Term Paper on "Language Analysis Using Foucault's Theory of Language/Power"

Quoted Instructions for "Language Analysis Using Foucault's Theory of Language/Power" Assignment:

Analysis the following:

Context of situation (tenor and mode)

Connotation, denotation, modality, positive/ negative evaluation

Formulaic language, clichés, idioms, metaphors

The essay should take the following form:

Introduction: what you are going to an*****, and what techniques you are going to use to an***** it

Methodology: explain the techniques you are going to use (explain the meaning of context of situation, how spoken language differs from written language, etc.)

Analysis: you need only quote relevant sections as you proceed through your analysis. You can either an***** you’re the text chronologically as it comes, or you can an***** different aspects together (e,g, connotation, idioms, metaphors)

Conclusion: what you found in your analysis, and how this contributes to an understanding of the texts you have an*****d (e.g. one text has a lot of words with positive/ negative connotations because the newspaper has strong feelings about the topic.

Bibliography (3 items, APA)

You have to:

Give a good explanation of the technique you are using

Show you understand the technique you are using

Show you can apply these techniques in appropriate way to the texts you are analyzing

Reach a conclusion which are clearly connected to the analysis you have done

News Article 1 (Mirror.co.uk)

Killer’s Questions: Do you believe in God?

A TEENAGE gunman went on the rampage at his school – asking one boy: “Do you believe in God?” before shooting him.

Nazi worshipper Jeff Weise, 16, who called himself the Angel of Death, grinned as he gunned down a security guard, five pupils and a teacher before killing himself after a shootout with police.

Fifteen pupils were injured in the spree – America’s worst school massacre since Columbine High in 1999 which left 15 dead.

It began when Weise murdered his grandparents and stole his policeman grandad’s pistol, shotgun, bulletproof vest and police car, then drove to the school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota.

Reggie Graves was in class when he heard Weise – banned from school for misbehaviour – blast his way pass the metal detector at the entrance, killing the security man.

He heard Weise confront a boy named Ryan in a nearby classroom. “He asked Ryan if he believed in God – then he shot him.”

Teachers herded pupils from one room to another, trying to escape the gunfireas other children begged Weise to stop shooting.

Student Sandra Hegstrom said: “you could hear a girl saying, “No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?’”

She said Weise appeared to carefully choose his victims, saying he grinned and waved at one student he targeted before turning to shoot at another.

She added: “I looked him in the eye and ran in the room, and that’s when I hid.”

Pupil Ashley Morrison saw Weise peering through a classroom window as she hid inside. He banged on the door, then walked away and she heard more shots.

She said: “I can’t even count how many gunshots you heard. There were over 20.

“There were people screaming and they made us get behind the desk.”

Ashley called her mother on the mobile phone, crying: “Mom, he’s trying to get in here and I’m scared.”

Weise had a brief shootout with the police who rushed the school, then turned his gun on himself.

Extra medics were flown into the state to help treat the injured.

Susan Fairbanks spoke to her 15-year-old bother Lance Crowe before he had surgery for three bullet wounds. She said: “He said that his friend died and that he was scared.”

Martha Thunder’s son Cody, 15, was treated for a wound to the hip.

She said: “He heard gunshots and the teacher said, ‘No, that’s the janitor doing something’.

“And the next thing he knew the kid walked in there and pointed the gun right at him.”

Weise was described as a loner who usually wore black and was teased by fellow pupils.

Relatives said his father committed suicide four years ago. His mother, who has brain injuries for a car crash, lives in a Minneapolis nursing home. Pupils said Weise wrote messages expressing support for Hitler on a right-wing website. A ***** who identified himself as Jeff Weise of the Red Lake Reservation posted messages under the nickname Todesangel – German for Angel of Death.

One said: “I guess I’ve always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals and his courage to take on larger nations.”

Another said he had been questioned by police about an alleged shooting threat at the school on April 20, Hitler’s birthday.

And a third said he believed Hitler and the Nazis just got a bad press.

The reservation is home to the 5,000 strong Red Lake Chippewa Tribe, one of the poorest in the state. Tribe Tride chairman Floyd Jourdain called it “without a doubt the dar***** hour” in their history. “There’s not a soul that will go untouched by the tragic loss we’ve experienced here.”

State Governor Tim Pawlenty said: “We ask Minnesotans to help comfort the families and friends who are suffering unimaginable pain.”

It was the second fatal school shooting in Minnesota in 18 months. Two pupils were killed at Rocori High in Cold Spring in September 2003. John ***** McLaughlin, 15 at the time, is awaiting trial.

News Article 2 (The Guardian, Wednesday March 23, 2005)

You could hear a girl saying, ‘No. Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?’

Nine killing in deadly school rampage of neo-Nazi loner stun Red Lake

On the neo-Nazi websites where the teenage loner aired his admiration for Adolf Hitler’s notions of ethnic purity, he was known as Todesengel – German for Angel of Death. Late on Monday, in a secluded Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, he played out those dark fantasies.

Jeff Weise, 16, shot dead his grandfather, five teenagers, a teacher, and two other adults before turning the gun on himself. A dozen others were wounded, with two in a critical condition.

It was the deadliest school shooting since April 20, 1999 when two students at Colorado’s Columbine High School killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.

The scale of the violence overwhelmed the emergency services in the remote northern community, forcing the evaluation of some of the more seriously wounded. “We’ve never dealt with anything like this before, “Sherri Binkeland, spokeswoman for North County Regional Hospital, told reporters.

Even among Indian reservations, Red Lake is a particularly close community, one of only two reservations in America where all lands are held in common.

The tribal government has sole jurisdiction over the community’s 850,000 acres, and there are very few non-Indians living among the reserve’s 5100 members. Located in a secluded area of northern Minnesota, the reservation sits remote and desolate amid vast plains of farmland, on the snow-covered banks of the frozen Lower Red Lake.

But yesterday the isolation was abandoned as police officers, federal investigators, counselors and journalists descended on the reservation in its time of grief.

There will not be one soul who isn’t touched by this tragedy here in Red Lake, “Floyd Jourdain, chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, told a press conference. “It still hasn’t sunk in.”

At Red Lake High School where the killings took place, Weise was known as a misfit and a loner, the product of a deeply troubled family. His father committed suicide four years ago, and his mother was in nursing home in Minneapolis more than 200 miles away after suffering brain injuries in a car crash.

Classmates described him yesterday as “weird” and “anti-social”. Relatives said he was regularly teased.

But it was unclear yesterday what knowledge his classmates or the authorities in Red Lake had about Jeff Weise’s inner life, which he pursued on a number of neo-Nazi websites, according to the St Paul Pioneer press.

In his postings, Weise showed strong identification with Hitler, and ideas of racial supremacy, calling himself Native – Nazi as well as Todesengel.

“I guess I’ve always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations,” said one of his postings last year.

He vented his impatience with those who did not share his fascination with Hitler, singling out his teacher for rebuke. “The only ones who oppose my views are the teachers at the high school, and a large portion of the student body who think a Nazi is a Klansman, or a White Supremacist thug.”

On Monday, that frustration with his teachers and his classmates came pouring out in a murderous rampage. But he apparently had another score to settle first – with his grandfather, Darryl Lussier, a known figure on the reservation where he had served as a police officer for three decades.

After shooting dead Lussier and Lussier’s companion, Weise stole his grandfather’s police-issue bulletproof vest and official car, as well as two handguns and a shot gun, and drove towards the red brick school house, arriving at about 3pm, FBL officials told a press conference yesterday.

Witnesses said that Weise had a grin on his face and waved to fellow students, as he walked along the school corridor, emptying his guns.

He was challenged by an unarmed security guard, and shot him dead before resuming his rampage. “Mr Weise continued to roam through the school firing randomly,” the FBI spokesman, Michael Pabman, told the press conference.

Reggie Graves, 14, told AP teachers herded students from one room to another, trying to move away from the sound of the shooting. He said some students crouched under desks. Another student, Ashley Morrison, said she heard shots, then saw the gunman’s face peering though a door window of a classroom where she was hiding with several others.

“I can’t even count how many gunshots you heard, there was over 20…There were people screaming, and they made us get behind the desk,” she said.

Armed tribal police soon arrived to confront the teenager, forcing his retreat into a classroom where he shot dead five students before turning the gun on himself.

According to the Associated Press, three of the students were shot in the head at close range. “You could hear a girl saying, ‘No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?’” one student, Sondra Hegstrom, said.

That remained unclear yesterday, with FBI struggling to piece together a motive for what they believed was a pre-meditated attack.

Some of those clues may eventually be provided by Weise himself, from his involvement with neo-Nazi websites. In a posting year, he admits that he was questioned by police after a threat against the school in what could have been a possible warning sign.

“By the way, I’m being blamed for a threat on the school I attend because someone said they were going to shoot up the school on 4/20, Hitler’s birthday, and just because I claim being a National Socialist, guess whom they’ve pinned,” he wrote in comments posted at 11:41pm, April 19, 2004.

The newspaper went on to report that Weise was subsequently cleared, and quoted him as saying: “I’m glad for that. I don’t much care for jail, I’ve never been there and I don’t plan on it.”

For the people on the Red Lake reserve, the killing spree was “the dar***** hour in the history of our tribe”, said Mr Jourdain. “Our community is devastated by this. We have never seen anything like this in the history of our tribe.”

Poverty, strife and few jobs

Red Lake reservation, which is home to about 5,100 Chippewa Indians, has a long and troubles history of poverty, unemployment and internal struggles for control of its 850,000 acres.

For 10 years, unemployment on the reserve, in an isolated part of northern Minnesota, has hovered close to 60%.

Its schools are among the worst in the state; four of five students at Weise’s high school live below the poverty line. Red Lake has tried to earn money from gaming; it established three casinos in an attempt to provide unemployment.

In the 1980s, it was the scene of violent riots after civil rights abuses by the tribal authorities. In the past 10 years, however, a new generation of tribal leaders has been committed to reform.

News Article 3 (The Sun online)

Smiling Nazi loner kills 9

A CRAZED student was SMILING as he blasted fellow pupils in a school gun massacre that left nine dead.

Heavily-armed loner Jeff Weise, 16, smirked and waved as he went down a corridor shooting at will.

The Nazi-obsessed teenager asked a pal called Ryan if he believed in God – then shot him.

And a petrified girl begged for her life with the words: “No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone.”

The teenager even fired at a door as a school superintendent desperately held it shut while 25 pupils cowered on the other side.

At least 15 students were also wounded in the bloodbath at Red Lake High School, Minnesota.

Weise – who dubbed himself Angel of Death on right-wing internet chat rooms – killed 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High, Colorado, in 1999.

The teenager bagan the rampage by killing his granddad Daryl Lussier and his wife at their home.

He is then believed to have grabbed to handguns, a shotgun and a bullet-proof vest owned by Mr Lussier, a long-serving cop in the Indian reservation community.

Weise fled in the murdered officer’s police pick-up truck and rammed it into the side of the school building.

The teenager then shot dead a security guard standing beside a metal detector to stop knives coming into the school.

Next, he loosed off rounds while swaggering down a corridor – as terrified pupils barricaded themselves in classrooms.

Weise eventually forced his way into a room and shot dead teacher Neva Roger, 52. Then he killed five of her students.

One of them was named as ninth-grader Thuriene Mari Stillday.

Teacher Diane Schwanz told how the killer tried to break down the door to her room. She added: ‘I got onto the floor and call cops.”

Pupil Ashley Morrison was in her room and used her mobile to call mother Wendy, who listened to the horror.

As Weise peered through a window in the door, she screamed: “Mum, he’s trying to get in here.” Ashley said later: “I heard over 20 gunshots.”

One unarmed pupil revealed: “He pointed his gun at a boy and changed his mind, smiled, waved at him and shot somebody else.”

It was not known last night if pal Ryan or the girl who begged for her life were among the dead.

Weise, who always were black, was banned from school by 300 American Indians and had a home tutor.

He wrote of his admiration for Adolf Hitler on websites, using the penname “Native Nazi”.

Weise’s father committed suicide 4 years ago and his mother was brain-damaged after a car crash.

One pupil said the teenager was one suicidal – and claimed he said: “It would be cool if I shot up the school”.