Critical Listening: Hidden Agency, Loaded Language, Identity and Power

Remember from Grade 11

In Grade 11 you asked three linked critical questions about oral texts: What point of view is represented? What is omitted to sustain it? Whose interests does it serve? You learned about vested interests and dominant perspectives, and tracked how a character's views changed across Macbeth. Grade 12 asks you to analyse perspectives and biases in more complex oral texts, where bias often hides in grammar and word choice rather than in open opinion, and to comment with understanding and sensitivity on the questions they raise about beliefs, values, identity and power. You'll also consider your own position as a listener.

Let's start with a press conference

After a spill from a (fictional) factory into a river, a spokesperson says: "We regret that a release occurred overnight. Out of an abundance of caution, we've notified the appropriate authorities. Early indications suggest minimal impact."

Every sentence may be accurate. But listen to what the grammar does. A release occurred: no one released anything. Out of an abundance of caution: the company sounds careful, not responsible. Early indications suggest: whose indications, measured how? A Grade 12 critical listener hears not only what is said but how the language shapes who looks responsible.

Where bias hides in language

• Hidden agency. The passive voice (mistakes were made) and nominalization (turning actions into nouns: there was a release) can remove the person or organization responsible.
• Euphemism. Mild words for harsh realities: downsizing for firing people, collateral damage for civilian deaths, a water event for a spill.
• Naming choices. The same people or events can be named in ways that signal sympathy or hostility: rally, protest, disruption, riot; land defenders or protesters; newcomers or foreigners.
• Presupposition. A statement or question that assumes something without arguing for it: "When will the council stop wasting money?" presupposes that it is wasting money.
• False dilemma. Presenting only two options when more exist: "Either we build the highway or the town dies."
• Us and them. Pronouns and labels that create an in-group and an out-group: "people like us", "real Canadians", "taxpayers" (as if some listeners aren't).

None of these is automatically dishonest. Euphemism can be kind (at a funeral), and every speaker has to choose names. Critical literacy means noticing the choice and asking what it does and for whom.

Beliefs, values, identity and power

The curriculum asks you to comment with understanding and sensitivity on the questions texts raise. Useful questions:

• Beliefs and values: What does the speaker assume is normal, good or obvious? Would everyone in the audience agree?
• Identity: Which groups are named, and how? Who is spoken about rather than with? Who is invisible?
• Power: Who gets to speak, for how long, and with what authority? Whose words are treated as facts and whose as opinions?

Sensitivity means that your commentary respects the people a text discusses. When a text concerns a group you don't belong to, listen to what members of that group say about it, avoid speaking for them, and comment on the text's choices, not on the worth of the people.

Your own position

Every listener has a position: experiences, communities and beliefs that shape what we notice and what we miss. A Grade 12 critical listener considers this positionality and asks: Why does this text seem neutral to me? Would it seem neutral to someone with different experiences? Noticing your own position isn't a weakness. It makes your analysis more honest.