Blog Entry 3

Positioning

Positioning is an element in critical literacy where the participants in the text are giving roles. For example, I had done a critical review on an interesting article about a girl with disability was rejected by a private school for disable student because of the insufficient of facilities and then I listed down the participant in the text; the girl (Scarlett Finney), the girl’s parent (Scott and Bernadette Finney) and The school (Baulkham Hills private school). After that, I look for further evidence in the text to find the interpretation for each participant and I like to show Scarlett’s position in the text; she is describe in the text as a prominent child with bright future ahead despite her disabilities. Positioning also giving roles to the reader as well such as I managed described the reader playing a role of a judge in the article which I’d done earlier and the writer’s purpose of giving a role of a judge to the reader is mainly to persuade to gain get huge sympathy to the girl’s cause.

Linguistic perspective

For this topic, I defined linguistic perspective as a combination of signs which is different in term of meaning for a specific group of people only as it had being generally being constructed sociologically. The role of linguistic approach to literacy is to show how a text works and how to use the knowledge to become critical reader. This topic also enabled the reader to distinguished the global or key elements from the view of linguistics perspectives in the text and the criteria of the aspects in the text itself which are remained constant such as the text can be about something (field), they position reader interpersonally (tenor), they vary in degree of abstraction (mode), they must have some overall shape (genre) and the unchangeable overt or covert ideological position (ideology). All of these aspects are hidden in the text; which I can describe the reader as if he/she is an archeologist at the archeological quest seeking for valuable hidden treasures (linguistic perspective) in the labyrinth of words and sentences.

Speech and speakers

Kress (1994) stated that the experience of language is the experience of texts which he defined as the ability to utilize and understand language reflects the ways how texts shaped us mainly as human, mainly in term of building our self-identity, attitudes towards others people and general knowledge about the world. He also uses the term of ‘discourse’ to explain more on how texts shape identity of people and Kress described discourse as ways of speaking or writing which it promoted a particular view of the world in the way it should. The usage of language can also shaped our assumption as different people in different setting should behave and an excellence example is the behavior towards men and women in the way of both gender should or shouldn’t behave. There are texts that were ‘constructs’ and ‘positions’ for a specific group of people which also Kress referred as ‘ideal reader’, the ideal reader is a person is most likely to agree or persuaded by the view of the world promoted by a text. Finally, the topic teaches us a valuable lesson in changing the way we usually looked at ourselves and also other people alike as there the need to become aware in how a certain texts position us and also to read critically at texts which constructed the world we taken for granted them as natural.

Reference:

Kress, G (1994). Chapter 2 ‘Speech and speakers: the formation of the individual in discourse and genre’. In Linguistics processes and in sociocultural practice. Melbourne: Deakin University Press, Page 33-37 and page 48-49.