See Lerman (1980) for one such extended attempt.
A more adequate account of such features of language in use would
demand a detailed discussion of work such asFoucault's (e.g. 1972) attempts
to define the discourses which constitute such fields as medicine or economics,
and Habermas' (e.g. 1979) work on communicative competence and
universal pragmatics. Such a discussion is well beyond the scope of this
chapter.
However, it should already be clear that recent work in pragmatics has
therefore contributed many concepts which can help to analyse such rhetorical
strategies. People have many everyday ways of talking about language,
but they do not normally have available ways of talking precisely about such
aspects of meaning. Again, I have had room here only for the briefest
examples of a type which might be developed by a teacher in the classroom.
The basic argument is that language is used for social control, but that the
mechanisms of such control are describable and understandable, and that
some escape is possible. As Bolinger (1980a, p. 387) argues: