Language, Ideology And The World View By: Rana Faqir M. Aslam

Language, Ideology and the World View Presented to: Dr. Shirin Zubair By: Rana Faqir Muhammad Aslam

What is Language? • The most powerful means of communication • Determines the identity of the user • Shows social status of the user • Indicates the ethnic group

Different ways of looking at language • • • • •

A systematic way of combining smaller units into larger units We use language to say what we mean We use language: referentially affectively

Referentially • Put those books on the table

Affectively •

Put the books down on the table.

• Can you put the books on the table. • I wonder if you’d mind putting the books on the table, please.

Referentially • The referential function is the one associated with what objects and ideas are called and how events are described

Affectively • The affective function of language is concerned with who is allowed to say what to whom, which is deeply tied up with power and social status

Signitive power of language: • to propagate different ideologies • gives access to the world view of the powerful • makes the less powerful accept this world view • consolidates the system of the distribution of power

What is Ideology? • One of the most complicated concepts • A variety of theoretical approaches • Heavily charged with political connotations • Widely used in everyday life with the most diverse significations

First used by Destutt de Tracy • Ideology is the "science of ideas," insisting that only through a rigorous ideological application the truth could be ascertained and false knowledge debunked • Ideology is a set of ideas – especially ideas which challenged traditional systems of belief

Napolean Bonaparte • ideology was something that stood in the way of practical action • ideology was too idealistic and its goals unattainable • We must lay the blame for the ills that our fair France has suffered on ideology, the shadowy metaphysics.... (Napolean Bonaparte)

Mechiavelli (1469–1527) • His ideas can be related to ideology when he talks on the use of force and fraud in order to get and maintain power

Karl Marx (1818–1883) • the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas • ruling material force of society is its ruling intellectual force • Control over material production leads to control over means of mental production

Louis Althusser (A follower of Marx) • the poor had been persuaded that the state of affairs of their poverty was ‘natural’

Michel Foucault • His project has been to critique the production of ‘truth’ and therefore refuses to link ‘ideology’ with any rigid, settled notion of truth • He came eventually to drop the use of ideology for his preferred term, ‘discourse’ • He extends discourse into the way knowledge is produced

Ideology used for 3 senses • to refer to certain beliefs • to refer to false or distorted beliefs • to refer to all kinds of beliefs whether true or false

Karl Mannheim • distinguishes between the ‘particular conception’ of ideology and the ‘total conception’ of ideology • The ‘particular conception’ of ideology denotes that we are sceptical of ideas advanced by our opponents

What is World View? • It is the ‘total conception’ of ideology • ‘the ideology of an age or of a concrete historicosocial group, e.g. of a class, when we are concerned with the characteristics and composition of the total structure of the mind of this epoch or of this group. (Mannheim 1929) • This meaning comes closer to what is thought of to be the World View

Anthropologists on World View • How primitive peoples understand reality • The terms ‘cognitive view’, ‘world view perspective’, ‘basic assumptions’, ‘implicit premises’, ‘World Outlook’ are used as synonyms • Redfield describes world view as ‘that outlook upon the universe that is characteristic of a people’

Benjamin Lee Whorf & Edward Sapir • the world view was in a sense shaped by language • it is the language that shapes and structures thought • language and world view are in a circular relationship

Developing society like Pakistan • There cannot be a single or monolithic and unchanging world view • There can only be fluid, diversified, pluralistic world views in various degrees of flux

Languages; vehicles of world view • value-laden diction • being intelligent, fast, enterprising, bold, charismatic, beautiful, rich and respected are terms of positive valuation

Ideology-laden words: Shaheed • The word used frequently to arouse emotions of the masses • Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto • Ziaul Haq • Every army officer that dies • Christian officer • Indians used for Kargil dead

Ideology-laden words: Democracy • Ayub Khan’s ‘basic democracy’ was control over electoral colleges • Ziaul Haq’s ‘Islamic democracy’ was a camouflage for his own rule. • General Pervez Musharaf talks of ‘true democracy’ without introducing complete civilian control

The male dominating values of our culture • women’s sexuality is stigmatized • A woman cannot confess to have male friends, let alone lovers • The words pertaining to honour – izzat, asmat, ghairat, sharam, haya – all refer, much more seriously, to female waywardness than to male. … From this notion of sexuality comes the strong imperative of hiding away the female, seen primarily as a sexual object, from other males (Tariq Rehman)

Ideology after 9 – 11 • The concept of terrorism and Jihad • Terrorism is an act that restores an irreducible singularity to the heart of a generalized system of exchange. All those singularities (species, individuals, cultures) that have been sacrificed to the interests of a global system of commerce avenge themselves by turning the tables with terror. Terror against terror – this is no longer an ideological notion. We have gone well beyond ideology and politics

• Question mark on the concept of ideology and the world view after 9–11

References: • • • •

Tariq Rehman David Hawkes Jorge Lorrain R. L. Trask Linguistics’ • Shan Wareing, Peccei • Leong Yew

‘Language, Ideology and Power’ ‘Ideology’ ‘The Concept of Ideology’ ‘Key Concepts in Language and Jason Jones and Jean Stlwell ‘Language, Society and Power’ www.

Thank you 4 ur patience Rana Faqir Muhammad Aslam