LANGUAGE

Language is a system that is in continuous change at two different levels: synchronic (it refers to a particular point in time) and diachronic
(it refers to how language changes over time).
Syntax refers to the grammatical rules which determine how words can be combined together.
Phonetics refers to the study of speech sounds, especially how they are made by speakers and perceived by hearers.
Morphology refers to the study of the smallest meaningful part of language, the morpheme.
Jargon is language used by a group that is difficult or impossible for those outside the group to understand. It is often associated with a
specific profession. Jargon is connected to power because people in positions of power often speak (and write) in a way in which others find
difficult to understand, so those who are able to use jargon can establish power.
Language can have different functions: it can be used to refer to things, to demonstrate status and power, to amuse. Jakobson creates a
model of the functions of language composed of six elements that are necessary for communication to occur:
Addresser  context/message/contact/code  addressee
Each element refers to a function of language:
Emotive  referential/poetic/phatic/metalingual  conative
• Emotive  it refers to the speaker’s attitude towards what he is speaking about (Wow, what a view!)
• Referential  it refers to the information, idea, situation expressed by the speaker (The autumn leaves have all fallen now)
• Poetic  it refers to the message for its own sake
• Phatic  used to build or maintain social relationship and not to convey information (It’s cold in here)
• Metalingual  used to refer to the language itself while communicating (“Horse” is a noun)
• Conative  used to draw the addressee’s attention (Listen to me!). This function, oriented towards the addressee, can have implications in
terms of relations of power: interpellation means that language is used to address people and to position them in some way.

Words in language are signs and according to De Saussure each sign must be composed of a signifier (the letters of a word, or the sounds)
and of a signified (the concept itself expressed by that word). For example, the signifier can be t-r-e-e and the signified the concept itself of a
tree.
Another concept created by De Saussure is that of langue (the sum of all the combined aspects of a language system – it corresponds to
Chomsky’s competence) and parole (the actual exercise of language through speaking – it corresponds to Chomsky’s performance).

LANGUAGE DIVERSITY
Dialect is a variety of a language that can signal the speaker’s regional or social background. It differs in grammar.
Accent is a variety of a language that can signal the speaker’s regional or social background. It differs in pronunciation. It can be
distinguished into:
• regional accent, meaning different accent according to the place where that speaker lives.
• social accent, meaning different accent according to the speaker’s social class.
• personal accent, meaning different accent according to context, moods, physical reasons, etc.
Broad accent is when pronunciation is very strong and noticeable, very different from RP (Received Pronunciation is the accent of
Standard English).
Convergence is the process of modifying one’s own accent/dialect to sound more similar to other participants or according to the context,
to sound like SE users.
Levelling or Standardization, considered a dangerous process because traditional accents lose their distinctive features and become more
similar to each other, consists in becoming similar to Standard English.
But some regional accents resist becoming completely standardised, and an example of this is Estuary English, which is the English spoken
around the estuary of river Thames. Tony Blair, for example, is said to have adopted Estuary English to sound more ordinary and more
appealing to the public.

SENTENCE ORGANISATION
Sentences are composed of different levels:
• WORDS (content/open vs. function/close)
• PHRASES (made of words but no finite verbs)
• CLAUSES (made of phrases with finite verb)
• SENTENCE (written)/UTTERANCES (spoken)

WORDS
• Content/open words = convey information, meaning (Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb)
• Function/close words = necessary words for grammar (Prepositions, Articles, Conjunctions, Pronouns)

PHRASES
A phrase is a single word/a group of words acting as a unit, that are linked grammatically, but that do not contain a finite verb (except for
verb phrases).
• Finite verb forms show tense, person and number (I go, she goes, we went, etc.)
• Non-finite verb forms do not show tense, person or number. They are infinitive forms (e.g. to go) and -ing forms.
There are different types of phrases: noun phrases, adjective phrases, verb phrases, adverb phrases, prepositional phrases.
E.g. The first summer’s day burst through the curtains unexpectedly  This is a clause, composed of 3 phrases. The first summer’s day = noun
phrase; through the curtains = prepositional phrase; unexpectedly = adverb phrase.

CLAUSES
A clause is a group of related words, usually with a finite verb, that is structurally longer than a phrase.
There are 2 types of clauses: main clause (independent clause) and subordinate clause (dependent clause).
Clause structure is S V O (subject, verb, object) + adjuncts (manner, place, time).
There are:
• finite clause (e.g. I remember it)
• non-finite clause (e.g. To remember/remembering/remembered)
• verbless clause (e.g. well, I never!)
SENTENCES
A sentence is a grammatical construction that makes sense on its own, it is the largest unit of syntax.
There are different types of sentences:
• Simple sentence, contains just one clause (one finite verb). It is a main clause.
E.g. Have you seen my trainers?
• Compound sentence, contains 2 or more simple sentences (main clauses) linked by co-ordinating conjunctions. Each clause carries the
same weight. Main + main.
E.g. It’s my birthday and I enjoy making other people happy
• Complex sentence, contains a main clause with a finite verb phrase and at least one subordinate clause. Main + dependent. E.g. I’m
starting tomorrow, although I don’t have an online name yet
• Complex + compound sentence.
E.g. We won the game, but my uniform was muddy because it rained the entire time.

FOREGROUNDING
The clause element that has replaced the subject in the usual initial position is called a marked theme. On the other hand, an unmarked
theme is the word that is expected to be found at the beginning of a sentence in English language.
Placing a clause element, other than the subject, at the front of a sentence and making it into a marked theme is a device called fronting or
foregrounding. This device creates an unexpected sequence, different from the usual sequence SVO+adjuncts. Foregrounding, unlike left-
branching, doesn’t contain a verb.
The aim is to draw the attention on the clause element put in the initial position.
E.g. At last, he came into the room  At last= marked theme; this is a foregrounding.
E.g. He came into the room at last  At last= unmarked theme; it is used in final position as expected in English language.

END FOCUS
When the information is positioned at the end of the sentence to emphasise the end rather than the beginning this is called end focus.
E.g. We want more people to have the chance to go to university, not less  not less= end focus.

CLEFT SENTENCES
A cleft sentence is a sentence which is “cleft” (split) in order to put the focus on one part of it, breaking the information into two clauses.
The aim is to place emphasis on selected parts of sentences. The writer or speaker can decide to delay introducing the real subject of a
sentence by using a dummy subject, meaning a word that has no meaning in itself. Different dummy subjects can be used, for example
there, it (+ be), what.
E.g. There then occurred a strange event  instead of “A strange event then occurred”. The dummy subject used here is there.
E.g. It was his voice that I loved  made of 2 clauses, main (It was his voice) and dependent (that I loved), but it could be just one sentence “I
loved his voice”. The content the author wants to emphasize is put after the it (+ be) and the rest of the content is “packaged” into a that-
clause.
E.g. It was Tom who felt a sharp pain after lunch / It was after lunch that Tom felt a sharp pain  instead of “Tom felt a sharp pain after lunch”.
Different elements can be emphasised, Tom or lunch.
E.g. What I ignore about him is his rudeness  What is the dummy subject.
There are other types of cleft sentences:
• Person cleft: E.g. the person who told me about it was John
• Thing cleft: E.g. the thing I want to say is that you’re right
• Place cleft: E.g. the place where he went for some business is London
• Time cleft: E.g. the year when I graduated was the most difficult of my life
• Reason cleft: E.g. the reason why I can’t do that is because I’m tired

PASSIVE VOICE
Passive voice (instead of the active) is used to alter the focus of a sentence. The use of passive voice also makes the register of a text more
formal.
E.g. The old cinema building was knocked down so that a modern development of luxury flats could bring new life to the area  Using the
passive voice bring the object to the front of the sentence, allowing the writer to draw attention to the old building and to the future of the
site. The same sentence using active voice is: A private company knocked down the old cinema building so that a modern development of luxury
flats could bring new life to the area. This proves that passive voice is also a way to omit the subject so that there is no reference to the agent
responsible for the actions.

LITERARY AND RHETORICAL DEVICES

Literary and rhetorical devices are used by speakers and writers to intensify the power of the texts they create. Rhetoric is the art of
persuasive discourse and it is used in everyday life (in political discourse too) to persuade people to do or believe things.

ETHOS, PATHOS, LOGOS

There are three types of persuasion according to Aristotle:
• Ethos: audiences are persuaded with ethos because they believe the speaker to be fair and honest .
• Pathos: audiences are persuaded with pathos because emotions are aroused by what the speaker says.
• Logos: audiences are persuaded with logos because of the reasoning contained in what the speaker says, meaning that the speaker wants
to convince the audience of the logic of what is being said or written.

LITERARY DEVICES
• Irony is the use of a word, phrase or paragraph with a contradictory or opposing meaning to its usual one, generally to satirise a person or
issue.
E.g. The irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

•A metaphor describes one thing in terms of another, creating an implicit comparison between two seemingly unrelated concepts.
Metaphors actually show how we think, because the words we use are evidence of the way we think. Metaphors show the ideology of their
users and for this reason they are considered tools of persuasive discourse. For example, politicians usually refer to their work as a war, a
battle.
E.g. “This is a journey worth making and a fight worth fighting” (T. Blair)  Journey and Fight are two metaphors used by Tony Blair and they
are open to interpretation.
Metaphors work on two concepts:
• Target domain: concepts to describe.
• Source domain: concepts used to describe the target domain.
E.g. Life is a journey  Life is the target domain, what I want to describe; Journey is the source domain, what I say to describe the target
domain.
The source domain in political discourse is usually referred to war (fight, battle, protect, defend, threat), sport, plants, building, health.
E.g. What we need is a root and branch approach to the problem  Plants; Britain needs a crusade against poverty and injustice  War; The
foundations for recovery have been firmly laid  Building; It is clearly a symptom of a corporate disease  Health.

•Metonymy is when the name of an attribute or thing is substituted for the thing itself.
E.g. The Stage metonymy of the theatrical profession
E.g. The Crown  metonymy of the monarchy

•Overstatement or Hyperbole is an exaggeration. It can be used to create a comical or less than serious tone or to emphasise a certain
concept.
E.g. I’ve told you a million times.
Understatement or Litotes is when something is presented as smaller or less good or important than it really is.
E.g. “I’m a little tired.” (After completing a marathon or after having not slept all night long)

•Oxymoron is when two apparently contradictory words are put together to create a special effect.
E.g. Robin Hood was an honest thief

• Paradox is an apparently self-contradictory statement that contains some kind of deeper meaning below the surface.
E.g. War is peace. Freedom is slavery.

• Personification is when an object or idea is given human qualities.

E.g. The ocean danced in the moonlight.

• A pun is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or
rhetorical effect.
E.g. Thief is court out  This headline from a Daily Mirror article uses the homophone (two words with the same sound but different
spelling) court/caught to head an article about a thief who slipped out of court and was arrested for shoplifting. This pun emphasises the
irony of the event by linking the court case and his arrest.

• A simile is when two things are explicitly compared using a marker such as the prepositions like or as.
E.g. He is as blind as a bat.

• Symbolism is the use of an object to represent something else. For example, a dove symbolises peace, the colour black symbolises death or
evil, the colour white symbolises life or purity, a chain can symbolise the coming together of two things.

• Synecdoche is when a part is used to represent a whole.

E.g. The prisoner was placed behind bars [In prison]

SOUND PATTERNS
• Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant, often in the initial position. It is used to make the text more eye-catching and memorable.
E.g. Help Labour Build a Better Britain.

• Assonance is the repetition of a vowel in a medial position. It is used to make words sound musical and to create a grave or pensive tone.
E.g. That solitude which suits abstruser musings.

• Consonance is the repetition of a consonant in medial or final position.

E.g. Beanz Meanz Heinz

• Onomatopoeia is when a sound of a word directly links to its meaning.

E.g. … at night when the wind rose, the lash of the tree shrieked and slashed the wind…

• Rhyme is the repetition of a sound, usually at the end of a poetic line.

E.g. Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

RHETORICAL DEVICES
• Antithesis is when two words or expressions with opposed meaning are used together to bring out a contrast. Antithesis refers to single
words.
E.g. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind  Same structure, different meaning. Small is opposed to Giant; Step is opposed
to Leap.
Contrastive Pair is when two words or ideas are placed in opposition to bring out a contrast. Contrastive pair refers to clauses.
E.g. Let’s not just reject the Conservatives today, let’s reject the Tories’ plan that always puts the rich and powerful first.
E.g. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

• Branching is the arrangement and order of subordinate and main clauses in a discourse. The order determines whether left or right
branching has been used.
Left-branching is using subordination at the beginning of a sentence. The listener has to wait for the main clause to get the whole
information. Left-branching, unlike foregrounding, contains a verb.
E.g. When Lady Russel, not long afterwards, was entering Bath on a wet afternoon, amidst the dash of other carriages and the bawling of
newsmen, she made no complaint.  The reader is forced to wait for the main clause at the end of a very long sentence, starting with the
subordinate clause.
Right-branching is putting the main clause (the main information) first and then supplying a commentary on it or additional information. It
is the standard English sequence.
E.g. The cabin boy stitched a torn sail, with the shirts washed and hung, the beds made below, the decks scrubbed clean.  The main
information is immediately presented and therefore the emphasis is put on it.

• Listing is when the writer or speaker create a list. In political discourse it can have different aims: create a climax, create confusion, logic
and reason.
E.g. Security. Stability. Opportunity.

• Repetition is the action of repeating something that has already been said or written. The aim is to draw attention to the key ideas.
E.g. …why we need change and why the change we are proposing is the best option we’ve got. Let’s start with why we need change…

• Patterning is the repetition of phrases, clauses and sentences to give to a discourse a sense of balance and reason.
It consists of three different devices:
Parallelism is when clauses with similar structure are repeated.
E.g. Wounds caused by knives will heal, wounds caused by words will not heal.
Tripling or three-part list is when three similar words (tripling) or clauses (three-part list) are repeated. The aim is to make the ideas
contained in them seem “common sense”.
E.g. Blood, sweat and tears.
Juxtaposition is when words/ideas are put together in order to develop a relationship between them. It may be used to emphasise a
contrast or to suggest similarities.
E.g. All’s fair in love and war.  Love and war, two opposite concepts, are placed beside one another. The juxtaposition of love and war aims
at showing that despite how different the two are, both are characterized by a lack of rules or guidelines.

GENDER AND LANGUAGE

Gender refers to a cultural system by which society constructs different identities for men and women. It is socially constructed and
therefore related to society.
Sex refers to the biological distinction between man and woman.
Language is affected by stereotypes that are seen as natural, as common sense (naturalization) because the dominant ideology has turned
them into “norm”.
E.g. Women are chatterboxes  Women love to walk. Silence intimidates them, and they feel a need to fill it, even if they have nothing to say.
E.g. Act like a man!  Be brave!
E.g. Act like a lady!  Be polite!
Language can be used to discriminate men and women. This is called sexist language, which is the language that conveys prejudices based
on sex or which suggests that one sex is superior to the other. Generally, it refers to a discrimination against women.
Examples of sexist language:
• Man used to refer to both men and women, to refer to “person” in general.
• Address forms, in fact there are 3 different address forms for women (Mrs -married woman, Miss -unmarried woman, Ms -) and just one
for men (Mr).
• Dual-gender terms linked only to a particular gender. In English language there are some terms that we are used to link to a particular
gender even if they are dual-gender terms, meaning that they refer to both genders, for example nurse, secretary, model, doctor, actor. We
are immediately led to think that “nurse” is “infermiera”, even if it also refers to men. The same happens for segretaria, modella, dottore,
attore. This shows that language forces our way of thinking. The terms nurse, secretary, model, doctor, actor are all unmarked terms,
meaning terms we usually use, very frequent. The fact that male nurse, male secretary, male model, woman doctor, actress are considered
marked terms, meaning unusual, not very frequent, proves that language influences our way of thinking.
• Semantic derogation, which refers to the fact that some expressions that refer to women have acquired belittling, sexual or negative
connotations.
E.g. Dinner lady  waitress, servant. Originally “lady” referred a woman in a high social position. The original meaning has been transformed
into a more negative meaning.
E.g. Master vs. Mistress  Master is a person who has a complete control of something, the owner of, a man who is in charge of an
organization, a group (Positive connotation). Mistress is an illegit lover, a whore (Negative connotation).
Ideology is not only used as persuasion (as in political discourse) but also as gender discrimination. This kind of language suggests that
women are inferior to men and is influenced by ideology.

Many studies have been conducted about gender differences in speech style:

Men
• Men are more likely to interrupt (and to not let women speak)
• Men will often reject topics introduce by women (dominant
attitude)
• Men are more likely to use familiar terms of address (even
when a more formal or impersonal tone is appropriate)
• Men are more likely to use commands
• Men use slang and swearing more frequently
• Men talk more than women in public (academic meetings,
classroom interaction…)
Women
• Women will talk about topics raised by men
• Women are more likely to be supportive and collaborative
(saying mm, yeah, right which are minimal responses), this is
why they usually provide feedbacks
• Women are more likely to start a conversation, but they often
fail because males are less willing to cooperate
• Women use tag questions more frequently
• Women use more modal adverbs (probably, possibly) and
tentative verbs (think, suppose) as a form of mitigation
• Women use more hedges (well, you know, kind of) as a form of
mitigation
• Women are more likely to use evaluative adjectives
(wonderful, brilliant, great)
 • Politeness markers (please, thanks)
• Women talk more than men in the domestic and private
spaces

In the past, there were three different theories about gender differences in speech style:
• Deficit  women’s language is weak and tentative (and therefore inferior to men’s) because women don’t have access to social power.
• Dominance  women’s language is seen as weaker because male dominance in society creates gender inequality.
• Difference  men and women have different aims in conversation, because they have different values.
Jespersen said that women talk too much, use a more restricted vocabulary and less grammatical accuracy.
Lakoff said that women use more hedges, more intensifiers (so, very), more questions and question tags, lack of assertiveness, more
standard vocabulary.
Deborah Tannen said that men’s talk aims at providing information, while women’s talk aims at negotiation. Tannen also found out that
the use of women’s language is closer to rapporting (detailed story telling), while men’s talk to reporting (telling facts). Tannen also said
that women try to share problems, men to solve problems.

In 1990s the Social Constructionist Theory was created against the theory of deficit, dominance, difference. According to this theory men
and women speak the way they do because they are constructing themselves as feminine and masculine in their talk. This theory presents a
more flexible model of gender and emphasises the heterogeneity of femininities and masculinities, because not all men and women speak
in the same way, there are many other factors, not only “gender”, which influence how individuals speak in a specific situation. Gender is seen
in relation to identity and it interacts with cultural and social background of speakers, their age, religion, sexual orientation but speakers
construct their gender identity, they construct themselves as feminine and masculine, according to the situation or context they find
themselves into.

In an age of political correctness this kind of sexist language is seen as unacceptable. This is why English has changed a lot and is now a
politically correct language. Possible alternatives to sexist language are:
• Use of they
E.g. The student in the program takes about 6 years to complete their course work.  Their is used instead of his.
• Use of plural
E.g. Office managers should ensure they attend the meeting  used instead of saying “Each office manager should ensure he attend the
meeting”.
• Use of passive
E.g. The budget must be submitted by the department chair by March 1st  used instead of “The department chair must submit his budget by
March 1st”.
• Rephrasing, which means saying a sentence in a different way.
E.g. When revising a document, an editor must…  used instead of “When an editor revises a document he must…”

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (C.D.A.)

Critical Discourse Analysis (C.D.A.) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that was created by N. Fairclough, R. Wodak,
T. Van Dijk. The starting point of C.D.A. is how language shapes society, because by controlling discourse, one can control how another
person thinks.
Discourse is not the same as “speech”, but it is defined as language related to any particular field, for example political discourse, technical
discourse, etc.
E.g. No smoking!  it is a text but not a discourse because it is just a single sentence.
In linguistics discourse is defined as any continuous use of language, any written or spoken language longer than a single, isolated
sentence/utterance (sentence in written language, utterance in spoken language), a longer text whose parts are related to each other by
formal/logical relations (cohesion is formal because only relies on grammar, and coherence is logical).
A text must have a communicative function, coherence and informativeness. It can have cohesion or not.
E.g. A) The phone is ringing. B) I’m having a shower.  There is no cohesion, meaning no cohesive devices, but it is perfectly coherent, so it is
a text.
E.g. The teacher was awarded some money. Ms Ball’s conduct was to blame. I don’t want a new car.  It is not a text because it makes no sense,
it doesn’t communicate anything. It is not cohesive or coherent. Even if we added connectors it wouldn’t be a text because it doesn’t make
sense.

If by controlling discourse one can control people, then consent (meaning the result of persuading people) relies on mastering language
and on ideology.
This concept is called manufacture of consent, meaning controlling people and their way of thinking through language.
Ideology is a set of values, beliefs, ideas shared by a community. But there are things we take for granted, values and ideas we have that
seem perfectly natural. These are the result of dominant or hegemonic ideology, which is the ideology of dominant social class that in the
end is seen as the norm (e.g. Women must be skinny and tall to be attractive). Dominant ideology filters our representation of the world,
removing anything that doesn’t fit its values. Such values and beliefs are accepted as the norm and considered perfectly normal. Fairclough
refers to this as naturalization, meaning that dominant ideology is seen as natural, as common sense. In other words, someone else’s
opinion seems as our natural opinion, as common sense, as the norm.
The aim of C.D.A. is to go beyond the text, unravelling or “de-naturalizing” the ideology expressed in discourse and to get to the implicit
message of that text. For Fairclough language is a form of social practice, meaning that language is a part of society, and not external to it;
language is a socially conditioned process, conditioned by other non-linguistic parts of society. Language is social in the sense that whenever
people speak, listen, write or read they do so in ways determined socially and have social effects.

Discourse analysis works on three levels:

• Text  Description of formal properties of the text (register, othering, transitivity, etc.)
Register is linguistic variation according to the context of use and can be divided into mode (channel of communication used, in other
words spoken or written and format); tenor (the style, level of formality, relation between participants); field (the topic, content, subject
matter of the text, in other words, what is the text about).
• Discourse practice  Interpretation of the text as a product (someone wrote it/told it). In the text we can find the ideology of the author,
of the one who produced it. If the reader reads the text, the text for him is not a product but a source, and the reader interprets the text
according to their ideas, ideology, adding something to the starting point through interpretation (e.g. interpretation of a poem). So, text is at
the same time product and source, it is produced and interpreted.
• Social practice  Explanation of the text. The reader/hearer tries to understand the social impact and the intended meaning of that text
(e.g. political discourse).

LANGUAGE AND POWER

George Orwell, in his novel “1984”, introduced a new language called “Newspeak”, which is used and controlled by the state. The idea is
that by controlling language, the state can control thoughts too.
Sapir and Whorf created the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, according to which “a language not only encodes certain angles on reality,
but also affects the thought processes of its speakers” meaning that language changes the way in which we perceive the world.
Language is a tool of power, for example in advertisements language is used to persuade people to buy certain products. This happens
because words convey ideas, ideologies. Political language is another example of language used to create power relations because its aim is
to persuade voters, to manipulate them (rhetoric is literally the use of language to persuade others).
Spin doctors are the experts who write the speeches for politicians in order to get a particular effect.
George Orwell said that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of
solidity to pure wind”, in other words he is saying that the aim of political language is to manipulate the voters.
Language is not “neutral”, “transparent”, it is a means of social construction, meaning that language conveys ideologies and ideas and that it
is not only shaped by the context and society, but it also shapes society because it makes people change their minds. Whatever we say or
write is the expression of our ideology, this is why language is not “neutral” or “transparent”.
Language changes the way in which people perceive the world because the language we use to represent something can alter the way in
which it is perceived. This is why by controlling the discourse one can control how another person thinks.

Power comes from the privileged access to social resources such as education, knowledge, wealth, meaning that these resources are the
tools to be able to have power over people. This is how power is defined.
Power can be achieved:
• Power through dominance, meaning that people have to accept someone else’s decisions.
• Power achieved by consent, meaning achieving power by persuading using language and various strategies.

Media are used to manufacture consent, to allow one single person to persuade many people. Newspaper, television, radio are all traditional
media and are one-way communication. Facebook, Twitter, Web-sites are all new media and allow politicians to have a feedback from
people because they can interact. They represent a deep change because they allow a many-to-many communication, in other words, the
number of people who can get involved is a mass. New media give greater power and influence and allow a more personal
communication with no filters. In the past politicians had to go through journalists: today they can reach people in a more direct and
personal way.
In social medias politicians show their private lives, so that they can show their voters they are one of them, they have a private life just like
them. Followers can enter their lives.

POLITICAL SPEECHES
Referring to Britain, in 1960s the way of creating political speeches changes:
• use of everyday language (humour, interactive style, personal involvement)
• mixture of formality and informality (Formal language is characterised by formulaic expressions, technical expressions, passive forms,
complex sentences; Informal language is characterised by phrasal verbs, vague language, connectors like and/but, short sentences, use of
imperative).
• mixture of publicness and privateness
• use of subject-specific and abstract nouns (discussions are often theoretical)
• use of Standard English mixed sometimes with regional in order to tune in with the hearers.
Standard English is the form of the English language widely accepted as the usual correct form . It doesn’t have any regional inflection. It is
taught in schools, used in television, radio.
It is considered a tool of power: if you don’t know Standard English you are excluded.

There are different kinds of speeches and each one has different set features:
• War speeches
• Leadership acceptance speeches (when accepting responsibilities of leadership)
• Conference speeches (Trade Unions Conferences/Party…)
• General election speeches and Victory Speeches
• State Opening of Parliament – Queen’s speech (The formal start of the parliamentary year. The Queen, the House of Lords and the House of
Commons meet in the House of Lords chamber. It is an outline of proposed policies and legislation)
•General
• E.U.

STRATEGIES USED IN POLITICAL SPEECHES

• Transitivity is used to emphasise or minimize the role of the agent. It depends on word order (syntagmatic axis) and word choice
(paradigmatic axis).
When speaking or writing, we constantly make choices and according to how we construct a certain sentence we can draw the attention of
the reader/hearer on certain elements.
1. Mary ate the cake  Objective, informative, naming (the agent is named), attention on the agent.
2. My sister consumed the petit four  More formal, more detailed
3. Dessert was scoffed by the greedy girl  Negative connotation, passive construction, attention on the dessert.
4. The sweets were devoured by that woman  Most negative, passive form with focus on the sweets and no more connotation of the girl, here
called “that woman”
The transitivity model was created by Halliday and consists of:
• Agent (people, things, abstract concepts)  Agents are usually the participants of the event and can be divided into actors/doers agents
(those who do the action) or patients (targets of the action).
• Process (verbs)
• Goal (what/who is affected by the action)
• Circumstances (where, when, how something has happened)  extra information about the process that can also be omitted
E.g. Tories win final general election seat  Tories= agent (Emphasis on the role of the party and not on the leader); win= process (active form
to emphasise the agent); final general election seat= goal.
E.g. History was made at last  Very generic title, we don’t know it is referred to the general election 2010, it sounds neutral. There is no
agent. History= goal; Was made= process (passive form to exclude the agent; the writer is not so in favour of the winners); at last=
circumstances.
E.g. Cameron triumphs on shock election night  Strongly in favour of Cameron and the Conservative party. Cameron= agent (emphasise the
role of Cameron, not his party); triumphs= process (active form to emphasise the agent); on shock election night= circumstances.

• Nominalization is turning a verb into a noun to minimize the effect of the process. It offers a less specific representation of the action. It
stands for a process but eliding those involved in the process.
E.g. Israeli attack kills 10 Palestinians in Gaza  Emphasis on the role of the agent. Israeli attack= agent; kills= process; 10 Palestinians= goal;
in Gaza= circumstances.
E.g. Rafah Incidents  Example of nominalization. No agent and no process in order to minimize the role of the agent.

• Othering is used to underline the difference between good ones ( we) and bad ones (the others). Othering is achieved through utterances
which establish we and they groups.
E.g. There were times under Labour when 90% of job growth was taken up by foreign nationals – under us, the majority of the rise in
employment has gone to Brits  Labour= bad ones; Us= good ones.

• Use of pronouns is fundamental in political speeches because it conveys a message.

•The “I” pronoun is usually used to sound though and powerful.
E.g. I want to make sure that my government always looks after the elderly, the frail the poorest in our country  “I” used to sound
authoritative.
•The “We” pronoun (also “Us”, “Our”) can be used exclusively (when it refers to the government or a single political party) or inclusively
(when it refers to the whole Britain or British people).
E.g. I want us to build a society with stronger families and stronger communities  “Us” is used exclusively because it refers to a single
political party, the Conservative.
E.g. So that together we can reach better times ahead  “We” is used inclusively because it refers to the whole Britain.

• Collocation is when two or more words frequently occur together as part of a set phrase. Language corpora refers to the co-occurrences
between words in a text.
There are three types of collocations:
• Unique collocations, when a word is not used with any other word.
E.g. We shrug our shoulders  The verb shrug is not used with any other noun.
• Strong collocations, when two words are expected to be used together, otherwise we make a mistake.
E.g. Make a mistake; Take a seat; Save time  these words must be used together, or it is considered a mistake.
• Weak collocations, the ones we have to focus our attention on in a political speech. It involves words which can co-occur with many other
words. They are done on purpose to get a particular effect, to be meaningful.
E.g. Red shirt  The colour red can be applied to many other words such as red car, red door.

• Soundbites are short and memorable utterances meant to catch the audience attention and be easily remembered.
E.g. Don’t ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country  it is a memorable chunk of a JFK speech. Soundbites
usually contain contrastive pairs because they are more effective and easier to remember.

• Euphemism is using mild, inoffensive or vague words in order to make something seem more positive than it might otherwise appear
(war, poverty, unemployment, etc.). It is used to reduce the negative effect of an expression.
E.g. ethnic cleansing genocide
E.g. passing away dying
E.g. overweight fat
The aim is to control information transmission, hiding the truth and legalizing wrong behaviours and to influence people’s way of thinking.

• Dysphemism is using strong, negative expressions to highlight the negative aspects of something and background any positive association.

E.g. worm food dead

E.g. cancer stick cigarette

• Metonymy consists in replacing the name of something with something that is connected to it, without being the whole thing itself. It is
used to affect the audience perception of and attitude to the original thing.
E.g. We need some new faces around here  new faces refer to new people

• Presupposition is a background opinion or fact embedded within a sentence/phrase and taken for granted to be true by the speaker.
E.g. A further bill will make it easier for business to protect their intellectual property  The speaker is taking for granted that another bill will
make it easier
E.g. We will introduce a fairer funding formula  The presupposition is that the current funding formula is not effective.
Presupposition is a way of delivering information implicitly and leaving it to the hearer to deduce meaning and make assumptions.
Presuppositions can be identified through: use of possessives (My, her, his, our), comparative adjectives (fairer, easier), subordinate
clauses (to protect their intellectual property), questions.
• Implicature is something implied but not said, something implicit which depends on a shared knowledge.
E.g. My government’s first priority is to strengthen Britain’s economic competitiveness  What is implied is that there’s a list of priorities since
this is the first one.
Implicature is a way of delivering information implicitly and leaving it to the hearer to deduce meaning and make assumptions.

• Analogy is a similarity/comparison between two different things, the relationship between them. It can explain something unfamiliar by
associating it to something more familiar. It works at sentence level.
E.g. As it is dangerous for a family to run up a debt, so it is dangerous for a country  The economy of the nation is compared to an individual
household.

• Equivalence is used in lists and reduces differences between words/phrases. It works at word level.
E.g. We all know this is a world of dramatic change. In technology; trade; in media and communication  The speaker is considering all these
concepts as a single change.
E.g. In the increasingly global economy of today we cannot compete in the old way. British business must compete by…
E.g. We’re the party of the first chance, the first job, first pay cheque, the first home.

• Moral language is when the speaker presents a concept as if it were a moral value everyone has to agree on.
E.g. Just as passionate that young people should have the chance to go to university
E.g. I believe that is the best way to get the strong government that we need

• Authoritative language is when the speaker expresses his authority using the “ I” pronoun or verbs like “Want”.
E.g. I want to make sure that my government always looks after the elderly, the frail the poorest in our country
E.g. I want us to build an economy that rewards work