I have had
many requests - well, one or two :)
- for my recent talk at the Teacher
Development / Global Issues Special Interest Group at the IATEFL Conference.
Here you are - hot
off the ACC podium at King’s Dock in Liverpool.
Are You a Social Justice Warrior?
·
How do we create lessons to ….?
·
What activities can we do…..?
·
How do develop our own approaches…?
What struck me as unusual was that the sub-questions
somehow affected the function of the main question. Was it rhetorical or
redundant? Well, neither, really but it served to point to the embedded subtext
of Presupposition: Go ahead, be a social justice warrior!
Let’s
consider other language features whereby additional meaning can be conveyed
A
LANGUAGE
a) Ambiguity
Different interpretations can be generated from each of the following headlines:
i) THREATENING FEMINISM.
ii)
San Jose cops kill man with a knife.
iii) Milk drinkers
are turning to powder.
At i) Threatening
can be the gerund with feminism as
its object, the thing being threatened; or threatening
as the gerundive is describing feminism
which is threatening someone or something else.
In ii) our focus is on the with a knife phrase, which can be adjectival, qualifying man; or it can be adverbial, modifying kill - each rendering quite different in
sense.
iii) Forces us to look at the verb more closely: is it the ordinary verb
turn with the adverbial to, expressing a preference; or is it
the phrasal verb turn to, which
conveys that those who drink milk are undergoing metamorphosis to a pile of
dust?
Ambiguity was used very effectively by the
Delphic oracle!
b) Implicature:
This is a delightful device in that what is
not said can actually be understood!
I may say: ‘That’s a lovely outfit
you’re wearing today’ and that is clearly complimentary.
However, by laying stress on the word today, I am immediately implying that your dress sense usually
leaves something to be desired.
A further comment, ’I’ve always liked you in that’, with the
appropriate emphasis, can convey my opinion that you wear that old rag much too
frequently!
c) Connotations: Here we refer to associations we make with words and images. Below the Dior poster promotes a
fragrance for men. The word sauvage conveys a sense
of the suave, the manly; the handsome, edgy actor, Johnny Depp, further
strengthens that image. But a
prankster, by adding the letter ‘s’ and an image of a banger on a fork, has
ruined that cool component and completely changed our perception.
We need to be aware of how language use can greatly affect our understanding
of things.
B. Perceptions and Attitudes
These images go some way to showing how our
view on things may be distorted as do the following concepts.
Perception: how we understand information
received from our senses - what our eyes tell us about the world.
Perspective:
the cognitive framework through which we see the world around us - our
‘glasses’ filtering what we see.
Attitude: this
is a mental and emotional construct; it’s the ‘colour’ of lenses through which
we interpret the world.
Our perception of the world is like a huge mosaic, and we continually work on it to
maintain coherence.
Cognitive Dissonance: the psychological stress felt when holding simultaneously contradictory
ideas, values, etc. – when our mosaic loses cohesion.
In the 2014 Referendum, the question
being voted on was, Should Scotland be an
independent country? As someone then firmly in the NO camp, I was upset to
see the YES group had purloined the saltire as their symbol. There it was, the
St Andrew’s cross, representing for me nationality, culture, identity, being
associated with a set of values contrary to mine.
Finally we look at Polarisation: the movement of views
towards the opposite extremes. It is rather like the Marty Feldman,
eyes-wide-apart image, but refers to beliefs at the level of the group rather
than the individual.
This device is greatly used in advertising, politics and the social
media whereby jingles, slogans and algorithms repeat the message to gain
commitment and group affiliation. Brexit is
an example of a determined effort to polarize political positions. An extreme
position is the reductionism that if not black, then white.
C. ISSUES
An issue for us is something
important, something we care about. But issues
can easily be clouded by emotions.
Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was set in
the conservative backdrop of a private school for girls in 1930’s
Edinburgh. Brodie, the main character,
is iconoclastic: smoking, embracing Mussolini’s fascism and imposing her
beliefs on her young students. And it ended in tears: the student she modelled
on herself joined a convent while another, embracing Franco’s cause, was killed
in Spain.
This exemplifies my point that it is
an arrogance to see our perspective, our personal mosaic, as the right one. In
addition, imposing that on our students is emphatically not our role!
D. WHAT TO DO?
1) Raise awareness –
students can research selected issues for class presentations, either in groups
or individually.
2) Extend knowledge -
students can design current-affairs quizzes for
each other, take part in Model United Nations conferences, in public
speaking contests, etc..
3) Develop analytic and oral skills
- students debate well-supported, contrasting opinions on topical themes. They
can have guided discussions after watching Bjorn
Lomborg’s Cool It and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, films which differ on how to face global
warming.
4)
Humour can be incisive and
memorable. Students can enjoy rich language practice in unpacking Its semantic complexities.
In our first example learners can
discuss what they understand from Mr Tyson’s response to a frequently-asked
question.
Students can explore what is wrong Stephen Colbert’s cross-eyed, inward-looking perspective.
To comprehend
the cultural content of the climate cartoon, students need to know the Humpty
Dumpty rhyme. Here the composer shares an omniscient perspective with the reader
– we know there is undoubtedly going to be a great fall! We can ask what they think this is an allegory
of; is it political in nature; could it relate to poor decision-making, false
promises, etc? While I don’t condone the ‘livable’ spelling error in the final
one (L), that is one for you to work on yourselves.
My final point is that as
teachers our role is to guide our learners to become informed, contemplative, articulate
citizens of the future. But
in doing so, we must take care not to perpetuate the crime of Miss Jean Brodie!
Hope you enjoyed it!
Last week someone ‘informed’ me that then the Catholic
Easter was being celebrated (What about us Proddies,then?) and that this week
Greeks would be celebrating the religious Easter – hmmm!
Anyway, for those celebrating the other, the Orthodox
Easter:
Kalo Pascha wherever you be!
