Sociological Theories of Language and Power

Sociological Theories of Language and Power Given that sociological theories are just that- theories, it is impossible to say that they can sufficiently explain or define any aspect of our lives. However, sociological theories can help us to understand the way in we interact with each other and society thereby broadening our knowledge and perspectives. In the following discussion we will look briefly at some of the main sociological perspectives. We will then look at language as a means of communication and social interaction. Finally we will examine the relationship between language and power by exploring mass communication and its effect on social life. Sociology is concerned with society, with individuals in society, with institutions and with its norms and values. As Bilton et al state, social life is a puzzle and sociologists spend their professional lives trying to make sense of it. (2002 p4) Within sociology, there are several different influences which affect how theorists explain or attempt to explain social phenomena. These include functionalism, conflict theory and Marxism among others. Functionalism views the various parts of society as interrelated parts of a complete system. It sees behaviour as being structured and social relationships as being patterned and recurrent. It also emphasizes the role of value consensus within society. For example from a functionalist perspective, the family structure as a recurring social unit plays an important role in society. The family is the main socialising agency for young people and acts as a stabilising influence in society by propagating the shared norms and values of society (Har alambos and Holborn 1995, p8-9). In direct contrast, conflict theory is concerned with social structure as a cause and reflection of social inequality. Wallace and Wolf outline three basic assumptions of conflict theory. Firstly it assumes all people have basic common interests. Secondly that power is central to all relationships and thirdly it assumes that values and ideas are seen as weapons used by groups in their own interests rather than a way of defining society as a whole (1999, p68). It is similar to the Marxist perspective of society as operating through the fundamental conflicts of interests between the social groups involved in the production process (1995, p12). Another sociological perspective is structuralism, which was strongly influenced by the work of Sauserre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Sauserre developed the study of linguistics by looking at language as it is structured. According to Sauserre, analysing the structures of language means looking for the rules which underlie our speech. He argued that the meaning of words is derived from the structures of language, not the objects to which they refer. In this way, meaning is created by the differences between related concepts which the rules of a language recognise (Giddens 1989, p698-699). The field of semiotics is largely derived from Sauserres work on linguistics. The semiotic approach that meaning is located in the sign, has important consequences for how we view culture and language and through these, power. Sauserre described semiotics as a science that studies the life of signs within a society. It is concerned with meaning as something which is socially produced and proposes that the decoding process of communication is as important as the encoding process. In semiotics, meaning is derived from signs through their structural organisation. Sauserre conceived of signs as being made up of the sound image, termed the signifier and the mental concept, termed the signified. In this way signs can differ between individuals. For example when one person in a group refers to a car, everyone would conceptualise a car but each persons car would be very different. According to Mulholland (1991, p17), language is the instrument by which meaning is realised and by which effective social interaction can be created and sustained. She adds, language is not a neutral toolwhenever one encodes something of the world into language one is fitting it into a systematic code which works to produce meaning both paradigmatically (by choice of one item from a similar set of items) and syntygmatically (by arranging choices into sentence patterns).This can influence how it works to represent both propositional content (the happenings of the world when they become the subject matter of speech) and interpersonal content (the attitudes, role, tone and so on of relationships) (Mulholland 1991, p18). Therefore language is much more than a set of words and phrases which we use to communicate. And aside from spoken or written language, communication is also achieved through body language, a look or a gesture can say all that needs to be said. Much of our communication is based on shared codes and cultures. Day to day conversations are based on a knowledge of ourselves and the people we are communicating with. However, there are many factors which influence how we communicate. For example, our audience, the context, the desired outcomes of the communication and shared terms of reference. For example teenagers may be comfortable talking together about the latest rap artists and may even adopt some of their lingo whilst their parents may have no idea what they are talking about. This is because the parents are not familiar with the context (rap) of the conversation. Another factor which affects communication is the power and relative status of the speakers. Consider for example being told to step aside on a pavement by a police officer. Most people would comply with the request since the police (generally speaking) have an authority bestowed on them by their uniform. Similarly, we are inclined to give credibility to news broadcasts because we believe that the newsreader has authority and therefore what he or she is telling us must be true. Although Eldridge (1993) and others have argued that news is just a social construction anyway and as such cannot be considered unique or impartial, it is not reality which is constructed but a semblance of it. (1993 p33) However many argue that the media and the language it uses is manipulated by those who are in power in order to reinforce and legitimate that power. According to Adorno and Horkheimer (1979) the media is a technological system which is grounded in economic power. They argue that through the m edia, power and social systems are reproduced which in turn reproduce forms of social inequality in which political and economic spheres are inextricably mixed (cited Eldridge 1993, p34). They argue that news as such is just the result of what is considered important or proper between a select and unrepresentative group of business people, reporters and officials. In contrast to this a pluralist conception of mass communication is that there is such an enormous flow of messages and images that we can choose among them which to believe and which to discard. The Marxist response to this is that whilst it is true that the media occupies a contested space which has economic, cultural and political constraints as well as commercial pressures, these merely lead to different patterns of domination and agenda setting. (Eldridge, p36) For example, Williams has stated the commercial character of television has then to be seen at several levels: as the making of programmes for profit in a known market; as a channel for advertising; and as a cultural and political form directly shaped by and dependent on the norms of a capitalist society, selling both consumer goods and a way of life based on them in an ethos that is at once locally generated, by domestic capital interests and authorities and internationally organised by the dominant capitalist power. (ci ted in Fairclough 1995, p43) Mass communication is frequently discussed in terms of its effect on listeners/ viewers/ readers. In this way, it can be said to be a powerful force in our everyday lives. Therefore the language it employs also has a certain power. The formal language of the newsreader for example implies knowledge and authority and we are inclined to trust this voice. Likewise, the more commercial an image becomes, the less we are likely to trust it. Conclusion Sociological theories such as structuralism are very useful in enhancing our understanding of language and power in society. By comparing differing theories of language and of power we may not come up with definitive answers but we are certainly more knowledgeable about the processes. Power is exerted through many different means and language is just one of these. However it is potentially a very influential source of power and one which is exploited wherever possible. This can be seen in many facets of social life from politics, economics even religion and popular culture.

Utopia-Religon

Thomas More wrote Utopia a few years before the Protestant Reformation, during a period rife with religious instability. Not everyone trusted the corrupt Roman Catholic Church, and many Europeans looked elsewhere for their religious inspiration. Though the Utopian religion has some similarities with Catholicism and Protestantism, it is an entirely unique belief system uninfluenced by the numerous European faiths of the period. The main thing the sets the utopian religion apart Is its complete religious tolerance.While all the utopian religions are monotheistic and all their god by a general Utopian term of Matthias, they disagree on who exactly Matthias is. The only belief that is not allowed is atheism. Utopians feel that if an individual does not think that he Is responsible for his actions, and that there Is one Supreme Being who controls the world, then there is nothing to stop him from breaking laws and causing disorder. The Utopians don't believe in predestination like many sec ts of Protestantism does.All the religions meet at one church and serve under the same priest. In church one is not allowed to say anything that's offensive to another religion because of on early Utopian law saying that no one should suffer or be made uncomfortable due to his religion. A Utopian can try to convert others to their religion if they are able to present their argument calmly and reasonably. All this is very deferent from any of the European religions, who were constantly going to war with each other In the name of god.Catholic kings would go on crusades against the Muslims; Jews during the Spanish Inquisition were kicked at of their homes and persecuted for believing differently, and after the protestant reformation Catholics ND Protestants had years of bloody warfare. Even the religious leaders themselves would start war, such as when Luther declared war on the Jews and the peasants. Religious tolerance was something that didn't come to Europe until much later. Anothe r thing that shows the uniqueness of the utopian religion is the way they elect and serve their priests. Priests are chosen by the people in a secret election.Unlike Catholics and Protestants who have numerous corrupt priests, utopians have very few, because of difficulty finding someone moral enough for the Job. The Priest Is also he highest power in the land. This is very opposite of Protestants, who believe in a â€Å"priesthood of all Believers† that the priest is equal to the parishioner. Priests, similar to Lutheran are allowed to marry, and their wives are treated like high members of society. Priest also cannot be punished for crime, utopians believe that someone who dedicated himself to god can only be punished by god himself and not through human hands.A widowed elderly woman is also allowed to become priest which is something that's not allowed by any other religion. The priest also went to war with he utopians for the purpose of Inspiring the troops, preventing ex cess killing, and pacifying the enemy's vengeance. The utopians worship their god in a very unique way. In church they do not sacrifice any animals because they do not think that a merciful god would enjoy senseless bloodshed. This shows how the Utopians would not have approved of the flagellant movement In the fourteenth century.The flagellants were groups of clerics that would go from town to town and whip their bare skin to inspire public repentance. If the Utopians wouldn't even draw an 1 OFF animal's b tort no reason they would never nave approved to hurting oneself tort a oddly purpose. The Utopians do burn incense, because they feel that the scent somehow raises people's thoughts. They do not burn them for god because they know he has no use for such things. Similar to the Protestants the Utopians don't focus on acts of devotion. The Utopians, unlike the Catholics, have no visual representations of god anywhere. They also don't believe in omens and fortune telling.Their calen dar, like the Catholic one, is based on a solar year divided into lunar months. The Utopian religion has a confusing stance on female equality. On the one hand they allow woman to become priests which is something that's unheard of in any of the European religions, but they also make woman confess all there wrong doings to their husbands before any holiday. They give woman a chance at equality, but then also show them how they are inferior to their husbands. While this does seem paradoxical, it does offer more gender equality than any other religion. The Utopians are also hypocritical with their religious punishments.They have a law eying a priest cannot punish a sinner because that is the Job of the government. The most drastic punishment they allow the priest to give is excommunication. Yet if the excommunicated one does not convince the priest that he is reformed, he is arrested and punished by the counsel for sinfulness. So the priest technically has the power to punish in a ver y roundabout but powerful way. He can decide who is reformed or not and through that he is given the power to imprison. If a counsel can arrest and try an individual for impiety, doesn't that mean a person is suffering because of their elision.This proves that although the Utopians say they offer complete religious freedom, a person can still suffer because of his beliefs. The truly devout Utopians do one of two things. The holier ones take vows of chastity similar to the Catholics, and eat a very strict diet consisting of no meat. The less holy yet more admired ones take upon themselves heavy labor that will benefit the community. It is more admired in Utopia to do heavy work for the community then to live a life of chastity. This is very different from the Catholic mentality.Catholics admire priests as holy and serve them only because the priest was able to devote his life purely to god and give up human desires. The peasants who spend the whole day doing backbreaking labor are vi ewed as the lowest of society even though what they do greatly benefits everyone else. Thomas More would not have though the Utopian religion was ideal. More himself was a devote Catholic who even died for his faith. He played an integral role as Lord Chancellor in persecuting the Protestants after the reformation. He would not have proved of the complete religious toleration of the Utopians.Also the Utopian laws allowing euthanasia, divorce, and married and female priests are completely against the teachings of the Catholic Church. He wrote Utopia as a way of criticizing the Catholic Church for all of its corruptions not as a blueprint for a new religion. At the end of the book More says that while Hathaway was speaking he kept thinking how some of the Utopian laws were Just bizarre. He says â€Å"quite apart from such things as their military tactics, religions, and forms of worship, there was a grand absurdity on which their whole society is based, communism without money. (Utop ia 113) This quote proves how Mores intention in writing Utopia was not to create a new way of life, but to criticize the fraudulent doings of contemporary European society. Although Utopia is championed as the ideal place to live there has yet to be a country that NAS tried to mimic its way to elite. Even More himself would nave rejected its unique religion. But regardless of its desirability, the Utopian religion has proven to be a completely unique belief system uninfluenced by contemporary religious beliefs.

Generative Grammar

FOUNDATIONS IN GENERATIVE GRAMMARAny native speaker of a language can be said to know the grammar of his/her own language, they know how to form and interpret any expression. However, this grammatical knowledge is subconscious. Native speaker have grammatical competence in their native language. This means that they have tacit knowledge of the grammar of their own lang. We have to make a difference between competence (the fluent native speaker's tacit knowledge of his lang) and performance (what people actually say and understand, the use of the language). Criteria of adequacyBasically, the criteria of adequacy are 2: descriptive adequacy (universality) and explanatory adequacy. 1. A grammar is descriptively adequate if it correctly describes whether a sequence of words is or isn't grammatical and also correctly describes what interpretation(s) this sequence has. 1. 1. The goal of a descriptive linguist is to devise particular grammars of particular languages, while that of a theoret ical linguist is to devise a theory of grammar. This is a set of hypotheses about the nature of possible and impossible grammars of natural languages and about the inherent properties that natural langs do and don't possess.An adequate theory of grammar must satisfy the criterion of adequacy known as universality. This means that a theory of grammar must enable us to devise a descriptively adequate grammar for every natural lang. The main goal of Generative Grammar is to build a theory of Universal Grammar. 2. This theory of UG will not only list the universal properties of natural lang grammars, but also explain the relevant properties –i. e. why grammar have the properties they do. This requirement is referred to as explanatory adequacy. Language FacultyAccording to Chomsky, the most plausible explanation for uniformity and rapidity lies in that the course of acquisition is determined by a biologically endowed innate language faculty within the brain, which provides childre n with a genetically transmitted set of procedures for developing a grammar on the basis of their linguistic experience (the speech input they receive). The hypothesis that the course of lang acquisition is determined by an innate language faculty is known as the innateness hypothesis. The major tenets of this hypothesis are: 1. The innate language faculty is unique to humans. . All humans possess this ability of lang acquisition. 3. The uniformity character suggests that children have a genetic guidance in the task of building a grammar of their native lang. 4. Despite performance errors in the input, children acquire a competence grammar, which again points to the fact that the acquisition ability must be genetically determined. 5. Although no special care is taken to teach them, children acquire languages successfully, which again supports the genetic character of lang acquisition. Principles We have claimed that children have a genetically endowed language faculty.If so, what ar e the defining properties of the language faculty? The lang faculty must include a set of principles of Universal Grammar, in the sense that the lang faculty must be such as to allow the child to develop a grammar of any natural lang on the basis of a sufficient speech input. If these principles are universal their application in one language should reveal evidence of their application in other langs. The underlying rule to construct a particular structure in one language will be part of a general principle of UG. (1) a. Mary will tell me the truth. b. Will Mary tell me the truth? Move the second word in a sentence in front of the first word) (2) a. The girl in the corner will tell me the truth. b. *Girl the in the corner†¦.? | | |STRUCTURE DEPENDENCE PRINCIPLE | |All grammatical operations are structure-dependent. | To explain grammaticality and ungrammaticality we should rely on general principles such as the Structure Dependence Principle, although in each language this prin ciple will be turned into something more concrete:Move an auxiliary in front of a preceding noun expression which functions as its subject. This rule makes use of structural information which is subconsciously available to all humans, although people don't know what an auxiliary is. Also this rule accounts for the contrast in (3): (3) a. Mary told me the truth. b. *Told Mary the truth? as we have applied inversion to a non-auxiliary. A theory of grammar which posits that the internal structure of words, phrases and clauses in natural lang is determined by innate UG principles minimizes the burden of grammatical learning imposed on the child.This is quite important given the learnability criterion of adequacy for any theory of grammar. The UG theory accounts for the rapidity of the child's grammatical development by positing that there is a universal set of innately endowed grammatical principles which determine the nature of grammatical structure and the range of grammatical operati ons found in natural lang. Since these UG principles don't have to be learned, the UG theory minimizes the learning load placed on the child and as a consequence maximizes the learnability of natural language grammars. ParametersAlthough the lang faculty involves a set of UG principles, all aspects of the grammatical structure of language are not determined by innate gramm. principles. Otherwise all languages would have the same structure and there would not be any structural learning in lang acquisition. So although there are universal principles which control the overall structure of a lang, there are also language-particular aspects of grammatical struct which children have to learn as part of acquiring their native lang. Acquisition involves structural learning, which is limited to a set of parameters.Parameters are those aspects of grammatical structure which are subject to lang-particular variation. Examples of parameters: 1. Null subject parameter: languages which permit omis sion of the subject of a finite verb and langs that do not. (4) a. Maria come pasta. b. Come pasta. (5) a. Mary eats pasta. b. *Eats pasta. 2. Wh-parameter: languages which permit fronting of the wh-phrase or not. (6) a What do you think he will say? b. ?Que piensas que el dira? c. Ni xiangxin ta hui shuo shenme you think he will say whatEnglish and Spanish Wh-phrases move to the beginning of the interrogative clause, but Chinese Wh-phrase remains in situ. 3. Head position parameter: the relative positioning of heads with respect to their complements. Head-first languages and Head-last langs. (7) a. Close the door b. Moonul dadala. door close (8) a. desire for change. b. byunhwa-eadaehan kalmang change-for desire 4. Discourse/Agreement Prominence: Miyagawa (2005) claims that languages can be classified according to whether they are focus or agreement prominent.On the basis of his classification, there are languages which overtly instantiate the notion of topic (Korean or Japanese), there are also languages which put a special emphasis on agreement marking (English), but additionally there are languages which show both (Spanish). >>> Jimenez (2008, 2009) 9) a. Taroo-ga hon-o katta. Taro-NOM book-ACC bought ‘Taro bought a book’. b. Hon-o Taroo-ga katta. Book-ACC Taro-NOM bought ‘A book, Taro bought’. 10) a. Mary likes syntax. b. *Syntax Mary likes. (11) a.Susana corto los tulipanes. (S-V-O) Susana cutpast3sg the tulips ‘Susana cut the tulips. ’ b. Los tulipanes(,) los corto Susana. (O-cl-V-S) The tulips, CL3pl,masc cut Susana ‘The tulips, Susana cut’. Parameter-setting Parameters involve binary choices, so structural variation between langs is constrained. The only structural learning that children have to face is the task of setting the appropriate value for each of the relevant structural parameters >>>>> Metaphor of the switch in the up or down position.

The On The Last Straw Game - 961 Words

The last straw game was very exciting with various scenarios depicting real life moments. The key feature in the game was social economic status. This is because according to research socioeconomic factors are the main determinants of health disparities. Disparities exist when differences in health outcomes or health determinants are observed between populations. In the United States health disparities are well known problems among ethnic groups such as African Americans, Asia Americans, Native American and Latinos. Other disparities that contribute to unequal health outcomes include race, gender, sexual and orientation. The aim of this game was to make us aware of the health disparities among the population and to equip us with the mindset that these are challenges real. As healthcare professionals we can contribute in bridging that gap through educational programs and policies. Poverty is a cycle that creeks from one generation to another. The only way to stop this trend is to invest in the education of the old and new alike. That in itself, is a huge problem because people who are poor live in neighborhoods that are rough and progress is hardly achieved with the resources that are located in those areas. The most important element that can transform the fortunes of people living in poverty is to invest in the younger generation through education. Investing in the right programs, will achieve more high school graduation rates and continuous education through to college.Show MoreRelatedClassification Essay -Three Types of Dieters860 Words   |  4 Pagesthe Monday promise makers, dieters with whom most people remain familiar with and whose excuses they know, cannot keep their promises. The promise makers always start their diets tomorrow, after one last, scrumptious dinner--their favorite meal of course! The Monday promise maker can last through lunch, but by dinner he or she cannot take their hunger pains any longer. 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