111. Discursivism110 can designate an approach for practicing ‘discursive engagements’ with other texts or discourses to explore their linguistic, cognitive, or social constitution (I.35). A ‘language’ is defined as a vast ‘virtual system of available options’ (a ‘theory of everything’, as it were) in a genuine dialectic with a ‘text’ defined as an ‘actual system of selections and combinations’; a ‘discourse’ is defined as an actual multi-system of related texts (cf. I.35ff). Ideologically, discursivism resonates with ecologism, which sees text and discourse as resources for free access to knowledge and society (0.7; I.76). Historically, it is emerging as a post-modernist project committed to inclusive multilingualism and multi-culturalism. Like functionalism, with which it shares key interests, it has evolved on two distinct sides, namely text linguistics and discourse analysis, which I believe to be converging (cf. II.119).
112. Discursivism stands firm upon being frankly explicit about its own social, ideological, and academic orientation and consciously positioning the ‘voice’ of the author who shares knowledge as a charter of ‘being educated’ (I.78, 84; II.209). Moreover, the voice too is shared and ‘polyphonic’, seeking ‘intersubjectivity’ through contact with a wide spectrum of alternative or contrasting voices and viewpoints in their own words rather than just paraphrasing or summarising them all. Discursive diversity benefits from post-modernism and multiculturalism at the present stage of political and economic history, when they engage in counter-discourse against the discourses of right-wing governmental or corporate power-brokers who fear diversity will bring pressure to share.
113. Discursivism does not aspire to completeness of description or analysis, which in the past has imposed drastic restrictions on both the data and the description (0.8), e.g. ‘syntax independent of meaning’ (II.69, 79). For ecologism, completeness is a ‘hopeful utopia’ to work toward without attaining; we can always say more about a text, compare or contrast it with more alternative versions or with other texts, or trace it further back to its sources or forward to its effects, and so on. The realistic aim is to pursue the exploration until we have captured some non-trivial and non-obvious aspects of interest and relevance for our agenda of understanding and enhancing human communication (0.8). If we view texts as ‘work in progress’ (I.39), our own discourse can further the ‘progress’ by broaden-ing inclusion and exploiting the inclusive essence of language (cf. I.38f, 47). In theory, then, discourse remains an open process that can ‘progress’ through multiple discursive engagements, as when explanation clarifies and renews its own content (cf. I.76, 113); our success in this ‘progress’ is the real foundation for whatever authority our work may attain.
114. In practice, we should expressly apply the ‘ecologist strategies of discourse’ we are seeking to describe. So I adopt user-friendly, ordinary language as far as I can, and technical language only as far as is genuinely required. I also build balanced or parallel patterns, as when I introduce each approach to ‘studies of language’ in this chapter by suggesting how it ‘defines language’ and where it might be situated ‘ideologically’ and ‘historically’ (II.4, 25, 75, 90, 111).
115. The texts and discourses we describe can be chosen for their relevance to a discursive theme concerning some significant issue or problem in current public discourse. One such theme would be corporate cynicism, where ‘social benefit’ is a ‘doublespeak’ term for ‘private profit’:
[70] The Council for Nuclear Safety showed more than 1000 workers in Harmony Gold Mines[…] have received an annual radiation dose five times higher than it should be. ‘Essentially, these workers were
being fried.’[…] ‘They are not provided with protective clothing or even instruments that would allow them to measure radiation levels.’ ‘Mining has a social benefit and we can’t make it so costly that workers’ jobs are at risk’, said Anglogold representative Johan Botha. ‘So perhaps you say radiation will kill you, but no jobs will also kill you.’ ([Johannisburg] Mail & Guardian, 01/03/99)
In the less cynical corporate discourses of the past, the ‘representative’ would express ‘surprise’ and ‘regret’, however insincere, and promise some ‘investi-gation’ or ‘remediation’. But the ‘new cynicism’ offers a brutal choice between being ‘killed’ by ‘radiation’ or by starvation (‘joblessness’). The ‘workers’ being black Africans and the spokesman being a white Afrikaner encapsulates the sinister history of gold mining in South Africa.
116. In Tanzania, African workers in gold mines didn’t need to wait around for radiation to kill them (first reported by Amnesty International):
[71] Ten of thousands of small-time prospectors[…] held legal claim stakes to their tiny mine shafts.[…] In August 1996,[…] bulldozers, backed by military police firing weapons, rolled across the goldfield, smashing down worker housing, crushing their mining equipment and filling in their pits.[…] About fifty miners were still in their mine shafts, buried alive. (Best Democracy)111
In the corporation’s cynical response, the incident was ‘a complete fabrication of a bunch of greedy, lying Black Africans trying to shake them down’ — a version ‘backed by the World Bank’, which had ‘granted the biggest loan guarantee in its history’ to ‘develop the site’; an actual videotape of ‘a worker going into a pit to retrieve bodies’ was said to show ‘bodies of ne’er-do-wells killed by local resi-dents, or victims of mine accidents distant in time or place’.111 An ‘internationally respected expert on human rights and the environment, Tanzanian lawyer Tundu Lissu’, who called for an ‘investigation’, was ‘charged by the Tanzanian government with sedition’ — this action too ‘supported by the World Bank’.111
117. And the ‘social benefits’ of gold mining may be granted not just to workers, but to all residents in an ‘area’[72]. In fact, all forms of life in the region may embrace a golden opportunityto be ‘killed’[73]. Corporate cynicism again re-sponded, this time from the boss of the Australian company running the mine[74].
[72] Mining Awareness produced a leaflet that drew attention to the problems of blasting, dust, chemicals, silting, erosion, water supply, pollution of the area and waste disposal associated with gold mining.112 [73] An enormous ‘toxic bullet’ of deadly cyanide that accidentally overflowed a dam at a Romanian gold
mine has contaminated 250 miles of rivers in Hungary and Yugoslavia, killing millions of fish, shutting down water supplies and leaving a trail of aquatic devastation that will require years to repair. (NGO Coalition To Save Our Rivers)www
[74] the only fish I’ve seen are the four fish held up by two 14-year-old boys that were described as ‘Environmental Experts’. (Brett Montgomery)www
The Romanian disaster was accidental, though foreseeable from a string of similar incidents at the site (cf. VII.62). But unleashing toxic waste seems planned to become policy in the globalisation sponsored by the same World Bank, witness an internal memo from its Chief Economist, Lawrence H. Summers[75]. [75] Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries
polluted.[…] The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable: a country with the lowest wages[loses the least in] foregone earnings from morbidity and mortality.113
Such data point up how the discursive theme of corporate cynicism can challenge not just discursivism and ecologism, but the well-being of whole societies.
118. Discursivism aspires to be a ‘progressive’ enterprise for producing discourse about discourse and staging a productive interplay of discursive positions. The present Introduction is a programmatic attempt to enlist discursivism in such a project, ranging across the Internet and large corpora from discourses of literature, philosophy, history, politics, economics, science, and technology.