Language in Use
165-166
THEME G: LANGUAGE AND EXPERIENCE
G9 The language of school subjects
The units in this theme concentrate upon the ways in which we use language consciously to shape and interpret our experience of the world. 'Telling the tale' and 'Watching games' are both concerned with the part played by audience in determining how we language experience. 'Telling the tale' focuses upon the changes which are necessary in the telling of a story in order to meet the needs of different audiences, while 'Watching games' considers the degree to which the successful reporting of events depends upon our accurate estimate of our audience's past experience of similar events.
The next four units are all concerned with the effects of particular formulations upon the subsequent interpretation of the events that they predict. 'Making predictions' looks at the way in which a writer reconciles his report of events, as they actually happen, with his previous estimate of how they were likely to happen, while 'Slanting the news' considers the effect of different ways of formulating headlines upon a reader's response to the events which they preface. "Making up questionnaires' gives a class the opportunity to see for themselves how the formulation of questions affects the type and value of the information that they can yield. Finally, 'Catch phrases' looks at the way in which slogans and abstract labels can distort and over-simplify a reader's response to complex events.
The next four units are all concerned with different facets of relating what we observe to what we write about it. 'Writing the rules' considers the difficulty of writing an account of our actions accurately enough for others to use it to carry out similar actions. In the process, the class comes to see that the relationship between words and actions is much less simple than appears at first sight. 'Technical terms' looks into the reasons for the existence of what so many people call jargon. Its aim is to show a class that what is 'jargon' to one man is to another, a way of languaging essential to the job he has to do. 'The language of school subjects' looks at the same topic in the context of school subjects and explores the relationship between a technical term and the underlying concepts which it embodies. 'Writing up' returns to the problem of relating our words to what we observe in order to look at the difficulties of recording a sequence of events like a scientific experiment, where the language has not only to be very carefully related to what is observed, but must also take account of the technical terms relevant to the field in question.
The next unit, 'Praise and blame' looks at the way we use language to evaluate day-to-day experience. It considers the degree to which words we use for praising and blaming embody a wide range of assumptions about goodness and badness which we seldom examine, because we acquire them as a consequence of learning our language.
The last two units look at the special problems facing those who write about the arts. 'Reviewer and audience' considers the degree to which reviewers function by making large assumptions about the previous experience of their audience. 'Language and art' looks at the problems of writing about experience which is essentially non-verbal, like music or painting.