Importance of language and Discourse.

Name: Vadher Ankita.

Paper: E-E-205-B: Cultural Studies.

Topic: Importance of language and Discourse.

SEM: 2, part: 1,

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept. of English,

Bhavnagar University.

Language and Discourse:

Raymond William Explain Definition of culture and society remain the cornerstone for much cultural studies even today:“our description of our experience comes to compose a network of relationship, and all our communication systems, including the arts, are literary parts of our social organization… since our way of seeing is literally our way of living, the process of community the offering, reception and comparison of new meanings leading to the tension and achievement of growth and change.”

           

William’s quote shows experience is central to the project of cultural studies, traffic clothing, food, social relations on public transport the sense of community or entertainment constitute our everyday culture. It foregrounds experience, but it analyses the relations that construct reality. Experience is expressed through language; how we express what we experience, how we speak with others and how we tell our stories. Language and representation are integral to the experience and construction of reality. In our society we studying about class-consciousness, tradition, race, gender discrimination, this all involve in our culture we studying not only about economic or politics but it also related to our everyday life. Language is very important and also played a vital role in our everyday life. Communication is very important to creates community and constitute a particular culture. Meaning is also played important role meaning exchange through a process of negotiations. Cultural studies believe that the process of meaning production are connected to the structure of power in society certain meaning acquire great power because of their sources, other meaning become less important. In cultural studies the preferred term to speak about ‘meaning’ is representation. We represent a present’s world in such a way that we can understand it. Representation can be an image, a word a sound or a concept. Language and meaning are connected to issues of class power, ideology and the material condition in which the speaking/ painting or situated in a context. This context is discourses are situated in a context in which a culture’s communication, meaning production and interpretation occur. Every objects, subjectivity and identity has to have some kind of representation in a particular society. This can be a name, a symbol, a word, a metaphor, a visual sign.

Example:

Our identity as a boy or girls is made possible through a system of signs think of our name which in most cultures where meaning is shared immediately identifies our gender when we hear of the name of people from other countries we don’t know they are male or female. Objects and events are also signs within a language system that can be interpreted by people who share a set of cultural codes.

Example:  Toys.

People who lived in a society they define boy and girl. When we look at toys we know tools/guns are suitable for boys. And dolls are suitable for girls. Here the point is dolls become sings of the feminine and therefore are given to girls. And guns become signs of masculinity. The values of a particular culture decide the owner/ user of dolls and tools not the inherent quality of the objects themselves.   

  

These discourses are patriarchal and treat women as weaker and requiring protection and to be given only particular tasks. As a result the discourses decide what is suitable or not suitable for girls and boys. It becomes natural to given dolls to girls and tools to boys. So then we can conclude our reading thus: text in contexts in society. We have to move between texts and everyday life where one influences the other. Girl and boys grown up watching such images of women and toys, and they grown up with same values in their everyday life, ways of thinking and social relation in turn produce similar texts. As the girl and boy grown up within this system of representation where their qualities and duties are available, they acquire an identity.