Week 6

There are broadly speaking three approaches to explaining how representation of meaning through language works.  We may call these the reflective, the intentional and the constructionist or constructivist approaches.  You might think of each as an attempt to answer the questions, ‘where do meanings come from?’ and ‘how can we tell the “true” meaning of a word or image?’

In the reflective approach, meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world….

The second approach to meaning in representation argues the opposite case.  It holds that it is the speaker, the author, who imposes his or her unique meaning on the world through language.  Words mean what the author intends they should mean.  This is the intentional approach….

The third approach recognizes the public, social character of language.  It acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language.  Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representation systems–concepts and signs.  Hence it is called the constructivist or constructionist approach to meaning in language.  According to this approach, we must not confuse the material world, where things and people exist, and the symbolic practices and processes through which representation, meaning and language operate.

—Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices

Required Readings

  • Hall, Representation, Introduction (1-11), Ch. 1 (15-41) [Moodle2]
  • Weedon, Ch. 5: “Discourse, Power and Resistance” (104-131)
  • Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power” (in Kourany et al. 103 118) [Moodle2]
  • Bucholtz, Ch. 2: “Theories of Discourse as Theories of Gender: Discourse Analysis in Language and Gender Studies” (43-69), in Holmes and Meyerhoff The Handbook of Language and Gender
  • Lakoff, Ch. 7: “Language, Gender, and Politics: Putting ‘Women’ and ‘Power’ in the Same Sentence” (161-178), in Holmes and Meyerhoff The Handbook of Language and Gender
  • Native Tongue:  Chapters 12-15 (136-183)

Additional Resources

Other Works by These Authors

  • Hall, Stuart, and Paul du Gay
    Questions of cultural identity
  • Weedon, Chris
    Feminism, theory, and the politics of difference
  • Weedon, Chris, and Glenn Jordan
    Cultural politics : class, gender, race, and the postmodern world

Due This Week

Weekly journal entry including main points from readings, major points about language treated by Elgin in Native Tongue, and observations about language from daily life.