Language and Discourse of Cultural Studies

TOPIC : Language and Discourse of Cultural Studies

PAPER 8 : The Cultural Studies

STUDENT'S NAME : Gohil Yashpalsinh B.

CLASS : M.A., Sem-2

ROLL NO. : 16

YEAR : 2013

                                    

           

          Raymond Williams’s influential definition of culture and society remains 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 literally parts of our social organization…Since our way of seeing is literally our way of living, the process of communication is in fact the process of community: the offering, reception and caparisons of new meanings, leading to the tensions and achievements of grown and change.

(1961:  55)

          Experience, as William’s quote shows, is central to the project of Cultural Studies. Experience, especially in term of the everyday, is a central political and analytical category itself

First, let us understand exactly why this definition is so crucial to Cultural Studies. Given below is a graded set of explanations about language and Cultural Studies.

·        Studying society is about culture and not only about economics or politics.

·        Meanings and values and their exchange or circulation, constitute a particular ‘culture’ or community: communication creates community.

·        A society’s meanings and values reflect its economic and political systems- and hence to study meaning is to study a culture.

·        Culture is about the role of meanings in any society. A culture is sharing of meaning.

·        ‘Meanings’ are never fixed: they are arrived at through a process of negotiation and exchange.

Cultural Studies analyses the processes through which certain meanings are produced in a particular culture. It believes that the processes of meaning-production are connected to the structures of power in society: certain meanings acquire greater power because of their sources, other meanings become less important. 

‘Meanings’ are processes of language. (Language here is taken to mean not just words or print but also speech, painting, photography.)

          In Cultural Studies, the preferred term to speak about ‘meaning’ is ‘representation’. Representation is the process of signifying (meaning-generation), and includes the word/sign and its concept/meaning. Representation presents the world in such a way that we can understand it. Representation can be an image, a word, a sound or a concept. It uses these ‘sings’ in order to generate meaning. That is, presentation is the alphabet of culture; the alphabet is used to make meaningful sentences. In short, it is language.

word + concept behind the word = meaning

word, concept, meaning, context = representation

But this language is not neutral or transparent Language and meaning are connected to issues of class, power, ideology and the material conditions in which the speaking/painting or interpretation occurs. All expression and use of language are situated in a context. This contest is discourse.

What discourse does it to define what can be said. That is, discourse is the context in which a culture’s communication, meaning - production and interpretation occur, it the terrain of thought and expression.

          Cultural Studies examine how representation function particular society. No object in society can exist without its representation. That is, every object, subjectivity and identity has to have some kind of presentation. This can be a name, a symbol, a word, a metaphor, a visual sign.

          Popular cultural studies (within Cultural Studies) rely on such a notion of language and discourse. For Cultural Studies everything in society is language. Objectives and events are also sings within a language system that can be interpreted by people who share s asset of cultural codes.

Thus, Cultural Studies sees culture as a text made of sings and generation meaning. This is an important move, for it makes use of theories from structuralism and linguistics to speak of the textuality of culture.

A text is read for the sings within itself.

A text is related to and read within the context of other texts.

A text is finally related to and read within a lager cultural text.
 

In above example, we can say the text of tools and dolls can be read within a discourse through the following steps in interpretation and critique:

       I.            Dolls are objects given to girls; tools are given to boys.

    II.            Dolls are given to girls rather than to boys.

 III.            Girls being more ‘delicate’ must be given softer and harmless things. Boys being ’tougher’; can be given harder objects. 

IV.            Dolls are harmless, soft and gentle; tools are hard and possibly dangerous.

   V.            Dolls are to be cared for, groomed. Tools are used to achieve certain results (repairs, construction, etc.).

VI.            Grooming and care are ‘feminine qualities and jobs, Repairs and construction are male jobs and responsibilities. 

VII.            Dolls inculcate these feminine qualities in girls, and tools inculcate masculinity in boys.

Notice her that the interpretation looks at the language of toys and the discourse within which we interpret them. What are the discourses, we can detect in the above examples?

·        The girls are delicate and weaker;

·        That grooming and care are feminine qualities/duties.

These discourses are patriarchal and treat women as weaker, gentler and requiring protection and to be given only particular task. There discourses govern suitable play material because game and play are also elements within this same society. As a result, the discourse decides what is suitable or not suitable for girl and boys. It then becomes nature to give dolls to girls and tool to boys. So then we can conclude our reading thus:

Text: toys

Language: meaning of these toys (dolls = feminine; tools = masculinity)

Discourse: patriarchy and gender difference

But is that all? 

We discover something else from the above activity, we cannot give a doll to a girl unless we know the convention that govern such items (i.e., unless we know the language of toys).

But we cannot define what ‘feminine’ means without knowing g what ‘masculine’ means. Feminine is what is NOT masculine.

Therefore, the definition and meaning of the term ‘feminine’ is depended upon its contrast with and difference from ‘masculine’.  In order to understand one, we need to know and understand its other or its opposite; meaning is thus the result of difference, where the meaning of 'feminine' is only available in its difference from ‘masculine’.

In short, we cannot say there is a true or complete ‘feminine’ because its meaning is depend upon, ‘masculine’. There is no essential meaning, and all meaning is the result of this relationship with it opposite or other. 

For Cultural Studies this insight – drawn from proststructuralism - is crucial. It suggests:

·        All meaning is relational.

·        All representation (sign and meanings) is based on difference.

·        All representation is a system of negotiation where meanings contest for viability and expression.

·        This contest is situated within a discourse where (for example) dolls represent feminity in a culture. Dolls acquire meaning, and then term ‘feminine’ becomes represented through certain signs (dolls, care, grooming, soft/gentle qualities).

Texts and representations are therefore texts in contexts, in society; we have to move between texts and everyday life where one influences the other. Girls and boys grow up watching such image of women and toys. When they grow up, they subscribe to these same values (mostly) in t heir everyday life, ways of thinking and social relations and in turn produce similar texts.

As the girls and boys grow up within this system of representation where their qualities and duties are already available they acquire an identity.

Cultural Studies is basically an exploration of specific contexts (culture, community, nation, caste, class, gender, race, sexuality) where repressions produce and reinforces identities through particular modes.