Syntax, Translation, and Truth

A similar and related point to that noted in Montogmery's work has been made specifically in the case of syntax (Montgomery 1992; Simpson 1988, 1993; Chilton 1997). The system of “transitivity,” for example (Halliday 1985), provides a set of choices for describing “what is going on in the world.” One such choice is referred to as a “material process,” where what is going on may be described as an action, transaction, or event.

An example from Goodman (1996: 56) clearly illustrates these options:

Goodman (1996:57) comments on the possible reasons behind such selections, suggesting:

Writers with a technical interest in weaponry (in a specialist magazine) might have an interest in obscuring the pain and destruction that weapons cause. Writers who are on the same side as the soldiers might also have an interest in obscuring their army's responsibility for the death of innocent civilians.

Although Goodman is writing in 1996, we can note the similarity with Orwell's comments some 50 years previously (see also Chilton 1997; Stubbs 1996). While many of Goodman's claims may be true, Fairclough (1995) notes that such claims are often built around single, isolated utterances, taking no account of the textual or historical context of production. One might, for example, decide to present the sentences highlighted by Goodman by sequencing the events for the listener in very specific ways:

Announcement

Innocent villagers died last night. It was the soldiers who fired on them. It was the soldiers who killed them!

In the first sentence here it is the villagers who are highlighted, not the soldiers. One might argue, as does Goodman, that such a form obscures those responsible. However, not only are those responsible highlighted in the next two sentences, but the very contrast that is indicated by their exclusion from the first and not the following sentences might lead readers back to the first sentence to confirm their originally hidden responsibility. By inviting readers/listeners to revisit the first sentence, this small text may emphasize not only the responsibility of the soldiers, but that they have tried to avoid that responsibility.

Issues of representation, however, need not only revolve around specific syntactic transformations: without any seemingly manipulative intent one can achieve personal and political goals by relatively uncontroversial structural selections. Consider the general area of evidentiality. Evidentiality refers to the way in which forms of evidence become grammaticalized in different languages and to the attitude one takes or adopts toward this evidence (see papers in Chafe and Nichols 1986), since not all evidence is of a similar type. There is a complex interaction here between such things as beliefs, assumptions, inferences, and physical experiences (sight, hearing, smell, touch, etc.): I saw John yesterday; I believe I saw John yesterday; I was told John was seen yesterday; it is possible that John was seen yesterday.

In a study of political discourse just prior to American entry into the 1990 Gulf War, Dunmire (1995) argues that newspaper articles in both the New York Times and the Washington Post, and statements made by representatives of the American government, actively assisted the USA in positioning itself for intervention. They did this by shifting their concerns from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to a series of claims regarding a potential attack on Saudi Arabia. Dunmire argues that, through an increased use of nominal clauses to represent the threat of Iraq's attack on Saudi Arabia, what was speculation came to be accepted as fact.

Equally, it may be that in some cases it is not simply the syntactic form which is chosen, but rather the relative distribution of particular syntactic selections which carries the political implications. Work by Stubbs (1996) on the distribution of ergative forms within two school geography textbooks may be used to illustrate this point. As Stubbs (1996: 133) explains, ergatives are verbs which: can be transitive or intransitive, and which allow the same nominal group and the same object group in transitive clauses and as subject in intransitive clauses: several firms have closed their factories factories have been closed factories have closed

The important point is that ergatives have agentive and nonagentive uses. This allows ergatives, like transitivity in active and passive sentences, to be used differentially depending on the ideological goals of the text.

Using a computer analysis of two different types of school text, one which looked at human geography from a fact-based perspective (text G), and one which adopted an environmentalist position (text E), Stubbs discovered significant distributional differences between the two:

Relative to text length texts G and E have almost the same number of ergative verbs: slightly fewer than one per 100 words of running text. However, the distribution of transitive, passive, and intransitive choices is significantly different (p < 0.001). Text E has many more transitive forms with correspondingly fewer passives and intransitives. Consistent with explicit orientation to the responsibility for environmental damage, Text E expresses causation and agency more frequently. (Stubbs 1996: 137)

Clearly, text E's author has adopted an explicit political role within the text and this is revealed through both a grammatical and a distributional analysis of specific verb forms.

The idea that similar grammatical categories may be operationalized in different ways is taken up by Kress and Hodge (1979), who have argued that several different types of strategy might be subsumed under a general heading of negation. They explore the use of a variety of options available to politicians which allow them to articulate some contrastive alternatives to what they are saying: I agree with you but…; that is a fair point, nevertheless…; I see your point yet…. However, such stylistic assumptions seem to overlap with other levels of structure such as discourse, for example, and indeed forms such as but, nevertheless, well, etc. are now normally referred to as discourse markers (Schiffrin 1987; Gastil 1993; see Schiffrin, this volume). Wilson (1993) explicitly treats such forms as discourse markers and suggests that they may function differentially in the marking of ideological contrasts. In an analysis of students' debates on specific political subjects, it is noted that “and” may be used for either planned coordination (as in X, Y, and Z) or unplanned coordination (as in X and Y and Z). The choice one adopts relates to the way one wishes to present the elements coordinated by “and.” In political terms, unplanned coordination is used where one wishes the elements to be treated independently (Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland), whereas planned coordination treats the elements as naturally linked (Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland).