In response, inventors of international languages tried to bring about world peace with their inventions, the most famous of which is Esperanto. It didn't catch on sufficiently for the world's politicians to need or want to learn it.
Slowly, another international language emerged, spoken by diplomats, scientists, artists, business people and many more. Benefiting from the legacy of the British Empire, and the rise in influence of the most powerful member of that Empire - the USA - English or kinds of English is being spoken all over the globe. In truth, they speak what the linguist David Crystal calls "Englishes", though some ways of talking are what have been called "creoles", "pidgins" and "patois". I was watching an Austrian pop music channel recently and the comments and ads were in an Anglo-German Creole whose core was German, but which was full of "go to it", "cool", "be there" and the like.
Most of this has gone on without direction from governments. The technologies of telephones, radio, TV, records, CDs, mobile phones and the internet have enabled most people in the world to get access to each other's language in a matter of moments. Through these channels, millions of young people across the world have grown to like the sounds produced by English-speaking bands. Bales has studied leader emergence in groups made up of unacquainted individuals in situations where they have to bid or compete for speaking turns.
Results show that individuals who talk the most have a much better chance of becoming leaders. Depending on the social orientations of their talk, they would be recognized as a task or relational leader. Subsequent research on leader emergence has shown that an even better behavioral predictor than volume of talk is the number of speaking turns.
An obvious reason for this is that the volume of talk depends on the number of turns—it usually accumulates across turns, rather than being the result of a single extraordinary long turn of talk. Another reason is that more turns afford the speaker more opportunities to realize the powers of turns that have been explicated above.
More recent research has extended the experimental study of group leadership to intergroup contexts, where members belonging to two groups who hold opposing stances on a social or political issue interact within and also between groups. The results showed, first, that speaking turns remain important in leader emergence, but the intergroup context now generates social identity and self-categorization processes that selectively privilege particular forms of speech.
What potential leaders say, and not only how many speaking turns they have gained, becomes crucial in conveying to group members that they are prototypical members of their group.
Prototypical communication is enacted by adopting an accent, choosing code words, and speaking in a tone that characterize the in-group; above all, it is enacted through the content of utterances to represent or exemplify the in-group position.
These out-group-directed prototypical utterances project an in-group identity that is psychologically distinctive from the out-group for in-group members to feel proud of and to rally together when debating with the out-group.
Building on these experimental results Reid and Ng developed a social identity theory of leadership to account for the emergence and maintenance of intergroup leadership, grounding it in case studies of the intergroup communication strategies that brought Ariel Sharon and John Howard to power in Israel and Australia, respectively.
Specifically, when conversational influence gained through prototypical utterances culminates to form an incipient power hierarchy, group members develop expectations of who is and will be leading the group. Acting on these tacit expectations they collectively coordinate the behavior of each other to conform with the expectations by granting incipient leaders more speaking turns and supporting them with positive audience responses.
In short, the emergence of intergroup leaders is a joint process of what they do individually and what group members do collectively, enabled by speaking turns and mediated by social identity and expectation states processes. In a similar vein, Hogg has developed a social identity account of leadership in intergroup settings.
Narratives and stories are closely related and are sometimes used interchangeably. However, it is useful to distinguish a narrative from a story and from other related terms such as discourse and frames.
A story is a sequence of related events in the past recounted for rhetorical or ideological purposes, whereas a narrative is a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories formed by incorporating new stories and relating them to others so as to provide an ongoing basis for interpreting events, envisioning an ideal future, and motivating and justifying collective actions Halverson et al. The temporal dimension and sense of movement in a narrative also distinguish it from discourse and frames.
Both discourse and frame lack the temporal and causal transformation of a narrative. Pitching narratives at the suprastory level and stressing their temporal and transformational movements allows researchers to take a structurally more systemic and temporally more expansive view than traditional research on propaganda wars between nations, religions, or political systems Halverson et al. The intergroup structure of al-Qaeda narrative includes the rhetorical constructions that there are a group grievance inflicted on Muslims by a Zionist—Christian alliance, a vision of the good society under the Caliphate and sharia , and a path from grievance to the realization of the vision led by al-Qaeda in a violent jihad to eradicate Western influence in the Muslim world.
It is deeply embedded in culture and history, and has reached out to numerous Muslims who have emigrated to the West. The intergroup content of al-Qaeda narrative was shown in a computer-aided content analysis of 18 representative transcripts of propaganda speeches released between — by al-Qaeda leaders, totaling over 66, words Cohen et al.
The success of the al-Qaeda narrative has alarmed various international agencies, individual governments, think tanks, and religious groups to spend huge sums of money on developing counternarratives that are, according to Schmid , largely feeble.
Ironically, it has developed into a narrative of its own, not so much for countering external extremism, but for promoting and justifying internal nationalistic extremist policies and influencing national elections. This chapter provides a systematic framework for understanding five language—power relationships, namely, language reveals power, reflects power, maintains existing dominance, unites and divides a nation, and creates influence. The first two relationships are derived from the power behind language and the last three from the power of language.
Collectively they provide a relatively comprehensible framework for understanding the relationships between language and power, and not simply for understanding language alone or power alone separated from one another. The language—power relationships are dynamically interrelated, one influencing the other, and each can draw from an array of the cognitive, communicative, social, and identity functions of language.
The framework is applicable to both interpersonal and intergroup contexts of communication, although for present purposes the latter has been highlighted. Among the substantive issues discussed in this chapter, English as a global language, oratorical and narrative power, and intergroup leadership stand out as particularly important for political and theoretical reasons. In closing, we note some of the gaps that need to be filled and directions for further research.
When discussing the powers of language to maintain and reflect existing dominance, we have omitted the countervailing power of language to resist or subvert existing dominance and, importantly, to create social change for the collective good.
Furthermore, in this age of globalization and its discontents, English as a global language will increasingly be resented for its excessive unaccommodating power despite tangible lingua franca English benefits, and challenged by the expanding ethnolinguistic vitality of peoples who speak Arabic, Chinese, or Spanish. Internet communication is no longer predominantly in English, but is rapidly diversifying to become the modern Tower of Babel. And yet we have barely scratched the surface of these issues.
Other glaring gaps include the omission of media discourse and recent developments in Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Loring, , as well as the lack of reference to languages other than English that may cast one or more of the language—power relationships in a different light. One of the main themes of this chapter—that the diverse language—power relationships are dynamically interrelated—clearly points to the need for greater theoretical fertilization across cognate disciplines.
Our discussion of the three powers of language boxes 3—5 in Figure 1 clearly points in this direction, most notably in the case of the powers of language to create influence through single words, oratories, conversations, and narratives, but much more needs to be done. The social identity approach will continue to serve as a meta theory of intergroup communication. To the extent that intergroup communication takes place in an existing power relation and that the changes that it seeks are not simply a more positive or psychologically distinctive social identity but greater group power and a more powerful social identity, the social identity approach has to incorporate power in its application to intergroup communication.
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Search within Show Summary Details Language and Power. Language and Power. Keywords power behind language power of language intergroup communication World Englishes oratorical power conversational power leader emergence al-Qaeda narrative social identity approach. Introduction Language Is for Communication and Power Language is a natural human system of conventionalized symbols that have understood meanings.
Conceptual Approaches to Power Bertrand Russell, logician cum philosopher and social activist, published a relatively little-known book on power when World War II was looming large in Europe Russell, Language—Power Relationships As indicated in the chapter title, discussion will focus on the language—power relationships, and not on language alone or power alone, in intergroup communication. Open in new tab. Figure 1.
Power behind language and power of language. Power of Language Language Maintains Existing Dominance Language maintains and reproduces existing dominance in three different ways represented respectively by the ascent of English, linguistic sexism, and legal language style.
Language Unites and Divides a Nation A nation of many peoples who, despite their diverse cultural and ethnic background, all speak in the same tongue and write in the same script would reap the benefit of the unifying power of a common language.
Power of Single Words Learning a language empowers humans to master an elaborate system of conventions and the associations between words and their sounds on the one hand, and on the other hand, categories of objects and relations to which they refer. Conversational Power A conversation is a speech exchange system in which the length and order of speaking turns have not been preassigned but require coordination on an utterance-by-utterance basis between two or more individuals.
Narrative Power Narratives and stories are closely related and are sometimes used interchangeably. Discussion and Future Directions This chapter provides a systematic framework for understanding five language—power relationships, namely, language reveals power, reflects power, maintains existing dominance, unites and divides a nation, and creates influence. Further Reading Austin, J. How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Billig, M. Ideology and opinions: Studies in rhetorical psychology. Crystal, D. English as a global language , 2d ed. Cambridge, U. Culpeper, J. New York: John Wiley. Holtgraves, T. Social psychology and language: Words, utterances, and conversations.
Fiske , D. Lindzey Eds. Mumby, D. Narrative and social control: Critical perspectives Vol. Ng, S. Power in language: Verbal communication and social influence. References Abrams, D. Metatheory: Lessons from social identity research. Personality and Social Psychology Review , 8 , 98— Bales, R. Interaction process analysis: A method for the study of small groups.
Oxford: Addison-Wesley. Benedek, M. Creating metaphors: The neural basis of figurative language production. NeuroImage , 90 , 99— Berger, J.
Expectation states theory: A theoretical research program. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop. Bolton, K. World Englishes today. Kachru , Y. Nelson Eds. Oxford: Blackwell. Bourhis, R. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development , 2 , — British Council.
Brosch, C. On the conceptual history of the term Lingua Franca. Journal of Applied Language Studies , 9 1 , 71— English is the only means of preventing our isolation from the world and we will act unwisely if we allow ourselves to be enveloped in the folds of a dark curtain of ignorance.
Our students who are undergoing training at schools, which will admit them, either to university or to vocation must acquire sufficient mastery of English to give them access to the treasures of knowledge, and in the universities no student should be allowed to take a degree who does not acquire the ability to read with facility and understanding works of English authors.
A library language:- English is a rich more house of knowledge. There is hardly anything important in the world that has not been translated into English. In India, as in other countries, English will maintain-quite- probably increase-its immense usefulness as a library language. The implications of this are two fold: all teachers in higher education should be essentially bilingual in the regional language and in English, and all students and, particularly postgraduate students should be able to follow lectures and use reading materials in the regional language, as well as in English.
A link language :- English has served, and is serving, as a link language at two important levels. First English is responsible for our contacts with the outside world. Second, English serves as a link language in India.
People in different states have different mother tongues. It is English only that serves as a link between one state and another. A person from Calcutta, for example, will not be understood in Madras except through English.
English also is the language of trade and industry in India. Not only that, the official correspondence between the Union Government and the non-Hindi speaking States is conducted in English. It is true that Hindi is the official language of the country. Even then English is used increasingly for inter-state purposes.
English has served as a unifying factor in the country. Essential for overseas employment:- It is well known that English is the language which connects people from different regions cultures and nations. Due to the fact that the British ruled most parts of the world a few years ago, they could conveniently sow the seeds of English language and culture in those countries. During the colonial period, the British gave a common language to the world. It has helped the world in sharing any kind of information fast and clear without any translation.
Though the British left their colonies a long time back, their efforts and reforms in the field of education are yielding result now. Globalisation has encouraged the domestic companies to think beyond their nations.
As English is spoken in most of the countries, language is no more a barrier for people who intend to settle down in the countries for the better prospective of career and job.
It is like either you work hard and show your performance or perish for not taking care of your professional growth. The ability to use a language efficiently is very much required to remain employable. What is employability? It is the ability to remain employable as a result of the relevant skills one possesses. The ability to express fluently in both written as well as oral form of language is very much essential for the career growth.
Proper English does not mean only the ability to make grammatically correct sentences. It means other related skills for effective communication like presentation skills, convincing and negotiation skills and interpersonal skills using that language. Communication means the exchange of information, ideas, feelings and thoughts.
The type of communication which is used in the corporate world is business communication. The consequence is a more divided world: Those who can speak English and have access to innovation versus those who do not have the means to learn the language and, therefore, lag behind. While the Western language, and therefore culture, penetrates Third World communities especially, the West has increasingly more economic and political influence over these countries.
Should this development only be seen as negative? Globalization and the expansion of the English language have resulted in oppression and inequality. But the creation of this widespread, unintentional, tool can also be put to positive use. If accessible to everyone, it can be used to avoid cultural misunderstandings, conflict, and promote coexisting diversity.
Your email address will not be published. An informative statement, with a slight personal infliction on the narrative, single languages and local dialects only continue if they has social value. Simply put strong language grow for the same reason. Back to Top. Choose Your Starter: China or Article 9?
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