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Quiz

Further Readings

Further reading for Introduction

  1. Ulrich Beck's Risk Society is a socio-political account of the critical state of modern German and European society and culture. Besides locating the crises of the environment, the family and the status of science and technology within political and economic theory, he takes a remarkably positive attitude to the political awareness and participation which these crises have brought about.

    • Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

  2. From a purely analytical viewpoint, one of the best overviews and introductions to CDA is Paul Simpson and Andrea Mayr's Language and Power: A Resource Book for Students. Ron Scollon's Analyzing Public Discourse shares with our book the attempt to use critical discourse analysis (CDA) insights for action, rather than simply for analysis. It is a more concentrated attempt to use CDA to impact on society, in particular public policy, i.e. public consultative discourse analysis

    • Scollon, R. (2008). Analyzing Public Discourse: Discourse Analysis in the Making of Public Policy. London: Routledge.
    • Simpson, P. and Mayr, A. (2009). Language and Power: A Resource Book for Students. London and New York: Routledge.

  3. In many ways this present book takes the same perspective on discourse as Norman Fairclough’s Language and Power and derives from it the underlying theoretical linguistic framework. However, that is a more advanced textbook without any emphasis on the writing of texts. For the reader whose appetite has been whetted by the present book, it would be excellent follow-up reading at a more challenging level.

    • Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power (2nd edn). Harlow: Longman.

  4. Fairclough is himself very dependent on Michael Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, which is the inspiration and source of most of the grammatical theory of Part A.

    • Halliday, M.A.K. and Matthiessen, C. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd edn). London: Hodder.

  5. There are various derivatives of functional grammar designed for students at different levels. Suzanne Eggins’ An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics is clear and comprehensive, and explains and uses the notion of system: a framework for modelling linguistic choices, a concept which underlies Halliday’s Grammar but to which he makes no explicit reference. An equally accessible, but no less comprehensive, textbook is Angela Downing and Philip Locke’s A University Course in English Grammar. One advantage of this textbook is that, although Hallidayan in spirit, it preserves much of the traditional terminology of grammatical analysis. It also includes many interesting texts. The easiest introduction is David Butt et al.’s Using Functional Grammar: An Explorer’s Guide, designed specifically for teachers using Hallidayan grammar in the classroom.

    • Butt, D. and National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (Australia). (2000). Using Functional Grammar: An Explorer’s Guide (2nd edn). Sydney, NSW: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research.
    • Downing, A. and Locke, P. (2006). English Grammar: A University Course (2nd edn). London: Routledge.
    • Eggins, S. (2004). An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics (2nd edn). New York and London: Continuum.

    We will refer to specific parts of these grammar books (4–5) in the further reading sections of Chapters 1 to 3.

  6. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s seminal work on a comprehensive account of the grammar of visual design draws on a variety of examples to examine how images convey meaning.

    • Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd edn). New York and London: Routledge.

  7. Information regarding the use of electronic portfolios can be found on the popular and free ePortfolio platform www.foliospaces.org. The special issue of the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology also provides interesting articles on the use of electronic portfolios for academic purposes. Of particular interest is Hiradhar and Gray’s article on the implementation and integration of electronic portfolios into language-related courses.

Further reading for Chapter 1

  1. Halliday’s and Matthiessen chapter 5, Downing and Locke chapter 6, and Eggins chapter 9 all provide a comprehensive account of the grammar of theme and rheme. Butt chapter 6 gives a simpler version. Eggins units 2 and 3 are a clear and detailed account of the theory of genre and register, and Butt et al. deal with the same concept in a very simplified way in chapter 8.

    • Butt, D. (2000). Using functional grammar: An explorer's guide (2nd ed.). Sydney: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research.
    • Downing, A. & Locke, P. (2006). English grammar: A university course (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
    • Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.). New York and London: Continuum.
    • Halliday, M. A. K. & Mathiessen, C. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Hodder.

  2. Halliday and Hasan’s Language Context and Text chapter 4, explains the idea of generic structure and gives clear examples of how it is related to social context. Tony Bex’s Variety in Written English provides a useful overview of written genres.

    • Halliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, R. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Bex, T. (1996). Variety in written English: Texts in society: Societies in text. London: Routledge.

  3. Walter Nash’s Designs in Prose chapter 1, pp. 9-19 is the source for the accounts of paragraph structure given in this unit. Although, or because most of his examples are made up, they are often humorous and entertaining. This book has been perhaps superseded by Nash and Stacey’s Creating Texts: An Introduction to the Study of Composition. Both are very useful rhetorical manuals, though they have little to say about the ideological dimensions of texts.

    • Nash, W. (1980). Designs in prose: A study of compositional problems and methods. Harlow: Longman.
    • Nash, W. & Stacey, D. (2014). Creating texts: An introduction to the study of composition. London: Routledge.

  4. Colomb and Williams’ ‘Perceiving Structure in Professional Prose’ is a very useful article. It is the source for the point first and point last distinction, but elaborates many other aspects of prose structure, such as the way texts hang together through lexical patterning to form discourse units of various extents.

    • Colomb, G. G. & Williams, J. M. (1985). Perceiving structure in professional prose: a multiply determined experience. In Odell, L. and Goswami, D. (eds.) Writing in Non-Academic Settings. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 87-128.

  5. Stephen Bernhardt’s ‘Text Structure and Graphic Design: the Visible Design’, is the source for the features of visual informativeness mentioned in this unit. It makes an interesting comparison between grammatical/lexical features of texts and their visual equivalents, within a functional framework. Parts of Goodman and Graddol’s Redesigning English have interesting work on the visual aspects of texts.

    • Bernhardt, S. (1985) Text structure and graphic design: the visible design. In Benson, D. & J. Greaves (eds.) Systemic perspectives on discourse vol.2. Norwood NJ: Ablex.
    • Graddol, D., Goodman, S. & Lillis, T. M. (eds.). (2007). Redesigning English. London: Routledge.

  6. Ronald Carter and Walter Nash’s Seeing through Language chapter 3 is a useful exploration of narrative structure, as is chapter 18 of Montgomery at al.’s Ways of Reading. William Labov’s original account of the structure of oral narratives can be found in Language in the Inner City. The major introduction to narrative is Michael Toolan’s Narrative: a critical linguistic introduction.

    • Carter, R. & Nash, W. (1990). Seeing through language: A guide to styles of English writing. Oxford: Blackwell.
    • Montgomery, M., Durant, A., Fabb, N., Furniss, T. & Mills, S. (2007). Ways of reading: Advanced reading skills for students of English literature (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
    • Labov, W. (1972) Language in the inner city. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
    • Toolan, M. (2012). Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction. London: Routledge.

  7. Van Dijk’s ‘News Schemata’, from which the model of generic structure of news reports is taken, has an extremely interesting later section which explores convincingly the ideological potential of news structures.

    • Van Dijk, T. A. (1986). News schemata. In in C.R Cooper and S. Greenbaum (eds.) Studying writing: Linguistic approaches, 155-185. London: Sage

  8. There is a considerable literature on genre and its teaching, mainly within an Australian context. Most useful and accessible for the teacher are Brian Paltridge’s Genre and the Language Learning Classroom and Frances Christie and Jim Martin’s Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School. The latter includes a chapter by Peter White most relevant to this Unit ‘Death, Disruption and the Moral Order: the narrative impulse in mass-media ‘hard news’ reporting’ discussing how aspects of narrative influence the genre of news reports.

    • Paltridge, B. (2001). Genre and the language learning classroom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
    • Christie, F. & Martin, J. R. (Eds.). (2005). Genre and institutions: Social processes in the workplace and school. London: Continuum

  9. Gunther Kress explains key concepts in multimodality or visual informativeness of texts in this great collection of videos. Each video focuses on a particular set of questions and key concepts and provides clearer understanding of visual information of texts and its related issues.

  10. Martin and Bednarek’s New Discourse on Language presents innovative analyses of multimodal discourse, identity and affiliation within functional linguistics. In Chapter 4, Knox et al. present a detailed analysis of two Thai newspapers by looking into various aspects of language, images, page design to show how social bonds are developed and maintained between newspapers and their readers.

    • Knox, J. S., Patpong, P. & Piriyasilpa, Y. (2010). Khao naa nung: a multimodal analysis of Thai-language newspaper front page in Martin J. and M. Bednarek New discourse on language. New York and London: Continuum.

  11. Baldry and Thibault’s Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis analyses and interprets a range of multimodal texts and genres in relation to their social and cultural contexts. Concepts such as ‘clusters’ and the ‘resource integration principle’ and their application to a variety of texts can be found in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 looks in detail at webpages and how the technological resources of the web allow hypertext pathways that link web pages and websites in complex ways.

    • Baldry, A. & Thibault, P. J. (2006). Multimodal transcription and text analysis: A multimedia toolkit and coursebook. Oakville, CT and London: Equinox.

  12. The following article gives some insights on how headlines and leads are selected and manufactured according to their importance.

Further reading for Chapter 2

  1. Perhaps the best introduction to the Whorfian hypothesis is to go back to the original and read Whorf’s ‘An American Indian model of the universe’ and ‘the Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language’ both in Language, Thought and Reality. Though his hypothesis has gone out of fashion in mainstream North American Linguistics, with its emphasis on universals of language (cf. Pinker’s superficial rejection on pp. 59-66 of The Language Instinct) there have been more or less successful attempts to defend, explain or reclaim the hypothesis by John Lucy and Penny Lee. There is a sympathetic account by George Lakoff in Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Guy Deutscher’s article in The New York Times ‘Does Your Language Shape How You Think?’ and his more extensive book, Through the Language Glass, are interesting and provocative.

    • Deutscher, G. (2010). Does your language shape how you think?. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 25 October 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=0
    • Deutscher, G. (2010). Through the language glass: Why the world looks different in other languages. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co.
    • Lakoff, G. (1990). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Also available at: http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/gleazer/296_readings/lakoff.pdf
    • Lee, Penny (1996), The Whorf theory complex — A critical reconstruction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
    • Lucy, John A. (1992), Language diversity and thought: A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. New York: Morrow.
    • Whorf, B. L., Carroll, J. B., Levinson, S. C., and Lee, P. (2012). Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (2nd ed.). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

  2. Fowler gives a useful account of how vocabulary is used to describe women in newspapers in Language in the News chapter 6, ‘Discrimination in discourse’. Sara Mills’ Feminist Stylistics (chapter 4) also provides interesting strategies on how to analyse at the level of the word.

  3. The grammatical details of process types, participants and transitivity can be found in Halliday and Matthiessen, chapter 5, Eggins chapter 8, Downing and Locke chapter 4, or the more elementary treatment in Butt et al. chapter 3.

    • Butt, D., Fahey, R., Spinks, S., & Yallop, C. (2000). Using Functional Grammar: An Explorer's Guide. National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University, Sydney.
    • Downing, A. and Locke, P. (1992). A university course in English grammar. New York: Prentice Hall.
    • Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.). New York and London: Continuum.
    • Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Hodder.

  4. Deirdre Burton’s ‘Through glass darkly: through dark glasses’ is a classic feminist analysis of transitivity patterns in an extract from Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar. It demonstrates the passivity of the patient undergoing electric shock therapy and her subjection to the intentional actions of the doctor and nurse. Goatly in ‘What does it feel like to be a Single 20something Female Singapore Graduate’ applies transitivity analysis to a newspaper column and relates the analysis to the ideological position of women in Singapore. This is useful reading for South-East Asian students, who could well substitute this for the analysis of the Candy Crush Saga feature. Another alternative analysis, from the 1st edition, is available in the supplementary material on this web-site.

    • Burton, D. (1982). Through glass darkly: through dark glasses. On stylistics and political commitment – via a study of a passage from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. In Carter, R. (ed.) Language and literature: An introductory reader in stylistics. London: Allen and Unwin, pp.195-214.
    • Goatly A. (1999). What does it Feel Like to be a Single Female 20something Singapore Graduate? In Chew, P. G. L. and Kramer-Dahl, A. (eds.). Reading culture: Textual practices in Singapore. Singapore: Times Academic Press.

  5. Chapter 4 of Simpson’s Language, Ideology and Point of View and Mills’ Feminist Stylistics, chapter 5, show how transitivity analysis can be applied to literature, and Fowler, pp. 70-80, to news headlines. The final, new chapter, of Hodge and Kress’s Language as Ideology includes an incisive analysis of the media coverage of the Gulf War.

    • Fowler, R. (2013). Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge.
    • Hodge, B. & Kress, G. R. (1993). Language as ideology (2nd ed.). New York and London: Routledge.
    • Mills, S. (1995). Feminist stylistics. London: Routledge. Available at: http://english.360elib.com/datu/P/EM306069.pdf
    • Simpson, P. (2003). Language, ideology and point of view. London: Routledge.

  6. Halliday and Matthiessen discuss the grammar of nominalisation as an aspect of grammatical metaphor on pages 636-658 of the Introduction. Martin gives a rather negative view of nominalisation on pages 29-32 of Factual Writing and in ‘Life as a Noun: arresting the universe in science and humanities’. Goatly disputes some of his value judgements in ‘Green Grammar and Grammatical Metaphor’.

    • Goatly, A. (1996). Green grammar and grammatical metaphor, or language and the myth of power, or metaphors we die by. Journal of Pragmatics, 25(4), 537-560.
    • Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Hodder.
    • Martin, J. R. (1989). Factual writing: Exploring and challenging social reality (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Martin, J.R. (2003) Life as a noun: arresting the universe in science and humanities. In Halliday, Michael & Martin, J.R. Writing Science: Literacy and discursive power. London: Falmer Press, pp. 242-285.

Further reading for Chapter 3

  1. Poynton, in the last chapter of Language and gender, gives an excellent overview of the resources for constructing interpersonal relationships, as well as the model of social relationships from which we borrow the dimensions of Power, Contact and Emotion (Affect). Martin gives a more theoretical and dense account in English Text, pp. 523-536

    • Martin, J. R. (1992). English text: System and structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
    • Poynton, C. (1989). Language and gender: Making the difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  2. The grammatical dimensions of mood and modality have authoritative treatments in Halliday and Matthiessen’s Introduction chapter 4, Downing and Locke chapter 5 and Eggins chapter 6. Equally useful is Fairclough’s treatment of modality and evaluation in Analysing Discourse, chapter 10.

    • Downing, A., & Locke, P. (2006). English grammar: A university course (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
    • Eggins, S. (2004). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.). New York and London: Continuum.
    • Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge.
    • Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Hodder.

  3. Simpson chapters 2 and 3 develop the Hallidayan analysis of mood and modality into a theory of narrative point of view in prose fiction.

    • Simpson, P. (2003). Language, ideology and point of view. London: Routledge.

  4. Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English pp. 43-57 discusses the English pronoun system in some depth. Rob Pope in Textual Intervention pp. 51-3, 60-68 shows how complicated and ambiguous the reference of pronouns can become in lyrics. Montgomery (1986) does the same for DJ talk.

    • Halliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
    • Pope, R. (1995). Textual intervention: Critical and creative strategies for literary studies. London: Routledge.
    • Montgomery, M. (1986). DJ talk. Media, Culture & Society, 8(4), 421-440.

  5. Nash’s Designs in Prose has an interesting chapter 6 on the relationships of a writer to his [sic] reader. Pages 152-154 discuss levels of formality and emotion in vocabulary, as does Geoffrey Leech’s Semantics pp. 12-18.

    • Leech, G. N. (1981). Semantics: The study of meaning (2nd ed.). London: Penguin.
    • Nash, W. (1980). Designs in prose: A study of compositional problems and methods. Harlow: Longman.

  6. The article by Monbiot is a very accessible account of current ideological euphemisms.

Further reading for Chapter 4

  1. Jenny Thomas’s Meaning in Interaction is a very interesting and accessible introductory textbook on Pragmatics and it covers in more depth many of the topics dealt with briefly in chapters 4, 5, and 6.

    • Thomas, J. A. (2013). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Routledge.

  2. Sperber and Wilson in Relevance pp. 3-15 explain why the code model of communication is inadequate, and Mills, pp. 26-43 develops these ideas in relation to feminist critique.

  3. The best existing survey of presupposition theory is probably in Levinson’s Pragmatics chapter 4.

    • Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  4. Sperber and Wilson in Relevance pp. 243-254 discuss propositional attitude in order to explain away speech act theory.

    • Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

  5. A detailed linguistic, pragmatic and discoursal account of metaphor can be found in Goatly’s The Language of Metaphors, chapter 5 of which discusses the functions of metaphor and the relationship between metaphor and irony. Wayne Booth’s classic The Rhetoric of Irony takes a literary rather than linguistic approach. An accessible article on the use of metaphor during the 2008 financial crisis is ‘In Financial Crisis, Metaphors Fly Like Bad Analogies’

    • Booth, W. C. (1974). A rhetoric of irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    • Goatly, A. (2011). The language of metaphors (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
    • Phillips, M. (2015). In financial crisis, metaphors fly like bad analogies. WSJ. Retrieved 18 October 2015, from http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB122247765693581355

  6. The philosopher Paul Grice was the first to stress the importance of inferencing in communication in articles such as ‘Logic and Conversation’. See also Thomas chapters 3 and 4. Keiko Tanaka’s Advertising Language is an interesting account of advertising in Japanese and English, based on theories of pragmatic inferencing, which analyses the strategies of latent or covert communication.

    • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. and Morgan, J. (eds.) Syntax and semantics volume 3: Speech acts. New York: Academic Press
    • Tanaka, K. (1999). Advertising language: A pragmatic approach to advertisements in Britain and Japan. London: Routledge.
  7. Shank and Abelson elaborated the idea of scripts (which we include under schemas). A more accessible account of schemas can be found in Judith Greene. Fairclough in Language and Power pp. 131-33, attempts to distinguish different kinds of schemas, which he calls schemata, scripts and frames relating them to discourse structure, interpersonal relations, and word meanings respectively.
    • Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). Harlow: Longman.
    • Greene, J. (1985). Language understanding: A cognitive approach. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
    • Schank, R. C. & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
  8. Goodwin gives a detailed account of how a language utterance can be understood through pragmatics as part of the totality of a communicative event.

Further reading for Chapter 5

  1. Rob Pope’s Textual Intervention, chapter 2, is an excellent resource for exploring more deeply how subject positions are set up and reproduced in discourse, and relating these to linguistic features such as agency, the vocabulary of self-description and pronouns. The whole book, as its title implies, encourages resistance against naïve subjection to positioning by the text. Fairclough’s Language and Power pp. 23-61 is an extensive and insightful account of subject positioning through the power structures of institutions in society, and how to resist it, which he exemplifies further, pp. 150-55.

    • Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). Harlow: Longman.
    • Pope, R. (1995). Textual intervention: Critical and creative strategies for literary studies. New York; London: Routledge.

  2. The classic early text on Speech Acts is Austin’s exploratory lectures How to Do Things with Words. John Searle in Speech Acts and Expression and Meaning consolidated the theory, and pages 54-71 of the former provide the kernel of his ideas. Jenny Thomas gives a clear and accurate summary in chapter 2 of Meaning in Interaction. David Crystal discusses speech acts and other aspects of pragmatic theory in the context of internet language in Language and the Internet.

    • Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Crystal, D. 2001. Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Searle, J. R. (1969) Speech Acts: an essay in the philosophy of language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
    • Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
    • Thomas, J. A. (2013). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Routledge.

  3. There are two major overlapping approaches to politeness theory: Brown and Levinson’s Politeness and Leech’s in Pragmatics. Jenny Thomas in chapter 6 gives a thoughtful overview. Richard Watts’ Politeness makes a useful distinction between language forms that are used for politeness, and whether their use is polite in its interactional context. It also attempts to relate politeness to power struggles in discourse and to Relevance theory.

    • Brown, P. and Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Thomas, J. A. (2013). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Routledge.
    • Watts, R. (2003) Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  4. For the concept of dispreferred seconds a solid account, with the odd dirty joke, appears in Levinson’s Pragmatics pp. 332-345. The best and most recent account of the way speech acts fit together into sequences is seen in Schegloff’s book.

    • Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
    • Schegloff, E.A. (2006). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  5. Stanley Fish’s Is there a text in this class? is a fascinating exploration of different ways of reading texts, and how readers are taught to read and so are inducted into discourse communities. The idea in this chapter that a reading list might be read as a poem derives from Fish.

    • Fish, S. E. (1980). Is there a text in this class?: The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Further reading for Chapter 6

  1. The theory of intertextuality originates with Julia Kristeva (1974: 59-60). Charles Bazerman’s chapter 4 ‘Intertextuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts’ provides a useful background and details on levels and techniques of intertextuality.

    • Bazerman, C., & Prior, P. A. (2004). What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices. London and Mahwah, N.J: Erlbaum.
    • Kristeva, J. (1974). La revolution du langage poétique. Paris: Seuil. (Partially translated by M. Waller as Revolution in poetic language.) New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

  2. There are many accounts of the representation of speech and thought. Leech and Short in Style in Fiction chapter 10 provide a thorough and accessible account. A modification of their scheme can be found in Hutchinson’s ‘Speech presentations in fiction...’ A more recent account using corpus data can be found in Semino and Short’s book.

    • Hutchinson, T. (1989). Speech presentation in fiction with reference to The Tiger Moth by HE Bates. Reading, Analyzing and Teaching Literature/Ed. by Mick Short. London, 120-145.
    • Leech, G. N., & Short, M. (1981). Style in fiction: A linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. New York; London: Longman.
    • Semino, E. & Short, M. (2004). Corpus stylistics: Speech, writing and thought presentation in a corpus of English writing. London: Routledge.

  3. A useful exploration of Bakhtin’s theory of many-voiced or diglossic texts can be found in Holquist’s Dialogism. Mary Talbot in ‘The Construction of Gender in a Teenage Magazine’ analyses a feature article on lipstick, and draws attention to the different voices heard.

    • Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world. London: Routledge.
    • Talbot, M. (1992). The construction of gender in a teen-age magazine. In Fairclough, N. (ed.). Critical Language Awareness, Harlow: Longman, pp. 174-199

  4. Allan Bell’s The Language of News Media, pages 44-50, gives an insider’s account of the different stages of transmission of messages in the news production process, and the opportunities for change and distortion which this communicative chain presents.

    • Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Further reading for Chapter 7

  1. The crises for democracy and capitalism have recently been extensively explored by Bauman and Bordoni. A shorter account of the crisis of debt and how it has shifted between state public and private sectors can be found in Part One of Living on Borrowed Time. It is not only left-wing anti-capitalist sociologists like Bauman who identify the crisis: the suggestion that the present economic system based on the growth of consumer capitalist economies is likely to lead to a crisis of civilisation is evidenced in Ahmed’s report of a study by NASA.

  2. Judith Williamson’s book Decoding Advertisements is an excellent account, using semiotics, the theory of signs and their meanings, of how advertisements are composed and understood both visually and verbally. It takes a Marxist perspective on advertising as a feature of capitalism. Guy Cook’s The Discourse of Advertising is a more linguistic and less ideological exploration, which makes fruitful comparisons between the texture and discourse of ads and of literary texts. Particularly interesting are the sections on how music and words combine with visuals in TV ads, the intertextuality of one ad parodying another, the different voices of ads, and the structuring of vocabulary to reinforce stereotypes.

    • Cook, G. (2001). The discourse of advertising (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
    • Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding advertisements: Ideology and meaning in advertising. London: Boyars.

  3. Fairclough gives an interesting analysis of the relationship between ads and lifestyle in Language and Power, pp. 165-175.

    • Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). Harlow: Longman.

  4. The importance of the effects of consumer culture are both dealt with in Lester Faigley’s Fragments of Rationality where he discusses the post-modern subject and where he quotes from Baudrillard’s America, another controversial text.

    • Baudrillard, J. (2010). America. New York: Verso.
    • Faigley, L. (1992). Fragments of rationality: Postmodernity and the subject of composition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
  5. No doubt our ideological perspective on consumerism and advertising has been influenced by Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders and Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be – this latter explores the warped psychology of consumerism and is a great antidote to the poisonous brainwashing undercurrents of advertising.
    • Packard, V. (1957). The hidden persuaders. New York: McKay.
    • Fromm, E. (2013). To have or to be? New York: Bloomsbury.
  6. The two links from Youtube are examples of how stereotypes function in ads. Both ads explore gender stereotypes which carry particular assumptions about women.
  7. This Coca Cola ‘Reasons to Believe’ Ad promotes its product by appealing to the human emotions of hope and love. The video tries to exploit humanitarian and progressive ideologies advocating environmentalism, literacy, open borders, care of children, and anti-militarism, to promote its image and further capitalistic consumerism. It is particularly hypocritical considering the harm Coca Cola has inflicted on the environment and water supplies (see the link to www.rt.com).

Further reading for Chapter 8

The language and production of traditional news

  1. Bell’s The Language of News Media is a unique book since it is written by a linguist who is also a journalist, giving an insider’s view of the context of news production. This is especially interesting for anyone considering a career in journalism as it shows the internal workings of news organisations as well as performing linguistic analyses. Elaborate notes on the book are also available at: http://www2.media.uoa.gr/lectures/linguistic_archives/mda0405/notes/Bell_Media_and_Language.pdf.

    • Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.

  2. Fairclough’s Media Discourse is centrally within the critical discourse tradition in a way in which Bell’s book is not, and theorises, for example, the nature of mass communication and the mixing of public and private genres. Despite the theoretical framework, the analysis of Radio and TV shows is both riveting and revealing about discourse types and social relations.

    • Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Arnold.

  3. Roger Fowler’s Language in the News has already been referred to several times. It is an accessible, clear and accurate work of linguistic analysis of media texts, and illustrates how ideological consensus is achieved in order to maintain the power structures of society. Another must for would-be journalists.

    • Fowler, R. (2013). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. London: Routledge.

    Digital news production

  4. David Tewksbury and Jason Rittenberg’s News on the Internet is an invaluable book that informs much of the content of this chapter. So are Allan’s and Natalie Fenton’s publications on the same topic.

    • Allan, S. (2010). The Routledge companion to news and journalism. New York, NY: Routledge.
    • Fenton, N. (2010). ‘News in the Digital Age.’ in Allan, S. The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism. London: Routledge.
    • Tewksbury, D. and Rittenberg, J. (2012). News on the Internet: Information and Citizenship in the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. John Knox’s work on online newspapers explores the conventions of online news design. Visual-verbal communication on online newspaper home pages gives some insights on visual, verbal and visual-verbal communication on the home pages of three English-language online newspapers from different national cultures. Punctuating the home page presents an analysis of images, specifically `thumbnails', on home pages of online newspapers and how their positioning in news stories represent specific discursive practices.
    • Knox, J. (2007). Visual-verbal communication on online newspaper home pages. Visual Communication, 6(1), 19-53.
    • Knox, J. S. (2009). Punctuating the home page: Image as language in an online newspaper. Discourse & Communication, 3(2), 145-172.
  6. Anjan Sundaram’s article highlights the ways in which the number of journalists on the ground have been reduced in the age of digital news and the consequent deterioration of journalism. It also illustrates how lack of journalists reinforces the ways in which news values operate to exclude non-elite nations.

    7. Representation in the news

  7. These three articles are good examples of how North Korea is depicted in the news. The articles can also be analysed in terms of news values.

    8. Lack of freedom in mainstream news

  8. Current pressures on press freedom in Hong Kong are highlighted in the following articles:
  9. The Hong Kong Free Press website is an example of an independent online media centre that unites critical voices on local and national affairs. According to their website, ‘HKFP arrives amid rising concerns over declining press freedom in Hong Kong and during an important time in the city’s constitutional development.’

    10. Participatory news and citizen journalism

  10. Bruns’ article describes the paradigm shift towards user-led forms of content production, which are proving to have an increasing impact on media, economy, law, social practices, and democracy itself.
  11. Downing explores the possibility of alternative media challenging neo-liberalism.
    • Downing, J. D. (2002). Independent media centres: A multi-local, multi-media challenge to global neoliberalism. In Raboy, M. Global media policy in the new millennium. Luton, U.K: University of Luton Press, pp. 215-232. Available at: Google Books
  12. This comprehensive list of citizen journalism websites illustrates some of the efforts underway to develop new forms of inclusive, participatory journalism.
  13. Various participatory alternative news sites, besides those already mentioned, use blogs or social media. Some of the popular ones include:
    • Global Voices: Over 200 bloggers around the world work together to provide translations and reports that normally are not heard in traditional media.
    • Media Shift: PBS and host, Mark Glaser, deliver information to the “Digital Media Revolution,” including topics on legacy media, business, social media and more.
    • Online Journalism Blog: This blog offers opinion and news on topics that range from citizen journalism to online journalism and focuses on Internet-published content.
  14. The article below is an example of how social media is deployed for raising awareness and breaking stereotypes in society.
  15. The videos are also examples of how a certain sort of dominance can be challenged through the Internet and its resources. They challenge the dominance of social media, consumer advertising, as well as mainstream news, through humour. The novel The Man who Forgot his Wife provides a similarly humorous take on citizen journalism and social media blogs.

Further reading for Chapter 9

  1. Arran Stibbe’s excellent Ecolinguistics expands the coverage of the language of environmentalism introduced in this chapter. He discusses in technical detail the stories – myths, ideologies, and identities – we construct about ourselves in relation to the natural world.

    • Stibbe, A. (2015) Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. Abingdon: Routledge.

  2. Halliday’s article ‘Language and the order of nature’ is seminal in bringing to light the problems of mismatch between grammar of scientific texts and the physical “realities” discovered by 20th century science. These ideas are developed in conjunction with Jim Martin in Writing Science; literacy and discursive power. However in ‘Green grammar and grammatical metaphor’ Goatly takes issue with Halliday and Martin’s conclusions. Goatly’s and Halliday’s articles can be found in Fill and Mühlhäusler’s interesting collection The Ecolinguistics Reader.

    • Fill, A., & Mühlhäusler, P. (2001). The ecolinguistics reader. London: Continuum.
    • Halliday, M. A. (1987). Language and the order of nature. The linguistics of writing: Arguments between language and literature, 135-154.
    • Halliday, M. A. K. and Martin, J. R. (2003). Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. London: Routledge.

  3. These problems of mismatch between grammar and quantum physics have been eloquently expressed by David Bohm in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, though his linguistic solutions to the problem are rather eccentric and impractical. Towards the end of his life Bohm visited the Blackfoot Algonquin tribe in Dakota and claimed that they spoke the language he needed for describing the realities of quantum physics. This is documented in David Peat’s Blackfoot Physics. For an insider view of the Blackfoot language read the fascinating article by Leroy and Ryan.

  4. Andrew Goatly’s Washing the Brain: metaphor and hidden ideology chapter 7, is a more extensive exploration of issues about grammar and ecology sketched in this chapter. It develops the argument by contrasting the grammar of European languages with Blackfoot.

    • Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the brain: Metaphor and hidden ideology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins
  5. Kristin Davidse in ‘Language and world view in the poetry of G.M. Hopkins’ shows how this 19th century English poet exploits the ergative vocabulary of English to depict the relationship between humanity, nature and god. The article would make an interesting complement to this unit.
    • Davidse, Kristin. (1994). Language and world view in the poetry of G.M. Hopkins. In O. de Graef et al. Acknowledged Legislators: Essays on English literature in honour of Herman Seurotte. Kapellen: Pelchmans
  6. Peter Mühlhäusler has an interesting article ‘Linguistic adaptation to changed environmental conditions’. In this he sketches how immigrants to ecologically rich but unfamiliar environments, such as Australia, Mauritius, and New Zealand, lack the vocabulary for local fauna and flora, and details the linguistic consequences of this lack. In ecological terms he suggests that if you cannot identify or name a species you may not realise you are losing it.
    • Mühlhäusler, P. (1996). Linguistic adaptation to changed environmental conditions: some lessons from the past. In Fill, A. (ed.). Sprachökologie und Ökolinguistik. Tübingen: Stauffenburg-Verlag.
  7. Mary Schleppegrell has written several articles on language in environmental education, especially ‘Abstraction and agency in middle school environmental education’, which concentrate on how textbooks often fail to identify the perpetrators of environmental degradation through, among other grammatical devices, nominalization and passivisation.
    • Schleppegrell, M. J. (1996). Abstraction and agency in middle school environmental education. In Language and Ecology: Eco-Linguistics. Problems, theories and methods. Essays for the AILA 1996 Symposium (pp. 27-42).
  8. From a more literary point of view, Jonathan’s Bate’s Romantic Ecology devotes much attention to Wordsworth’s relationship with nature, and its relevance to current ecological debates.
    • Bate, J. (2013). Romantic ecology: Wordsworth and the environmental tradition. Abingdon: Routledge.
  9. 9. On modern scientific theory and the move beyond Newton, Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point are quite accessible. For a rather difficult and challenging book on one modern physical theory, chaos theory, try Prigogine and Stengers’ influential Order out of Chaos. James Lovelock’s popular Gaia: a new look at life on earth and the more technical The Ages of Gaia are essential background to one modern ecological theory.
    • Capra, F. (1976). The Tao of physics London: Fontana.
    • Capra, F. (1983). The turning point: Science, society, and the rising culture. London: Flamingo.
    • Prigogine, I. & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of Chaos: Man's new dialogue with nature. London: Flamingo.
    • Lovelock, J. (2000). Gaia: A new look at life on earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Lovelock, J. (2000). The ages of Gaia: A biography of our living earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  10. For details of the theoretical debate on the concepts of ‘ecocentrism’ and ‘anthropocentrism’, refer to Andrew Dobson and Neil Carter.
    • Carter, N. (2007). The politics of the environment: Ideas, activism, policy (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Dobson, A. (2007). Green political thought (4th ed.). London: Routledge.
  11. Examples of exploitation of natural resources by big corporations to further consumerist ideology and their reactions to criticism can be found in the links below. The first link is a report on how multinationals are affecting both the quantity and quality of water by extracting large quantities for their factories. The second link is an interesting example of how corporations combat criticism through carefully designed webpages claiming they are restoring what they extract from nature. The two links are examples of various issues covered so far, such as resistance to advertising (from chapter 7), media battles (involving social media) (chapter 8) and the fight between big business and the environment, and the role of the expert, particularly conflicting expert opinions.
  12. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything brings together the themes of chapter 7 and chapter 9. In a remarkably upbeat book she details the ecological crisis and shows that the campaigns to resist environmental degradation are providing an opportunity to tackle global inequality.
    • Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  13. The poems discussed in the final section of the chapter are from Alice Oswald’s Woods and The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas. The website below is a good source for other poems on the environment and is an example of how poetry enables a better understanding of nature and ecological issues. Poems from the website can be analysed to see how they employ various linguistics strategies to represent the environment.

Further reading for Chapter 10

For the project

  1. An excellent textbook on creative writing, using the insights of discourse analysis to inform the writer is Jeremy Scott’s Creative Writing and Stylistics. This could be useful in guiding the project involving the writing of subversive humorous texts.

    • Scott, J. (2014). Creative writing and stylistics: Creative and critical approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Books and an article on humour

    There are many important books on the theory of humour, but the following seem most relevant to the present unit.

  2. Oring in Engaging Humor exemplifies how humour can be used to attack and vilify, for example in racist discourse.

    • Oring, E., 1945. (2003). Engaging humor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

  3. Michael Billig in Laughter and ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour explores the ways in which language is used as a means of socialization and control through embarrassment. Simpson’s book is the source of the satirical triad in this chapter, and his work prefigures Billig by establishing an agenda combining CDA with humour studies.

    • Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage.
    • Simpson, P. (2003). On the discourse of satire: Towards a stylistic model of satirical humour. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.

  4. Goatly’s Meaning and Humour is a comprehensive overview of semantic, pragmatic and discourse theory in relation to jokes. Chapter 10 expands on the introduction to this chapter.

    • Goatly, A. (2012). Meaning and humour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5. Lindner’s ‘Cashing-in on risk claims: on the for-profit inversion of signifiers for ‘‘Global Warming’’ analyses how visual humour can be used for subversive purposes.

    6. Parody and fan fiction

  6. Walter Nash’s The Language of Humour is the source for the models of parody developed in this chapter.
    • Nash, W. (1985). The language of humour. Harlow: Longman.
  7. Ewan Morrison’s short but informative article on fan fiction is the framework for the discussion in this chapter.
  8. The parody of the Red Ridinghood story is taken from Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Other examples of humour used to subvert texts can be found below.
    • Garner, J. (1994). Politically correct bedtime stories. New York: Macmillan.
    • Hazeley, J. and Morris, J. (2015). Ladybird book of the hangover: Volume 5 of Ladybird Books for grown-ups. UK: Penguin.
    • YouTube, (2015). "Global Warming" - Fosters. Retrieved 25 October 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-dCLZtwYg
  9. The links below illustrate how the digital media can use humour intertextually to challenge romantic or sexual ideologies. The first link is the trailer of the movie Twilight (2008) and the second link is a spoof or parody on that trailer. The video parody can be analysed by applying the concepts of source expression, derived expression, and displacing content.

    10. Fan fiction web-sites

  10. The most popular fanfiction sites are given in the links below. FanFiction is considered to be world’s largest fanfiction archive. It has currently well over 2 million users, and hosts stories in over 30 languages. Asianfanfics is mostly about Asian characters, and topics from Asian culture. The service claims it’s ‘one of the most feature-rich Asian fanfiction websites on the Internet.’ The Archive of Our Own is a project founded and operated by the Organization for Transformative Works. deviantART is one of the most important sites that let artists showcase and discuss their work. The site is most famous for visual art, but there is a surprisingly high number of verbal texts, as well.

    11. Fanfiction examples that challenge the authority of storytelling:

  11. The following links are particularly interesting in the way they use humour and satire to challenge power and the authority of story-telling. Graphic fanfiction in the format of the graphic novel genre can be seen in the Star Trek fanfic series websites (with the related article by Markiewitz) where new media makes possible various forms of resistance. These examples can be analysed with the use of the theoretical framework for discussing parody introduced in this chapter.

Supplementary material