LANGUAGE AND POWER : CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

This week I realized how much power language carries. I have never thought that language shapes our life so much . For example, it can make us being regarded as impressive, attractive or on the contrary, poor. What I am trying to say is that you are you, as long as you express yourself with your own way of language use. You can make everything to people with your language. You can bring news to them, teach something, lie, read a poem and affect them etc. That is what acts you out to ypur environment. I liked the passage in the readings which says ‘Language....does things: it constructs social categories, it gives orders, it persuades us,it justifies, explains,gives reasons,excuses. It constructs reality. It moves poeple against other people.(TRC,1998:7,124,294) (p.45). Language is really powerful because it constructs reality, the world.

It is good that language is powerful because we think we all know languages. But what about the disadvantages of it? Have you ever thought that language is dangerous? Dou you think it brings you trouble somehow? To be honest, I thought language is bad when you swear or say something breaking a friend’s heart. This is what lots of people do as me. However, after the lesson this week, I realized that it is so powerful that a word which is positive can also be negative for us in the long-term. It can create trouble and make us to make wrong choices and so on. The issue is other people can use the language more effectively than us. They can affect and dominate us with their language. This is the time where language is dangerous. But I know the solution; actually I have learnt it today. While you are reading ‘Critical Literacy’ must always be there. This is to read something with questioning and reasoning. You should always ask yourself questions such as Is this the reality? Is this true? Is this what the writer is trying to convey? Is there an implication? These questions will help you criticize the text and in the end you will end up with a consciously-read text which will make you get the real idea of it.  If you have critical literacy, you can protect yourself from being deceived. I decided to read with such critical approach from now on because I think I lost so much time. I hope I will be a reader who understands everything in and behind the texts. 

LINGUSTIC VARIATION AND ITS SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

As we know, there are five main key areas of sociolinguistics, namely, personal characteristics, linguistic styles, social characteristics, socio cultural factors and sociological factors. I personally believe that because of these, there are linguistic variations. However, I am a little bit uncertain about how linguists make decisions about the causes and results of these variables. Chambers, J.K (2009) states that ‘A speaker who is fluent but vague will seem to us to be evasive, perhaps deceitful, and one who is articulate but hesitant will seem pensive and thoughtful’. In my opinion, this is not very realistic. Therefore; I don’t agree with this idea. I have a friend who speaks fast and vaguely because speaking always creates panic to him. He is not a self-confident person and he does not seem to overcome this but this does not have anything with his personal character but his problems with communicating people. I mean, if a person speaks vaguely and fluently, that does not mean this person is deceitful. There may be psychological reasons or different experience behind it and linguists should make more research about it. They should not make decisions about personal characteristics and their effects on linguistic variables quickly.

I also want to say that there is another important aspect in determining language variants: Hawthorne effect. Murray says ‘the behaviour of any given experiment‘s subjects is changed just because the subjects perceive themselves as participants in the experiment’ This is the fact that when somebody observes you, you become a different person and speak accordingly. You go away from your behaviours and modify your speech. This is absolutely valid for me. I cannot even write something when my teacher is near me because this irritates me. I write and erase, I try to form different sentences and try to explain what I want to write differently even though I know that the teacher does not read what I am writing, but I cannot change my mind. This is also very clear in my speech. When I realize that I am observed, I unconsciously start to speak differently (actually I try not to form wrong sentences and speak without hesitation). At that point, I wonder why linguists do not try to find ways to avoid Hawthorne effect on people interviewed? It is a necessity because linguists make decisions after they interview with them and try to find in what situations they vary their speech. Therefore, in order to make the research more natural, they should try to avoid Hawthorne effect as much as possible first. I think they should work with psychologists.