ONE LANGUAGE MANY WORLDS

Even in a single language such as English there are many ways of repre-senting the world. These representations are often the result of particular habitual ways of thinking, or worldviews. The example given of the botanist is worth recalling here. The way a botanist thinks and talks about plants depends on the botanical language available to them. Obviously if a new plant is discovered, that will have to be named. But when deciding how to classify this plant, the botanist will look at the kinds of features considered important in their discipline. The features that matter to botanists are directly connected to the aims of this science: to categorise and understand plants, trees and other flora. The features that the discipline gives importance to can be understood as being structured by the botanist’s (world) view of plants. Colour probably would not be important, but how the plant repro-duces will be. We can say, then, that a particular set of values underlie this structure because some things are important and some are less important.

Finally, we can call this worldview the ideology of botany, that is, the values, ideas and features that define botany as a discipline; the things that are taken for granted in order to conduct the work of a botanist.

We don’t tend to think of fields of science as having an ‘ideology’. We tend to associate ‘ideology’ with beliefs that are somehow negative, subjec-tive or simply other. But as we saw in Chapter 1, an ideology is a set of beliefs. The reason we tend only to identify the beliefs of other people is because we consider our own (individual and group) beliefs to be normal, natural and obvious. Fairclough calls this ‘naturalization’, which he defines as giving ‘to particular ideological representations the status of common sense, and thereby mak[ing] them opaque, i.e. no longer visible as ideologies’

(1995: 42, see also Bourdieu 1991).

Simpson writes:

An ideology therefore derives from the taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs and value systems which are shared collectively by social groups.

And when an ideology is the ideology of a particularly powerful social group, it is said to be dominant.

(1993: 5) Here again we see how ideology links to power. We all have beliefs. Such beliefs become significant with respect to other people when the belief holders are in a position to get their point of view accepted as the norm.

We can see evidence of particular ideologies at work in language. As mentioned in the previous chapter, ideologies work like filters, changing the way things are represented according to the values of the ideology. For example, in many countries, there has been a change in the way recipients of government services are described when compared with a few decades ago (Mautner 2010). Rather than being referred to as ‘people’ or ‘citizens’, we are now ‘customers’, ‘service users’ and ‘clients’. This signals an ideologi-cal shift towards government services framing (and speaking to and behaving towards) the public in the way a business or corporation would.

The power of government means that it’s very difficult to question or change this way of referring to members of the public. Further, particular ways of using language encourage certain kinds of behaviour.

Imagine what it would be like if you considered the relationships you have with friends as a ‘customer/company’ relationship. How would you talk about your friendships? What would you expect from your friends?

How might this change the way you behave as a friend?

Activity 2.4

Thinking about friendships in the terms of Activity 2.4 would probably change both your behaviour and expectations. You might think about the time and money you have ‘invested’ in the friendship and whether you were getting ‘good value’ for this. You might expect your calls to be returned in a prompt manner, you would expect good ‘service’ from your friend and so on.

The idea that language influences the way we behave is perhaps most obvious in the case of certain metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that our thought processes are structured along metaphorical lines. For example, when we describe a verbal argument, we are likely to use words such as ‘attack’, ‘defend’, ‘won’, ‘lost’ and so on. From evidence of the language we use to talk about arguments, Lakoff and Johnson suggest the existence of the metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. We use the language of war to describe arguments. They go further than this, and argue that this metaphor (ARGUMENT IS WAR) actually structures how we think about arguments. For Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the words we use are thus evidence of the way we think.

This way of speaking (and thinking) about arguments is probably so familiar that it doesn’t seem particularly interesting. The familiarity of these expressions may hinder our attempts to explore any effect they may have.

With some linguistic signs it can be easier to look with a critical eye. Imagine someone is being fired. Her boss has a number of choices.

Example 2.1

a. You’ve been fired

b. I’m making you redundant c. Your job has been outsourced

d. All roles in your section have been demised e. We’re providing you with new opportunities

Firing someone can be represented and communicated in various ways.

Everyone understands what ‘being fired’ and being ‘made redundant’ mean.

These days, the concept of outsourcing is probably also very familiar. But to

‘demise’ jobs is fairly opaque (Guardian 2013). Perhaps the stress of having to decode the message somehow displaces the disappointment of being fired or makes it easier for the manager to fire them.

War metaphors are common. Make a list of war terms and then where they are used other than to talk about real battles.

Activity 2.5

As we have seen, some languages place things into different ‘classes’.

For this activity, it might help to work with some colleagues. Choose some objects around you, and either gather them in one place or mark them in some way. Develop a classification system that sorts the objects into classes. Try and develop some reasons for the classes. You may have trouble allocating objects to just one! You’ll need to think carefully about the objects and the features you use to construct your classes, and should give each a name. Then, tell some colleagues which class each belongs to, but not what the classes are or how they are defined.

They will need to try and figure out your classification system.

This is exactly the kind of task that Dixon had to work through when describing the noun class system of Dyirbal (Section 2.3.2).

Activity 2.6

The police forces in the UK often use the radio to communicate with each other. Before 2009, there was no uniform way for police to speak over the radio. The lack of a common system meant that communication was not always efficient or clear. In emergency situations, it is very important that the right information is conveyed to the right people at the right time. Moreover, talk on the radio is expensive (Meyer 2007). It is therefore important to minimise the time spent on air while maximising the information conveyed. One way of ensuring clarity of communication at these times is to make sure a clear concise form of speaking is the norm. Two linguists, Edward Johnson and Mark Garner, together with police experts, developed a new way of communicating over the radio (NPIA 2007).

The system they developed, Airwave Speak, was created around the principles of ‘Accuracy, Brevity, Clarity and Discipline’ (British APCO 2007). Everyone has a call sign. If my call sign is ‘Whisky Echo’ and my recipient’s call sign is ‘Bravo 67’ I would start with:

■ Bravo six-seven, Bravo six-seven from Whisky Echo Over.

This shows that when ending an utterance, ‘over’ is said. Other common phrases include:

■ Yes yes – for yes

■ Out – to signal that the conversation is finished

■ Received – to indicate the message has been heard.

■ Acknowledge – to check the other person is receiving

■ Read Back – to ask for information to be read back, in order to check correctness; responded to with ‘Reading back’

■ Repeat – to ask someone to repeat what they said; responded to with ‘Repeating’ to indicate that the message is being repeated.

There are also protocols that set out the order in which information should be provided. For example, when describing a car, an officer would follow the order Colour, Make, Model, Type and Registration number. In giving this information, it would be marked, that is the officer would say

‘Colour red, Make Toyota, Model not known, Type hatchback’ and so on.

Using the conventions just outlined and the one added here, describe to a colleague the last time you got a lift from someone, whether it was a family member, friend or a taxi. For describing people use the informa-tion structure Name, Age, Sex, Height and mark this informainforma-tion in the same way as for cars. Does this start to feel ‘natural’? How long does this take?

Activity 2.7