P2SB Revision Notes

• It is generally recognised that any act of writing is embedded in wider social and discursive
practices which carry assumptions about participant relationships and how these should be
structured and negotiated (Lemke, 1995).

Language and Gender

According to feminist social psychologist Nancy Henley (1987), sexist language may be classified
as follows.

Language that ignores and excludes women, thus rendering them invisible.

• Masculine generics: 'he' or 'man' to refer to a person with an unspecified gender, 'mankind',
'guys' etc. These forms have traditionally been regarded as grammatically correct in
referring to any person, irrespective of gender; but as they are masculine-specific terms,
they can be perceived as gender-exclusive.
➢ Masculine generic forms seem to exacerbate an existing tendency for a prototypical
person to be considered male (Hamilton, 1991).
➢ A study by Weatherall (1998) of a group of children's use of personal reference terms
showed that 88% were male terms; for instance, a train was named “Mister Train”, a toy
dog was labelled male and named “Joey”.
• Sequencing or order of precedence given to feminine and masculine forms: usually, the
male term is placed first, as in “husband and wife, brother and sister”.
➢ Although this depends on cultural context, as in traditionally domestic domains, more
emphasis may be given to the female form, as in “Mum and Dad”
• Caldas-Coulthard (1995) studied samples from American newspapers, and found that news
items were more likely to be written by men than women, and were more likely to be about
men than women. Also found that men were more often quoted than women, and more
often attributed as being the agents of action than women.
• Weatherall (2005): The reason for women's relative invisibility in the public arena is that
women have not always had straightforward access to the technologies and institutions that
transmit information from one generation to another.
• In general, feminists tend to favour the use of gender-neutral or unmarked language; but in
other languages, there have been cases where gender specificity is instead advocated,
such as French women cabinet ministers who wanted to be called 'la ministre' even though
'le ministre' was grammatically correct (1998).
Language that defines women narrowly.

• Women are more often discussed in terms of appearance and family relationships, while
men are discussed in terms of what they do. (Key, 1975)
• More frequent comments about how women look and what men do are a form of power
because they set up the desired attributes expected of each gender (Miller and Swift, 1976)
• Naming practices: in many cultures, the male name is passed down the family. In Anglo-
American culture, it is common for boys to be named after their fathers. Further, a woman is
typically expected to take her husband's surname – thus defining them in terms of family
➢ Names are central to a person's identity, as they “constitute cultural conceptions of the
self and the self's relation to others in society.” (Strathern, 1992)
➢ As such, taking on the man's name suggests her subordinate position in the
relationship, and reduces her to the property of her husband.
• Address terms: women take on the title “Mrs”, “Miss” or “Madam” to reflect their marital
status, which thus appears to define them; while men use the uniform title “Mr”.
➢ Effect on perceptions by others; in a questionnaire study, Heilman (1975) found that
American undergraduate students rated course descriptions as less enjoyable and less

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 intellectually stimulating when taught by a “Miss” or a “Mrs” than when taught by a “Ms”.
➢ Wood (1997) suggests that “Ms” is associated with feminism and widowhood.

Language that degrades women.

• Semantic derogation: feminine forms that have negative, demeaning or sexual connotations
➢ As exemplified by Lakoff (1973), bachelor and spinster, master and mistress, lord and
lady are supposedly male and female equivalents, yet have very different connotations
➢ “It is viewed as a compliment when a owman is likened to a man (she thinks like a man)
and an insult when the reverse happens (he's a real old woman).” (Weatherall, 2005)
• Labelling practices: “girl”, “woman”, “lady”
➢ Lakoff (1973) has argued that “girl”, because of its associations with immaturity, do not
have the same sexual connotations as “woman”
➢ Depends on context – when used by a man to a woman, it may seem patronising, but
this is not the case when used between women to show sisterhood
➢ In the Sydney 2000 Olympics, the sports commentator's use of “ladies” to refer to
female athletes attracted flak (Chadhuri, 2000)
• Gender marking: masculine terms are typically unmarked, while feminine terms are marked
through suffixes, eg “actor/actress”, “host/hostess”, “waiter/waitress”, or adjuncts (gratuitous
modifiers), eg “lady doctor”, “lady lawyer”, “female manager”
➢ Thus, feminine terms appear to deviate from the standard – suggests exception to rule
➢ As noted very early on by Simone de Beauvoir (1952), the use of marked terms may
also detract from connotations of potency as held by unmarked terms
➢ That is, the addition of feminine suffixes and adjuncts has a trivialising effect (Henley,
1987), suggesting that no matter what women do, they are marked as different and thus
less important than men in the same field
➢ Use of adjuncts, especially in occupational titles, encode stereotypes about normative
gender roles, eg in “female lawyer” that lawyers tend to be men, and in “male prostitute”
that prostitutes tend to be women
• Use of gendered adjectives: “pretty”, “lovely”, “charming” for women (or children) and
“tough”, “strong” and “macho” for men
➢ Stanley (1977) suggested that the few words that refer to strong, intelligent, sexually
active, independent women and the plethora of negative and sexual terms reflected
negative attitudes towards women in society
➢ Feminist slogans like “women can do anything”, “girl power” and “riot grrls” deliberately
reject or invert these traditional associations, by linking women with strength
➢ As Weatherall (2005) notes, the same slogans may reproduce the status quo “because
they reinforce a cultural system where strength and power are valued”
➢ Furthermore, such slogans may be percieved to ironically emphasise the markedness
or atypicality of the connection between women and power (women can do anything)

Four different approaches to gendered speech

Deficit Approach (Lakoff, 1975)

• Lakoff (1973) strongly endorsed the idea that language reflected women's secondary
status in society
• “Women's register” serves to maintain women's role in society; women tend to use linguistic
forms that reflect and reinforce a subordinate role – shows women's insecurity and
hesitancy in communication
• Women's speech is typically characterised by the following features
➢ Lexical hedges: you know, sort of, well, you see
➢ Tag questions: she's nice, isn't she?
➢ Rising intonation on declaratives: I'm not sure why she did that?
➢ Empty adjectives: divine, adorable, gorgeous

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 ➢ Precise colour terms: magenta, aquamarine
➢ Intensifiers: totally, absolutely
➢ Hypercorrect grammar: use of prestige forms
➢ Super-polite forms: would you mind if... if it's not too much to ask...
➢ Avoidance of swear words
➢ Emphatic stress: she was a brilliant singer
➢ Frequent apology

Dominance Approach (Spender, Zimmerman, West)

• Female sex seen as subordinate group whose difference in style of speech results from
male supremacy
• Primarily male-centred language; male language is treated as norm, as seen from generic
expressions (Man, mankind) which render women invisible
• Men are more likely to interrupt than women in mixed-sex conversations: 1975 study
conducted by Zimmerman and West showed that in 11 conversations between men and
women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only two
• Although Beattie also found that women and men interrupt with more or less equal
frequency from 10 hours of tutorial discussion (greater sample)
• Beattie has also noted that interruptions may not necessarily reflect dominance, but interest
and involvement as well

Difference Approach (Tannen, 1990)

• Differentiates men and women as belonging to different sub-cultures, as they have been
socialised to do so since childhood
• Results in varying communicative styles of men and women; similar to cultural differences
• Men use a “report style”, aiming to communicate factual information, whereas women more
often use a “rapport style”, more concerned with building and maintaining relationships
• Men grow up in a world in which conversation is competitive
• They seek to achieve the upper hand or to prevent others from dominating them;
concerned with status, and focus more on independence
• For women, talking is a way to gain confirmation and support for their ideas; think in terms
of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy
• Also, men often use direct imperatives while women prefer indirectness

Dynamic Approach (Coates, 1998)

• Gender is a cultural construction, not a predetermined social category

• Acting/talking like a man/woman varies over time, among social, ethnic and cultural groups
• Gender is accomplished in talk every time we speak
• Speakers accomplish their roles anew in each conversation and the roles/degree of
feminity and masculinity vary depending on the context
• Choices are constrained by normative pressures acting on both men and women: it is much
harder to perform versions of masculinity or feminity that challenge dominant gender norms

Language and Age

General facts

• Language varies according to the age of the interactants or speakers

➢ Labov's New York department store study (1972a) found that older New Yorkers were
less likely to pronounce the rhotic “r” than younger speakers
➢ Chambers and Trudgill (1980) found that in Norwich, England, the pronunciation of the

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 “e” in words like bell tell tended to vary according to the speaker's age
• “Children and the elderly have a high degree of cultural salience in most societies” (Peccei,
2004) – they have a special social, economic and legal status
• Their communicative abilities often differ significantly from the middle-aged group
• Illustrating the fact that age is an important cultural category, Peccei highlighted that in the
phrases such as “the intelligent old woman”, the age descriptor 'old' is placed closest to the
noun 'woman', thus indicating that it is her definitive characteristic
• “Childhood and old age are often viewed as particularly problematic and vulnerable life
stages, requiring special attention from the rest of society.”
• There are also legal institutions designed to protect them
➢ Children are in the care of their parents or guardians, and are limited by law in the
choices they can make (reflected in legal term “minor”)
➢ Elderly people may be required to retire at a certain age
• Butler (1969) has suggested that “Ageism reflects a deep seated uneasiness on the part of
the young and middle-aged – a personal revulsion to and distaste for growing old, disease
and disability.”

How people talk about the young and the elderly

• Explicit age marking: Under-fives and over-sixty-fives tend to have a disproportionately

large number of specialised age group labels, suggesting their special status
➢ For under-fives, “newborn”, “infant”, “baby”, “toddler”
➢ For over-sixty-fives, “aged”, “elder”, “senior citizen”, “pensioner”
• Connotations: certain adjectives may serve as age markers, such as “wise”, “dignified”,
“frail” for the elderly, “cute”, “bratty”, “mischievous” for the young
• Negative lexicalisation: while there are virtually no insulting or demeaning terms exclusive
to the middle-aged group, there are several for children and many for the elderly
➢ Children: brat, punk, whelp, whippersnapper
➢ Elderly: fogy, hag, biddy, fossil, geezer, duffer, crone
➢ In a study described in Coupland, Coupland and Giles (1991), it was found that the
expressions “senior citizen” and “retired person” had the positive connotations of
“active”, “strong”, “happy”, while “aged”, “elderly” and “old” were much more negatively
evaluated

How people talk to the young and the elderly

• Young children, as “apprentice speakers”, are still in the process of acquiring the grammar
of their native language
• Child Directed Language (CDL) is a special style used in speech to young children:
➢ Calling child by name, often using a pet name or term of endearment
➢ Shorter, grammatically simpler sentences
➢ More repetition
➢ Use of questions or question tags (That's nice, isn't it?)
➢ Use of 'baby-talk' words
➢ Expanding on and/or finishing a child's utterance
➢ High proportion of directives – imperatives (be careful, don't do that) or 'talking over'
➔ Talking over = referring to people as 'he', 'we', 'she' while in their presence
➔ Mother: T has a little problem with patience. We're working on patience. What is
patience, T? (from Ervin-Tripp, 1979)
• Prosodic features like higher pitch, slower speed, exaggerated intonation
• Young children are usually perceived to be incompetent turn-takers, with older speakers
having expectations that their contributions will be irrelevant or delayed
• It has been suggested that CDL could be used as a means of asserting power, and
establishing the parent or caregiver's right to command compliance
➢ Adults can make demands of children, but children must make polite requests of adults;

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 for instance, when asking children to repeat their question/request politely
➢ Allows adults to direct or control responses of children – especially tag questions, which
explicitly seek agreement with the speaker
• Parallels with Elder Directed Language – Coupland, Coupland and Giles (1991) have
studied similarities between CDL and the speech style used with the elderly
➢ Content: simpler sentences, more questions/repetitions, use of pet names, talking over
➢ 'Sound': slower, louder, higher pitch, exaggerated intonation
• Reflects perceptions that the elderly and children are not fully competent language users
• Also entrenches stereotypes about people in these groups
➢ Matched guise experiments show that speakers with an 'elderly' voice tend to be rated
as vulnerable, forgetful and incompetent more often that speakers with younger voices
➢ Cultural expectations of the elderly: intellectually inferior, physically weak
• Atkinson and Coupland (1988) note that using CDL with the elderly may serve as a
deliberate strategy to constrain and marginalise them, particularly in institutional settings
• But it may actually reflect an attitude of affection and nurturance instead; Cromer (1991)
has pointed out that affectionate talk to lovers and pets is also characterised by higher
pitch, exaggerated intonation, pet names and baby-talk words
• Coupland, Coupland and Giles (1991) reviewed studies which showed that some elderly
people found such speech styles patronising or demeaning, while others (esp those who
were frail or suffering from deafness or memory loss) found it nurturing and a help in
understanding and participating in the conversation

Language of youth

• Young people are “subject to the generational imperative to invent a slang vocabulary
they perceive as their own” (Dalzell, 2005).
• Teenage vocabulary has been greatly influenced by African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE) or Ebonics – due largely to hip-hop culture and rap music
➢ Phonological features
➔ Pronounce voiced /ð/ as /d/: “the”, “they”, “that” pronounced as “de”, “dey”, “dat”
➔ Pronounce unvoiced / / as /f/ (usually at the end of the word): “Ruth”, “South” as
“Ruf”, “Souf”
➔ Non-rhotic: /r/ is dropped if not followed by a vowel eg in “bird”, “four”, “door”
➔ Realisation of final /ŋ/ as /n/: “tripping” as “trippin”
➔ Reduction of vocally homogeneous final consonant clusters: “test” becomes “tes”
(both voiceless), “hand” becomes “han” (both voiced)
➔ Transposition of adjacent consonants: “ask” as “aks”, “gasp” as “gaps”
➢ Grammatical features
➔ Double negatives: I didn't go nowhere
➔ Use of “be” to mark aspect (indicate habitual status): He be eatin' rice
➔ Omission of present-tense inflection: She write poetry
➔ “It” indicating existence of something (there is...): it's a doughnut in the cabinet
➢ Lexical features
➔ Most of the lexicon derives from SE, but there are some lexically unique items such
as “crib” and “homey” (youth slang)

Language of Advertising

• The ultimate function of advertising is promotional: to draw to our attention and keep in our
minds the availability and desirability of a product, service or brand
• In some cases, informative and persuasive strategies are woven together (eg 'inform'
customers of ostensible benefits of consuming the product)
• Advertisements are high dependent on context and inextricably linked to societal values
and cultural conditions

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 • Advertisers may tailor and target their messages to particular audiences (Brierley, 2002) –
Volvo cars were marketed differently in the UK, France and Germany, focusing on safety,
design and performance respectively
➢ In targeting particular audiences, advertisers have to rely on conventional ideas about
the intended recipients of marketing messages, resulting in generalized and cliched
assumptions being made about certain social groups

Features of advertising discourse

• Visual language: logo may identify the company/brand without any linguistic clues
• Sound symbolism: draw on semantic associations of speech sounds
➢ Fricative sounds /f/, /ʃ/ (sh) and /v/ are often used for the naming of household cleaners
in English, for example Flash, Frish, Vim, Cif (Vestergaarrd and Schroder, 1985)
➢ Because of their characteristically harsh pronunciation, tend ot associate fricatie sounds
with abrasive qualities, thus suggesting the effectiveness of cleaning products
➢ Naming of Blackberry – “strawberry” was rejected as “straw” was seen as a slow
syllable, as compared to the shorter “black”. Also, research had shown that people
associate the b sound with reliability. (From Wall Street Journal, 2002)
• Sound repetition (replication of vowels/consonants): rhyme, assonance and alliteration
➢ Sounds with aesthetic qualities that are pleasing to the ear
➔ Fanatical about Furniture, Passionate about Prices (Courts furnishings)
➔ Your Throat Feels Smoother When You Suck A Soother (Soothers lozenges)
➔ Work Faster, Work Faster (Encarta CD-ROM)
• Coinage of neologisms: achieves novelty of expression
➢ Affixation: eg “New Lashfinity with Permawear” in ad for Max Factor make-up – suffix
-finity and prefix -perma both suggesting make-up is long-lasting
➢ Speech simulation: “Betcha can't eat just one” (Lay's potato chips), “Drinka Pinta Milka
Day” (UK Milk Marketing Board)
• Wordplay or lexical ambiguity, thus allowing for multiple interpretations
➢ Use of polysemes or words with more than one meaning: “another load off your mind”
for a washing powder
➢ “No more pore excuses” (Almay cleansing lotion), “Every bubble has passed its fizzical”
(Corona lemonade)
• Descriptive language: use of adverbs (smoothly, softly, quickly), adjectives
➢ Synonymy (beautiful, great, wonderful), hyperbole
• Figurative language establishes connections between unrelated concepts/objects
➢ Use of similes: “as cool as a mountain stream” (Consulate's menthol cigs), “like gentle
summer rain” (Nivea Soft shower gel)
➢ Use of metaphors: Tropicana fruit juice as “100% pure sunshine”; brings to mind
associations of an aspirational lifestyle
• Use of initialisms such as “TLC” (tender loving care) or technical vocabulary
➢ Tacitly creates a personal link between writer and reader due to shared knowledge
➢ Abbreviated forms may also serve to impress readers with the scientific status of the
product being marketed – appears well-researched and technically advanced
(Vestergaard and Schroder, 1985)
• Simple sentences that are short, snappy and memorable
➢ May be minor sentence: “Fresh to the last slice” (Sunblest bread), “So creamy it's
almost fattening” (Burma Shave foam)
➢ Use of imperatives: “Pick up a Penguin” (Penguin biscuits), “Don't Leave Home Without
It” (American Express card), “Switch to Powergen” (Powergen electricity)
• Rhetorical question may be constructed into a problem, thus persuading buyers that their
problems can be alleviated or solved through consumption – eg “Been turned down for
credit? Look what just turned up.” (Capital One credit card)
• Vagueness: use of comparative adjectives like “better” “faster” makes it extremely difficult to
access the objects of the comparisons (Vestergaard and Schroder, 1985)

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 • Synthetic personalisation: may implicitly presuppose that the advertiser has some personal
knowledge of the consumer's preferences and desires
• Presupposition: “Where will you eat your fruit and flakes for breakfast?” (Grain Golden
Wheat Bars), which presupposes that consumers will purchase the product
➢ Consumer choice is not whether to make the purchase, but which purchase to make
➢ May also imply a relationship of familiarity between producer and consumer

Language of Medicine

• “We accord more status, power and authority to the medical profession than perhaps to any
other field.” (Woods, 2006)
• Asymmetrical distribution of power reflected in language choices of medical professionals,
whether among themselves, or in doctor-patient exchanges
• The authority attributed to physicians is reflected and replicated in the dominance of
paternalistic styles in which doctors take a didactic 'parental' role with patients (Tate, 2003)
• Tension between care and cure
➢ On one hand, patients would want to have a good understanding of their illness as well
as the rationale behind their proposed treatment
➢ But doctors may have difficulty communicating such information to the patient – either
because they may feel that it is not in the patient's best interests, or due to the time
constraints involved in modern clinical practice
➢ eg in diagnosis, doctors present medical facts objectively, while patients tend to define
illness in terms of its personal relevance (possibility of recovery, level of pain, side
effects), thus evincing the tension between the professional and personal
• Doctors may represent themselves in a variety of voices (Cordella, 2004)
➢ Doctor voice (to seek information, review, assess)
➢ Educator voice (communicate information about treatment)
➢ Fellow human voice (show understanding and provide reassurance)
➔ However, also note that doctors may prioritise the reporting or diagnosing of medical
facts, over the expression of human interest, values or concerns
➔ Divergence between the doctor's medical voice and patient's personal voice of the
“lifeworld” (Mishler, 1984)

Language used by medical practitioners

• Use of specialist terminology or specialized semantic sets

➢ Latin terms: vertebra, cranium, humerus
➢ Latin-derived abbreviations: ac (ante cubum – before meals), po (per os – by mouth)
➢ Medical jargon: eating disorder, palpitation, epilepsy
• Figurative language: contributes to the depersonalization of the patient
➢ Heart = pump, digestive system = plumbing, urinary tract = waterworks
➢ Metaphor of battle – patients follow doctors' orders to fight the enemy within
• Abbreviations: may be used to avoid saying unwelcome words explicitly, eg STD
• Euphemism: avoidance of the word cancer, using “growth”, “tumour”, “condition” instead
• Naming and labelling practices: patients may be labelled by their illness, as in “the peptic
ulcer in room four needs his IV changed”
➢ Dark humour in labellings such as “brainstem preparations” (terminally ill patients),
“crispy critters” (severe burn victims)
➢ Diseases are also presented as discrete entities (infections, ulcers, cancers)

Structure and sequencing of doctor-patient exchanges

• Ideal or model sequence might consist of an opening, complaint, examination, diagnosis,

treatment and closing – although deviations are likely

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 • Adjacency pairs: communicative routine between doctors and patients
➢ Three-part interactional routine where doctor asks patient a question, followed by
patient's response, then followed by doctor's assessment or a further question
➢ Mishler (1984): an organizational structure by which physicians impose their authority
and control in speech exchanges with patients
➢ Questions function as a powerful discourse device, as they control the sequencing of
speaker turns, as well as restrict the topic of responses
➔ Doctors often make unilateral topic changes, thus are able to control the semantic
subject matter of the discourse (Ainsworth-Vaughn, 1998)
➔ Power to decide what is and what is not semantically relevant
➢ Doctors tend to ask questions to specify nature of patient's condition, while patients
tend to use language in narrative form to express their concerns, as well as ask
questions to seek reassurance
➢ In asymmetrical speech exchanges, it is more difficult for a less powerful participant to
deny, rather than affirm, a proposition made by the more powerful participant
➔ This is especially because doctors may pose close-ended questions (such as tag
questions) that predispose a particular response
➔ Modal tags are speaker-oriented and seek information
➔ Although tag questions may also function as expressions of empathy, ie affective
tags, which are listener-oriented and used for social purposes (this must be very
painful for you, is it?) (Holmes, 1984)
• Interruptions: “Almost 70% of patients' initial statements of conerns are interrupted, usually
by narrowly focused, close-ended questions (Frankel, 2002)
➢ “Silencing of the lifeworld” leads to patients' disempowerment and objectification
• Absolute certainty: modals expressing high degree of certainty
➢ “If you keep trying, you will be successful” (note 'if' condition clause)
• Construction of interpersonal relationship: may be achieved through politeness strategies
(mitigating face-threatening acts), empathetic questions (use of affective tags)
• Declarative statements used to articulate diagnosis: you have thyroid cancer
➢ Diagnose the illness as an objective problem
• Sequencing of diagnosis: patients tend to remember statements given first and forget
information presented later

Language of Politics

• “Politics has as its central aim the acquisition and retention of power for certain groups and
individuals – and most particularly the authority to control the accumulation and distribution
of a society's economic wealth and goods.”
• Formal and conventional language
➢ Ritualistic use of formal titles in parliament speeches: “the honorable Member for
Aldershot”, “the honorable Gentleman” (UK House of Commons)
➢ Although mediatisation of modern-day politics has caused a shift towards more informal
ways of speaking – eg Tony Blair is the first British PM to be known by his nickname
➢ Blair's “use of register-shifting to legitimise his policies” (Charteris-Black, 2006)
➢ Able to blend formal and informal styles, integrating ethos with pathos
• Parallelism or parallel structures: grouping items together has the effect of unifying them –
either to convey that they are somehow related, or deliberately invite comparison
➢ Three-part list: Fairer, Faster, Firmer (UK govt paper on immigration), “there, now and in
the future” (Tony Blair)
➢ Synonymous parallelism: “the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not
possess, to defend but not to conquer...”
➢ Antithetic parallelism or contrast structures: “Ask not what your country can do for you –
ask what you can do for your country.” (Kennedy, 1961)
➢ Syntactic parallelism

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 • Strategic lexical choices: Fairclough's 2000 corpus of New Labour political speeches found
the word “new” to be the most common
• Dysphemism: use of a negative or depreciating word rather than one which is relatively
neutral, like “slaughtered” and “annihilated” instead of “killed”
• Metaphor: “beacons of excellence”, “axis of evil” – enables politician to reformulate a
concept from an abstract target domain to one from a concrete source domain
➢ Disease metaphor
➔ John Kerry: No civilized country should shirk its responsibility to help stamp out this
disease.(when speaking about ISIS)
➔ Obama: “It will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL.”
➔ Martin Luther King Jr: “Segregation is a tragic cancer which must be removed
before our democratic heath can be realized” (1957)
➢ Light and darkness contrasts
➔ Churchill frequently contrasted Britain and Nazi Germany by contrasting terms of
light and darkness
➔ Referred to Britain as a “beacon of salvation” and Nazism as “the dark curse of
Hitler” (Charteris-Black, 2006)
➢ Journey metaphor
➔ Martin Luther King, Jr spoke in Biblical terms of the political fight for freedom and
equality as a journey through a harsh landscape to a promised land, eg “The road to
freedom is a difficult, hard road” (note that MLK never held political office)
➔ To understand abstract target domains
➢ Battle metaphor
➔ Margaret Thatcher spoke of “fighting inflation” and “fighting unemployment”
• Agentless passive constructions and nominalisation
➢ Passivisation “leaves attributions of agency and responsibility implicit”
➢ Nominalisation diverts attention away from the process to the product of the process
• Use of personal pronouns
➢ Use of “we” creates synthetic, personalised relationship with the public
➢ Use of “I” focuses attention directly on the politician as an individual; may present
impression of honesty and sincerity

Language of Academia

• “Writers need to establish relatively harmonious connections with their readers, taking their
views, beliefs and expectations into account and strategically addressing them as
intelligent equals.” (Hyland, 2002)
• Complex noun phrases in subject position: “The findings of... ABC cited earlier, as well as
those from other students, indicate that boys...”
• Use of directives
➢ Verbs in imperative mood (but may function as declarative): “consider the Archilles
paradox”, “refer to the previous section”
➢ Modal verbs of obligation addressed to the reader: “these activities should be more
closely examined”, “the first relation in the set should always be used”
➢ Hyland notes that modals of obligation are typically writer-oriented as they signal what
the writer believes is necessary or desirable
➢ Despite their supposed bald-on-record quality, directives are better seen as complex
rhetorical strategies writers can use to manipulate a relationship with readers and
indicate the ways they are intended to follow the text
• Adjectives expressing writer's judgement of necessity, usually followed by a complement to-
clause: “It is essential to characterise the large signal model...”
• Hedging: “it is quite possible that...”, “in a way...”, “it is probably the case that...”
• Specialised lexis

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