Ancient Wonders and the Backward Worldview

I was watching Ancient Impossible on the History Channel and was struck by the hegemonic discourses it presented as self-evident truths. Particularly, the discourse of relativist historical valuation and the obfuscation of inequality were striking. The synopsis from the History Channel's website exhibits these two epistemic positionings:

"A mega factory is a modern invention--wrong--the ancients were the first to build these thousands of years ago. What was the incredible 16 wheel Roman automated factory in the south of France which could feed 12,500 people a day? How did the ancient Egyptians produce hundreds of vehicles of war every month? How did the Romans forge enough iron to equip an army, and mine enough gold to keep an economy afloat? With today's technology, this would be achievable, but how did the ancients do this thousands of years ago? We reveal the impossible ingenuity and techniques that made it possible for the ancients to have "Mega Factories" of their own" (Synopsis).

First, the rhetorical question about a 'modern invention' plays with conceptions of modernity and our supposed sense of superiority over previous generations of humans. The hidden interrogative of the first line and subsequent questions also serve as distracting clickbait - a genre for drawing attention by hiding pertinent facts from the reader. What is hidden is a false dichotomy - that a 'mega factory' in a primitive society is a sign of genius, instead of the mundane mark of scientific progress filtered through capitalism that it is today. This depiction ignores two things - first, it obfuscates the objectivity of science, wherein the materials and principles for these inventions and indeed any scientific breakthrough have always been hidden in plain sight, but are too often smothered by our obsession with earthly power acquisition or divine favour. It also ignores the destructive use to which the factory is put, but the reader cannot fail to notice that the subsequent examples are drawn from military industrialization, the very definition of scientific progress turned to destruction for political ends. War is not a wonder, but an aspect of human nature as 'achievable' now as it ever was, if society is willing to embrace its appetite for destruction and the waste of human potential it entails.

Second and more troubling, the programme erases from history the individuals dominated by the wasteful and unethical practices that lead to the creation of these 'wonders'. The narrator himself is ebullient about cathedrals and underground waterwheels, skipping over the excess spending on symbolic buildings of politicized religion and the hard reality of wheel-turning slaves dying in the dark. On a moral level, these advanced 'wonders' hardly seem worth the ethical costs they demand, considering their flimsiness when compared to modern buildings, and the inequality between those who created the cathedral or water wheel and those who carried bricks or walked in the dark should force us to question the 'wondrous' nature of these constructs.

This dichotomy leads to the major motif of the show - that these buildings and their creators were ahead of their time. This dangerously gets the reality backwards. These ancient societies, who turned their production to the destructive enterprise of war, who kept slaves, and whose genius inventors came from a small elite portion of the population, were in fact centuries behind where they should have been had they embraced democratic education for all, and the allocation of resources towards human progress. Pushing this narrative of 'wonders' puts forth what Foucault (2003) called an elite scientific discourse of war (50), one that uses the rightness of war, in this case symbolized by the 'wonders' which were no more than proto-capitalist mechanisms of war, and that silences the voices of those it dominates.

Put bluntly, when we look back wistfully at the 'ancients', we should see that it was precisely their moral retardation that held them back and prevented them from advancing themselves, and consequently us, further. Only educated elites could see where they should be and make 'wonders' that we surpass everyday in our more educated and equal world.

On the other hand, we in advanced countries have stopped making the wonders that came at breakneck pace since the Enlightenment, trading an inward-looking, comfortable post-scarcity lifestyle for resource exploitation of other parts and peoples of the planet, all enforced by unending wars. As futurist William Gibson (1995) famously quipped, "The future is here, it is just distributed unevenly" (Science, 11:55). What does this say about us and our moral advancement? Or more importantly, how will humans of the future see it?


Sources


Ancient Impossibles show site
http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-impossible

Ancient Impossibles episode synopsis
http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-impossible/season-1/episode-8

"The Science in Science Fiction" on Talk of the Nation, NPR (30 November 1999), Timecode 11:55.

Foucault, Michel. (2003). Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador.

Gender and Dreams: Japanese Payday Loans

See this picture?

These billboards are visible on my way to work every morning, when I walk from the Japanese Railway Osaka Station to switch trains at the Umeda Hankyu Railway Station. Both billboards are advertising Mobit, a payday loans company here in Kansai.

Both boards are variations on the same themes and images.

There is the face of actor Naoto Takenaka, best known for the smash hit film Shall We Dance? that inspired a remake starring Richard Gere. Takenaka's enlarged head stares wistfully out of the board, eyes piercing through circular-rimmed glasses, a fedora on his head, stubble on his chin and looking tanned and vigorous. Next to the Moa-like bust of Takenaka is a reduced halfshot of actress Natsuna in a red silk dress playing violin. Natsuna became an actress after being scouted for her beauty and became star of several TV dramas.

The contrast between the two images is strong. The man is dressed conservatively, even his eyes are covered. The woman is in red silk dress, arms, legs and head bare. Her clothing exudes femininity, openess, approachability, a red of strength and sexuality in direct opposition to his detached watcher's face and muted tones.

The genderized message is clear. Women need loans to be sexy and alive, to be and make the art the man appreciates. The loan allows the woman to be watched. The man conversely is deepened by the loan, made wiser and stylish, and in the position of observer.

Men are targeted in another way - the billboards can also be read as inviting men to become 'sugar daddies', patrons of women who become works of art.

Does this approach match the population of users? Let us consider that the top three users of such loans are women 40 - 49 years old (25.8%), women 20-39 (20.9%), and men aged 40-59 (19.1%). This 'double targeting' of middle-aged men and elision of middle-aged women, who are both already a large customer base and not considered suitable for an ad based on female sex and youth, may thus be read as an attempt to enlarge the market share of middle-aged men, who will incur both their own costs and the women they support.

Public advertisements are texts that speak to all people, appealing to their hopes and fears in the attempt to create necessity for their product. In the case of payday loans, they appeal to culturally ingrained discourses of gender relations that require finanial capital to maintain. In the case of Japan especially, the cultural acceptance of 借金　(shakkin or borrowed money/debt) in novels, movies, films, as well as the 'life stories' of executives and entertainment district workers is huge and thus impacts the psyche of the average Japanese, who sometimes kill, die, or sell themselves to pay off their or other's debts.

This is a larger topic for another time.



Sources

Mobit homepage.
http://pc.mobit.ne.jp/web/pc/AP300S0000.do?pub=GOGPC_10011031_NA000001_8537&on=Z787764&df=1

Nippon Statistics Center. (2012). Shakingyou riyousha ni kansuru chousa kenkyuu [Research survey about payday loan users].
www.fsa.go


Yahoo talent informtion website, Natsuna.
http://talent.yahoo.co.jp/pf/detail/pp261230

Japanese Flinch Games

Riding Japanese transit (JR + Osaka subway) for five hours daily the past two years, I had lots of time for people watching.

One thing I observed on a daily basis was the Japanese 'flinch game.' Usually participants were two males, students from elementary to high school, although the occasional undergraduate pairing could be seen. One participant would take the role of 'attacker', the other 'defender.' Attacker would stand in a relaxed stance, hands weaving in front towards Defender. He would make taunts towards Defender, while saying words like "omae na" (this guy!) or "yaru zo" (here I come), if memory serves, before making feints and attacks in the form of pokes, prods, smacks, or light punches.

Defender would be clinging to overhead rack or strap, legs closed at knees to protect groin, free hand out front or across chest with elbow towards Attacker. Some would make protestations like "yamero" (cut it out), but most would be quietly twisting body or arm to deflect attacks.

On occasion, Defender would overtly block a feint, hit back, defend against a false attack, scream or otherwise do something that broke some unwritten rule. Defender would then lower defenses and submit to a punishment smack or pinch from Attacker.

Both Attacker and Defender would be laughing throughout the flinch game. As many of these games as I witnessed, I could never discern the rules to the interaction, nor did I ask questions as I so wanted. It reminded me of Fox's (1991) early 20th century anthropology of fights among Irish laborers, about which he commented, "it was not chaos and mayhem, but ritual in the simplest sense. It was entirely rules-governed, though no one could have told me what the rules were - in the same way that language is rules-governed" (153-154)

I estimate having seen near or over a hundred such interactions in my travels spanning 5 days a week for 30 weeks over two years. I wish I had had the energy and equipment to film or record these flinch games.

In terms of discourse, I suspect a few were in operation in the regulation of the game.

First would be the discourse of senpai-kohai, or superior-inferior that dominates so much interaction in Japan's vertical society. Although as mentioned I never talked to participants, I strongly suspect senpais were mostly Attacker, while Defender was a kohai role. The subjectification and reinforcement functions of these roles is clear.

Second, the changing Japanese definition of violence is another discourse on display here. Japanese popular culture has several instances of interaction that would be termed 'violence' from a western standpoint but are not considered such here. There is the 気合い入れ (kiaiire) or strong pat on the back with an open hand or even kendo sword to get one motivated for a contest or trial. There is also the binta, a face slap between friends that is met with laughter, as well as the many types of headslaps visible in Japanese manzai comedy routines. Rapidly disappearing is the genkotsu (knuckle to head) , a staple 'education technique' I witnessed in the countryside during my teaching days there in the 1990s, but which is rapidly coming under the heading of 'corporal punishment' in urban centres such as Osaka. Normalized or acceptable corporal punishment at schools is still a problem in Japan (Kobayashi 1997).

The question is, what role does the flinch game serve? How is it regulated, and what happens when the Attacker transgresses with too much real instead of ritual or symbolic violence? I think this last ambiguity is where power harassment and other forms of violence propagate in Japanese society, and need to be looked at in detail.


Resources

Fox, Robin. (1991). Encounter with Anthropology. London: Transaction.

Kobayashi, Noboru et al. (1997). Prevention of Childhood Injuries: Intentional and unintentional. 9th Asian Congress of Paediatrics
http://www.nospank.net/japan.htm

Looking at 'Die Japan'

[draft]

Today I’ll be taking a look at an infamous blog post in Japan, entitled “Preschool Failure, Die Japan!”

The post appeared February 15^th, in the season in which Japanese mothers search for schools to put their children for April start. It was brought up in government debates, but dismissed by PM Abe as an anonymous and unreliable source. This was met with protests of Japanese wearing signs saying “It was me!” expressing solidarity with the original poster. The Abe regime responded by launching a new day care plan and providing new funding, which was a factor in Japan’s largest postwar budget, despite poor economic performance.

Currently, I identify three ‘debates’ that dominate Japanese public discourse, as is evident by their appearance in media and public protests. There is the nuclear power discourse, in Japanese datsu-genpatsu (脱原発) involving such issues as government response to the Fukushima disaster, as well as Japanese use of nuclear issues. Second, there is the ‘Militarizing Japan’ discourse, centered around kennpo-kaizenn (憲法改善), which would allow collective self-defense and increase Japan’s role in foreign peace-keeping missions for the UN. Last, is the problem of what officials call Japan’s Aging Society Issue, or shoushika-mondai 少子化問題. Although the government uses this term from its viewpoint of having to pay for an increasing number of retirees with less tax income from working age people due to decline in births, the flip side of this is the popular discourse of lack of support for child-bearing families specifically, including lack of daycare, lack of support for mothers returning to the workforce, and virtual non-existence of paternity leave or support., This latter problem and its entailed viewpoint is the stance of the ‘Die Japan’ poster.

Yet neither of the previous two discourses have attained the change of the latter. First, both issues are too broad for popular support. The nuclear discourse especially stretches from Fukushima response to waste disposal, nuclear power regulation, and allowing US nuclear weapons into Japan. Next, both issues require specialist knowledge, which prevents many Japanese from commenting on them. Finally, both are separate from daily life for many Japanese, and thus are beyond topic of discussion. In this way, in the debates on nuclear power and Japanese military, the official discourse is dominant, and no organized or effective opposition can be raised against the status quo. This is not the case with the third debate, where the government discourse of supporting women is contradicted by the everyday experience of many Japanese, as the protests inspired by 'Die Japan' indicate.

In other words, ‘Die Japan’ is part of an anti-discourse, challenging and contesting the official discourse of adequate government support for women returning to work. There have been other responses to this problem, such as the appearance of companies that allow daycare on site, allow flexible working hours, and the rise of ikumen（育メン）or men who step outside the traditional work role to take a greater part in raising children. Although CDA is generally used to analyze official texts for examples of strategic domination, it works equally well for uncovering how anti-discourses challenge existing domination, and this is how I will use it to unpack ‘Die Japan.’

The ‘Die Japan!’ post is a polemic, a frenetic mix of tough talk and political rhetoric. Government ‘buzzwords’ from the Abe plans are thrown back at politicians, as well as their own scandals. In terms of genre, it is best classified as guchi 　(愚痴)、best translated as 'grumbling.' This is a uniquely Japanese form of communication, in which the calmness and objectivity that characterizes discussion which might be termed 'hot debate' in other cultures is utterly dropped in favour of a no-holds barred critique of the object. This critique is based on the subject's bitter personal experience and wry observation or even mocking of the object's discourse. 'Guchi' is usually limited to family or personal acquaintances. It is thus the very antithesis of the studied and serene speeches of PM Abe, both in tone and substance.

A word about genre of social messaging is also relevant here.

Invisible Dress Codes

Please excuse the lateness of this post, but I am just recovered from a tsunami of work duties, PhD writing deadlines, and personal dramas.

Today, I’d like to sharpen my CDA skills on a simple question that I have been asked many times as an ESL instructor at a Japanese university:

“Are you going to teach class dressed like that?”

To the best I can recall, I have been asked this at least 3 to 4 times a semester for the past six years, thus between 18 to 24 times. Of these, only one incident came from a professor, the rest from fellow foreign ESL instructors. They have all happened in the morning when I arrive at work dressed in street clothes due to the sweaty, dirty nature of commuting in Japan, especially in summer. I keep clean, conservative teaching attire in my locker and change into it before starting classes.

After my objection to the question, most interlocutors defensively define the genre of their question as a ribbing joke, but their jab at humour is only pretense. The non-professor questioners have what could be described as ‘gleaming’ eyes, while the intonation is one of a markedly rising pitch. Both these body and vocal signs indicate that a certain pleasure is being taken merely from asking the question itself, not observing any reaction to a punchline indicative of humour, thus further defining it as a different genre. The one Japanese professor who asked this question lacked any of these signs, but was instead marked by a calm voice expressing concern and then relief upon the answer, and thus is excluded from further consideration.

The significant social fact is that all interluctors are of the same professional rank as myself – ESL instructor in Japan. This is a doubly precarious social identity, since ESL academics in Japan are rarely considered ‘real’ educators by academics in other fields, and also because many stay at the full or part time teaching level without ever completing a PhD. They thus have no hope of becoming a professor except in extreme circumstances of having inside help or moving to the countryside where rural institutions are more lax regarding credentials. Add to that recent changes in labour laws limiting instructors to 5 year contracts and reducing benefits and the desperation that births this sort of social jockeying becomes evident.

The main element of the utterance is the juxtaposition of‘the verb 'teach’ and the pronoun ‘that’. Teaching in Japan has the double cachet of respect traditionally afforded to the title of ‘sensei’, while MA-holding foreign university ESL teachers often consider themselves superior to the rank-and-file educators with bachelor degrees teaching in conversation schools across the country. Alternately, the use of the pronoun marks street dress as unmentionable, an alien ‘other’ unfit for the university environment. Ironically, there are non-accredited, 'scab' ESL teachers at my workplace who are forced to wear suits, in other words conform to a stricter dress code than the MA-holding contracted foreign teachers. This irony testifies to the greater social conformity exerted upon workers in relation to the precariousness of their position.

Coming from contracted, accredited foreign ESL faculty, the question itself is a form of self-policing, wherein university employees with little job security or authority attempt to exercise symbolic authority over a fellow by commenting on their violation of an implicit dress code. The fact that no code exists allows the presumption to occur, and also facilitates backpedalling when the interlocutor is confronted. As Bourdieu (1991) explains, this type of self-policing is common among the petit-Bourgeoisie attempting to accumulate social capital to make up for their lack of capital and thus power in other respects.

The fact that almost no professors ask the question implies that they are secure in their social capital and thus have no need for such strategies, although loyalty for the employer would explain the rare instance of questioning from a Japanese professor.

One can expect such strategies and gaming of social reality to increase as the precariousness of the ESL or ‘false’ academic increases in Japan along with worsening economic conditions and a rethinking of the necessity and even utility of English education here.

PS: I should note that since moving to a university with less standing, these questions have ceased, and I have even been suggested to dress more casually in accordance with other instructors.

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1991) Language & Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Finding Takeshi's Satisfaction

Whereas my first analysis started with a charged social problem as presented in a small text, for this next exercise I’d like to look at a longer text without any explicit social problems and tease out both its discursive structures as well as any social issues implicated by them.

I have chosen the ‘Satisfaction’ advertising campaign by ECC, a large English conversation teaching company or ‘eikaiwa’ here in Japan. Web and television versions of its current campaign star Takeshi Kitano, world-famous actor, director, comedian and artist.

It is first necessary to explain the context of English conversation teaching or ‘eikaiwa’ here in Japan. Eikaiwas in Japan are generally non-accredited teaching classrooms where Japanese people come and take lessons in mostly English conversation from mostly unlicensed foreign teachers, usually young people living and working in Japan for a short time. The instruction at eikaiwas is thus largely ‘casual’, with a lack of testing or evaluation, syllabuses, curriculum, or any other trappings of an institutional setting. Tiny local eikaiwas often run by a foreign husband-Japanese wife pair dot the land, while large corporate eikaiwas such as Nova, Geos, and Aeon dominated the casual English teaching scene in the 1980s and 1990s with prominently displayed  ‘ekimae’ classrooms close to most rail stations, so as to be convenient for workers and students. The embezzlement scandal that rocked Nova in the early 2000s began a period of lower profile for these three heavyweight eikaiwas, which are still popular but not as ubiquitous as before. Conversely, ECC has recently taken a larger profile, with advertisements on TV and in trains. ECC previously specialized in children’s English classes as taught in local spaces such as houses or community centers taught by housewives looking for extra income or to use English skills acquired in their youth, but has now branched out to business and adult lessons while relegating child classes to the ECC junior brand.

Since this ad campaign depends largely on visuals, I start my analysis with them. Color is a major element in marketing considerations, and the Satisfaction campaign is marked by the use of a neon pink textbox on white background colorscheme. This is a change from the previous ECC Beat Taheshi campaign that used a scarlet background with gold piping, which held an aura of respectability. The neon pink of the ‘Satisfaction’ campaign, by contrast, is redolent of spontaneity and creativity, allowing the customer to feel their choice of ECC marks them as such.

The screenshot above is taken from ECC's main webpage, and presents the dominant themes of the campaign, as well as their inherent contradictions. On the left are four foreigners, smiling and  besuited, tokens of both the 'fun' often associated with English  ‘eikaiwa’ classes as well as the professionalism denoted by their attire. Although ECC classes may be as fun as any other eikaiwa, their professionalism is just as suspect. A link on the ECC website to its '6 Deciding Factors' (ＥＣＣの６つのこだわり）　begins with its claim of stringent background checks, which is belied by the detail that foreign teachers must have a 4 year university degree, but not any teaching experience or credentials.

In terms of genre, the campaign is not just a simple advertisement, but features the informative or didactive theme of survey results. This touch of ‘scientificity’ adds legitimacy to the ad’s claims, although the objectivity and validity are questionable considering that the agency performing the survey is a for-pay market research company and not an academic organization. The survey is notable for its supposed anonymity, although the use of pseudonyms for rival schools (School A, School B etc) also calls its results into question in terms of transparency.

There are number of claims made through keywords in the main statement for the Satisfaction ad campaign, supposedly, which is found on the ECC main homepage at www.ecc.jp. It is as follows:

英会話学校を選ぶなら、満足度で選ぼう。

プロの教師のもと、楽しく学べるレッスンの雰囲気。

通いやすくて、続きやすい充実のサポート体制。

すべての人に、英語の満足を。

はじめなら、ＥＣＣです。

http://www.ecc.jp/

If you’re choosing an English conversation school, choose for satisfaction.

Learn from a professional teacher, in an atmosphere of fun learning.

Easy to come to, easy to continue, with a complete support system.

The satisfaction of English for all people.

If you’re starting out, it is ECC. (my translation)

The keywords of ‘conversation’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘professional’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘fun’, ‘easy’, ‘support’, and ‘all people’ stand out and define the discourse, as do their ambiguities. First, ECC is a ‘conversation school’, thus ‘satisfaction’ is a natural aim of its discourse instead of the results and accreditation marking the discourse of schools in the education system. For precisely this reason there is no mention of results, credentials, etc, and thus it is marked as a discourse of ‘edutainment’ characteristic of eikaiwas.

Second, the mention of ‘professional’ is a claim of legitimation, despite the lack of any mention of credentials for either students or teachers. As mentioned above, ECC teachers are not required to have any pedagogic credentials or experience. The concomitant claim of ‘support’ is similarly a claim of an organizational status ECC does not have

Next, the claim of ‘atmosphere’ is ironic considering that ECC was outperformed by School E in two categories of the survey concerning this keyword, namely Quality of Instructor Atmosphere (講師の雰囲気の良さ) and Quality of School Atmosphere (学校の雰囲気の良さ). Ironically, the use of the term ‘instructor’ (講師), which is usually reserved in Japanese education discourse for university instructors, mark yet another implicit claim to educational institutional status that ECC and other conversation schools do not deserve. Similarly, the very use of the term ‘school’ （学校）to describe ECC is a calculated misnomer, as businesses of its kind are usually referred to by the term ‘English conversation classrooms’ (英会話教室), and thus another claim of institutional status it does not hold.

Moving on to the terms ‘fun’ and ‘easy’, they hearken back to the ads of the big three ekimae eikaiwa of the past, as mentioned above, and thus are an attempt to capitalize on their popular appeal. This contrasts with the claim of being ‘for all people’, which is simultaneously an appeal for new students, as well as a statement that ECC lessons no longer for kids, as implied by the aforementioned usage of the brand name ‘ECC junior’ to differentiate between children and adult lessons.

Although on the surface this ad campaign may have little to do with social issues, the Japanese public discourse of English as opportunity and English as threat noted by Seargeant (2011) is well in evidence, and has a lot to say about the conception and valuation of foreign labour in Japan. Besides Mr. Takeshi, all actors are smiling be-suited Caucasian males and females, who both iterate the native fallacy and the definition of welcoming white foreigner. The ‘native fallacy’ is the belief that only a native English speaker can impart speakable English to Japanese, a form of fetishization that stems from the school system where foreigners are found teaching English and most kids sleep through classes, preferring to get their English from Japanese teachers at juku, or cram schools that aim to help them pass the entrance exam of the high school or university of their choice. In both these cases, fluency is far from the aim or result. The addition of the prominent ‘white gaijin’ or foreigner underlines the conception of English as a ‘first world’ language, at once both accessible to the Japanese yet denied to Filipino, Indians and other ‘brown gaijin’ who have a harder time of working as English teachers despite their fluency with the language.

References

Seargeant, Phillip. (2011). English in Japan in the Era of Globalization. Palgrave.

NOTE: This analysis took longer than expected, so I will simply mark the paper reference here and add internet links at a later date when I am free.

Guns Don't Kill, Circular Logic Kills

I had intended a longer text for my inaugural analysis, but seeing as starting small is probably the best thing to develop my analytical skills, as well as the only scale my busy life will allow, I’ve decided to start with one phrase:

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

This seems a timely subject in light of the shootings in Santa Barbara and Las Vegas and on and on ad nauseum, as well as one rife with power dynamics and semiotic significance that seem perfect for a Critical Discourse Analysis.

First of all, what is the context and genre of the utterance? A lengthy web search indicates that the phrase is an unofficial National Rifle Association slogan, used primarily by pro-gun supporters in the US whenever a new massacre occurs and public sentiment turns towards the so-called ‘liberal agenda’ of restricting or regulating firearms. It is thus normalized and disseminated popularly in right wing camps to provide justification for keeping power in the hands of individual gun owners, while indirectly benefiting the gun industry and lobbies such as the NRA. As such, it can be seen as a tool of hegemonic struggle, specifically to keep the gun industry and right wing power nexus on top by appealing to individual gun owners on the grounds of keeping their freedoms. This linking of individual freedom and corporate or elite benefit is a defining feature of US right wing public discourse, as evidenced in the domination of US economic discourse by Neoliberalism, and is a structure that has come to dominant American discourse in toto.

Next, what are the syntactic and semantic features of the utterance? The first proposition, “guns don’t kill people”, by using the inanimate ‘guns’ as the subject, takes agency away from people and thus depicts gun deaths as blameless and unavoidable affairs. The stripping away of all identifying particles such as articles and inflections like verb tense, while retaining the universal plurals of ‘people’ and ‘guns’, creates a ring of truism about the phrase. By pairing this first proposition with the second tautological clause, “people kill people”, the idea of the unavoidable violence of human nature is reinforced and opposition silenced. The normalizing ‘common sense’ nature of the utterance’s grammar is precisely the kind of blindingly irrefutable shared logic warned of by Gramsci.

Of course the two propositions together constitute a false equivalence – no one is saying that guns rise up magically and kill people, but that their easy access leads to greater gun crime and deaths. This is borne out by statistics ,

(http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html), but such facts have no place in this type of discourse. This simplified equivalence also ignores the material effect of guns in accelerating death – people may kill people, but may also kill many more in a shorter time with automatic weapons. All these details are brushed aside in the mesmerizingly clean circular logic of the phrase “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

The most pernicious facet of this utterance is that the listener has to admit the first proposition to a certain degree before the second is delivered. It is in this ambiguity linking the two propositions that the utterance as a whole gains discursive power. Once you admit, “Yes, guns don’t kill people by themselves…” the remainder of the phrase is driven home by the binary relation between the first and second propositions, and the false equivalency slips in and derails dialogue. Any chance to debate the details left out of the utterance (“Guns by themselves,” “Automatic guns,”) are swept aside in the overwhelming perlocutionary force of the phrase.

One irony to note here is that the slogan stands for an unregulated access to guns which is the exact opposite of the supposed origin of the phrase as spoken by head of the Colt Patent Fire Arms Co.  President Fred Roff is supposed to have said, "Our big concern is to make sure that guns get into the hands of only those who know how to use them. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Considering the recent history of NRA opposition to background checks, waiting periods and other forms of gun registry and regulation, the volte face in discourse is extreme and indicates an almost Neoliberal valuation of market forces appealing to individual freedom over concern for social costs or welfare.

What about creation and reception of the phrase? It’s existence as a ‘bumper sticker’ slogan of gun owners without any attribution to one speaker reveals the popular appeal to common logic that mark discourse about cultural norms such as gun ownership in the US. Even the speeches of politicians and pundits in the gun debate pale in comparison to the illocution and force of this pro-gun bumper sticker, which is understandable in light of the difficulty of making memorable utterances about such ‘hot button’ topics while not offending voter and industry demographics. As for reception, the aforementioned enforced necessity of acknowledging the first half of the phrase renders opposition weak and ineffective, which implies the inability of liberal or anti-gun forces to marshal an equally forceful response or slogan.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” allows gun supporters to feel satisfied within their bubble of rhetoric masquerading as logical thought, while creating unease and frustration among gun opponents, who have not been able to satisfactorily pierce the ‘logic’ of the slogan with concise or forceful objections. The way in which the phrase shuts down opposition to and dialog with the dominant party about redistribution of power or reordering of the status quo is an example of the silencing defensive strategy identified generally by Pierre Bourdieu, and specifically in terms of Neoliberal Discourse by David Harvey

This was my first practice CDA. It is rough and weak, but like any exercise program I intend to make it the first step on a long journey to strengthening my analytic skills. If you have any comments or suggestions, leave them below. Please note that I will not be discussing the gun debate nor responding to any comments that try to.