Language in Use 173-174
This unit is concerned with our need to find language for assessing what is
going to happen, and how this leads us to see these events in terms of the verbal
predictions we have made. Its aim is to show how we try to make events
fit the verbal framework we have set up for them, and how we cope with the contradictions
-which result when our predictions are wrong. The material easiest to use
is the sports page of national or local papers, but predictions about social
or political events can also be used.
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[1] The aim of this session is to focus the class upon the making of predictions about events. This involves us in making a number of assumptions which determine our choice of words, which in turn cause its to put a particular construction upon our subsequent experience of the event. For this, the class need to write a short piece in which they make their own predictions about a forthcoming local or national event. Circulate the pieces and explore in discussion how they arrived at the form of words they have used. In particular, ask them to consider how large a part was played by their previous experience of similar happenings.
[2] For this session, the class need a collection of predictions made in the press about the events which they used in [I]. The collection should be divided according to the different predictions made, and sections of the class should be asked to examine each. Their task is to examine the material in order to prepare a report on the language used and the basic assumptions involved. The reports should be presented to the class and the nature of the divergences revealed should then be explored through discussion.
[3] For this session, the class need to have collected the comments
which were published after the event, or at a later stage of events when the
predictions originally made had been in some respects confirmed or falsified. The
aim of this session is to explore what happens when a writer has to go on working
within a linguistic framework which he has himself set tip when events require
it to be modified. Working in the same groups as for [2], the class should
compare the two sets of comments and prepare a report on what they discover.
Points to look for include:
(a) what happens when the original prediction is falsified;
(i) does the writer exploit his lack of success?
(ii) does he try to conceal it by attempting to rewrite
the past?
(iii) does he write as if the result is so unexpected
that it would never have been predictable?
(b) how do writers exploit their successful predictions?
(c) by comparing different reports, is there any evidence to suggest that individual
writers, in fact, see the event in terms of their predictions
about it?
This unit takes as its subject matter events which involve short-term predictions. Work over a longer period may be undertaken on the kind of long-term prediction made in the Press from time to time, on subjects like the report of a Commission of Inquiry into the siting of a new airport. The way in which newspapers report criminal proceedings in the courts involves other factors, such as the operation of the 'sub judice' rule. The reporting of a trial exciting wide-spread interest might nevertheless be the basis of work along lines suggested in this unit.