Peer-assessment
What are our success criteria for analytical
writing about purpose and audience?
Understanding representation: social groups
Representation: the portrayal of events, people and circumstances through
language and other meaning-making resources to create a way of seeing the world
Starter: how do
the following
terms represent
the social groups
to which they
refer?
pikey
hobo
queer
chav
coloured
boy
sissy
biddy
oap
God botherer
frog
black
immigrant
non-white
fairy
homo
wimp
hoodie
maverick
tranny
yuppie
Bible basher
oriental
boche
cis-gender
Look up any terms if you’re not sure. Are
they pejorative or neutral? How many
stigmatise the group to which they refer?
Pejorative terms
a word expressing contempt or disapproval
• Often, the choice of words used to describe a
group of people can indicate a stereotype or
particular attitude towards the group.
• While some terms stigmatise these groups, other
terms have been reappropriated by the groups,
or reclaimed so that the word seems normal or
even complimentary.
• Can you think of any terms which have been
reappropriated by the group to which they refer?
The Power of Language
• Don Kulick of Stockholm University, writing with
reference to terms for gay and lesbian people,
notes that ‘naming confers existence’ (2000).
• This suggests that naming is a significant act: if
you give something a name, you say that it exists,
while simultaneously defining it. If there is not a
name for it, it does not exist. If the name is
pejorative, it is automatically stigmatised.
The Power of Language
• In 2000, for instance, Greater Manchester
Police were issued with a document called
‘The Power of Language’, detailing terms
considered inappropriate for police officers to
use.
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/13
56233/Police-officers-told-to-mind-theirlanguage.html
The Power of Language
• John Harris, writing in The Guardian in 2006,
suggested that using the term chav is a matter
of ideology and a form of snobbery:
– “The chav phenomenon – the mass mockery of a
certain kind of young, Burberry-check wearing,
borderline criminal, proletarian youth...actually
denotes the mind-boggling revival of privileged
people revelling in looking down their noses at the
white working class.”
The Power of Language
• Conversely, reappropriation arguably turns the power
of language to define and stigmatise on its head:
– ‘The emergence in the 1990s of ‘queer’ as a self-label for
proud gay men and lesbians [was] a label that previously
had been a deliberate and resented epithet. Similarly,
many gay rights organisations use the symbol of the pink
triangle, a symbol used in Nazi Germany to identify gays, to
promote awareness of discrimination against gays. A
marking mechanism that had been used as a device of
discrimination was transformed into a tool of tolerance, a
symbol of pride and self-acceptance.’
– Galinsky, A. D., Hugenberg, K., Groom, C. and Bodenhausen, G. (2003)
‘The Reappropriation of Stigmatizing Labels’, in J. Polzer (ed.) Research on
Managing Groups and Teams, vol. 5, Elsevier Science, p. 231
A real-life example
In the light of the recent immigration crisis in
Europe, renewed focus on choice of words such
as immigrant, migrant and refugee is evident:
Migrant
Denotation
Connotation
What might this
tell us about the
people using the
word?
Refugee
How does this article extend your
understanding of this topic?
Homework
• TWO things to read and be ready to comment on next lesson:
– An important article by Vivian de Klerk about taboo language and
gender. If the link doesn’t open, copy and paste the URL into your
browser, or search the title in Google Scholar. Free PDFs should be
available, or you will be able to find it on JSTOR while in school.
Bibliographical information on the next slide to help you search for it.
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vivian_Klerk/publication/29807
278_How_taboo_are_taboo_words_for_girls/links/004635396ffcc8c9
6f000000.pdf
– ANY post from Deborah Cameron’s blog. Please don’t all just read the
first article.
• To help you, please write a list of bullet points of key ideas which
you learnt/found interesting in these articles.
• De Klerk, V. (1992) How taboo are taboo
words for girls. Language in Society. 21. 277289.