Ruizo 31
ways to analyze and bridge these levels. The first one is the members-groups
analysis, where language users-engage in discourse as members of (several)
social groups, organizations, or institutions; and conversely, groups thus
may act “by” their members. The second process is that which looks into
the action - process dynamics, where social acts of individual actors are thus
constituent parts of group actions and social processes, such as legislation
and news-making. The third process is that which studies the context social structure, where situations of discursive interaction are similarly part
or constitutive of social structure; for example, a press conference may be
a typical practice of organizations and media institutions. Finally, there is
the personal and social cognition, where language users as social actors have
both personal and social cognition: personal memories, knowledge and
opinions, as well as those shared with members of the group or culture as
a whole (Dijk 53-54).
For the focus of this brief study, this paper will zero in on the
action – process aspect, where actions of individual members become the
representation of the action of the whole society, as in the case of lawmaking. This paper seeks to offer analyzed inferences on how certain words
and terms in the final draft of the law which were found contentious by
different stakeholders of the society concerned with the issue of women’s
rights.
Since the actual text of the law spans the length of a total of 9,506
words, I opted to draw the attention to certain key provisions in it that,
upon surveying and reading the entirety of the text, stood out in terms of
its diction and the possible ways that the choice of words would affect how
a law is to be construed and statutorily constructed (Agpalo 12).
The first important language-related point worth looking into
is the fact that the featured law, which is the legislative achievement in
the direction of gender-equalization, does not contain an operative
definition of the term “gender.” The definition of terms under section
4 paragraphs (a) to (m) include the designated meanings, terms like
“women empowerment,” “marginalization,” “urban poor,” “indigenous
peoples,” “children,” “senior citizens” (“LawPhil Project: Philippine Laws
and Jurisprudence Databank”); it does not, however, hold a working
definition of gender. It may initially seem as if the omission of the same is
due to the notion that gender, as far as womanhood goes, is a biologicallypredetermined assumption, more in line with the dictionary definition of
gender as the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits typically associated
with one sex (“Gender”). However, if we are to look at the concept of
gender on a more complex scale, we can see that the distinctions from
one gender to the next is actually more complicated, more socially and