Authority and Language: An Analysis of Language Privilege

BACKGROUND

Different status of various kinds of people is a common phenomenon in the world. Sex, power, economy, ethnicity, and age are important factors that influence the dominance on range of groups. A strong group tends to have powerful authority among vulnerable group which the situation does not only become a chit-chat but a custom. It is inevitable that grouping people according to their social level has occurred and establish a system of social class. The effect of different qualification or status also spread in almost every element of human life, including a manner of speaking, style or linguistic features. For instance, a renowned professor is not expected to speak like a person who works in a private factory. A businessman can never use the beggars’ accent when talking to his friends and the driver’s government has no authority to speak to the president without restraint or viceversa. It is a clear distinction that the existence of semantics, syntax, phonology, phonetics, vocabulary or style also has a role to distinguish particular person and their position in the society. Therefore it can be easily to identify who belongs to which level.

Based on the latter case, certain groups organized by people who have powerful levels and in this research will deeply focus on language authority occur among individual or intellectuals who have the power to speak and respected by many people. Differences in rank or position in essence is often influence and determine the person's speaking style. Someone who has a higher position tend authoritative in conveying style of speech, when he said something, although only a single word, a subordinate will follow him without hesitant and this was seen as something natural. On the other hand, language as tool to communicate becoming much more complex phenomenon as it can be learned in order to become more authoritative in its practical (Milroy & Milroy, 1999). This becomes interesting discussion because not infrequently there are people who did not have a high position in the government or any agency but the use of language is often more listened to than people who have a high position in formal organization, in a concrete example illustrated when an individual tends to believe special individual (dignitaries honored in a community) rather than the Member of Parliament (have a power of the legislative function in a country). Speech codes in that situation became a permanent variety hereditary and thus the linguistic feature has gradually strong influences as a result of language Authority.

In educational context, it is nature that students want to study the language especially EFL (English as foreign language) at a major university, but the unique thing that arises when they learn to be more authoritative, it presents a system of authoritarian, namely habit differences in the language used by a fraction of a professor or influential lecturer in academic environment against his interlocutor that his colleague or his students as a low speaker status. Although the matter use of English in communicating in Indonesia country was minimal, but the linguistic features owned by professors certainly not least, considering they have been spending almost half of their life to learn the language and followed by the increase of students who want to learn English (EFL) with varying motives.

As a result of the development of sociolinguistic research in recent years, it has become possible that language phenomenon has grown and at the same time attracted more linguists to continue exploring the existence of the applied linguistic especially in education and not some cases that cultures may be especially affected by sociolinguistic demonstrations of authority. It has been also long recognized that students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds express concern about their uncertainty and lack of control in social situations involving people in socially powerful positions. The students from different ethnic often being isolated because of discrimination they felt. “Are their faces so different? Do people think they can’t speak English? Moreover the students feel the sense of power distance between themselves and the school environment that do not create a bridge of understanding and competence for successful interaction.

However there only a few expert discussed the authority of language as their primary research, by that reason the researcher interested in investigating something which is largely unknown by using ethnography design where Mackay & Gass in Heigham & Sakui (2009) add that ‘Ethnographic approaches are particularly valuable when not enough is known about a context or situation’. Departing from the issue the researchers took the initiative to examine more deeply about the authority of language that occurs in daily life and all the parts that involved in educational context. The researcher also tried to find out their feelings, expectancies and presumptions to this diverse situation of language usage in the environment . Based on the explanation above, the researcher will conduct an ethnography research entitling Authority and Language: An Analysis of Language Privilege

Essential Questions in Philosophy

Philosophy, simply stated, is the experience of asking such grand questions about life, about what we know, about what we ought to do or believe in. It is the process of getting to the bottom of things, asking those basic questions about ideas that, most of the time, we simply take for granted, never think of questioning, and probably never put into words. We assume, for example, that some acts are right and some are wrong. Why? We know that it is wrong to take a human life. Why is this? Is it always so? What about in wartime? What about before birth? What about the life of a person who is hopelessly sick and in great pain? What if the world were so overcrowded that millions would die in one way if others did not die in another?

Furthermore, responding to these difficult questions, the answers will reveal a network of beliefs and doctrines that may never have articulated before we first found ourselves arguing about them. Not surprisingly, the first time an individual tries to argue about questions he or she has never before discussed, the result may be awkward, clumsy, and frustrating. That is the point behind philosophical questions in general: to teach us how to think about, articulate, and argue for the things we believe in, and to clarify these beliefs for ourselves and present them in a clear and convincing manner to other people, who may or may not agree with us. Very often, therefore, philosophy proceeds through disagreement, as when two philosophers or philosophy students argue with one another. Sometimes the dispute seems trivial or just a matter of semantics.

However, because what we are searching for a basic knowledge especially in accordance with philosophy of language, with that in mind, let’s begin the discussion with series of somewhat simple but straightforward questions, each of which is designed to think about the questions and express opinions by elaborating what the philosopher have achieved.

Below there are nine questions that the writer will try to elaborate each of them by providing the answer in the next section.

• What is Philosophy of Science?
• What is Philosophy of Language?
• What is Analytic Philosophy of Language?
• What is Philosophy?
• What is Ordinary Philosophy of Language?
• What are the major topics in Philosophy of Language?
• In what ways is Philosophy of Language different from Linguistic Philosophy, Philosophy of Linguistic, and Language Philosophy?
• Who are considered philosophers of language; and what are their major concerns or ideas?
• In what ways will your knowledge on Philosophy of Language contribute to your professional competence as a teacher and/or as a linguist?

Ethnography and Action Research

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

Research is a quest, an attempt to better understand the complex worlds we live in. It is an endeavor that can have the highest possible purpose to help others. In applied linguistics, this means helping language learners, teachers, researchers, materials writers, and program administrators gain a deeper understanding of the multifarious worlds of learning and teaching languages. Qualitative research has evolved over the past three decades into a broad body of knowledge. Within its domain is a wide range of approaches and methods that reflect not only the multiplicity of its root disciplines but also the diversity of contexts and purposes to which it is applied.

A qualitative to research generally involves the researcher in contact with participants in their natural setting to answer questions related to how the participants make sense of their lives. Qualitative researchers may observe the participants and conduct formal and informal interviews to further an understanding of what is going on in the setting from the point of view of those involved in the study. Ethnographic research shares these qualitative traits, but ethnographers more specifically seek understanding of what participants do to create the culture in which they live, and how the culture develops over time.

Qualitative and ethnographic research developed in education in the late 1970s. Ethnographic researchers drew on theory and methods in anthropology and sociology, creating a distinction between ethnography of education (work undertaken by anthropologists and sociologists) and ethnography in education (work undertaken by educators to address educational issues). Other forms of qualitative research drew on theories from the humanities and other social and behavioral sciences, adapting this work to educational goals and concerns, often creating new forms (e.g., a field method approach, interview approaches, and some forms of action research).

The term of Ethnography and Action Research in qualitative research always appear to be essential part of many qualitative discussion, however the research both action research and Ethnoghraphy have their own approach to deal with a certain problem in process of gaining better result. The Action Research for instance have a long story in its development, the research was coined by the social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the United States in about 1944 in connection with research which aimed to promote social action through democratic decision making and active participation of practitioners in the research process. The target group for Lewin's programme of action research was field workers who were trying to improve relations between minority groups in American society. Lewin believed that through action research advances in theory and much needed social change might simultaneously be achieved.

In addition there is a clear understanding that Ethnography research lies on the scope called culture and Action Research is undertaken in the field of workers, teachers, administrators or supervisors in order to change and improve their own practice. The process of each research will bring the researcher into deeper understanding toward the phenomena occur even in everyday practice. Based on this reason, further explanation will include the process of each research and underlining some of data processing both in Ethnography and Action Research.

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