Domestic
Violence
Street Violence
Why is it so prevalent?
How do we construct violence in our everyday language?
How do our metaphors cause us to be tolerant of violence?
Why do we find violence so justifiable even as we deplore it?
What about the structure of English might lead to easy acceptance of violence?
How is violence related to sexism? to racism?
How are sexism and racism incorporated into the structure of English?
How does metaphor interact with and
strengthen derivational thinking within English?
How does metaphor interact with and strengthen the violence myths of our
culture?
How does metaphor interact with our daily lives and our daily perceptions?
How can we go about constructing "bridge metaphors"
to change perceptual patterns away from violence?
What can we do about it?
Textbooks:
Elgin, Suzette Haden Staying Well with the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense Prentice Hall 1990
Elgin, Suzette Haden How to disagree without being disagreeable Getting your point across w/ the gentle art of verbal self-defense MJF Books 1997
Norberg-Hodge, Helena Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh 1991 Sierra Club Books
Language and Peace, eds. Christina Schäffner & Anita L. Wenden, Darmouth 1995
Hardman, M.J. A Language Sampler for Language and Perception 1996
Le Guin Ursula, Always Coming Home; novel comes in hardback, boxed with tape and as a paperback; currently OOP; may be available at used bookstores
Hardman, M. J. Derivational Thinking packet
Tickner, J. Ann Gender in International Relations; Feminist perspectives on achieving global security Univ. of Colombia Press 1992
Papers:
Three 5 page papers. The three
papers may be sections of one larger paper
The first paper should be a collection of violent language.
The second paper should be an analysis of that data.
The third paper should be a construction of non-violent alternatives for the
violent language.
Possible paper topics:
Metaphors in any given venue.
VAPS in any given venue.
language & children's books
language & right-wing political slogans (hijacking of language)
language & women's rights
language & food industry / trade
language & war
language & sitcoms / anything on TV / other media
language & your specialty
language & schools / teaching children
intonation patterns
language & violence in academia as seen, for example, in native/minority
critiques
Class Summary
Elgin Disagreeable
Chap 1 What are the two
characteristics of hostile language? Name 2 of the 4 benefits from reducing
hostil language.
Chap 2 What did you learn as a child about hostile language? What do you now
believe?
Chap 3 From p 53 -- ask/answer these questions of three incidents of verbal
abuse from your life (current, or in memory)
Chap 4 - Do the exercise on p. 70 using C-Span; then try it once with a living
person; report on your experience.
Chap 6 p. 103 Apply the two steps to some situation in your own life.
Chap 7 - p. 123 - apply the three steps to some situation in your life.
Chap 8 - use SHE’s techniques to construct an alternate to some VAP you have
heard or produced.
Chap 9 - p. 155 - construct a 3-part message for some complaint in your life.
Chap 10 - OK - you write a little SF sketch of aliens arriving on Earth.
Media:
First: Stanford tape on
derivational thinking & In whose honor?
Second: In Whose Honor?
Third: Jones, The New Racism
Fourth: Spirit -- the Indian in the Global Mind
Fifth: Language Includes / Language Excludes
Sixth: Sylvia Winter, Prof of Spanish, Stanford - Rethinking Colombus.
Seventh: Defending Our Name - Loni Guinier, Johnetta Cole, Angela Davis
Eighth: Winona La Duke - Environmentalists & Native Americans & from
Genocide to Resistance — the next 500 years
Ninth: Helena Norberg-Hodge “Relook at Development”
Tenth: Vandana Shiva: Biopiracy.
Observations:
First: Generative Metaphors — war
as sports / sports as war / sex as war / war as sex / sex as sports / sports as
sex
Second: Violence metaphors you hear for non-violent activities.
Third: Violence metaphors you hear in the Alligator
Fourth: Ranking comparisons that you made
Fifth: Ranking comparisons directly related to people.
Sixth: Sitcom for VAPS
Seventh: Bull Moose article
Eighth: Joy Brown & Laura Schlesinger - general
Ninth: Joy Brown & Laura Schlesinger - specific
Tenth: “Houston Houston do you Read” by James Tiptree Jr.
Non-violent language constructions:
First & Second: Recast
metaphors of your choice.
Third: Non-hierarchy recasting.
Fourth: Sit-com analysis/recast.
Fifth & Sixth: Analysis & rewrite of Bull Moose article
Eighth: Brown & Schleshinger-general
Ninth: Brown & Schleshinger-analysis
Tenth: Recast metaphors.“arsenal of drugs”; “hit the mark”; “fighting on two
fronts”; “beat a dead horse”; “shoot down an argument”
Class presentations/bibliography:
Language and War
Cohn, Carol. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defence Intellectuals”.
Exposing Nuclear Phallacies. Pages 127-159.
Gay, William C. “Star Ward and the Language of Defense.” Just War, Nonviolence,
and Nuclear Deterence. Pages 245-264.
Holm, Tom "Patriots and Pawns: State Use of American Indians in the
Military and the Process Nativization in the United States” p.345 Jaimes The
State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance
Lakoff, George "Metaphor & War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify
War in the Gulf”
Merrill, Lisa & Denise Quirk 1994 "Gender, Media, and Militarism"
Expanding Gender Relations
Language and Illness
Sontag, Susan Illness as metaphor & AIDS & its metaphors
Martin, Emily Flexible Bodies
Selby, Kevin Comparing the Treatment of Gender-Specified Cancers: A Narrative
of Two Pamphelts on Breast and Prostate Cancer 1996 OSCLG: Oct. 3 1996
Monterrey, CA
Language and ‘development’
Babb, Florence E.(Winter 1980) “Women and Men in Vicos, Perú: A Case of Unequal
Development”
Jaimes, M. Annette w/ Theresa Halsey "American Indian Women: At the Center
of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary North America" 1992± chap XI in
The State of Native America Genocide, Colonization & Resistance, Ed. by M.
Annette Jaimes, South End Press
Schoepfle, G. Mark, Kenneth Nabahe, Angela Johnson, Lucie Upshaw The Effects of
the Great Stock Reduction on the Navajos
Oyewumi, Oyeronke “Colonizing Minds and Bodies: Gender and Colonialism” chapter
4 in The Invention of Women
Oyewumi, Oyeronke “The Transltion of Cultures: Engendering Yorùbá Language,
Orature and World-Sense” chapter 5 in The Invention of Women
Language and race/culture
Lacour, Claudia Brodsky "Doing Things with Words: "Racism" as
Speech Act & the Undoing of Justice" in Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering
Power ed. Morrison, Toni
Gladden, Kathy “How many women does it take to make a “manday”?
Haraway, Donna “ Remodeling the Human Way of Life: Wherwood Washburn and the New
Physical Anthropology, 1950-1980” PRIMATE VISIONS Gender, Race, & Nature in
the World of Modern Science Routledge 1989
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl
ftp://english.hss.cmu.edu/English.Server/Fiction/Stowe-Sojourner%20Truth
Fraternity Gange Rape
Sanday, Peggy Reeves Fraternity Gang Rape
American Mixed Race
Clements, Susan, “Five Arrows”
Lawrence, Cecile Ann, “Racelessness”
Moore, Zena, “Check the Box that Best Describes You”
Davis, F. James, “The Hawaiian Alternative to the One-Drop Role”
Jaimes, M. Annette, “Some Kind of Indian: On Race, Eugenics and Mixed-Bloods”
Squire-Hackey, Mariella “Yankee Imperial and Imperialist Nostaligia”
Exam Questions
In the answering the questions, use material from all of the sources, including class presentations, media, texts, observations, and non-violent constructions. Integrate the material of the course. Use specific examples in all cases.
You will answer four of the following questions, my selection.
1) Discuss the way in which the material in the Sampler provides the scientific structural basis for the rest of the material dealing with language and violence.
2) How does derivational thinking enable racism and sexism?
3) According to Elgin in Staying Well with the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and in How to Disagree without being Disagreeable, how can verbal violence and hostility be dangerous to your physical and mental health? List several of the VAPs that Elgin discusses with examples. Create valid responses for each VAP that demonstrate techniques that Elgin discusses in her book that would not promote violence. How do the more usual responses promote violence? Compare/contrast violent/nonviolent metaphors regarding health as discussed in Elgin.
4) Explain how the principle of singularity was key in the transformation in Ladakh.
5) Choose two or three examples from our the resources of the course (tapes, presentations, readings) of researchers approaching a situation with totally incorrect assumptions and/or metaphors, and briefly describe how these mistakes impacted the cultures or groups being researched.
6) Compare/Contrast/Relate: Norberg-Hodge’s Ancient Futures and her media “Relook at Development” and Winona LaDuke’s “Environmentalists and Native Americans and from Genocide to Resistance — the next 500 years”. Discuss how these have similar ideas and how these women from different backgrounds have come to many of the same conclusions.
7) How would a changed definition of peace to include absence of structural violence, or “positive peace”, affect the language of foreign policy? What are some metaphors that might be profitably used? Write a paragraph describing the purposes of the USA toward a so-called “third-world” country like Ladakh as you think it should be, using an alternate metaphor and an expanded definition of peace.
8) How would a discussion between a female patient and a male doctor evolve if it was based on the metaphor of communication = combat? if it was communication = cooperation? Include discussion of hierarchy, singularity, and VAPs. From Vandana Shiva’s discussion of biopiracy, describe what would happen if the activity of sharing information freely was privileged in the medical world, or in the university community if you prefer.
9) Discuss derivational thinking in terms of the Indians’ culture being used as a symbol or mascot in the world of sports. Relate this also to New Age healers, or spiritual native connections as violent and damaging. Of the violence used against Indians in the past and the present (physical, linguistic, economic, etc.), which of the same techniques have been used against women?
10) How does ranking and hierarchy affect peoples’ psyche? What can be done to reduce the reliance upon ranking and hierarchies? Using the science fiction and other materials from the course, propose alternate metaphorical/cultural structures that would not involve hierarchy.
11) What valuable lessons have you learned in this course? What impact has the course had in your life and in your own language behavior? How has it affected your perception of others’ language behavior? How has it changed your perception of language itself?
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