- •Language And Culture By Clair Kramsch
- •Preface Purpose
- •Readings
- •References
- •Glossary
- •Author's acknowledgments
- •1. The relationship of language and culture
- •Nature, culture, language
- •Communities of language users
- •Imagined communities
- •Insiders/outsiders
- •Linguistic relativity
- •The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- •Summary
- •2. Meaning as sign
- •The linguistic sign
- •The meaning of signs
- •Cultural Encodings
- •Semantic Cohesion
- •Symbols
- •Summary
- •3. Meaning as action
- •Context of situation, context of culture
- •Structures of Expectation
- •Contextualization Cues, Situated Inferences
- •Pragmatic Coherence
- •The Cooperative Principle
- •Participants' Roles and the Co-construction of Culture
- •Summary
- •4. Spoken language, oral culture
- •Speech and writing
- •Indicating status
- •Social positionings
- •Protecting Face
- •Conversational Style
- •Narrative Style
- •Summary
- •5. Print language, literate culture
- •Written language, textual culture
- •Print and power
- •Social construction of literacy
- •Text and discourse
- •Literacy event, prior text, point of view
- •Summary
- •6. Language and cultural identity
- •Cultural identity
- •Cultural stereotypes
- •Language crossing as act of identity
- •Linguistic nationism
- •Standard language, cultural totem
- •Linguistic and cultural imperialism
- •Summary
- •7. Current issues
- •Who is a native speaker?
- •Cultural authenticity
- •Cross-cultural, intercultural, multicultural
- •The politics of recognition
- •Are emotions universal or culture-specific?
- •Text 10
- •Text 11
- •Text l2
- •Text l3
- •Cultural notions of 'face'
- •Text 14
- •Text 15
- •Text 16
- •Text 17
- •Text 18
- •Text 19
- •Text 20
- •Text 21
- •Text 22
- •Text 23
- •Text 24
Text 17
James Gee: Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. The Falmer Press 1990, pages 142-43.
Literacy, says Gee, is much more than just the ability to read and write. It is an ability to signal one's membership in a socially meaningful discourse community.
At any moment we are using language, we must say or write the right thing in the right way while playing the right social role and (appearing) to hold the right values, beliefs and attitudes. What is important is not language, and surely not grammar, but saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations. These combinations I will refer to as 'Discourses' with a capital 'D' ('discourse' with a little 'd', I will use for connected stretches of language that make sense, like conversations, stories, reports, arguments, essays; 'discourse' is part of 'Discourse' - 'Discourse' with a big 'D' is always more than just language). Discourses are ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body positions and clothes.
A Discourse is a sort of 'identity kit' which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular social role that others will recognize...
Another way to look at Discourses is that they are always ways of displaying (through words, actions, values and beliefs) membership in a particular social group or social network (people who associate with each other around a common set of interests, goals and activities). Being 'trained' as a linguist meant that I learned to speak, think and act like a linguist, and to recognize others when they do so (not just that I learned lots of facts about language and linguistics). So 'being a linguist' is one of the Discourses I have mastered....
To sum up, by 'a Discourse' I mean:
A Discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or 'social network', or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful 'role'.
-
How would you define 'a socially meaningful group'? Show through one or two examples not only that a Discourse is defined by the social group who uses it, but that it helps co-construct that social group as well (see Chapter 3).
-
Can you think of a type of literacy that would enable someone precisely to subvert the Discourse of the group to which he/she belongs?
Text 18
Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis (Eds.): The Powers of Literacy. A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing. University of Pittsburgh Press 1993, page 7.
To understand how Discourses operate in society, it is important to understand the notion of 'genre'. It is through genres that texts are linked to their contexts of production and reception, i.e. to culture.
'Genre' is a term used in literacy pedagogy to connect the different forms text take with variations in social purpose. Texts are different because they do different things. So, any literacy pedagogy has to be concerned, not just with the formalities of how texts work, but also with the living social reality of texts-in-use...
Genres are social processes. Texts are patterned in reasonably predictable ways according to patterns of social interaction in a particular culture. Social patterning and textual patterning meet as genres ... It follows that genres are not simply created by individuals in the moment of their utterance; to have meaning, they must be social. Individual speakers and writers act within a cultural context and with a knowledge of the different social effects of different types of oral and written text. Genres, moreover, give their users access to certain realms of social action and interaction, certain realms of social influence and power.
-
Compare this functional definition of 'genre' with the more traditional one you may find in the dictionary. What kind of link between language and culture is established by each of these definitions?
-
Find one example of an oral and a written genre respectively that might give its users 'social influence and power'.
-
How far is the notion of genre as discussed in this passage related to the notion of the literacy event as discussed before.
Chapter 6 Language and cultural Identity