. However, linguistic expressions do not correspond directly with the realities they describe. Rather, the grammar of representation, located in the ideational function of language, yields a linguistic product which reflects but a particular take on reality which may thus be ideologically infused. In this chapter, we apply tools sourced from SFG and developed for ideological discourse research primarily in the framework of Critical Linguistics to shed light on the ideological functions of linguistic representation. We do so in the context of media Discourses concerning State and Citizen. In Section 2, we introduce the basic principles of SFG. In Section 3, we show how the system of TRANSITIVITY affords ideological differences in Discourses of civil (dis)order. In Section 4, we discuss VOICE and GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR as means of mystifying responsibility for criminal acts of State power. In Section 5, we outline a grammar for the representation of social actors and illustrate the ideological potential of different options within this system with examples from discourse on immigration. Finally, in Section 6, we highlight a number of potential problems with Critical Linguistics which motivate the adoption of new complementary tools in contemporary approaches.

2. Systemic Functional Grammar

Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) presents a theory of language based on purpose and choice (e.g. Halliday 1973, 1978, 1994). In other words, it is concerned with what speakers are doing when they use language and why on particular occasions of use they formulate their utterances in the way they do. This is in contrast with other models of grammar such as Chomsky’s GG, which, as Fowler (1991: 5) states, ‘is not interested in the role of language in real use’. Here, for example, the active and passive constructions are seen as formal equivalences derived from some underlying deep structure. Similarly, GG would analyse two sentences ‘the police forced the rioters back’ and ‘the police moved the protestors back’ as realizations of the same syntactic structure [S[NP[VP[NP[PP]]]]] without any reference to differences in meaning, which, for Chomsky, is not the proper business of linguistics. SFG, by contrast, is ‘specifically geared to relating structure to communicative function’ (Fowler 1991: 5). Its focus point, in analysing language, is therefore meaning rather than form. Here, such alternative formulations are recognized as being used for different purposes on different occasions, as is partly evidenced by their context-dependent distributions. It is this functionalist orientation that makes SFG an ideal tool for CDA (Fairclough 1989: 11; Fowler 1991: 5).

In SFG, Halliday seeks to describe the systems of choices open to a speaker in the three (ideational, interpersonal and textual) functions of language he identifies. In CDA, researchers seek to interpret the ideological functions of these choices. On this account, language is said to provide a system of semiotic resources which exists as a meaning potential. The system is organized into strata at different levels of abstraction which are connected by means of realization. Meaning potentials are actualized through choices at each level in the system. The three strata are semantics (meaning), lexicogrammar (coding – both wording and ordering) and, relevant to spoken language only, phonology (sounding).¹ These three strata overlap with the three functions as shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1. Stratification and realization

The semantic stratum constitutes the speaker’s basic experience of what is described. This basic experience is then subject to further construal as is it is coded at the level of lexicogrammar.² Realization takes place through choices in various sub-systems of the lexicogrammar, each of which serves particular functions. Language conceived this way exists as a semiotic pool of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic choices realized through various sub-systems. These sub-systems consist of networks which have entry conditions and output features and are presented left-right according to a scale of delicacy. Crucially, the output of one sub-system may provide the entry conditions for the operation of another. Similarly, more than one sub-system may share the same entry conditions. Hence, sub-systems enter into systemic networks. For example, a fundamental choice the speaker makes in English is in the MOOD system between imperative and indicative forms. If the speaker selects indicative, then he/she faces a choice between declarative and interrogative forms. At the same time, the speaker must make choices in TRANSITIVITY (process, participant and circumstance types) and THEME (marked or unmarked ordering of the clause). These three systems reflect the interpersonal, ideational and textual functions of language, respectively.

The system of a language (i.e. the totality of all the specific systems that would figure in a complete and comprehensive network) is instantiated in the form of text – the material (no matter how ephemeral) manifestation of the system as a meaning-making potential. System and text, then, define two poles of a cline from potential to particular instance. Between these two poles are intermediate stations which, adapted from Halliday, we can think of as context-dependent constraints on the system which are responsible for statistical probabilities in instantiation and are associated with particular Discourses and genres (see Figure 1.2.). In examining the representational dimension of discourse, we are concerned with choices made in the ideational function, which is served primarily through the system of TRANSITIVITY. In Critical Linguistics, practitioners have been primarily occupied with ideological patterns of representation which result from transitivity choices in Discourses of law and order. In the following section, we consider TRANSITIVITY as ideological means in Discourses of civil disorder.

Figure 1.2. Instantiation

3. Transitivity analysis

Transitivity in CDA is a broader concept than the number of complements required by the semantics of a verb. It refers instead to the type of process designated in the clause and the consequences of this for the types of participants that can occur in the clause. TRANSITIVITY, then, provides a system of resources for referring to entities in the world and, crucially, the way that they interact with or relate to one another. It involves speakers analysing situations and events as being of certain types. Here, three elements of a canonical semantic configuration are distinguished: PARTICIPANTS, PROCESS and CIRCUMSTANCE. These elements are typically realized, at the level of lexicogrammar, in nominal, verbal and adverbial groups, respectively, and reflect functional categories in the clause structure Subject/Complement, Finite-Predicator and Adjunct as in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3. Canonical clause structure at three levels of realization

For Fowler, transitivity is the ‘foundation of representation’ (1991: 71). It is a particularly powerful notion and much used concept in CDA for, following Fowler, the system

has the facility to analyse the same event in different ways, a facility which is of course of great interest in newspaper analysis . . . Since transitivity makes options available, we are always suppressing some possibilities, so the choice we make – better, the choice made by the [D]iscourse – indicates our point of view, is ideologically significant. (ibid.)

The process is the ‘core’ component of the clause and the starting point in any ideational analysis. A relatively small number of general process types can be identified. Major process types are material, mental, relational and verbal while more minor types include existential and behavioural processes.³ These process types are associated with particular participant roles. For example, material processes, perhaps the largest category of processes, necessarily involve an ACTOR or AGENT (the ‘doer’) and may also involve a GOAL or PATIENT (the ‘done to’).⁴ By contrast, verbal processes necessarily involve a SAYER and may also involve a RECEIVER. Note that these requirements pertain to the semantic level and are not necessarily rendered explicit in the clause, sometimes to ideological effect, as we will see below.

A significant part of a Critical Linguistic analysis of transitivity involves identifying the process types and thus the participant roles that different social actors are represented as engaged in. This includes distinguishing, for example, whether certain social actors are more frequently represented as AGENTS or PATIENTS in material processes, or whether some social actors are more frequently represented as AGENTS in material processes while others are more frequently represented as SENSERS or SAYERS in mental and verbal processes, respectively. At a greater level of delicacy, it may involve distinguishing particular types of material, mental or verbal processes. Here, for example, we can distinguish between processes in terms of their modality, their intensity or the effect they have, if any, on a second participant. Let us now demonstrate how close comparative analysis of transitivity can reveal patterns in discourse which, it is argued, are indicative of ideology. Take, by way of illustration, the following analysis of reporting during the 1984–1985 British Miners’ Strike.

3.1 An example from the 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike

The Miners’ Strike is one of most pivotal moments in British industrial relations history. It greatly divided public opinion but many claim that significant factions of the national press were institutionally biased against the strike (Williams 2009). Throughout the period, there were several flashes of violence between police and striking miners on the picket line. Among the most controversial of these occurred at Orgreave on 29 May 1984 when police used riot gear for the first time in the strike.⁵ The events left 48 police officers and 28 miners injured.

Press coverage of industrial disputes and civil actions tends to focus on the disruptive effects of protests rather than the causes behind them (Glasgow Media Group 1976). This is problematic for it reduces the protest to a spectacle rather than a legitimate form of political action and prevents serious discussion of the issues at stake (Murdock 1973). Both papers in the data below conform to this conventional practice. However, there are some subtle differences. Trew (1979: 118) suggests that ‘when social norms ar...