Language in Use 59
This unit is concerned with the manner in which expressive force can be given
to a text merely through the way in which the information it contains is selected. Its
aim is to develop an awareness that no single representation of the facts can
be without bias, because no text can include all there is to say about an event.
Any selection implies some principle for selection: and such a principle will
have attitudes and assumptions built into it.
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[1] This session requires the class, working individually in three divisions, to write suitable articles showing respectively warm approval of the subject of the prepared material, strong disapproval, and neutrality. Ask the class to form groups each containing at least one person from each of these divisions. Discussion should centre upon the differences in the texts, in particular what facts were used by each group to give the bias required of them, and what facts could not be used because they did not fit the bias selected. The unit requires a collection of twenty to thirty statements about a given topic like population control, the siting of a new town, a war, strike or rebellion. Some of the items in it should be strongly biased, but most should be objective statements, statistical, historical, geographical or scientific. One or two should be irrelevant to the context.
[2] This session requires members of the class to gather a second collection of material on a different topic which is also the subject of frequent newspaper reporting and comment. Others need to make a collection of newspaper cuttings on the same topic, which should be available to the whole class. Explore in discussion the way in which individual newspaper reports make a selective use of the facts to develop the bias necessary for the political orientation of the paper concerned.
The work of this unit can be developed further by A3.