"Washington Bullets: Looking at Critical Discourse Analysis"






INTRODUCTION



A recent review article in the journal Applied Linguistics began with the following seemingly positive accolade for a branch of sociolinguistic research that has so far failed to account for itself in terms of a completely watertight theory:

What is most plainly distinctive about critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) is its sense of responsibility and its commitment to social justice This is linguistics with a conscience and a cause, one which seeks to reveal how language is used and abused in the exercise of power and the suppression of human rights..[..]..CDA has inspired a reconsideration of the purposes of language description, and it has pursued its own purposes with vigour, acting upon its own description of discourse as a mode of social action. (Widdowson, 98: 19/1: 136)

What is plainly distinctive about the last sentence in the above quotation is the repetition of the epithet 'own' in qualifying 'purposes' and 'description'. It seems that Widdowson is about to supply his own description of what CDA is really concerned with and that this may entail shortcomings inherent in a perspective that stems from it being wholly their 'own'. Indeed he does go on to point out that so far, no rigorous theory of CDA can be said to have been put forward, and that CDA claims to reveal 'neutral' and underlying meanings that will ultimately be able to expose the intent inherent in any text.

While it may be true that CDA has so far failed to successfully characterise its many efforts at revealing the social relationships behind any instance of linguistic activity with a totally coherent and closed system, from the perspective of language activity as a dynamic semiotic process, as an open system of meaning potential, such a failure can hardly be seen to be detrimental. Furthermore, claims of using linguistic analysis to read off the 'deep' meaning of any utterance or text, seem to be at variance with the aims and approaches of CDA and its practitioners as far as I understand them; aims which might be more profitably characterised as attempts to reveal relationships between participants, events and linguistic activity in a social, or community-based context of interaction, rather than seeing linguistic texts as objects whose ultimate meaning is there to be discovered once and for all.

In their own words, three sets of practioners who could be included under the umbrella of CDA characterise their activities in the following ways:


CDA is consolidated here as a three-dimensional framework where the aim is to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another: analysis of (spoken or written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, distribution and consumption) and analysis of discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice. A characteristic of the framework is that it combines a Bakhtinian theory of genre (in analysis of discourse practice) and a Gramscian theory of hegemony (in analysis of sociocultural practice). (p.2)

The distinction between what is explicit and what is implicit in a text is of considerable importance in sociocultural analysis. Analysis of implicit content can provide valuable insights into what is taken as given, as common sense. It also gives a way into ideological analysis of texts, for ideologies are generally implicit assumptions. One might also include on the presence-absence scale, the relative foregrounding or backgrounding of explicit textual content. (Fairclough, 1995: 5)

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The meanings of writers are the traces and effects of innumerable prior acts of reading, realized only through text, again produced in specific contexts and conditions. Readers and writers are antagonistic and interdependent to different degrees, and no analysis can afford to forget either dimension. However, it is also proper for analysts to have strategic reasons for being more interested in one direction than another, tracking backwards down the chain of intertextual connections or forwards along the series of textual effects that flow from a chosen text or discursive moment. (Hodge and Kress,1993: 176)

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Instead of talking about meaning-making as something that is done by minds, I prefer to talk about it as a social practice in a community. It is a kind of doing that is done in ways that are characteristic of a community, and its occurrence is part of what binds the community together and helps to constitute it as a community. In this sense we can speak of a community, not as a collection of interacting individuals, but as a system of interdependent social practices: a system of doings, rather than a system of doers. These social meaning-making practices are also material processes that bind the community together as a physical ecosystem. (p.9)

We orient our meanings toward prospective audiences and we orient them within a system of different viewpoints available in the community toward our topic. These orientations involve value preferences; they commit us to a political stance and a social point of view on our subject and toward our audiences...(p.12)

There are the persistant habits of speaking and acting characteristic of some social group, through which it constructs its worldview: its beliefs, opinions and values. It is through discourse formations that we construct the very objects of our reality, from electrons to persons, from words to 'discourse formations'. We necessarily do so from some social point of view, with some cultural system of beliefs and assumptions, and some systems of values, interests and biases. We do this not as individuals alone, but as members of communities, and however we do it, whatever discourse formations we deploy to make sense of the world, our formations always have systematic sociological relations to their formations.
(Lemke, 1995: 24)




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What follows is essentially an example of how linguistic analysis, specifically that based on a systemic-functional approach, and the aims of critical discourse analysis in particular, can be used in order to reveal some of the processes of interpretation that can be brought into play in looking at any text. Such an analysis should not be considered to be the meaning of the text, rather it claims to look at social conditions as an illuminatory backdrop to linguistic analysis, trace some of the assumptions relied upon in a social context through a discussion of some of the more evident intertextual references and metaphors which would be available to the projected audience of such a text, as well as highlighting its other formal features which could be seen as claiming a solidarity with such an audience, while at the same time expressing distance towards certain groups represented in the text through other linguistic means.

In other words, analysis hopes to draw relationships between the text itself as a linguistic object, the material social conditions in which such a text was conceived and which are in some way inserted into the form through the projection of a subject position (or a reader position, for the text), and the processes of semiosis itself; the making of signs and signification through the marshalling of social resources which of course includes the linguistic. Such an analysis becomes an interpretant itself, but readers will bring their own reading to bear on the text so that it is hoped that a purely static object, an interpretation, is not the only result, but a juncture in an ongoing dialogue about the limits of linguistic interpretation.


ORDERS OF DISCOURSE



(refer to Appendix: "Washington Bullets" The Clash. c. 1981)

Lyrics of the song "Washington Bullets" from the Clash album "Sandanista" released in 1981, form the text under discussion, songs remaining as an indication of an ideological formation or set of assumptions prevalent amongst people who may be defined as members of a subculture to which the songs were addressed at a particular time. This is not to say that the ideology itself is necessarily outdated, or no longer prevalent amongst people in various walks of life even years later, but that the feelings of solidarity engendered in and by in such songs have passed, due to other social factors: the music industry is reliant on fashion, and on new generations who find music gives them a sense of identity. Also, this text, being an example of a broad genre which could be categorised as "protest song" addresses itself not only to an audience, but also to an issue which was historically contemporaneous with the song's release. In other words, the conditions of consumption have changed since the song was released. Therefore, analysis should take account of this twin orientation to both the propositional content of the text, its view of 'reality' as constituted in the text, and its construction of a reader/subject position, its interpersonal dimension.

The discourse formations behind the actual lyrics of songs are pretty much unconstrained by conventions, even within particular song genres such as that of 'pop song', except that length and some rhyming may be of a predictable nature, as well as the actual themes, treated here as forming the main defining characteristic of a song genre. Of course this does not mean that some types or genres of songs do not have lyrics whose linguistic forms (as well as general thematic elements) do not conform quite strictly to certain patterns (Country and Western songs come to mind, and Japanese Enka seem to employ a somewhat limited lexical pool), but implies that formal elements, or texture do not always contribute to the categorization of songs as members of a particular genre.

The history of the Protest Song as a genre can be traced almost unbroken back to the Black American Blues of the early part of this century. Not only the lyrics mark this musical form, of course. Indeed, to discuss the lyrics as separate from the musical form does a particular type of violence to the 'meaning' of the songs as whole texts, but for the purposes of discussion here, aspects of the music itself can only be addressed very briefly. Music identified with this genre has a certain structure; it uses recognisable technical mannerisms, and the use of particular instruments and vocal styles also contribute to the identification of a variety of styles within the genre (cf. Oliver in Bigsby (ed) 1976). To make a complete critical analysis of a particular song, and especially one stemming from this tradition, would require a more detailed reference to the conditions of the society which gave rise to such songs and in what ways the tradition has been handed down. The musical form and its various performance styles and the way in which technical features of the music are complemented by lyrics in this genre is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper.

What is needs mentioning, however, is that occasionally, a form of protest song becomes popular to the extent that it becomes saleable. In other words, the conditions of production and consumption result in the curious paradox of having what is at first conceived of as a protest against market forces in general, the institutions which make for power structures which are resisted in these types of discourses, also provide the means for their distribution and wide dispersion. Such times seem to be marked by the existence of disaffected subcultures, comprised of people who are generally between fifteen and thirty, who are fairly well-informed and who have some disposable income which can be used to purchase these recordings, or who will be the target audience for advertisers in magazines, televison and radio programs which play or refer to such types of music.

Another way of looking at such processes is to note that mass culture tends to value 'information' so that people become competitive over how much they know, and who knew it first: information-producers compete with each other to give the public more and better 'news'. The intended audience therefore needs disposable income, because otherwise such music would not become widely available, or 'known about' - fashionable - due to the workings of the means of production and distribution of 'popular music'. This also seems dependent to a large extent on companies and organisations whose existence requires that their activities be profitable.

The specific cultural context of this particular text is twofold: the mass culture of Britain in the late 70's and early 80's, and the reactionary subculture to whom the song is addressed, and with whom the singer/songwriters identify. The British milieu is important, because the means of production and distribution were in a state of flux at the time, with independent record labels flourishing.

These labels supported alternative styles of music, and British-based radio stations (there were only two of any significance, the BBC was one) were not afraid to give airtime to any song or music which they perceived had some popular support. The way had been made more open by the earlier and concurrent popularity of Punk Rock, whose 'anarchic' technical style and disdainful lyrics would never have been acceptable for example, with big radio companies in the United States, who have always seemed fearful of the withdrawal of sponsorship should offence be given to either conservative audience members, or large sponsors. Once chart success in the UK had been observed, however, other countries began to give the products airtime and magazine space.

Personal experience living in London during the years 1978-1979 leads me to believe that the election of a conservative government in the UK at the time, provoked some measure of distress in younger disaffected, and from their perspective, perhaps disenfranchised, consumers over the direction of politics and mass culture. These groups were no doubt eager to find a voice in the face of a power machine over which they felt they had little control, and from which they felt alienated. People with menial and meaningless jobs seemed to feel most betrayed by the ideas and rhetoric of Thatcherism, and sought identity elsewhere.

The instance of the genre from which the text is taken, flourished from about 1978 to 1985, and was generally referred to as 'New Wave' music to distinguish it from Punk Rock, with which it had many obvious technical and ideological similarities, and to intimate that it represented a change from the emptiness of the other musical forms popular at the time, forms such as disco and commercial pop whose themes remained steadfastly ignorant of any serious social conditions.

Who named it this? Those with the most to gain: music critics of the subculture and the musical publishing industry who were intent on knowing it and defining it first, and for a price. This is not to detract from the received 'power' of such alternative ideology as a manifest means of expressing solidarity with others sharing similar worldviews, but it nevertheless points to the contradictory nature of mass resistant readings of perceived hegemonic power structures, as it ponts to the nature of the dissemination of resistant ideologies which are in turn dependent on at least sections of these same hegemonic structures.

That the text is directed at a specific audience only, is evident from the musical form itself: basic rock, with some subtle differences in mannerisms which set it apart from other rock forms. The actual musical form erects an effective barrier against any listeners not familiar with, and positive towards such musical style. Harsh rhythms, strident guitar riffs and gutteral voice quality help in maintaining this solidarity-distance relationship( or 'disaffiliation') with respect to those who might also find the lyrics offensive. This particular song is somewhat 'light' in musical texture, however, and may be more easily approached as a whole text by listeners unfamiliar with this particualr genre, mainly due to musical intertextuality: the melody and instrumentation make use of Latin American techniques and instruments in an overt reference to the theme of the song which addresses, initially, social conditions in Nicuragua.

The lyrics also refer to the subculture's own self-evident truths, or common sense assumptions; for example, that the USA interferes in the domestic affairs of other countries without being asked, and indeed without being welcome. Resistant readings would naturally arise in anyone resistant to the musical form itself, however, but any 'patriotic' American, for example, might find the lyrics objectionable, because the inference is very plain that America interferes in the affairs of other states with only its own interests at heart. The songwriters have obviously assumed that its listeners will share knowledge regarding the 'culpability' of the USA. It also presupposes a shared knowledge of recent world history: their aim is not to teach us anything, but to set up a feeling of recognition and solidarity, especially with the other 'oppressed' people of the world.

The general tenor of the text is that we all know what is really going on in the world, we can't be fooled, and we are not alone. This is contradicted slightly, however, with a certain stance in relation to the audience which manifests itself in the last part of the text, which will be taken up later.


TEXTUAL ELEMENTS



The main examples of intertextuality in the text, apart from the overt musical references, are made through signifying a background related to Latin America. In the actual performance of the work, through the use of a mock Latin-American accent in the pronunciation of the word 'America', for example, which seems reminiscent of the the song "America" in the musical 'West Side Story", the bands manages to allude to another host of associations related to the experiences of Hispanic people in and of America.
A more notable intertextuality, or manifest interdiscursivity, occurs in the use of Spanish during the song. A spanish-speaking informant thought that the phrase used as a type of refrain in the song might be one of two things: <disparadas>, which means '(bullets) were shot' (ie, in the passive voice) or <das varada>, meaning, 'the truth was spoken'.

Process types evident in the text seem to be weighted towards material processes and the relational. This is not surprising, given the tenor of the text, and the presuppositions cited above; relational processes are consistant with the writers' assumptions that the audience is able to agree with their attribution of qualities to the participants named or referred to in the text, and express a high degree of certainty, which is teamed with very little use of overt modal operators:


the cocaine guns are jammed downtown

What is responsible for an earlier cited (in the lyrics) killing of a 'youth of fourteen' are ' the cocaine guns', not of course made of cocaine but financed by the sale of cocaine.The metaphor by ellipsis is effective: the question does not need forming: to whom is the cocaine sold? ie, Where does the money come from? And furthermore, the use to which the money is put is implied as a two way indictment of forces using such guns. As well, the guns 'are jammed', an exaggeration, we feel, which is not so far from 'the truth'.


the killing clowns are blood-money men

The money in question is partly used to pay men to kill: they are 'blood-money men'. Furthermore, they are 'killing clowns': not a pretty metaphor, combining as it does, the image of a humorous children's entertainer, and 'killing'. Use of the definite article the marks the epithet as a foregone conclusion, even though this is the first reference we meet to these people as agents; previously the killing had been done by weapons bought by unsavoury means, or people had been killed ('got shot') in an agentless passive construction. As stated above, these men are not killing for an idea, but for money - money paid in exchange for blood: they are characterised in this way through these attributive devices, as having no morals, which would be bad enough, but also the reference to 'clown' connotes people who are not so much funny, as stupid. These terms tend to characterise the actors as small, and take away some of their power.


those Washington bullets again

Not only are the bullets supplied by Washington, in an indirect, but well-understood reference to the government of the United States, but the declarative 'those' serves to indicate that we have heard of them before, through the use of anaphoric reference, despite this being the first mention of 'bullets' in the text, although lexical cohesion is supplied through the obvious relationship of guns to bullets. This is further underlined by the use of again : We all know about how America supplies bullets, either literally or metaphorically, to organisations who do not necessarily use them for the good of the public, and here, it is happening 'again'.

Later on in the text, we can see another instance of attribution teamed with relational processes which leave no room for disagreement:


For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in Nicuragua,
There was no interference from America

The set phrase of the first line here, cues us to expect that there were many previous instances of what the actor involved was said NOT to do in this instance.
Another similar reading could lead us to believe that Nicuragua has 'had' many revolutions, but yet, each time that they did, America did not raise a finger. We are left to wonder what the difference is this time. This time, 'there was no interference from America': it's a statement of fact. The writers assume that we KNOW what is different this time, assumed knowledge needs no explanation. Furthermore, if we take this section of text as a unit utterance, in terms of the grammar, it is comprised of a long hypotactic clause in the Theme position, which is marked in English, as it does not function as the main clause, which is 'normal' in the Theme position. It thus functions as a temporal orientation for the Rheme in which New information is given. This second clause begins with an existential 'there' in the subject position, again serving to introduce a participant -in this case 'no interference' attributed to America - and this deferring to the end of the utterance gives the impression that this new information might be something unexpected under normal circumstances.

Material processes in the text are more in evidence than any other processes, probably because the writers wish to remind us of what has happened: the facts/history, from which we should be able to draw our own conclusions. But 'history' is a reported thing, and therefore open to distortion: each hearer draws a different conclusion, each reporter selects what s/he thinks salient. In the case of this song, however, the selected occurrences are to be told to the converted. They are presumed to already know their history, and these lyrics are here to reassure the audience that their world view is also shared by others. The text infers by an absence of explanatory material as much as by deixis. Most of the references to actors and participants are made through metaphor using references that are dependent on such shared knowledge. By listening to this song, and others like it, the hearers can experience a sense of 'fellowship' or solidarity with others who not only understand the references themselves, but also the allusions made through metaphor.

Material clauses are characterized by Martin et al (1997: 103) as " clauses [which] construe doings and happenings..[..]..changes in the material world that can be perceived, such as motion in space..and change in physical make up...[..].. The one inherent participant is the Actor - the one doing the material deed. In addition, there may also be a Goal - a participant impacted by the doing.."


Oh Mama, Mama look there!
The children are playing in the street again

The 'innocent' have nowhere else to play, so even though they know it is dangerous they keep doing it. This section is an example of manifest interdiscursivity - the singer/songwriter is not speaking this or telling us this himself, but has co opted another voice, that of an unidentified youth telling his 'Mama' what others of his peer group are still doing despite what happened earlier:


A youth of fourteen got shot down there

Passive voice indicates the youth's innocence, as the recipient, the goal of the action, if his age does not already do so; it was done to him by an unknown Actor, perhaps one of the 'killing clowns'.
In the following case, the Goal, what is acted upon or used in the material process, are Washington bullets, in the simple present continuous tense, active voice, to use traditonal grammatical tags, and this attributes the origin of the bullets to the state of America, while the process continues in the present:


blood-money men (are)
shooting those Washington bullets again



Other examples of transitivity expressed in material processes:

before the army came ...

(and did something which we need not even mention, as it is common knowledge)

Havana fought a playboy

the people fought the leader and off he flew

(You) find an Afghan rebel that the Moscow bullets missed (ie, did not kill)
(You) stop any mercenary
(You) check the British bullets in his armory.

The last stanza of the text neatly turns the focus back on the listener, directing an understood 'you' in the subject and theme position to do the things mentioned, to become the actor in this process, and in the process, be reminded that specific ideologies are not the property of the governments of any one nation. The writers/singers are British, so they most closely identify with, and direct their song to a British audience. The last line reminds the listener that their own government is not so clean either, but to this audience, such a reminder may represent something hopeful, because most of the listeners would have been opposed to, or resistant towards their governments' interests anyway.

In effect they have used a theme in the text which has introduced a set of Given, or assumed knowledge items on the part of the audience about an Other in the form of an imperialist America making unwanted interference in world affairs, usually through underhand means. The last part of the text aligns their own government, and the power structures against which they assume others are also struggling, with those larger forces in the world who are represented as having antithetical morals, who kill for profit, and who do not respect human rights.

The choice of imperative mood realising, in effect, a series of commands to do something, is also significant in that it sets up an interpersonal relationship between songwriter and listener which construes the listener as slightly passive, and may carry implications of power vis a vis the listener, which indicates that the singers are not only claiming solidarity, but also distancing themselves from such passive people who may think that America is the only one to blame - in this case the implication may be that members of the audience themselves may be also blameworthy for knowing it to happen yet doing nothing. Furthermore, verbal commands, where others tell one what to do without any face-saving politeness conventions (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1987) are known to be means of incitement in interpersonal relationships because they foreground a distance relationship, i.e. one of power.

The few mental processes represented in the text are in a similar vein:


Remember Allende (of course we do...)

Please remember Victor Jara (this might be more difficult)

Those Washington bullets want castro dead

Here, the bullets are portrayed as the Senser in a mental process, wanting Castro dead, as the Phenomenon, which in terms of functional grammar is marked to the extent that it is never said to occur, in other words, 'things' cannot be the Sensers in a mental process.

Verbal processes represented in the text also form part of a command in the same area of the text, with similar presumed effects:

Ask him what he thinks of voting Communist,
Ask the Dalai Lama in the hills of Tibet,

Other verbal processes are performed by inanimate objects; the Sayers are "every cell in Chile" which "will tell the cries of the tortured men". The brutality of the Pinochet regime is aptly referred to by the inanimate nature of the informants. These informants are full ('every cell'), and what's more they are full of tortured men (another relational attribute).


PARTICIPANTS



As was seen above, metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche are used as way of introducing inanimate objects into the text as perhaps "neutral observers" or "reliabale informants" in participant roles.The characterisation of other participants is generally achieved through naming them in conjunction with some process or attribute.
A child opens the text with a cry to its mother, in an example of "manifest" interdiscursivity that draws our attention to the plight of the children in his/her neighbourhood, who are likely to get shot at any time, by another of the participants, the "killing clowns".
For three stanzas, the main protagonist, America, is merely alluded to through the naming of its capital city, Washington. This device of alluding to "the state" through the naming of the city where it has its government, is used in two other places to refer to Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. In some ways, this could be taken to be another instance of interdiscursivity, using a type of "newspeak". The media in general are often seen by groups of the socially sensitive to be responsible - or irresponsible - for reporting that supports received ideology associated with capitalist hegemonies, and indeed many critical discourse analysts have turned their attention to the discursive formations evident in newspapers and other forms of journalism to investigate the linguistic means by which people are encouraged to believe in the validity of certain ideologies.This metonymic device also ironically draws attention to the fact that America's arch enemies are also politically organised along similar lines, despite protests that they may be diametrically oppposite - all have central governments ostensibly set up for the protection and service of their own constituents. In addition, the use of the name of the capital city of a nation state seems to imply an impersonal aspect to their activities, and refers also to a political agenda.

The 'army' that 'came' in Chile, although the country is not named, is one of the actors, and we are left to understand that this is the well-known army of Pinochet, backed by Washington. If we 'remember Allende in the days before' the army came, we will remember that his government was socialist, and therefore, anti-American.
Victor Jara is an actual named 'participant', if we can 'remember' him:
This common knowledge presupposed by the songwriters, was not known to me, nor most of my friends. A little research revealed that he was a singer of little note until he dared to sing songs of protest against the military rule (in the Santiago stadium ).
'They' attempted to stop him by cutting off his hands, presumably to prevent him from accompanying himself on guitar. When he continued to sing, the army representatives proceeded to cut off his feet, and according to my informant, he continued singing until he bled to death. Here, Washington bullets are blamed again; their function here is to symbolise the links between these types of incidents and an America which did nothing to stop such activities, and indeed may have backed the regime. Further indication of solidarity with the Spanish speaking victims of these army manoeuvres, is given when Spanish (the national language of Chile - but of course, we know) is used in the song to express the link between the army's behaviour and the bullets of Washington -the <disparadas> or <das varada> cited earlier.


And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961
Havana fought a playboy in the Cuban sun,

Reference is also made to Havana fighting a 'playboy', a rather disparaging characterisation of President Kennedy, whose exploits were well-known but generally ignored by the American public who tended idolise JFK, and this constitutes an obvious dig at one of America's sacred idols. In this manner listeners can enjoy the vicarious slandering of one America's heroes, without him even being mentioned by name. However, the presupposition that the audience will readily be able to idenitfy the referent, is bolstered by the mentioning of a time and place which firmly identifies the participant (here, the Goal of a material process) in this case. Nevertheless such metaphorical epithets introduced into a text as 'common knowledge' point to a subject construction of the reader/listener who is projected as having such extra-linguistic knowledge and presupposes also that such addressees will agree with the attributive nature of the term.


For Castro is a colour that's redder than red -
Those Washington bullets want Castro dead,
(for) Castro is a colour
That will earn him a spray of lead
.

Castro is mentioned by name, and cynically referred to as 'redder than red'. We understand what the word 'red' refers to in this instance, but its use here underlines the trivial and self centred nature of the reason Washington 'wants Castro dead': no more than because of his political colour.
It may be enough to say that the term 'Washington bullets' can signify a range of interpretants in a metonymic relationship to the whole of the state, in political terminology, of America, as was posited earlier. Also of course, the reference to cowboy shootouts with 'spray of lead' seems likely to be made by most listeners:


Castro is a colour which will earn him a spray of lead

Not many people are actually familiar with bullets or what they are made of, yet we are doubtless all able to make the connection required between "spray of lead" and a "hail of bullets". The reference here, again outside the text itself and pointing to other discourse domains owes much to the genre of the American Western, and gains significance with its suggestion of the wild west and the 'gung ho' thinking that most people might associate with it.


MARKERS OF COHESION, INTERTEXTUALITY, EVALUATION: MEANINGS IN CONTEXT


It could be said at this point that cohesion in the text is actually achieved by a great many references to places and attributes which rely on shared knowledge and beliefs in order to make sense:

In the Bay of Pigs in 1961..

If we do not know our recent history, we would have no idea what incident this refers to, who was involved, or even where the Bay of Pigs is. We need to be aware that Havana is the capital of Cuba, that Castro is the leader of the Cuban state, that Cuba is a communist state, that JFK tended to enjoy the high life, and that Communism is signified by the colour red, in order to understand anything at all in this stanza. All these references are assumed to have some common significance in the minds of the audience.
That the whole text relies on this shared knowledge to achieve its effect seems obvious at this point, and for this reason the text is a good example of how texts are 'fissured' by a myriad of matrices of both knowledge and projected readership:

The text (any given text) ceases to be a self evident unity, but appears as a relatively accidental site that marks where a series of discursive processes have briefly collided. Producers (authors, speakers) likewise lose the semblance of unity, and become channels through which various authors and agencies speak and act: the fissured authors of fissured texts. (Hodge and Kress, 1993:181)


Another textual channel is opened by the use of the phrase, "Human Rights in America" also sung in a mock Latin-American accent, and this sounds like a cynical challenge to the often heard American cry cited as a reason for the need to interfere in the domestic affairs of other nations, while the listener will also read it as an oblique reference to what we all 'know': that America abuses so-called 'human rights' even at home.

The name Sandanista is sung as a type of refrain several times, and it is left to the listener to make the connection between "the leader and off he flew, with a Washington bullet what else could he do.." and the name Sandanista. It might be more difficult now, but at the time, most people listening to the song would have had no trouble. We 'know' that there have been plenty of revolutions in Nicuragua in which America has interfered due to their being 'popular' uprisings. But in this case, the elected leader was sprouting a different ideology, one that Washington did not approve of.

As mentioned previously, overt indicators of modality seem almost completely absent in the text. The subject is entirely hidden as an 'I' entity. However, there is a feeling of - "we are all aware of -" in the first four stanzas. In the last stanza, it is more particularly addressed to the listener, not only to remember, think about, and feel disgusted, but also to do something, and here, one of the only modal auxilliaries in the text appears, suggesting that it might be difficult to find any Afghan rebels still alive:


If you can find an Afghan rebel that the Moscow bullets missed...

In other words, the degree of probability is very low, an expression of opinion by the writer regarding the 'facts' of history.
However, as modality in general refers to the degree of investment the speaker/writer has towards either his/her propositions or proposals, in grammatical terms, or towards the mimetic plane in social semiotic terms, it may be possible to infer from the text as a whole the level of commitment towards the areas of knowledge - their relative 'truth' or validity - by examining the finiteness of the verbal processes in the text which indicate the speaker's certainty. Therefore, the lack of any other indicators of uncertainty attached to the verbal processes indicates a high value of modality in the text. In other words, almost all the verbs are finite, and the tenses, another indicator of modality are generally simple present or present in the present (usually called present continuous tense, the unmarked, most certain or usuality-expressing form of the verb). Furthermore, in the last stanza, these simple present tense processes are in the imperative mood, marking a phase shift between more or less simple recount in the first stanzas to direct address of the audience in the last. In this case, the interpersonal relationship between the listener and the singer/songwriter is signalled by this shift in tenor.


In a war-torn swamp stop any mercenary

Mercenaries, we all know, are morally inferior to those who fight for an ideology. Mercenaries are indeed 'blood-money men', paid to kill. Who else might gain from their activities? Here, British interests are named, in a parallelism which echoes the metonymy associated with the bullets from Washington:


...check the British bullets in his armory

The implication is that you will find some, and that while we are quiet about it, while we the audience do nothing to prevent this, we are none of us 'blameless'. The text is therefore a neat combination of expressions of high affinity with the mimetic plane (thus semantic-meaning network) -- the discursive formations which realise the social conditions with which the songwriters and the projected audience identifies, and the propositions they make about their own world view -- and at the same time, it expresses a low affinity with this social 'reality'. Through the device of the imperative mood in the last stanzas, the addressees are cast at the same time into a subject position of identity also with those 'reality' conditions which have already been characterized as a recognizably unethical state, something with which listeners would not wish to identify. The contradictions inherent in such a text, which is fissured along lines of ideation and interpersonality, which slides or oscillates between statements of high and low affinity with both the projected audience and the propositions and proposals introduced in the text, mark it as a site signifying areas of social change in process, and as such seems to characterize a certain mood which was prevalent at the time of the song's release.


Alexanne Don. June. 1998

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APPENDIX:


WASHINGTON BULLETS


THE CLASH (c.1981)

Oh Mama, Mama look there!
The children are playing in the street again
Don't you know what happened down there?
A youth of 14 got shot down there
The cocaine guns are jammed downtown
The killing clowns are blood-money men,
Shooting those
Washington bullets again.

As every cell in Chile will tell -
The cries of the tortured men,
Remember Allende in the days before
Before the army came,
Please remember Victor Jara in the Santaigo stadium -
<disparadas>
Those Washington bullets again.

And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961
Havana fought a playboy in the Cuban sun,
For Castro is a colour that's redder than red -
Those Washington bullets want Castro dead,
(for) Castro is a colour that will earn him a
spray of lead.

Sandanista....

For the very first time ever
When they had a revolution in Nicuragua,
There was no interference from
America - Human Rights in America -
The people fought the leader and off he flew,
With a Washington bullet, what else could he do?
....Sandanista......

If you can find an Afghan rebel that the Moscow bullets missed,
Ask him what he thinks of voting Communist,
Ask the Dalai Lama in the hills of Tibet,
How many monks did the Chinese get?
In a war-torn swamp, stop any mercenary
And check the British bullets in his armory.
.....Sandanista.........



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Fairclough, Norman 1995. Crtical Discourse Analysis. Longman: New York

Halliday, M.A.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Hodge, R. and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Cornell University Press.

Hodge, Robert and G. Kress. Language As Ideology. (2nd ed) 1993. Routledge

Kress, G. 1985. Linguistic processes in sociocultural practice. Deakin University Press.

Lemke, Jay 1995. Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis.

Martin James R., C. M. I. M. Matthiessen & C. Painter 1995. Working with Functional Grammar: a workbook for Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Oliver, Paul. 'Blue-eyed Blues: The Impact of Blues on European Popular Culture'. in C.W.E. Bigsby (ed) 1976. "Approaches to Popular Culture". Popular Press. Boston

Widdowson, H.G. Review Article: The Theory and Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis. Applied Linguistics, 19/1: 136-151. March, 1998