Critical discourse analysis for fun and profit

[triskellian]

I've been thinking for a while about trying an experiment in the way I use language, and something that came up in my reading today made me decide to go ahead and do it.

The experiment is this: I will watch for times when I'm about to use "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender, and I will substitute "she" instead (I'm talking about speech; I take care to use non-gender-specific language in writing). I think I mostly do this with the drivers of nearby cars, when I'm predicting they're about to do something stupid ("He's going to pull out!"), so there's no value judgement involved, just an attempt to change the default setting on a switch, so to speak ;-)

I invite you to join me in this experiment if you wish, and to call me on it if you spot me using "him" as a generic (also if you wish!)


The reading that prompted this is for the Good Course (as opposed to the Bad one), which is on critical discourse analysis. The material we're currently covering is to do with the way ideology shapes language, and through it the world, and I've just finished reading a chapter on the way "common sense" encodes and enforces a particular way of understanding the world. (This same material is causing me to write and rewrite every sentence in this post as I notice the assumptions I'm building into the most innocent-looking phrases.)

Anyway. The words that solidified my intention to proceed with the experiment describe a way of foregrounding common sense, of making its working obvious and therefore open to question:

"the deliberate disturbance of common sense through some form of intervention in discourse"
(Normal Fairclough, Language and Power)

...And they're a reasonable description of my experiment, too. So that settled the matter ;-)

Comments

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

or example the word bint is completely repulsive to me,

Odd that bint in particular should irk you, considering it means: "A girl, a woman". Granted it's often used derogatively, but compared to slut or whore, it's a much more innocuous word.

I'm not even entirely sure why [mother-fucker] is an insult

"You fuck your own mother." I can see why some people might find that insulting.

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[kauket.livejournal.com]

But why is it more offensive to suggest someone fucks their mother than tto suggest someone fucks their father? Am I being really dense here?

Re: boys who like boys to be girls who do girls like they're boys who do boys like they're girls

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Maybe 'father-fucker' is just too alliterative to sound like a good insult.

Cue chorus of "Shut your fucking face, uncle-fucker..."