15.655, Review: Discourse Analysis: Dedaic & Nelson (2003)

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-15-655. Sat Feb 21 2004. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 15.655, Review: Discourse Analysis: Dedaic & Nelson (2003)

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1)
Date:  Fri, 20 Feb 2004 23:30:35 -0500 (EST)
From:  Laura Callahan <Lcallahan at aol.com>
Subject:  At War With Words

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 20 Feb 2004 23:30:35 -0500 (EST)
From:  Laura Callahan <Lcallahan at aol.com>
Subject:  At War With Words

Dedaic, Mirjana N. and Daniel N. Nelson, ed. (2003) At War With Words,
Mouton de Gruyter, Language, Power and Social Process 10.

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-2615.html


Laura Callahan, The City College of the City University of New York

OVERVIEW

This collection is divided into two parts, War Discourse and Language
Wars, containing thirteen essays, plus a preface, introduction and
conclusion. There is a name index and a subject index. Notes and
references immediately follow each article.

SYNOPSIS

Preface: Language as forms of death. Michael Billig.

In the context of events on and after September 11, Billig contrasts
Freudian explanations of the impulse toward war with Henri Tajfel's
(1981) social psychology. Tajfel posits cognitive rather than
emotional motives for war: it is not humans' innate instinct for
aggression that leads to organized violence, but rather a need to make
sense of the world by means of social categorization, which in its
simplest form is reduced to ''us'' versus ''them''. Billig argues that
words, and the implicit and explicit frames of reference they
establish, are necessary precursors to war.

Introduction: A peace of word. Mirjana N. Dedaic.

Dedaic discusses the treatment within Critical Discourse Analysis of
the relationship between war and discourse practices. She cites, among
others, the influence of Fishman (1972), who considers language to be
equivalent to nationality, thus supporting the concept of
''othering''; and of Bourdieu (1999), whose concept of language as an
instrument of symbolic violence, wielded as ''a tool of for order,
subjugation and demise'' (p. 3) is particularly apt for this volume.
An overview of the collection is given. Contributions to Part One
examine the connection between the discourse of war and actual
violence, while those in Part Two focus on conflicts over language in
various parts of the world that include a scenario of past or present
violence.  Several of the writers aim to discover how to impede the
progression from war discourse to war, and Dedaic states: ''Discourse,
we believe, should be the first door opened as we try to explain and
prevent state-or-group-organized killing of the other'' (p. 1).

I. War discourse

Liberal parasites and other creepers: Rush Limbaugh, Ken Hamblin,
and the discursive construction of group identities. Kathryn Ruud.

Ruud conducted a qualitative content analysis of radio program scripts
and books written by conservative U.S. radio talk show hosts Rush
Limbaugh and Ken Hamblin to examine how ingroup and outgroup
characteristics are systematically portrayed as ''good''
vs. ''evil''. The essay also discusses Nazi anti-Semitic discourse in
the framework of discourse-historical analysis.

Threat or business as usual? A multimodal, intertextual analysis of a
political statement. Suzanne Wong Scollon.

Wong Scollon applies mediated discourse analysis to the coverage of a
press conference held March 11, 1996, during the Taiwan missile
crisis, showing how television and newspaper reporters use neutral or
evaluative verbs to establish an ideological position for themselves
and their audience. She demonstrates how a statement by Chinese
Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in regard to U.S. intervention is given
different representations, ranging from matter-of-fact to hostile,
depending on the source.

Deixis and distance: President Clinton's justification of intervention
in Kosovo. Paul A. Chilton.

Clinton's March 24, 1999 national address, in which he announced
U.S. air strikes on Serbian forces, is broken down into units and
sub-units for a cognitive discourse analysis. The macro-structure of
the text is examined from the perspective of its propositional meaning
and speech acts. Its micro-structure is examined in terms of cognitive
discourse processing, wherein hearers are assumed to have conceptual
domains pointing to space, time and modality.  Of particular
importance is the center-periphery, or near-remote, schema. It was
necessary for Clinton, the speaker, to cause hearers to perceive the
physically remote as cognitively closer to the center, or
self. Chilton situates his analysis in the context of just war
doctrine and its traditional arguments in regard to waging war.

The language of atomic science and atomic conflict: Exploring the
limits of symbolic representation. Robert E. Tucker and
Theodore O. Prosise.

The authors trace the evolution of the rhetoric and metaphors used to
describe the atomic bomb and nuclear war, giving evidence that
language is inadequate to characterize the degree of destruction these
can cause. They advocate the development of linguistic resources to
meet this challenge, in order that words may be able to help people
conceptualize risks of a magnitude beyond human experience.

The politics of discontent: A discourse analysis of texts of the
Reform Movement in Ghana. Kweku Osam.

Osam applies Critical Discourse Analysis to two less-studied areas:
the discursive resistance of the dominated as opposed to the
dominators in an African rather than Western political system. A
history of the political situation leading to the formation of the
Reform Movement in Ghana is provided, followed by a discussion of the
ideology and discourse structures found in two of the Movement's
texts, from 1998 and 1999.

When guilt becomes a foreign country: Guilt and responsibility in
Austrian postwar media-representation of the Second World War.
Alexander Pollak.

Pollak analyzes articles published from 1945-1998 in three major
Austrian newspapers to discover how Austrian participation in Nazi war
crimes is minimized. He concludes that various strategies have been
employed, including self-presentation as victims, transforming the
causal chain, relativizing and justifying the past, and focusing
guilt. He finds that a distinction is repeatedly made between common,
front-line soldiers -- who are depicted as victims of the regime --
and the military elite.

Remembering and forgetting: The discursive construction of generational
memories. Gertraud Benke and Ruth Wodak.

Benke and Wodak's paper also treats the Austrian national discourse on
war-time atrocities, this time through interview data. They focus on
men from three generations: a former Austrian soldier, a man from the
generation of the soldiers' children, and a member of the third
generation, born long after the war. These individuals are interviewed
after they have seen a controversial exhibition documenting war
crimes.

II. Language wars

Attitudes toward linguistic purism in Croatia: Evaluating
efforts at language reform. Keith Langston and Anita Peti-Stantic.

After giving the trajectory of the Croatian language since the
nineteenth century, the authors report the results of a questionnaire
and follow-up interviews to determine attitudes toward institutional
efforts to purge Croatian of foreign and especially Serbian influenced
borrowings. They conclude that there is a significant amount of
resistance to language reform efforts, as well as a lack of
familiarity on the part of speakers with certain words that have been
promoted as being purer Croatian.

War, politics, and language: A case study of the Okinawan language.
Rumiko Shinzato.

Shinzato traces the shift of Okinawan to Japanese, and reports on
recent signs of revitalization. She is not optimistic, however, for
Okinawan's full recovery and maintenance. Particular attention is
given to the role of ethnic awareness and pride, with comparisons to
the situation of Catalan, Occitan and other minority languages.

Language choice and cultural hegemony: Linguistic symbols of domination
and resistance in Palau. Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain.

Matsumoto and Britain examine the effects of Japanese and
U.S. colonization of Palau, comparing the situation of diglossia under
each period of domination. Japanese language and culture is shown to
have penetrated to a much deeper level than has English and North
American culture. This is attributed to the fact that there were more
opportunities for informal social contact with the Japanese.

''Keep your language and I'll keep mine'': Politics, language,
and the construction of identities in Cyprus. Marilena Karyolemou.

Karyolemou uses the 1989 decision that the languages of instruction at
the University of Cypress be Greek and Turkish as the departure point
for a discussion of language, ethnic identity, diglossia and
bilingualism.  She observes that learning a language is not enough to
acquire ingroup identity, and that efforts to foster unification
through a third, common, language may not suffice if ethnic identities
are strong and supported by non-linguistic practices, especially in
areas with a history of conflict between ethnic groups.

Advertising for peace as political communication. Renee Dickason.

The Advertising for Peace campaign was a series of commercials
televised in Northern Ireland from 1988 to 1997. Dickason examines the
language and images used in these commercials, which were produced by
the Belfast agency of the North American multinational firm
McCann-Erickson. The campaign's goal was to cause the viewer to
''reimagine and restructure the future'' (p. 401), in some cases
through concrete action: the number of a Confidential Telephone was
provided for viewers to call with information that could avert
terrorist activity.  The author concludes that Advertising for Peace
may have had some positive impact, even as it raised concerns over
''the legitimacy of governmental use of the media in a democratic
country to change the attitudes of the people'' (p. 416).

American warriors speaking American: The metapragmatics of performance
in the nation state. Mark Allen Peterson.

>>From the perspective of metapragmatics, Peterson studies Congressional
debate over a 1996 bill to make English the official language of the
U.S.  government, and the coverage of same in The Stars and Stripes, a
weekly newspaper for veterans. At issue were the conflicting symbols
of an American citizen as being a person who speaks English, and the
existence of American soldiers who spoke only Spanish.

Conclusion: Word peace. Daniel N. Nelson.

Nelson closes the volume with the observation that a prerequisite to
war is dehumanization of the enemy, and this is accomplished with
words: ''Who'' becomes ''it'' (p. 454). He calls upon public
institutions to use language that affirms the identities of
populations within their political scope, arguing that insecurity in
regard to identity is an important factor in fostering hatred and its
consequent violence.

EVALUATION

This collection will serve a very wide audience, including scholars of
Critical Discourse Analysis; language and ideology; language,
ethnicity and identity; language attitudes, planning and politics; and
language shift. It will also be of use to readers with an interest in
war history and political science. Cohesion of content and style is
maintained from Preface to Conclusion. All contributions feature
clear, concise prose, with an exposition of each problem and a
comprehensive, though never cumbersome, review of pertinent
literature.

A convincing case is made that words, and certain ways of using them,
are indeed a necessary precursor to war. What is less clear is how, or
if, anyone should intervene in this process, aside from raising
awareness of it. A few of the writers do seem to encourage some form
of action. For example, Tucker and Prosise, after discussing the
inadequacy of words to describe the effects of weapons of mass
destruction, state: ''A task of the scholar who would analyze the
language of war is to understand such expressive difficulties with the
intent of alleviating them'' (p. 143).

Ruud cites van Dijk (1990:11), who calls for ''research to address
societal and political issues'' (p. 32). She states that ''critical
discourse analysis can highlight and expose forms of power abuse,
which directly or indirectly influence the mind, and ultimately our
larger society, through text and talk'' (p. 32). She concludes that
certain radio talk show hosts' discourse has a ''tendency to modify
human thought and behavior'' (p. 55). The implication is that this
discourse can inspire violent acts, and the reader wonders what, if
any, action is advocated.  Should such programs be censored?

On the other hand, Dickason, in her discussion of the television
commercial campaign designed to promote a cessation of violence in
Northern Ireland, asks whether it is appropriate for a government to
use the media to influence its citizens' attitudes, even when the
intended outcome would be positive.

REFERENCES

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1999. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, fifth printing.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1972. Language and Nationalism.  Two Integrative
Essays. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House.

Tajfel, Henri. 1981. Human Groups and Social Categories.  Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

van Dijk, Teun A. 1990. Discourse and Society: a new journal for a new
research focus. Discourse and Society. 1(1), 11.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Laura Callahan received a Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of
California at Berkeley and is currently an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the City College of
the City University of New York (CUNY), and a Research Fellow at the
Research Institute for the Study of Language in an Urban Society
(RISLUS) at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research interests include
language attitudes and language politics, codeswitching and other
contact phenomena, and heritage language maintenance. Recent work
focuses on ingroup attitudes toward the outgroup use of Spanish in the
United States.


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