2.12 Durkheim’s concept of social solidarity
2.12.1 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and social solidarity
Though there are many directions in the studies and criticisms of social solidarity;
the essence of this study is a focus on discourse strategies that evoke social solidarity and enhance textual cohesion in literary discourses. This underlying objective behind the adoption of discourse analytical approach to the phenomenon of social solidarity is the realisation of the fact that, both as a social practice and an ideology, social solidarity manifests discursively. Apparently, social solidarity is considered as the communication of intentions that consist of linguistic units whose success in the expressions of lust for beliefs, feelings, aims, and opinions by social groups, depend largely on the choice of registers in the expression of intentions. The communication of desires for group cohesion involves different modes of discourse strategies which might make obvious direct enactment, or overt pronouncements that evoke social solidarity. Attempts to sieve social solidarity from texture of text, therefore, involve using critical discourse analytical methods to investigate the various speech-act strategies and or lexico-grammatical
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properties in the text so as to unveil the various tenets of social solidarity and textual cohesion in the linguistic networks of discourses.
The society is therefore considered as a functional unit based on its social structure and social functions, which project it as ‘whole’ in terms of the functions of its social actors who work together to achieve cohesion of the entire society. Society, in this respect, is seen as a coherent and fundamentally relational constructs that function like organism, with its various parts working together in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion towards achieving an overall social equilibrium. Apparently, all the social and cultural phenomena are therefore seen as functional in the sense of working together, and are analysed in terms of this function.
Therefore, concern of critical discourse analysts is to ascertain the availability of the social fragments in the relationship between individuals in the society through the analysis of the various styles that strategise these relationships among social actors in the events re-created in texts. A substantiation of the above Foucaulsian premise on discourse and social practice is extended to include an emphasis of the social relations that project social solidarity among members of a social group. This argument is based on perspectives provided by van Dijk in Sociocognition those mental representations that are often articulated along ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ aspects. A situation in which characters in a social group will generally tend to present themselves or their own group in positive terms, and the other group in negative terms (van Dijk, 1995: 22).
This assumption has become necessary owing to a series of arguments that meaning is created when a sign occurs in a specific context. The fact remains that the concept of language becomes more meaningful only when it is part of the wider social context; language needs the context and, to a large extent, also helps create context at the same time. Language being an element structured by social events; the discourse is, therefore, considered as a network of social practices with linguistic options which define its potential and certain possibilities, therein controlling the linguistic variability of particular areas of social life. It therefore becomes so difficult to separate language from other social elements; the grammars of language are socially shaped. This explains the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the discourse, language and the social context, and the need to examine both for an overall deduction of the meaning of a discourse. Consequently, in language lies the main weapon for social solidarity. This is
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because language bubbles not only in the physical but also in the social, political, economic and other spheres in the social environment.
The relationship between language and the environment in which it evolves has been investigated by many linguists though the most widely accepted view being the modification of the theory of Linguistic Relativity push forward by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf: ‘the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’. The concern of this model is the projection of the fact that the varying cultural concepts inherent in different languages affect the cognitive classification of the experienced world of such speakers. This model suggests that the language we speak predisposes us, to some extent, to the particular way in which we observe and classify our physical environment, and even determines the ways in which we behave in this environment. The ways we behave in this respect include our interaction(s) with each other, as individuals, in the course of our daily lives.
Systemic Functional Linguistics has even evolved more elaborate and fielded specific analytical procedures that examine language as an abstract variable with meaning potentials which combine the systems of grammar, lexis and sound to produce specific contextual meanings. This has amount for suggestions that communicating meanings in particular context is the primary function of language (Thompson, 2004); the closer link between grammar and meaning, and then meaning and social context therefore accounts for the growing interests about language and context in linguistic studies. This increased interest is as a result of our enthusiasm for more knowledge about the world and our experience of social reality which influences the way we use and interpret individual words (Bloor and Bloor, 1980).
The analysis of context in linguistic studies were said to have been spearheaded by Firth; who in most of his works, which spanned through so many years, had been concerned with trying to explain the relationship between language and the context. In Tongues of Men (1937), for instance, Firth suggests that, meaning should be regarded as a complex of relations of various kinds between the component forms of a context of situation. These ‘component forms’, Firth suggests include: the setting of the event and the participants involved. Firth (1937: 38) argues further that:
The force and cogency of most language behaviour derives from the firm grip it has on the ever-recurrent typical situations in the life of social groups and in the normal social behaviour of the human animals living together in those groups.
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This argument projects the fact that language and context are inextricably bound together in the production of meaning. Firth was of the strong conviction that in order to arrive at the meaning of an utterance, the context within which the utterance was made, must as a necessity, be taken into consideration as well. The interpretation of our knowledge about the world is the product of our experience of the social reality which influenced our choice of words. Context, to a large extent, determines even the sound component of language and the various meanings attached to this component. Meaning generation, in any text, is therefore dependant on contextual variables construing social realities; and the connectivity of the various units of a text is essentially a matter of meaning.
In CDA, the interest of analysts is to identify those features of the context that govern or reinforce interactional process that take place through language, such as the use of language to control other people either by discretion or persuasion. Discourse analysis in CDA is said to be text specific; by taking into account the social environment, which include the participants and other social trappings ‘for the specific text in order to be able to make valid generalizations’ (Bloor and Bloor, 2007: 27). Consequently, questions raised in CDA’s analysis of a text such as ‘who is talking to whom about what?’ provides explanation on ‘interpersonal’ and ‘ideational’ functions of language, each of which are vital in establishing the form of language in use and the social context involved. Attempts to mix these explanations with the concept of ‘social solidarity’, is therefore to highlight some linguistic features within these communicative interactions that project group cohesion. It could as well mean the sieving of features from interlocutors’ use of language to enhance social solidarity more than just mere persuasive arguments based on ideological parameters as emphasised by critical discourse analysts.
In the analysis of discourses, CDA draws our attention to ‘the way in which language and discourse are used to achieve social goals and the part this use plays in social maintenance and change’ (Bloor and Bloor, 2007: 2). Though central to CDA is the issue of ideology and exercise of power, and a criticism ‘directed towards a positive outcome’ (Bloor and Bloor, 2007:5), which can be appropriated into analysis of the use of language in social situations, that signify social solidarity.
Fundamental in this argument is the basis that, just as CDA stresses that dominance may be enacted and reproduced by subtle, routine, everyday forms of text and talk that appear ‘natural and quite acceptable’(van Dijk, 1993: 249), social cohesion too can be (or is) enacted through one of the above means. But why CDA is interested in
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power abuse from the various arms in the discursive events, an analysis of social cohesion targets those linguistic features in a text that tend to promote, and underline group cohesion. Attempts to sieve social solidarity from textual networks of discourses give credence to fundamental social cognitions that reflect the basic aims, interests and values of groups and then application of principles from CDA to subtract features in the talk and speech that emphasise social solidarity as well.
The analysis of social solidarity from textual networks of discourses strives on CDA’s detailed descriptions, explanations and critique of the ways dominant discourses influence socially shared knowledge, attitudes and ideologies. Bond within these dominant discourse features are also the prevailing social cohesive attitudes and ideologies. Social solidarity is therefore hinged on the strata whereby both the dominant and powerful participants and the less powerful participants curve a middle ground of peaceful interdependence in their speech and talk incidences that signify group cohesion.
In social solidarity, regardless of power resources accrued to a participant, all discussions in the discursive event are geared towards variables of group allegiance and harmony, devoid of domination. Apparently, the influence of group cohesion is felt in the use of language properties: syntax, morphology or phonology (pitch or stress patterns in speech). The intentional or unintentional manifestations for group cohesion, just like in issues relating to power domination, feminism, and conversations in work organisations which are emphasised in CDA, may also be observed in social cohesion at one of these levels: in intonation, lexical or syntactic style, rhetorical figures, local semantic structures, phonemes, politeness phenomena, coinages, and so on (van Dijk, 1993: 261).
Though unlike in CDA where the interest might be on the extraction of issues relating to power and domination, in analysis of social cohesion emphasis is on the linguistic networks within these narratives that project social solidarity. CDA therein provides possible means to sieve social solidarity in literary discourses by extraction of obvious textual and semantic features from the lexical and grammatical elements that underline sharing of beliefs, feelings, aims, and expression of opinions that unite social actors as members of social groups.
It is from this background that this attempt is being made to unearth instances in Adichie’s uses of language that explicate social solidarity and at the same time enhance textual cohesion in the selected novels which are envisaged to be her discourse strategies of forging group cohesion in the contemporary crisis ridden society.