Week Nine: Semiotics
May 20, 2009
Mukin, A. “Reporting War: Grammar as Covert Operation” Dissent (2003), 14 – 20
Words and language are inherently political. That is, the meaning within language is understood according to varying beliefs and ideologies. As such, we must acknowledge the fact that language and words used in the media we interact with are populated with ideologies of the creator to convey their particular view to the audience. In “Reporting War: Grammar as Covert Operation,” Lukin presents a sample of the same news event from various publications, examining how varied actors, actions, events, and circumstances can convery very different messages that carry particular political ideologies of the writer or the publication. Through the way that words are used and organised, responsibility and blame can be assigned in an active way, or portray a more passive voice. Lukin’s unpacking of varied news articles on the same event has effectively portrayed the way in which language can be organised in different ways to give politicised meanings. Lukin herself cannot avoid placing meaning in her language, a struggle which Mikhail Bakhtin terms as “heteroglossia” where language is a site of struggle between authorial power and intention, and the ability of the audience to place their own value judgements on what they read or view. Having this understanding of language and meaning can increase the complexities in the interaction between an audience, the media, and media’s producers. Media’s messages are undoubtedly influencing its audiences, but a question of power comes into play in who has more power in the meaning that is understood through language and words? This language-related influence of the media is an essential aspect in seeing how media plays a strong role in culture and everyday life, in the way that an audience is exposed to ideology and opinions, which may highly affect the audience’s own opinions, depending on the meaning that is read into the language, whether it is authorial-intended or not.
