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Weekly Readings:
- Müller, Marcus, and Jörn Stegmeier. 2019. “Investigating Risk, Uncertainty and Normativity Within the Framework of Digital Discourse Analysis: Renewable Energies in Climate Change Discourse.” In Researching Risk and Uncertainty, Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty, eds. Anna Olofsson and Jens O. Zinn. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 309–35. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95852-1_13.
Video Lecture Notes
This lecture focuses on the relationship between language and knowledge, emphasizing how knowledge is structured, contextualized, and framed through discourse. It begins by highlighting a quote from the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky: “Consciousness is reflected in the world like the sun is reflected in a droplet of water,” underscoring the role of discourse in enabling human conscious engagement with the world. The lecture proceeds to unpack the concept of knowledge, distinguishing it from personal judgment and defining it as a set of commonly shared, socially accepted assumptions about the world.
Types of Knowledge:
- Implicit Knowledge: Practical, non-verbalizable knowledge (e.g., riding a bike, speaking grammatically).
- Declarative Knowledge: Propositional, conscious knowledge about facts (e.g., trees bloom in spring).
The Dutch linguist Teun van Dijk is introduced, who identifies three sources of knowledge acquisition:
- Experience: Sensory engagement with the world.
- Discourse: Information conveyed through language.
- Inference: Reasoning based on experience and discourse.
These sources interact from the beginning of human development, shaping how we form concepts and understand the world. Anthropologist Michael Tomasello emphasizes the importance of joint attention and shared intentionality in early childhood, highlighting how language acquisition is intertwined with the development of social cognition.
Frames and Frame Semantics:
Linguist Charles Fillmore introduced the concept of frames, which are structured sets of knowledge about typical situations, helping organize information and language. Frames consist of slots (categories) that are filled with context-specific values. For example, the “restaurant frame” includes slots such as tables, waiters, menus, and food. Different cultures and contexts fill these slots differently, shaping both expectations and the way we talk about restaurants.
Analyzing linguistic patterns reveals these cognitive frames, showing how knowledge is organized across social groups and time. This approach allows researchers to reconstruct the implicit knowledge underlying discourse.
Contextualization and Contextualization Theory:
John Gumperz coined the term contextualization, referring to the process of using linguistic and non-linguistic cues to interpret communication within its social context. A classic example is cross-cultural communication breakdowns, such as those illustrated in a 1979 British documentary showing British and Indian English speakers misinterpreting each other’s prosody (tone and emphasis) at a bank.
Peter Auer elaborates on contextualization, describing it as an ongoing process of answering implicit questions during conversation:
- Are we talking to each other?
- Who is talking to whom?
- What are we doing?
- What is our relationship? Miscommunication often reveals the hidden processes of contextualization, making visible the subtle ways we interpret language based on cultural expectations and social roles.
Perspectivity and Semantic Battles:
Wilhelm Köhler and others stress that knowledge is always shaped by perspective, as every linguistic expression reflects a viewpoint. For instance, a cow can be referred to as “cattle,” “livestock,” “mammal,” or “moo,” each highlighting different aspects depending on the speaker’s perspective (e.g., farmer, biologist, child). Visual representations also shape perspective, as demonstrated through photographs of German Chancellor Angela Merkel taken from different angles, each influencing how the audience perceives her.
Semantic Battles occur when competing perspectives are reflected in language, often in political or scientific debates:
- Terminological Competition: Different terms frame an issue differently (e.g., “therapeutic cloning” vs. “research cloning”).
- Semantic Fixation: The same term carries different meanings depending on context (e.g., “democracy” in East Germany vs. Western democracies).
Climate change discourse exemplifies this competition: terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” “climate crisis,” “climate emergency” all highlight different perspectives and evoke varying levels of urgency.
Conclusion:
The lecture underscores that knowledge is not merely an objective accumulation of facts but is constructed, framed, and contextualized through language. Experience, discourse, and inference interact continuously, while frames, contextualization, and perspectives shape how individuals and societies organize, communicate, and contest knowledge. The competition over linguistic representations reflects broader power struggles and ideological battles over what is considered “true” knowledge in society.