Abstract
The adversarial nature of the Australian media and politics, promoted by politicians, tabloid journalism and the self-appointed shock-jock spokesmen of the community, has intensified over recent years and leaves little room for reasoned debate about domestic and international issues. Currently, points of agreement or points of reconciliation are difficult to secure in a public discourse created through opposition, and this is one of the reasons why I was interested to read Opposition in Discourse: The Construction of Oppositional Meaning.
The author focuses on constructed opposites, which are ‘pairs of words whose oppositional relationship arises specifically from their textual surroundings’ (p. 1). One early example given in the book is a slogan from the 1997 UK General Election – Labour says he’s black. Tories say he’s British – which featured under the picture of a black man in a suit (p. 2). Such an example is considered unconventional as black and British are being constructed as opposite in the context of the political advertisement, with the implication being that the Labour Party is denying the man’s Britishness (p. 2). This type of opposite needs to be interpreted in the context of the text, which contrasts with conventional opposites such as good/bad and hot/cold, which we learn as children, and which need little interpretation if they are used conventionally in a text.
There are five chapters in the publication that are divided into clearly titled sections, which makes the book easy to navigate. The first chapter – ‘What are opposites’? – explores psychological and philosophical explanations of opposition in language and the characteristics of more conventional opposites.
Chapter 2 – ‘How opposites are constructed in texts and what they mean’ – focuses on the triggers for unconventional opposites. One section here concerns the lexical triggers of opposition (p. 47), which often explicitly predict an oppositional relationship in a text and ‘manage to summarize whole arguments in the soundbite of created opposite’ – a strategy that is common in poetry and political reporting (p. 48). In the following example (Express, 1 May 1997), the word turned indicates an opposition is to follow, but ‘steps around’ the expected binary of electable and unelectable and presents ‘a gradable opposition, whereby electable falls halfway between the extremes of unelectable and unstoppable’ (p. 48): The evil genius behind the strategy that has turned the party from unelectable to unstoppable in 10 years. (p. 48)
Over longer stretches of texts, as in the following example from The Guardian newspaper, unconventional opposites can be used creatively to undermine the expectation that is set up: . . . allowed the election to become a choice between the governing party telling the people ‘you’ll get sod all’ and the Opposition saying ‘sorry, you’ll get sod all’. (p. 83)
Here the word choice sets up an expectation of opposition, which is carried through the noun groups of governing party and Opposition but is undermined by what they say.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine unconventional opposites through data from previous research projects undertaken by the author and the work of one of her PhD students (Davies, 2008). The author is concerned about stylistics and includes analysis of constructed opposites from literary texts, specifically the work of two women poets and the openings of novels. This literary focus is explored in Chapter 3 – ‘Literary effects of constructed opposition’.
I was the analysis of opposition in the non-literary texts that was my main interest, however, and this is covered in Chapter 4 – ‘The role of opposition-construction in discourse meanings’. I found the chosen examples significant in terms of the proposition that ‘stereotypical opposite as a complementary is deeply entrenched in many aspects of Western society and it has very serious repercussions for us all’ (p. 27). Examples of unconventional opposites are drawn from a range of non-literary text-types, including political advertising and newspaper articles from the 1997 UK election, responses by writers to the 9/11 attacks, the textual construction of the female body in women’s magazines and articles about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed which were published in 2005.
Through her analysis the author makes a number of points about the contextual features of constructed opposites. Texts create ‘new and unusual opposites for their own purposes and these opposites are more or less easily interpreted by readers’ (p. 129) because, as language users, they draw on their understanding of more usual opposites and they recognize the grammatical and semantic patterning which provides evidence that an opposition is being set up in a text. Patterning includes the use of such grammatical devices as parallel, coordinating and comparative structures.
In the final chapter of the book – ‘The significance of opposition in language and texts’ – the author attempts to put a stylistic analysis of opposition into linguistic theory. Jeffries opts for a cognitive linguistics approach with an emphasis on contextual and cognitive theories of the reader, and uses Lakoff’s (1982) idealized cognitive model ‘in [her] attempts to understand the cognitive basis of constructed oppositeness’ (p. 115). Following the work on metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), she ‘would like to make the case that . . . opposition is at least as important a conceptual structuring device as metaphor’ (p. 122) and calls for more attention to be given to the topic.
I agree with Jeffries that the interpretation of unconventional opposites relies on the reader’s ability to recognize the opposition being set up and to understand its role in the text. In this way the reader learns ‘about any differences between the reader’s actual world and the opposition-construction of the text world’ (p. 126). Her analysis of a range of constructed opposites from literary and non-literary texts adds importantly to our understanding of this language device that is one technique being used to construct a worldview of opposites, of them and us.
The author states that there is a ‘possibility that political opposition-creation is a force at work in our world’ and that ‘it seems likely that the power of the media, and politicians through the media, is hegemonic in nature and has the capacity to influence the world-view of many of the world’s citizens’ (p. 122). This requires attention to be paid to unconventional opposites in texts as part of critical literacy development, and this in turn needs additional analyses from a linguistic viewpoint which sees them as socially constructed and an attempt to naturalize the oppositional relationships which are set up in texts. A socially oriented approach to unconventional opposites would enhance the work of Jeffries and our understanding of how a reader’s background and experience of reading enables them to recognize the opposition being set up, to understand its role in the text and how it is positioning them in relation to the opposition.