Using a computer analysis of two different types of school text, one which looked at human geography from a fact-based perspective (text G), and one which adopted an environmentalist position (text E), Stubbs discovered significant distributional differences between the two:
Relative to text length texts G and E have almost the same number of ergative verbs: slightly fewer than one per 100 words of running text. However, the distribution of transitive, passive, and intransitive choices is significantly different (p < 0.001). Text E has many more transitive forms with correspondingly fewer passives and intransitives. Consistent with explicit orientation to the responsibility for environmental damage, Text E expresses causation and agency more frequently. (Stubbs 1996: 137)
Clearly, text E's author has adopted an explicit political role within the text and this is revealed through both a grammatical and a distributional analysis of specific verb forms.
The idea that similar grammatical categories may be operationalized in different ways is taken up by Kress and Hodge (1979), who have argued that several different types of strategy might be subsumed under a general heading of negation. They explore the use of a variety of options available to politicians which allow them to articulate some contrastive alternatives to what they are saying: I agree with you but…; that is a fair point, nevertheless…; I see your point yet…. However, such stylistic assumptions seem to overlap with other levels of structure such as discourse, for example, and indeed forms such as but, nevertheless, well, etc. are now normally referred to as discourse markers (Schiffrin 1987; Gastil 1993; see Schiffrin, this volume). Wilson (1993) explicitly treats such forms as discourse markers and suggests that they may function differentially in the marking of ideological contrasts. In an analysis of students' debates on specific political subjects, it is noted that “and” may be used for either planned coordination (as in X, Y, and Z) or unplanned coordination (as in X and Y and Z). The choice one adopts relates to the way one wishes to present the elements coordinated by “and.” In political terms, unplanned coordination is used where one wishes the elements to be treated independently (Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland), whereas planned coordination treats the elements as naturally linked (Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland).
Linguistic options for representing the world are clearly, then, central issues in political discourse, but so are issues of action and textual production. Utterances within the context of political output are rarely isolated grammatical cases; they operate within historical frameworks and are frequently associated with other related utterances or texts (Bakhtin 1981). In 1993, for example, the prime minister of Britain responded to a question in the House of Commons in the following way:
PM John Major: “If the implication of his remarks is that we should sit down and talk with Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA, I can say only that would turn my stomach and those of most hon. Members; we will not do it. If and when there is a total ending of violence, and if and when that ending of violence is established for a significant time, we shall talk to all the constitutional parties that have people elected in their names. I will not talk to people who murder indiscriminately”. (Hansard Official Report, November 1, 1993: 35)
Despite this statement, however, on November 15, 1993, Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, claimed that the British government was, in fact, involved in protracted dialogue with Sinn Fein. The claim was rejected by the British government, but Adams went on to claim that Major had broken off the contact “at the behest of his Unionist allies” (Belfast Telegraph, December 15, 1993). The next day Sir Patrick Mayhew, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, when asked on BBC Television if there had been contact with Sinn Fein or the IRA by people who could be regarded as emissaries or representatives of the British government, said “No there hasn't.” The controversy over government contacts with the IRA resurfaced when, on November 22, Mayhew announced that “Nobody has been authorised to talk to or to negotiate on behalf of the British Government with Sinn Fein or any other terrorist organisation” (Belfast Telegraph, December 15, 1993). However, reports in the Observer newspaper later that week forced the government to admit having been in contact with the IRA in response to an IRA peace overture in February of that year.
Both journalists and Unionist politicians were by now beginning to argue that at best the government had misled them, and at worst lied to them (see Ian Paisley's comments in Hansard, November 29, 1993: 786). The government insisted that any contact had been at arm's length. On November 28 Sir Patrick admitted that the meetings had been going on for three years. The following day in the Commons he was forced to account for the seeming discrepancy between government statements and government actions.
The general claims made by Mayhew in the House of Commons were summarized and paraphrased in Wilson (1993: 470) as follows:
· We did not (1a) talk to the IRA, we had channels of communication/contacts.
· We did not (1b) authorise anyone to talk with the IRA.
In the first case a semantic contrast between talk and communication is presented, the claim seemingly being that the British government did not have articulate verbal contact, but did communicate with the IRA using selected channels of communication. In (1b) negation is employed in the context of a particular type of presuppositional verb (authorize) which creates two possible interpretations, both of which are equally acceptable:
We did not authorize anyone to talk to the IRA, so no one did.
We did not authorize anyone to talk to the IRA, although someone did (unauthorized).
Which statement was intended was never made clear in the debates that took place. However, as a number of politicians indicated at the time, the issue was not whether the government had communication channels with the IRA, but that John Major (and the secretary of state in other statements) implied by their comments (“[to] talk with Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA… would turn my stomach”) that the British government would not have any contact with the IRA until they gave up violence. For some of the politicians who listened to John Major's original claims, any contact at whatever level, authorized or unauthorized, was in breach of such claims.
This particular incident involves a complex of textual and historical issues as well as examples of particular forms of representation. It illustrates the need for arguments about political manipulation to draw on larger-scale linguistic structures, as well as general grammar and single words or phrases.
This is not to deny the significance of single words or phrases in the discussion of political discourse; the aim is merely to highlight other relevant aspects in delimiting political discourse. But even at the level of words and phrases themselves, as Stubbs has shown, it may not merely be the single occurrence of a term that is important but sets of collocational relationships, which in their turn produce and draw upon ideo logical schemas in confirming or reconfirming particular views of the world. For example, Stubbs (1990: cited in Stubbs 1996: 95) analyzed a newspaper text of riots in South Africa and showed how blacks and whites were frequently described by differ ent sets of words (see Wodak and Reisigl, this volume):
Blacks act in mobs, crowds, factions, groups. They constitute millions, who live in townships and tribal homelands. They mass in thousands and are followers of nationalist leaders. But Whites (who are also reported as committing violence) are individuals or extremists. By implication different from other (normal) Whites.
On a related level there is a further potential problem with some of the examples of political representation noted above, and this is that relativism affects everyone, including the analyst. The descriptive and, indeed, manipulative element in ana lyses concerned with the way in which representation may become systemically struc tured for specific effect is not in doubt. The derived implications may sometimes, however, be more political than analytical. At one level there is a suggestion that heroic terms for weapons, such as tomahawk, peacekeeper, Hawkeye, etc. (Moss 1985: 56), or the reordering of events (active vs. passive), reconstitute the world for hearers such that the truth or reality of an event is subverted. I have no doubt of the gen eral truth in this, but along with Horkheimer (1972) and Garfinkel (1967), I do not view participants to communication as potential “interactional” dopes but rather, as Giddens (1991) suggests, social actors capable of making choices, no matter how constrained the conditions. As Giddens notes, an agent who has no choice is no longer an agent.
Equally, since the transitive system of English syntax is available to all Eng lish speakers, alternative ways of representing the world may not be interpreted by hearers in exactly the ways that producers intend. As suggested above, the transforma tion of a passive sentence in production into an active sentence in interpretation is perfectly feasible. Indeed, research into political information processing clearly indic ates that interpretation in affected by cognitive bias (St Evans 1989). Once information is encoded into memory in terms of one set of concepts, it is unlikely to be retrieved and interpreted in terms of other, alternative sets presented at a particular point in time. For example, people who have conceptualized their view of blacks in a particular negative way are unlikely to adjust that view on reading or hearing a text which has manipulated any presentation of this group in a more positive manner. This does not suggest there are no possibilities for change, however. Views can be reformulated given forms of counterevidence presented over time and brought forward in parti cular ways, and part of this reformulation will, of course, be through different lin guistic presentations. The fact is, however, that specific biases may override structural presentation.
This may be seen clearly in attempts to model ideological reasoning in a computa tional form. One of the best known systems is POLITICS (see Carbonell 1978; see also Hart 1985), which is a program designed to interpret political events in relation to differing ideological frames. For example, if the input is (2), then the output for a conservative interpretation of the event would be (3) and that for a liberal interpreta tion of the same event would be (4):
· The United States Congress voted to fund the Trident Submarine project. (2)
Conservative interpretation:
| (3) | a. | The United States Congress wants the United States armed forces to be stronger, |
| b. | The United States Congress should be strong to stop communist expansion. |
Liberal interpretation:
| (4) | a. | The United States Congress fears falling behind in the arms race. |
| b. | The United States should negotiate to stop the arms race, (adapted from Carbonell 1978:30) |
The reference to an arms race or communist threat dates the POLITICS system. The important point nevertheless is that such systems generally work on the basis of key propositions within the input. These are then linked to particular scripts or frames (Schank and Ableson 1977); for instance, what the USA should do in the case of nuclear threat. These scripts provide a mechanism for grouping inferences and de fining the context in which interpretation takes place. Such contexts are modified relative to certain ideological formations (conservative or liberal). While it would be possible to build in specific parsing constraints which may be sensitive to structural dimensions of syntax, the important features for the system are elements such as “Congress” and “fund,” not necessarily their syntactic embedding.
As suggested above, syntactic selection undoubtedly affects interpretation, but this must be seen in relation to other contextual factors, and indeed in relation to the impact of lexical choices themselves. Wilson and Rose (1997) argue, for example, that the problems of interpretation which accompanied one piece of controversial legisla tion, the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, seemed to revolve around single lexical items. Making use of Sperber and Wilson's (1996) theory of relevance, Wilson and Rose describe how a single lexical item, in this case consultation, drives differing interpreta tions of the agreement. This controversial legislation brought together the Irish and British governments in an intergovernmental forum. The British government described the relationship as one of “consultation,” and modified this as “merely consultation,” revealing their view that they were only talking to the Irish government as opposed to being influenced by them. The Irish government, in contrast, viewed “consulta tion” as a process of influence. One does not normally consult someone unless one is willing to take the person's advice. In this case, consultation meant more than discussion; it was discussion plus impact. This was also the interpretation given by the Unionist parties within Northern Ireland, who were vehemently opposed to the agree ment. On the other hand Sinn Fein accepted the British interpretation, and for this very opposite reason (i.e. the British would do nothing more than talk to the Irish government) they also opposed the agreement. The point is, however, that in the myriad debates which took place at the time, the syntax of presentation seemed to have little impact on ideologically contrived lexical interpretations.
Such conflicts over lexical interpretation are not new, of course. Everyday words, organized and structured in particular ways, may become politically implicated in directing thinking about particular issues, and with real and devastating effects. Even the process of uttering someone's name may become a political act, as it did in the infamous McCarthy trials of the 1950s (see also Wilson 1990: ch. 3).
McCarthy's witch-hunt for communists created a context where “naming names” became a central issue (see Navasky 1982). The McCarthy trials raised questions about the very act of naming and what it means to name someone in certain kinds of social context. If one agreed to name names, was one an informer” or an inform ant,” for example? Ultimately, this depended on which side of the semantic fence you stood on. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was quite clear on his position:
They stigmatize patriotic Americans with the obnoxious term “informer,” when such citizens fulfil their obligations of citizenship by reporting known facts of trie evil conspiracy to properly constituted authorities. It would require very little time for these critics to pick up a dictionary; Webster's unabridged volume specifically states that an “informant” is one who gives information of whatever sort; an in former is one who informs against another by way of accusation or complaint. Informer is often, informant almost never, a term of opprobrium, (cited in Navasky 1982: xviii)
Whatever one's reasons for providing names to McCarthy's committee – and Navasky notes that justification ranged from the protection of the country (where one Manning Johnson admitted he would lie in a court of law in the course of protecting his country) to liberal outrage (James Wechsler argued that only by cooperating with the committee could he gain access to a transcript of the trials, which he could then use to attack the committee itself) – in those cases where names were provided a number of analysts took a simpler and alternative view to Hoover's: Navaksy (1982) states quite straightforwardly that anyone who gave names “was an informer.”
The interesting issue in all this is in relation to what one believes a word means, and what effect, beyond a word's core or semantic meaning, the use of the word has. Hoover objected to the use of the word “informer” not because it cannot be, in one sense, correctly applied to anyone who gives names, but because it carries negative connotations, and he believed that the actions of naming within the context of the search for communists and communist sympathizers ought to be seen as positive. Navasky takes an opposing view; despite Hoover's suggested semantic arguments, he points out that most of those who gave evidence thought of themselves as infor mers, and, says Navasky, “that's what I will call them” (1982: xviii).
Or consider another context where ordinary, everyday words are organized differ ently within the discourse of speechmaking. The following extracts are taken from a speech given by Neil Kinnock, at the time the Labour Opposition leader in Britain, on Tuesday June 2, 1987, at a Labour Party rally in Darlington, England: Uunemployment is a contagious disease … it infects the whole of the economic body …If limbs are severely damaged the whole body is disabled. If the regions are left to rot, the whole country is weakened …… just as the spread of unemployment, closure, redundancy, rundown … affects the economic life in that region so the same ailments in a country gradually stain the whole country.… if the battered parts and people of Britain don't get noisy they will just get neglected. Silent pain evokes no response.