M. Pratt 1987

Reference:

Under construction

Review

Excerpts

'What the "subcommunity" approach does not do, however, is see the dominated and dominant in their relations with each other -- this is the limitation imposed by the imaginings of community' (56).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | community | subcommunity |



'In both the linguistic and literary conceptions of subcommunity, then, one readily discerns nostalgia for the lost totality of the larger community. In the literary case, diversity of interpretation is often spontaneously, though by no means necessarily, perceived as a lack of consensus, a loss' (57).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | case | community | interpretation | literary | subcommunity |



'I have bee suggesting that the tendency to postulate social subgroups existing separately from each other gives rise to a linguistics that seek [sic] to capture identity, but not the relationality of social differentiation. It ignores the extent to which dominant and dominated groups are not comprehensible apart from each other' (59).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | differentiation | identity | linguistics |



Pratt advocates 'a linguistics of contact, a linguistics that placed at its centre the workings of language across rather than within lines of social differentiation, of class, race, gender, age. As my example suggests, it is as a critical project that I am discussing this linguistics here, that is, as a project intended to inform a critical scholarly praxis' (61).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | differentiation | gender | language | linguistics |



Referring to the dedication of the Statue of Liberty with dignitaries on the island surrounded by suffragists in boats protesting, Pratt says, 'To include both the island full of dignitaries and the boatload of suffragists in the same picture is to introduce a deep cleavage indeed into the imagined community' (55).

Domains: Under construction |

Key Terms: | community |



Last Modified: July-12-96 10:22:9

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