| Speech, whether oral or written, is a
used commodity. If we are to be heard, we must {{U}}(1) {{/U}} our words
from those {{U}}(2) {{/U}} to us within families, peer groups, societal
institutions, and political networks. Our utterances position us both in an
immediate social dialogue {{U}}(3) {{/U}} our addressee and,
simultaneously, in a larger ideological one {{U}}(4) {{/U}} by history
and society. We speak as an individual and also, as a student or teacher, a
husband or wife, a person of a particular discipline, social class, religion,
race, or other socially constructed {{U}}(5) {{/U}}. Thus, to varying
degrees, all speaking is a {{U}}(6) {{/U}} of others' words and all
writing is rewriting. As language {{U}}(7) {{/U}}, we experience
individual agency by infusing our own intentions {{U}}(8) {{/U}} other
people's words, and this can be very hard. {{U}} (9) {{/U}}, schools, like into churches and courtrooms, are places {{U}}(10) {{/U}} people speak words that are more important than they are. The words of a particular discipline, like those of "God the father" or of "the law," are being articulated by spokespeople for the given authority. The {{U}}(11) {{/U}} of the addressed, the listener, is to acknowledge the words and their {{U}}(12) {{/U}}. In Bakhtin's {{U}}(13) {{/U}}, "the authoritative word is located in a distanced zone, organically connected with a {{U}}(14) {{/U}} that is felt to be hierarchally higher." {{U}} (15) {{/U}}, part of growing up in an ideological sense is becoming more "selective" about the words we appropriate and, {{U}}(16) {{/U}}, pass on to others. In Bakhtin's {{U}}(17) {{/U}}, responsible people do not treat {{U}}(18) {{/U}} as givens, they treat them as utterances, spoken by particular people located in specific ways in the social landscape. Becoming alive to the socio-ideological complexity of language use is {{U}}(19) {{/U}} to becoming a more responsive language user and, potentially, a more playful one too, able to use a {{U}}(20) {{/U}} of social voices, of perspectives, in articulating one's own ideas. |