Control simply means getting people to act in a particular way. In that simple sense, we try to dictate and prevent, mainly. One has to be in the right position of authority to be able to exercise control over another person. We can think of such examples as: dictating things to a child or to a junior person, directing traffic, giving instructions to students, etc. Ordinarily, behaviour is regulated through persuasion or persuasive rhetoric, but in control, coercion is at work instead. What is operational in this essay is not the technical sense of control in research in which a variable is held constant in its natural outlook, not manipulated, in order to observe change in the manipulated variable. This essay is about the deployment of language in getting people to act in a particular way. It involves examining some semantic and pragmatic choices, and other media of control and the situations that demand them, in coercive control.
So, first, what are the types of control that one can think about? The following come to mind:
(1) Ordering of behaviour to suit membership or belonging to a particular group. This kind of control is found in the armed forces, schools, etc.
(2) Control of a person based on the assumption that the person reasoning is not yet reliable and so somebody else has to do it. For instance, control of children by adults, control of minors, etc.
(3) Control of a person to prevent another person from doing it or having an advantage. An example is the control of some spouses by their spouses.
An utterance in which an attempt is made to control someone is an imposition of someone's meaning or view of the world. Language used to exercise control is instrumental in function.
The rhetoric is coercive, trying to get us to do something against our will. The illocutionary acts that mainly feature include
- ordering or commanding;
- asserting;
- instructing;
- directing;
- interrogating
It seems to suggest that the meaning that applies to what is required to be done is imperative. That places pragmatics at the centre of it all.
In this respect, we expect
-- clarity of expression,
- specification of goal
- consideration of the circumstance of communication and
- applicable form or variety of language in such a situation.
Take clarity of expression, for instance. The one hoping to control the other needs to be clearly understood. No ambiguities. No equivocation. This is not an occasion to mask meaning with rare, big and jaw-breaking words! There is serious need for clarity. The addressee and the addresser need it badly.
The goal or what needs to be accomplished should be very clear and straightforward. It is not for the addressee to begin to scratch around, looking for the pursuit.
A consideration of the circumstance is crucial for it shows that the choices made are relevant. The addressee is being shown the circumference of the discourse and required to operate within it.
The applicable form imposes choice of variety of language. If the goal is to prevent a child from getting burnt in a fire, then the goal and the situation are captured.
Goal: Prevention from going near the fire
Words necessary: fire, going, burn, etc.
Expression: "Don't go near the fire. You will get burnt."
But it is not always as simplistic as that. We may have hidden and multiple goals, just as there may be no fire to reflect.
Some words that convey the idea of obligation include:
- must,
- should,
- have to,
- required, and
- obligatory/compulsory. Words that encode persuasion are:
- please,
- requested,
- may, and
- could.
A common error is to express a request as an order. This is obviously a failure of training in politeness skills. When students approach lecturers for registration, it is a command to say: "I want to register." The student "wants" to register, not to get "registered." And it is an order, a compulsion, "I want." The lecturer just has to obey!
Some students utter this impolite sentence out of innocence, not intending to offend, not really out to command or control the addressee. Some just do it out of carelessness and careless use of language is common in our time.
All along, we have been talking of control and language. But control could be facilitated by other things, for instance, a gun.Or both the gun and language could be combined. That is, the combination could be used in coercion.
It was pointed out earlier that in coercive control, the normal situation is that the person who is the High controls the Low. But in some abnormal situations, we find a Low controlling the High. It's obviously abnormal, as in a coup.
In discourses of this kind of abnormality, we have a preponderance of ordering and questioning. This is because the persons being questioned have lost control!
This boils down to the issue of what we as humans use language to do. What appears crucial in that is what happens to language as it does things for us. One, extension, is interested in the language of control in various provinces of life.
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