COG EL 11: Language and Power

Clarisse R. Rabe (ABEL 3-B)

Topics
1. Definition of Language
2. Characteristics of Language
3. Definition of Power
4. Types of Power
5. Language Features of Language and Power
6. Relationship between Language and Ethnicity
7. Language and Ethnicity Theories
8. Relationship between Language and Age
9. Difference in Language Use across Age Cohorts
10. How Language Use Changes over time

What is Language?
● A system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which
human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express
themselves. (Robins and Crystal)
● Language is an inseparable part of human society. Human civilization has been possible
only through language. It is through language only that humanity has come out of the
stone age and has developed science, art and technology in a big way. Language is a
means of communication, it is arbitrary, it is a system of systems.
● Language is a system, with inherently understood structure. (Mooney & Evans)
● Language is one way of representing reality. (Mooney & Evans)

Characteristics of Language
a. Language is Arbitrary
- Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no inherent relation between the words of
a language and their meanings or the ideas conveyed by them. The choice of a word
selected to mean a particular thing or idea is purely arbitrary but once a word is selected
for a particular referent, it comes to stay as such. It may be noted that had language not
been arbitrary, there would have been only one language in the world.

b. Language is Social
- Language is a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for
communication in a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group,
comprising an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to relate to each
other, to interact with each other, to cooperate with each other; it is a social institution.

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 Language exists in society; it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and
establishing human relations.

c. Language is Symbolic
- Language consists of various sound symbols and their graphological counterparts that are
employed to denote some objects, occurrences or meaning. These symbols are arbitrarily
chosen and conventionally accepted and employed. Words in a language are not mere
signs or figures, but symbols of meaning. The intelligibility of a language depends on a
correct interpretation of these symbols.

d. Language is Systematic
- Although language is symbolic, its symbols are arranged in a particular system. All
languages have their system of arrangements. Every language is a system of systems. All
languages have phonological and grammatical systems, and within a system there are
several subsystems. For example, within the grammatical system we have morphological
and syntactic systems, and within these two subsystems we have systems such as those
of plural, of mood, of aspect, of tense, etc.

e. Language is Vocal
- Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds only produced by a physiological
articulatory mechanism in the human body. In the beginning, it appeared as vocal sounds
only. Writing came much later, as an intelligent attempt to represent vocal sounds. Writing
is only the graphic representation of the sounds of the language. So the linguists say that
speech is primary.

f. Language is Non-instinctive, Conventional

- No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed upon formula by a group of
humans. Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation
transmits this convention on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also
change and die, grow and expand. Every language is a convention in a community. It is
non-instinctive because it is acquired by human beings. Nobody gets a language in
heritage; we acquire it because we have an innate ability.

g. Language is Productive, Creative

- Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can
be combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may
ever have made or heard before any listener, yet which both sides understand without
difficulty. Language changes according to the needs of society.

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What is Power?
In general terms, power refers to the ability or capacity to influence, control, or direct others and
events. It involves having the authority or capability to affect outcomes, make decisions, and
enforce rules or norms.

In the context of language, power specifically refers to the way communication can shape and
reflect the dynamics of influence and control within interactions. It specifically involves how
communication is used to assert authority, persuade, and maintain social structures and access.

Types of Power

According to linguist Shân Wareing (1999), there are three main types of power:

● Political power - power held by people with authority, such as politicians and the police.
● Personal power - power based on an individual’s occupation or role in society. For
example, a headteacher would likely hold more power than a teaching assistant.
● Social group power - power held by a group of people due to certain social factors, such
as class, ethnicity, gender, or age.

Wareing suggested that these three types of power can be divided into instrumental power and
influential power. People, or organizations, can hold instrumental power, influential power, or
both.

Instrumental power

Instrumental power is seen as authoritative power. Typically speaking, someone who has
instrumental power has power simply because of who they are. These people do not have to
convince anyone of their power or persuade anyone to listen to them; others must listen to them
simply because of the authority they have. (Headteachers, government officials, and the police
are figures who have instrumental power.) People or organizations with instrumental power use
language to maintain or enforce their authority.

Features of instrumental power language include:

● Formal register
● Imperative sentences - giving requests, demands, or advice
● Modal verbs - e.g., 'you should'; 'you must'
● Mitigation - using language to reduce the seriousness of what is being said
● Conditional sentences - e.g., ‘if you don’t respond soon, further action will be taken.'
● Declarative statements - e.g., 'in today's class we will look at declarative statements.'
● Latinate words - words derived from or imitating Latin

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Influential power

Influential power refers to when a person (or group of people) does not have any authority but is
trying to gain power and influence over others. Those who wish to gain influential power may use
language to persuade others to believe in them or support them. This type of power is often
found in politics, the media, and marketing.

Features of influential power language include:

● Assertions - presenting opinions as facts, e.g., ‘we all know that England is the greatest
country in the world’
● Metaphors - the use of established metaphors can reassure the audience and evoke the
power of memory, establishing a bond between the speaker and the listener.
● Loaded language - language that can evoke strong emotions and/or exploit feelings
● Embedded assumptions - e.g., assuming the listener is really interested in what the
speaker has to say

In some spheres of society, such as in politics, both aspects of power are present. Politicians
have authority over us, as they impose the laws we must follow; however, they must also try to
persuade us to continue voting for them and their policies.

Language and power examples

We can see examples of language being used to assert power all around us. Among other
reasons, language can be used to make us believe in something or someone, to persuade us to
buy something or vote for someone, and to ensure we follow the law and behave as ‘good
citizens’.

Here are a few examples we came up with:

● In the media
● The news
● Advertising
● Politics
● Speeches
● Education
● Law
● Religion

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Types of Power

● Coercive Power - the ability to force others to do something.

● Reward Power - the ability to offer incentives or rewards.
● Legitimate Power - the authority derived from a position or role.
● Expert Power - the influence based on knowledge and skills.
● Referent Power - the power based on charisma or admiration.

Language and Ethnicity

Language and ethnicity are often closely linked. A person’s ethnicity can influence the language
they speak, and the language they speak can influence their ethnic identity. For example,
someone who speaks Spanish may identify as Hispanic, while someone who speaks Mandarin.

● Ethnicity (According to Alan Belle)

Ethnicity has to do with a group sharing sociocultural characteristics – a sense of place, ancestry,
a common history, religion, cultural practices, ways of communicating, and often a language.

● Ethnolect

Hoffman and Walker (2010) describe an ‘ethnolect’ as a language variety that can ‘serve to
differentiate speakers who wish to convey membership in a particular ethnic group.’

Language and Ethnicity Theories

1. Holmes Code Switching

Holmes is a sociolinguist who has studied many aspects of language and social groups, including
language and ethnicity. In her 2017 book, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Holmes discusses
code-switching, stating that it allows a speaker to convey emotion effectively by drawing the
most appropriate vocabulary from other languages or linguistic varieties.

Holmes also observed that a person can still express their ethnic identity using their second
language, even if they do not speak it to a native level of fluency. She found that second and

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third-generation immigrants in the UK, who were not able to speak the language of their
community fluently, would still code-switch between English and another language to define a
separate ethnic identity that is still linked to the language of their community.

Second-generation immigrants = the children of immigrants.

Third-generation immigrants = the grandchildren of immigrants.

2. Kerswill’s Multicultural London English (2008)

In 2008 Kerswill, along with linguists Cheshire, Fox, and Torgersen, conducted a study on a
variant of English called Multicultural London English, or ‘MLE’ for short.

The MLE accent and dialect originate from immigrants and are typically used by young,
working-class people living in London. Despite features of MLE being seen in people from all
ethnic backgrounds, it is particularly common in people who are part of a multi-ethnic social
network.

Kerswill et al. suggested that ethnicity was not necessarily a determining factor affecting the
variation of English used by their participants. Instead, they explored the effect of social networks
on language use and how this interacts with ethnic identity.

3. Gary Ives Bradford Study (2014)

Gary Ives’ carried out two case studies in 2014 that looked at the relationship between language
and ethnicity. One in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and one in London.

In his Bradford study, Ives interviewed students from a school in Bradford which had a strong
Pakistani influence. He asked eight teenage boys from a Pakistani background about their
language use and code-switching. Their responses suggested that they found it was ‘natural’ and
due to where they were born/live.

However, Ives found that code-switching between Punjabi and English was a conscious choice
made by the British Asian boys (born in the UK with Pakistani origins) as a way to distinguish
themselves from the 'freshies' (born in Pakistan and moved to the UK). Certain slang words like
‘heavy’ and ‘bare’ as well as Punjabi swear words, were typical of their language.

Code-switching was therefore a way to emphasize group identity and exclude people from other
ethnicities who wouldn’t understand the language.

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 4. Gary Ives London Study

Ives carried out another case study looking at language and ethnicity in a school-based in
London. He interviewed students from various ethnic backgrounds, asking what words/phrases
they felt set them apart from other areas of the country.

Ives identified key vocabulary such as ‘bare’, ‘calm’, and ‘hype’, which makes up a variety of
languages called Multicultural London English (or MLE for short). MLE was used by students from
all ethnic backgrounds, including teenagers from a White British background who also used lexis
with Jamaican/Afro-Caribbean origins.

Ives’ London study, therefore, showed that language use doesn’t hugely depend on ethnicity but
rather where you live and your group identity.

5. Drummond (2012)

In his 2012 paper, Drummond studied the language of Polish immigrants. There were two
sub-groups: those that had settled in the UK and intended to stay, and those who intended to
return to Poland.

The Polish immigrants who wanted to stay in the UK and had positive attitudes toward their new
community tended to adopt the local accent in an attempt to sound more like the local teenagers.
However, those who intended to return to Poland tended to adopt non-standard features such as
the '-ink' pronunciation instead of '-ing' that distinguished them from the locals.

Drummond concluded that the immigrant's choice in language ‘can signal some kind of
allegiance to one or another culture.’ In other words, language reflected the immigrants’ attitudes
towards their Polish identity and their desire to integrate into UK life.

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Language and Age

Language and age are related through the ways in which language use evolves across different
life stages.

1. Early Life Stage

The early life stage refers to the stage where a large amount of parental intervention is necessary
for existence. This usually includes babies and young children. We call the language that adults
use only with children ‘child-directed language’ (CDL).

Peccei (1999 : 56) describes some of the features of CDL. She suggests CDL often includes the
use of the child’s name, directing attention to current tasks or the immediate environment and the
use of full nouns rather than pronouns. Other features of CDL suggest that adults consider
speaking to children as educational; they are teaching them to use the language.

2. Adolescent Life Stage

Adolescence is a relatively new age group, historically speaking. Eckert observes that
adolescence is the ‘product of industrial society, its history closely tied to the development of
universal institutionalized secondary education’. Adolescents do share a kind of liminal status;
they are neither children nor adults.

One of the linguistic features of this group (among many others) is multiple negation. Multiple
negation refers to the use of more than one negative morpheme or lexeme in an utterance. For
example, instead of saying, ‘I didn't do anything’, multiple negation is used by including another
negative word as in ‘I didn't do nothing ’. Multiple negation is a feature of non-standard English
and often stigmatized by prescriptivists.

3. Computer-mediated communication and adolescents

A type of communication wherein people use computers and networks to communicate with one
another.

This type of communication has specific features:

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 ● Language Shortcuts - Teenagers often use abbreviations, emojis, and slang in their digital
conversations. For example, “LOL” (laugh out loud) or “BRB” (be right back) are common.
● Informal Style - The language in text messages and social media is usually informal and
can include creative spelling, like “u” instead of “you.”
● Social Influence - The language used in online interactions is influenced by trends, peer
behavior, and online communities. Teenagers might adopt new slang or communication
styles from social media and online forums.

4. Middle Life Stage

Research has focused on this age group for a few reasons. Firstly, this age group is seen as the
‘unmarked’ age group. That is, childhood, adolescence and later life are frequently described in
terms of how they are different from adulthood. Secondly, there is an assumption that the middle
life stage is one where language use is stable and not expected to change, especially with regard
to child language development ( Roberts, 2004 ).

People in this life stage are usually conservative in their language use; that means that they use
standard language features more than the other age groups.

5. Later Life Stage

People in this life stage, like children and adolescents, are frequently depicted in a negative way,
which reflects prominent age-stereotyping, or ageism, in society.

Elderspeak refers to the use of a patronizing speech style resembling speech addressed to
children; this patronizing speech style results from and reinforces (negative) stereotypes that
older adults are cognitively impaired. Elderspeak also refers to the use of a simplified speech
register which is assumed to enhance older adults’ comprehension.

The features of elderspeak are similar to those of child-directed language, (e.g., the simplification
of language, shorter utterances, imperatives, repetition, a high level of tag questions,
interruptions, changes in pitch and particular forms of address.)

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Difference in language use across age cohorts

Regardless of what age group you fall into, you will likely have a solid idea of the type of
language that you tend to use. You might speak in quite an informal or colloquial manner, and use
language that falls into a more non-standard category. Alternatively, you might speak using
Standard British English in Received Pronunciation.

Your personal linguistic style could fall anywhere on the prestige scale, and the factors that make
up your identity will impact this. Your occupation, ethnicity, gender, interests and many other
contributors will inform the kind of language that you generally use.

One of these key factors is age.

1. Adolescent language use

Whether you use them or not, you are probably familiar with some slang terms and different
figures of speech commonly used by teenagers. To teenagers, these language features tend to
come as standard, and are constantly evolving. Adolescents will most likely also be able to
recognise that older generations and children younger use language forms that are different to
the ones they use.

This is a perfect example of how language use changes across different age groups in society.
Adolescents make up a key cohort when tracking language use across different ages, and there
are many distinct features often present in adolescent speech that may be less frequent in other
groups. For instance, after interviewing 63 17-year olds in West Yorkshire 1, Gary Ives theorized
that teenager-specific language includes:

● frequent slang
● colloquial word choices/ non-standard forms of English
● Taboo words and subjects
● dialect words

According to Ives, these features would be a lot less common in younger and older age groups
than in adolescence. Teenagers also use language to create and support a sense of social
identity that will inevitably change as new experiences, hobbies, and friendship groups circulate.
In many ways, non-standard forms of language provide more freedom for expression than
standard morphological patterns.

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 2. Language use in children

Whilst adolescence provides opportunities for teenagers to develop their own linguistic nuances,
young children will acquire and use language in different ways as well.

They might make up their own words (or even their own language amongst their friends!) and it's
only natural that their pronunciation of words might not be as clear as older generations. Children
also use language in order to communicate their needs so that the adults around them can
provide effective assistance.

Critical age for learning language

Younger children are also blessed with the increased ability (generally speaking) to acquire new
language very quickly and easily. You might have heard that learning a second language is much
easier in childhood than in adulthood, and in many cases this is true. Most people who are
bilingual learned a second language alongside their native language at a younger age.

Learning a second language at an early age is significantly easier than later in life due to the fact
that young children experience rapid neural formation and development that results in an
explosion of new learning potential. As we age, the rate at which we form new neural pathways
slows down, and this in turn makes learning new languages more difficult.

It is still very possible to learn a second language as a teenager or adult, but the likelihood of
being able to speak the new language to a native level is much smaller than if one starts learning
the language in childhood

3. Language use in adults

When comparing adults to children and teenagers, there are some distinctions in language use
that become immediately obvious. Because adults have had more life experiences and are more
experienced speakers in general, they are able to use language with more purpose and
autonomy than younger people. Adults tend to also exhibit more morphological awareness than
younger generations, which allows them to use language with more nuance, and achieve
different purposes more effectively.

As adults get older, the ability to remember certain words begins to diminish which can eventually
lead to issues with fluency and clarity. Elderly people, in particular, tend to struggle with
communicative fluency as their memories deteriorate. This can lead to increased pauses whilst

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talking and the introduction of more filler words such as 'umm' and 'err', as Susan Kemper's 1992
study into the distribution of adult sentence fragments concluded.

According to research by Deborah Burke and Meredith Shafto, as well as testimonies from their
informants themselves, older adults experience a decline in the ability to recall and produce
verbal forms of familiar words. Young adults do not often have this same difficulty and
consistently outperformed older participants in Burke and Shafto's experiment where participants
had to name pictures of objects.

How language use changes over time?

There are several sociolinguistic schools of thought when it comes to how an individual’s
language use evolves over time, and many sociolinguists have investigated this concept.

● Measuring age across different societies

Measuring age in sociolinguistics involves understanding how language changes across different
stages of life. Penelope Eckert, in her book The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (1997), categorized
age into three types: chronological age (the number of years lived), biological age (physical
maturity), and social age (age defined by social status and life experiences).

● The relationship between age and gender

Gender significantly influences language use, and cultural expectations related to gender often
intersect with age. Many cultures have specific gender roles and expectations that impact
communication styles and behaviors. For example, some cultures expect women to be more
cooperative and supportive in their speech, while others may see men as more diplomatic and
women as more assertive.

In her paper Sex and the Power of Speech (2010), Deborah Cameron discusses these
2gender-based language stereotypes. She notes that while Western cultures often view women’s
language as less direct and more supportive, other cultures may have the opposite view.
Additionally, the stereotype that women talk more than men is largely unsupported by research.
Studies show that, in informal settings, men and women speak similar amounts, while in formal
settings, men often talk more. This shows the need to question and critically assess common
assumptions about gender and language.

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 ● Age grading

Age-grading describes how certain behaviors and linguistic patterns are typical for specific age
groups and tend to recur predictably across generations. These patterns are usually limited to
particular life stages and do not persist beyond them. For instance, nursery rhymes and
childhood songs are commonly used by young children but are typically abandoned as they grow
older. Similarly, teenagers often adopt slang that is later replaced by different language patterns
in adulthood. This concept illustrates how language and behaviors evolve with age and reflect
generational trends.

Language and Gender

Sex vs. Gender

‘Sex’ is generally defined as someone’s biological state, that is, whether they are male or female.
Sex is not the same as gender. Sex, as a biological category, may have little influence on how
gender is constructed. Gender, then, is not something a person has or is born with; it is
something they accomplish through their behaviour, clothing, habits and speech (performing
gender).

Gendered Language

In the case of the English language, the term ‘gendered language’ does not refer to the
masculine or feminine labels given to nouns, as, unlike languages such as French and Spanish,
English does not have grammatical gender. Instead, gendered language in this instance means,
language that carries a bias towards a specific sex or gender.

INEQUALITY AT THE LEXICAL LEVEL

Marked Terms

A term is marked when it has a relationship with a seemingly ‘neutral’ and generic
counterpart (‘bachelor’ versus ‘bachelor ette’).

For example, ‘actor’ is referred to as an ‘unmarked’ term because it refers to a male and actors

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 in general. ‘Actress’, however, refers only to a female ‘actor’. By having a different form to
indicate only a female ‘actor’, it is ‘marked’.
In the context of gender, we find that terms referring to men are generally unmarked and
considered neutral, while those referring to women are marked for sex. Similar examples are
prince/princess, waiter/waitress, host/hostess and so on.

There are a few differences between the terms referring to men and the ‘equivalent’ terms for
women:
If we consider the difference between ‘bachelor’ and ‘spinster’, while both refer to an
‘unmarried adult’, these terms represent different types of unmarried adults. If we consider
how these terms are used, it becomes apparent that ‘bachelor’ has a positive meaning, while
‘spinster’ has a negative one.

For example, common collocations for bachelor are ‘eligible bachelor’ or ‘bachelor pad’. These
collocations reflect a positive view of single life for men; their lifestyle is desirable, and they too
are desirable. ‘Spinster’, in contrast, is more likely to be collocated with ‘lonely’ or ‘old’ and
suggests an image of an older, unattractive woman.

Generic ‘He’

● Generic “he” is a gendered third-person pronoun, to refer to a person of unspecified sex.

● It is often argued that the male term is not really sexed but rather is generic and refers to
both sexes. This, however, raises the question of why female marked terms are required
at all. Some of the problems with supposed generic terms become clear when
considering pronouns.

1. Every student should bring his books to class.

2. Every student should bring their books to class.
3. Everyone should cast his vote on polling day.
4. Everyone should cast their vote on polling day.
● Prescriptivists might argue that (1) and (3) are the only acceptable forms. The suggestion
that one could use ‘their’, as in (2) and (4) in these contexts, is met with the objection that
such use would result in disagreement in terms of number (i.e., ‘every’ and ‘everyone’
suggest the singular form). This is despite the fact that singular ‘they’ and ‘their’ has a long
history of use in this way.
● Prescriptivists have argued that number agreement is more important than
representing both sexes.

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Baranowski investigated the use of generic pronouns in the British and American press and
found that ‘he’ is no longer the preferred singular epicene pronoun in English’ ( 2002 : 395)
and ‘they’ is the most common and encouraged by guides on writing styles. (e.g., Linguistic
Society of America (LSA).

Sexism in Word Order

● The recent acceptability of ‘they’ as generic does not mean that sexism in language has
been eradicated. Even the order of words can demonstrate gender inequality.
● Motschenbacher (2013 ) found that the male form comes before the female. It suggests
that the ordering of words is linked to power. The conventional ordering, with men first
and women second, may be an indication of women’s less powerful position in the social
hierarchy. We now consider the way words associated with women often become less
positive over time.

Semantic Derogation

● Semantic derogation refers to the process by which a word comes to have negative
meanings over time.
● ‘Slut’ has been subject to derogation. In 1402, it meant ‘[a] woman of dirty, slovenly, or
untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Only later did it
become linked to loose sexual morality. Although this word has always been used to
judge women in relation to an expected standard, whether this is related to keeping
house, maintaining appearances or being chaste, ‘slut’ has recently been reclaimed.

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Language and Politics

Politics is the actions or activities concerned with achieving and using power in a country or
organization. Language is used as a means to form a state and is enacted in various ways that
help achieve political objectives.

“Politics affects almost everything, so if you don’t do politics there’s not much you do do.”

When people think of ‘politics’, they probably think of political parties, government and the way
that nations and communities are governed. This kind of politics is obviously important and
certainly linked with both language and power. Politics of the ‘normal’ kind, with governments,
opposition parties and the debating and passing of policy and legislation, involves persuasion. In
this chapter, politics is considered a little more broadly. We consider how language is used to
persuade people in a variety of contexts.

Politics and Ideologies

When it comes to politics, ideologies are generally connected with beliefs about the proper
organization of society and how to achieve and maintain the goals that this entails. What is
striking about this is that these beliefs are found to pattern among people in predictable ways.

● Our beliefs, our sense of what the ‘right’ social order is, has a profound effect on the
arguments we find convincing.
● Language also has an important role in this kind of discussion. Few people would
advocate ‘inequality’ in simple terms. ‘Inequality’ has a negative value attached to it; we
generally support what is ‘equal’ rather than ‘unequal’. This is considered ‘fair’. Notice,
however, what happens when we talk about ‘fairness’ rather than ‘equality’.
● Lexical choices refer to the specific words or vocabulary selections made by a speaker or
writer, which can influence meaning, tone, and style in communication. (‘Equality’
suggests a straightforward equivalence – that everyone be treated in exactly the same
way. ‘Fairness’, however, potentially allows for other factors to come into the equation.)
● Negatively framed arguments attract more attention from an audience than those phrased
in more positive terms. That is, ‘people pay more immediate attention to speeches if they
hear negative messages, or if they are exposed to rhetorical schemes. Positively framed
speeches without rhetorical schemes attract the least immediate attention (Lagerwerf, et
al, 2015).
● According to Aristotle (1991 ), persuasion can take place in at least three ways. He
makes a distinction between arguments that rely on logos, the words or the argument
itself; pathos, the emotion conveyed or the emotional connection to an idea or issue; and

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 finally, ethos, arguments from personality, that is, we trust the argument or ideas because
we trust the speaker.
● Political persuasion, like all forms of persuasion, relies on all three tactics. Employing
these tactics is not of itself deceptive or unusual. Nor are these tactics mutually exclusive.
For example, a cosmetics advertisement might use all three. It might point out the science
behind the efficacy of the cosmetic (logos), it might employ a celebrity to deliver the
message (ethos: a trustworthy speaker) and the advertisement may generally appeal to
the desire to look ‘better’ (pathos).

Contrasts

● In its simplest terms, a contrast involves comparing two things.

● You don’t need people with shovels and hammers. It’s high technology stuff, skilled
people will be flown in. ( Forbes , 2016 ) The contrast in Example 3.1 is between people
‘with shovels and hammers’ and high technology work. By highlighting the difference
between manual work (with shovels and hammers) and high technology work, the
speaker sets up a clear contrast. This contrast also presents an argument. The argument
could be phrased as follows: don’t think that fracking will bring jobs because the kinds of
jobs created are those that the local labor force can’t fill.

Three Parts List & Parallelism

● Three-part lists (or triple structure) are very common in persuasive texts. They have a
pleasing rhythm and as such are easy to remember. They are easy to identify, as they
have the structure ‘a, b and c’
● Three-part lists refer to a list of three things in a sentence. This is often a list of three
adjectives but can be a variety of words and techniques. Triples are also good tools for
making information stick in the reader's head.
● Parallelism refers to using similar words, clauses, phrases, sentence structure, or other
grammatical elements to emphasize similar ideas in a sentence.

However the Gas Utilisation Master Plan seeks to anticipate the infrastructure necessary to open
up the gas market for the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. (The three-part list
‘residential, commercial and industrial sectors’ towards the end does important work. In this
three-part list, the noun, ‘sectors’, which is modified by all three adjectives, comes last. This
serves to draw all the sectors together – they are all sectors, and so they all have something in
common.)

South Africa is currently beset by a number of socio-economic challenges such as a lack of

infrastructure, high levels of unemployment and a looming energy deficit. (Here, noun phrases
are syntactically similar. The use of similar syntactic structure in this way is called parallelism. The

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parallel syntactic structure encourages a reader to consider the entities in the same place in the
same way.)

● The most straightforward form of parallelism is repetition. We know from our own use of
language that if we want to emphasize something we repeat it. The same holds true in
political texts. Repetition across a long text or speech can also help structure it.

Hydraulic fracturing can be ‘safe’ when done in the right place, on the right scale, with the right
safeguards. (The repetition of ‘right’ here draws our attention to, or foregrounds, the three-part
list and the many variables that need to be considered for fracking to be safe.)

● Foregrounding is a useful analytic tool. It simply means that something is prominent in

some way. Foregrounding may occur through any of the following: putting a word or
phrase first, repetition, parallelism, unusual word order (especially in binomials).

Political Correctness

● People tend to have strong views about their own language and may fervently resist any
changes made to it, especially if it means that they have to change their own linguistic
behavior. In relation to language, this is sometimes called ‘political correctness’.
● ‘Political correctness’ is a contested term and a contested practice. What it refers to,
who uses it and why people label practices in this way are far more complex than may
first seem apparent.

Politics is everywhere: political movements, higher education, toys, financial systems and
humorous talk shows. If we pay attention to language used in these domains, we can uncover
the ideologies that underpin the persuasive arguments made.

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