Language, culture, and society

Chapter 1: Language
Critical thinking (tư duy nghiêm cẩn) about language can assist in resisting oppression,
protecting the powerless and building a good society.

Sociolinguistic

Features of natural language

- Functional & meaningful:
 Social function (familiarity, respect, politeness)
 Identifying function
 Emotive function
 Aesthetic function
 Cognitive function
- Open-ended, creative & flexible
- Structural, rule-based, complex, hierarchical

Language: a system with variation

‘standard, correct’ associate with power.

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Approach

Prescriptive: what is right and wrong, follow standard
Descriptive: describe language
 Linguistics: Descriptive – varieties are equal

Language & Power

Coercion vs. consent: Power working to make you do something (coercion) and power
working to make you think you want to do something (consent).

Ideology: set of beliefs that support power (symbolic power)

 e.g. There is a correct form of English

Political correctness: a contested term and a contested practice. Hypocritical?

Reflection W1: What do you think about this meme with regards to language and
power?
The meme is based on a recent incident in which a handicapped man claimed he was
refused service at a pho restaurant in Hanoi. However, security camera footage showed that
the owner of the restaurant had actually served him and treated him well. The man's false
claims went viral on social media, prompting the meme below. On the one hand, it is
important to be able to criticize people who make false claims and spread misinformation.
The man in the meme clearly did something wrong, and it is understandable that people
would want to call him out on it. However, the way in which the meme does this is
problematic.

The meme uses the Vietnamese phrase "share

lunch," which is a homophone for "xe lăn" (wheelchair).
The wordplay is intended to be humorous, but it
appears quite offensive to people with disabilities.

The content of the meme criticizes the man’s faulty

action and point out the lies he spread, particularly
when he claimed that the pho restaurant in the story is
a usual spot for him on his Facebook post. However,
the use of language in this meme brings discomfort to
viewers of the meme, particularly disabled individuals.
It is problematic because it reinforces negative
stereotypes about disabled people. It totally misses the
point – the problem was the lie, not the fact that he is disabled.

Also, memes have the power to spread virally, potentially reaching a wide audience and
harming public perception. This particular meme could harm the reputation of the disabled
community as a whole, reinforcing negative stereotypes and contributing to discrimination.

Instead of focusing on the man's disability for humor, the meme could have
addressed the issue of misinformation and the dangers of spreading false claims online.
This would have shifted the focus away from disability and towards responsible social
media behavior. In conclusion, it is important to remember that language choices have real-
world consequences, and memes, despite their seemingly lighthearted nature, can
contribute to harmful stereotypes and discrimination.
Week 2: Chapter 2: Language, thought, and representation

Week 4:
Seminar 1: Grammatical gender and linguistic relativity
Chapter 3:
Politics
Politics and Ideology
Three Persuasive Strategy
Aristotle (1991):
- Logos: the words or the argument itself.
- Ethos: arguments from personality, that is, we trust the argument or ideas because
we trust the speaker.
- Pathos: the emotion conveyed or the emotional connection to an idea or issue.

Fracking: Introducing Linguistic Tools

1. Contrasts
2. Three-part lists & Parallelism
- Three-part lists (or triple structure) – pleasing rhythm and as such are easy to remember
- Parallelism – the use of similar syntactic structure
3. Pronouns
4. Presupposition
5. Metaphors & Intertextuality
Metaphors create and assert an equivalence between two things. Metaphors state that ‘x
is y’; by contrast, a simile simply draws a comparison, saying that x is like y.

Conceptual metaphor: refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain in

terms of another
TIME – MONEY
(TIME IS MONEY)
 HAPPINESS – UP
SADNESS – DOWN
(Emotions – Directions)

6. Euphemism & Dysphemism

Euphemism – a word used to make something which might otherwise be unpleasant or
disagreeable more benign.
Dysphemism – a word used to make something which might otherwise be benign
unpleasant or disagreeable.

7. Nominalization – The change of non-noun word to a noun

When a non-noun word turned into a noun, we are more likely to think about something
solid.

8. Personification – the act of giving human quality to something that is not a human
Week 5:
Seminar 2: Manufacturing consent and controversy
Chapter 4:
Media
Mass media
‘mass’: a large scale of audiences with a significant degree of trust in the author of news

Media convergence

Media Frame: Frames of references that readers or viewers use to interpret and discuss
public events. Each story can have more than one frame, and media may focus on certain
frames over the other  lead readers to understand in a certain given way. (Baldwin et. al)

Language and Power

Power is created and exercised through language
 e.g. Politician using rhetorical devices
Derogatory terms or stereotype
The marginalized group reclaim the word
Reclaiming: The process though which marginalized or oppressed group embrace and
redefine the language previously used to degrade them.
e.g. “bede”, “bong”, “o moi” are reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community in Vietnam

Manufacture of consent: information altered by (media) filters, not a “real” agreement

News Values: Negativity, Recency, Proximity, Consonance, Unambiguity, Unexpectedness,

Superlativeness, Relevance, Personalization, Eliteness, Attribution, Facility

Experts and the news: https://hanoimoi.vn/noi-chuyen-chuyen-de-phu-nu-vun-dap-

hanh-phuc-gia-dinh-644999.html

Critical Discourse Analysis

Principles of CDA
- Fourth, discourse functions ideologically
- Fifth, CDA is a critical research – do not take a neutral stance

Fairclough’s CDA theoretical framework

The first dimension – Description: the analysis of vocabulary, semantics, cohesion, and
grammar, etc…

The second dimension – Interpretation: : it is concerned with the relationship between

the interactions with the text.