Martin & Rose (2007: 314):
Where CDA [critical discourse analysis] has tended to focus on semiosis in the service of power, and even to define its concern with language and ideology in such terms (e.g. Fairclough 1995), SFL has tended to take a wider view which takes ideology as permeating linguistic and other semiotic systems (as we suggested in Chapter 1).
On the one hand this is suggesting that every choice for meaning is ideologically motivated; on the other it focuses attention on the distribution of meaning in a culture. Which meanings are shared across the community and which are not, how is access to meaning distributed, and what kinds of principles are there for distributing access?
In our discussion of tenor above we considered the principle of social status in relation to generation, gender, ethnicity, incapacity and class, and this is critical to making generalisations about reciprocity of choice across genres. But beyond this, generation, gender, ethnicity, incapacity and class are major parameters along which all meaning is distributed and every social subject is positioned. In Bernstein’s terms these parameters predispose our generalised orientations to meaning, or ‘coding orientations’, which distinguish one social subjectivity from another. This makes every text an interested one (acting on someone’s interests); from this perspective there is no meaning outside of power.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, these are not mutually exclusive positions. Focusing on semiosis in the service of power does not exclude the view that ideology permeates linguistic and other semiotic systems.
[2] This is manifestly untrue. What is the ideological motivation for saying Is that a fern tree? What is the ideological motivation for saying Was that thunder? What is the ideological motivation for writing a² + b² = c² ?
[3] See the earlier post: Misunderstanding Bernstein.
[4] This is manifestly untrue. Whose interests does Lewis Carroll's text Jabberwocky act on?
[5] To be clear, if power is all that you are interested in, power is all that you will see.
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