4 minute read
Expanding the conversation
Expanding the conversation
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The power of language or the language or power?
Claire Hiscock, Language Development tutor, UAL.
Angela Carter (1983), Notes from the Front Line
- You know Shakespeare?
- Not personally.
- I read it at school.
- Well, I have the complete works here.
- They’re a lovely set, aren’t they?
- Yes, they are very well bound.
- They’re embossed in gold.
- Mmm, really nice. Part of our heritage. ‘Course, they’re not something you can actually read.
Abigail’s Party (1977) Mike Leigh.
Abigail’s party is a period piece. But the notion of a hegemony of knowledges and cultural meaning-making that the play highlights is fundamental to the Higher Education Institutions that today’s young people are crippling themselves with debt to be part of. The books, here, are for display, ‘embossed in gold.’ They are a visual display, but of the characters’ cultural ‘failings’. Although they are ‘part of our heritage,’ the characters can’t ‘actually read’ them. The ‘heritage’ the characters want to display is one from which they themselves are excluded. Its language is not one they can actually access.
On access to the language of power, the writer and broadcaster, Lindsay Johns, argues that schools should teach students “proper” English He believes that the street speech of Peckham, where he works with young people, disempowers and limits the life chances of those who speak it. You can listen to his talk here.
Another approach has been taken by British Universities, where there has been a significant move towards multimedia, interactive modes of text production or ‘digital literacies’. This is particularly relevant for Art and Design institutions where the ability to harness the increasing ascendancy of the visual image over that of the written text is seen as a way of empowering students. Lindsay Johns suggests schools combat linguistic exclusion by insisting on proficiency in “proper English”. British universities, on the other hand, are expanding the forms of text production that student participation can take. What both views recognise is the power struggle inherent in language use in HE.
I want to look at this struggle differently. As an English teacher, the Art and Design tutors at my university frequently grumble to me that their international students have ‘problems with grammar’ and that more and ‘better’ grammar should be taught and students’ work corrected for ‘grammar mistakes’ Over time, I have come to believe that this means: ‘The students are expressing themselves in ways with which I am not familiar, and this makes me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable because their language differs so completely from what I have always been used to and have been taught to accept – without questioning - is what English should be.’ European, yet they are required to join discourse communities that are deeply embedded in the power structures of an English medium, Western-centric institution. We need to analyse language use within these communities to recognise the dynamics of participation and the relationship between language, power and ideology. We need to recognise how power relationships are preserved within communities of practice if we are to understand why tutors find it so challenging to engage with contributions that don’t meet their expectations of language.
The ‘critical thinking’ so dear to British academics is deeply entrenched in their own knowledge-construction practices and written literacies. Academia has historically valued writing as the medium for the analytical and critical thinking that is the foundation of Western academic debate. Academic discourse is ‘embedded in the established practices and [commonsense] assumptions’ of HE institutions (Fairclough 2014:145) And academics rarely question how these written texts embody the power relations and struggles within the institutions that produce them.
Lecturers have, by definition, been rewarded with success in an environment which views its own discourse practices as the gold standard. They have, therefore, had no reason to critique the discourse of their own communities of practice. This unquestioning acceptance, this taking for granted of what language at university should look like, “legitimizes existing power relations.’ (ibid: 64)) My students, like other disenfranchised groups, can take an active part ‘in the innovative meaning-making practices of a community’ (Fairclough, 2013:217) but only if their language conforms.
The seriousness of dismissing language that does not conform cannot be underestimated. Universities should not be places where marginalised groups are further excluded and their potential constrained by language. Recognising how language use contributes to the hierarchical nature of academic discourse is a necessary move towards emancipation.
Digital practices could challenge the linguistic status quo, if, and only if they are a demonstration of ‘a new will to contest the ownership of university pedagogical practice.’ (Goodfellow, 2008:149) So often, it is the same students who shine in the digital as receive accolades for their written work. And they are, too frequently, the same students who mirror the lecturers’ own discourse in their work.
The digital, then, does not, with any certainty, offer an alternative to existing structures of inequality, to the established hierarchies and patterns of exclusion in HE. ‘Transformation without critique is unlikely to redress inequalities in power in higher education.’ (ibid) Nor will my teaching ‘academic’ English language automatically open up prospects to students who struggle to produce texts for tutors’ approval. If tutors, and students, fail to understand how language underpins unequal relations of power and do not challenge the accepted orthodoxies and ideologies that are embedded in the language they use, inequalities of opportunity will continue to exist - regardless of my lessons in ‘proper English grammar’ and regardless of new, multimedia forms of engagement.
Angela Carter, ‘Notes From the Front Line’ in On Gender and Writing ed. Micheline Wandor, Pandora, 1983
Barton, D. P & Tusting, K (2005) Beyond communities of practice: language, power and social context. Learning in doing, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Fairclough, N, (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language London: Routledge
Fairclough, N, (2014) Language and Power. London: Routledge
Goodfellow, R. (2008). Digital Literacies: Texts, Knowledge and Power in Higher Education. In: Solly, Martin; Conoscenti, Michelangelo and Campagna, Sandra eds. Verbal/Visual Narrative Texts in Higher Education. Linguistic Insights: Studies in Language and Communication (80). Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 135–151. London: Routledge
