Showing papers in "Critical Discourse Studies in 2010"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the processes and relationships of recontextualization between higher education and other EU policy fields, including for instance the recontextuality of "competitiveness rhetoric" and "globalization rhetoric" in HE policy documents.
Abstract: This paper explores, in some detail at the European Union scale, processes and relationships of recontextualization between higher education and other EU policy fields, including for instance the recontextualization of ‘competitiveness rhetoric’ and ‘globalization rhetoric’ in HE policy documents. We trace the implementation of the Bologna Process in two EU member states, Austria and Romania, illustrating the effects of these very different socio-political and historical contexts on EU standardization processes through a detailed discourse analytic study of recontextualization processes of policy documents. This paper integrates two approaches in critical discourse analysis, Fairclough's dialectic-relational approach and Wodak's discourse-historical approach, by introducing recontextualization as a salient critical discourse analysis category and explaining its relationship to other categories within a discourse-analytical approach to (or ‘point of entry’ into) trans-disciplinary research on social change.
186 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of one practice of user-generated communication on YouTube, the so-called "make-up tutorial" is presented, where the authors take an approach to spoken discourse analysis previously developed in the study of broadcast talk, but also make some observations about the structure of the YouTube site, by comparison with the discursive "regime" of television.
Abstract: Recent discussion of some user-generated material on the Internet has argued that its ‘freshness’ and ‘spontaneity’ offers a new form of ‘authenticity’ in mediated communication. With a focus on YouTube, particularly where extensive use is made of the facility to post text comments on vlogs, it has been suggested that such activities reproduce the feel of ‘face-to-face communication’. Interestingly such accounts echo previous debates about broadcast talk, although YouTube is defined as a species of ‘post-television’. This article assesses these claims through a case study of one practice of user-generated communication on YouTube, the so-called ‘make-up tutorial’. It takes an approach to spoken discourse analysis previously developed in the study of broadcast talk, but it also makes some observations about the structure of the YouTube site, by comparison with the discursive ‘regime’ of television. This analysis finds that there are indeed some distinctive communicative practices on YouTube, but rather tha...
182 citations
TL;DR: The discourse of politics in action: politics as usual by Wodak et al. as mentioned in this paper aims to make the invisibility of the back stage visible to the public through critical discourse analysis (CDA) by dealing with socio-political injustice which is created, disseminated and legitimised through discourse.
Abstract: Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is the framework most widely used to carry out research on political discourse by dealing with the socio-political injustice which is created, disseminated and legitimised through discourse (Hodge & Kress, 1993; Wodak & Meyer, 2002; Fairclough, 1989). However, this injustice does not usually appear on the surface; that is, it is commonplace that, when one discriminates or commits an injustice or when one tries to exploit from inequality, or indoctrinate, the intention, triggered by a certain ideology, is seldom exercised visibly. One of the main tenets of CDA is to make the invisible visible. While the issue of invisibility is not limited to politics, this field is widely ill-famed for doing that. In the meantime, people from different walks of life are curious to know what is going on behind the curtain, in what is being referred to as ‘politics’. In the book The discourse of politics in action: Politics as usual, Wodak, working within the framework of CDA, helps to make the invisibility of the back stage visible to the public. It is, as expected, a rigorous undertaking. To do this, Wodak has taken an adventurous journey from the front stage of the political world into the wonderland of the back stage to which a large audience, despite their eagerness, do not have access. Having grown up in a family in which politics was the main topic of discussion and having internalised the dangers that politics can pose, Wodak is able to decode the scenery of this enigmatic context. According to the metaphor, wonderland, just as the line between the fiction and reality in the book Alice in the wonderland is mostly blurred, the reader usually finds it difficult, if not impossible, to draw a clear-cut distinction between the fictitious aspect, the front stage, and the true life, or the back stage, of politicians, mainly because MEPs (Member of the European Parliament) constantly oscillate between the front stage and the back stage. Hence, the writer, by explaining the context of situation and by analysing the interviews conducted with the MEPs, hopes to contribute to making politics more transparent. The book contains six chapters, in addition to the Appendix section. The first chapter, ‘Doing Politics’, is further divided into five main parts. Wodak first provides the reader with the definition of certain terms employed in the book, such as habitus, communities of practice, front stage and back stage. Using examples from the field of politics, the writer gives a vivid description of the theoretical approaches and concepts used in the book. In this chapter, in fact, the ‘thematic relevance’ (a term introduced by Schutz & Luckmann, 1973) of studying ‘politics as usual’ is elaborated . That is, the book intends to find the nature of the problem by scrutinising discursive strategies as well as the linguistic structures that politicians employ, as the strategies and structures they use can be the best means to delve into their true personalities. The book repeatedly emphasises the dependency of politics and ‘doing politics’ on the context of situation. Hence, in chapter two, she – through the application of a DiscourseHistorical approach to CDA – endeavours to analyse political texts (mostly verbal) in their historical, socio-political and organisational contexts. Here, the writer employs the interpretational relevance, introduced by Schutz and Luckmann, to see how the analysis can contribute to the interpretation of the problem introduced in chapter one. In this chapter, the writer continues elaborating on the issue of knowledge and its impact on power: how knowledge
130 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the hundreds of videos that were posted to YouTube in response to the fierce anti-Islam video Fitna and analyse whether and how the participatory opportu...
Abstract: In this article we examine the hundreds of videos that were posted to YouTube in response to the fierce anti-Islam video Fitna. We use this case to analyse whether and how the participatory opportu...
108 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a three-level analytical framework is proposed for textual analysis of the representation of social groups which divides the text analysis into three domains of social actors, social actions and argumentation.
Abstract: CDA studies on out-groups, i.e. immigrants, within Wodak's Discourse-Historical and van Dijk's Socio-cognitive approaches along other approaches, have suggested methods and analytical categories through which discursive representations of social groups are investigated. Consequently, several listings of relevant analytical categories have been proposed and applied to many subsequent studies. However, the variety of the proposed methods in representation of social groups by various scholars and the often unclear accounts for the links among various levels of discourse analysis seem to have created a multitude of discursive strategies that can be overwhelming if not confusing. This paper is an attempt to make explicit various levels of discourse analysis on representation of social groups from detailed textual analysis to discourse topics and tries to show how micro-level analytical categories are related to macro-structure within various levels of contexts. Specifically, a three-level analytical framework is suggested for textual analysis of the representation of social groups which divides the text analysis into three domains of social actors, social actions and argumentation. It is suggested that the analysis should look at what is (not) in the text in terms of the three domains mentioned, and investigate how these domains are linguistically realized through a set of linguistic processes/mechanisms.
103 citations
TL;DR: The rise of ordinary voice in post-television news narratives has drastically transformed the nature of journalistic witnessing as discussed by the authors, and its implications for the moralisation of Western publics are explored in this paper.
Abstract: The rise of ‘ordinary’ voice in post-television news narratives has drastically transformed the nature of journalistic witnessing. For some, it facilitates connectivity with and action on distant suffering, yet for others, it fragments global connectivity and creates multiple but insulated communities of ‘our own’. It is this changing nature of witnessing, in the move from television to post-television news, and its implications for the moralisation of Western publics that I explore in this paper.
80 citations
TL;DR: This article used concordance tools to identify strings that are very frequent in a corpus of blogs, relative to a general corpus of written texts, focus on those relatively frequent words that mark stance and analyse the...
Abstract: Blogs, which can be written and read by anyone with a computer and an internet connection, would seem to expand the possibilities for engagement in public sphere debates. Indeed, blogs are full of the kind of vocabulary that suggests intense discussion. However, a closer look at the way this vocabulary is used in context suggests that the main concern of writers is self-presentation, positioning themselves in a crowded forum, in what has been called stance-taking. When writers mark their stances, for instance by saying I think, they enact different ways of signalling a relation to others, marking disagreement, enacting surprise, and ironicising previous contributions. All these moves are ways of presenting one's own contribution as distinctive, showing one's entitlement to a position. In this paper, I use concordance tools to identify strings that are very frequent in a corpus of blogs, relative to a general corpus of written texts, focus on those relatively frequent words that mark stance and analyse the...
69 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the new technological platforms available for people to express themselves in public, such as blogs, online tutorials, citizen journalism, and interactive services across institutions.
Abstract: Blogs, online tutorials, citizen journalism and interactive services across institutions are but a few of the new technological platforms available for people to express themselves in public. This ...
62 citations
34 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical social semiotic analysis of the UK Department of Work and Pensions 'Employ Ability' initiative is presented, where a number of semiotic resources are identified that attempt to make a neo-liberal "problematic" appear to be a natural and common sense response to questions of welfare.
Abstract: This paper provides a critical social semiotic analysis of the UK Department of Work and Pensions ‘Employ ability’ initiative. Although this initiative can be read as an attempt to reduce the exclusion of people with disabilities from the workplace, it is argued that the ‘Employ ability’ initiative, should be read as part of a discursive strategy to legitimate neo-liberal welfare reforms, where policies relating to the employment and underemployment of people with disabilities remain fixed almost entirely on the supply side rather than the demand side of labour. A number of semiotic resources are identified that attempt to make a neo-liberal ‘problematic’ appear to be a natural and common sense response to questions of welfare. Most notable is the use of an ‘empowerment’ discourse that seeks to legitimate a (self) disciplinary welfare regime and attempts to fabricate an active citizenry so necessary to the demands of neo-liberalism.
26 citations
TL;DR: In this article, social power in textual data is studied by combining tools for analyzing meaning and positioning in text, and the authors propose a method to study the social power of textual data.
Abstract: Studying social power in textual data: combining tools for analyzing meaning and positioning
TL;DR: The authors explored the discourses of citizenship through which the museum institution framed its public: museum-goers as participants, drawing on qualitative research on the London Museum of Science and Technology (LMS).
Abstract: This article explores the discourses of citizenship through which the museum institution is currently framing its public: museum-goers as participants. Drawing on qualitative research on the London...
TL;DR: The discursive construction of national identity (second edition) as mentioned in this paper is the most widely cited work on this topic. But it is not a complete survey of the discursive development of identity.
Abstract: The discursive construction of national identity (second edition), edited by Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart, translated by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J.W. ...
TL;DR: In this paper, Chow argues that poststructuralist destabilization of meaning through self-referentiality can be a problematic practice of privilege and power, not unlike the ability for the West to situate itself within fields of inquiry as the center, around which clusters a comparatively interesting and therefore worthwhile "Rest".
Abstract: Rey Chow’s recent contribution to Ingerpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan and Robyn Wiegman’s edited series, Next Wave Provocations, is indeed provocative. As her title suggests, Chow unpacks the problematic of an age in which the world is envisioned as a target, in a turn on Heidegger’s essay, ‘The Age of the World Picture’. In three chapters hung loosely together around the concepts of power, spatiality, referentiality, difference, theory, temporality and otherness, Chow questions the implications of the image/reality of the world target for the task of knowledge production. She does so most explicitly in relation to the academic realms of area studies (Asian Studies, African Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, etc.) and comparative literature. She does so from the theoretical standpoint of poststructuralism, demonstrating the limitations of the cultural/linguistic/literary paradigm’s ability to account for the negative difference embedded in language itself. Moreover, Chow argues that poststructuralist destabilization of meaning through self-referentiality can be a problematic practice of privilege and power, not unlike the ability for the ‘West’ to situate itself within fields of inquiry as the center, around which clusters a comparatively interesting and therefore worthwhile ‘Rest’. What I find most compelling about Chow’s work is her ability to pose critical questions and examine the complexity of the intersections between theory and materiality. In these brief essays, poststructuralist theory, largely informed by a Foucauldian perspective on power and difference, is put to the task of constructing a genealogy of modern war and the way the language of ‘world targeting’ converges with the questions asked by area studies. The issues of war are dropped in later chapters in favor of closer consideration of how targeting and self-referentiality shape the practical and theoretical impulses informing area studies and comparative literature as fields of academic inquiry. In the second chapter, Chow again takes up the limitations of poststructuralism, again by examining its tendencies toward negative difference, discursive ghettoization, exoticization and othering. In short, she points out the ways in which poststructuralism and its advocates address difference without addressing its attendant compulsion – exclusion. Indeed, as Chow puts it, the difference that matters (e.g. race, class, gender, sexual identity, nationality) ‘is often constructed negatively as what defamiliarizes, what departs from conventional expectations, what disrupts the norm, etc. – terms that are invested in inscribing specificity by way of differentiation, deferment, and resistance’ (pp. 60–61). The very notion of resistance so ubiquitous in poststructuralist criticism is, in fact, a construction of resistance to an already-known and expected West or Europe that is itself so pervasive and powerful to have the capacity to define the relationships of differencing performed by marginalized people as resistance (a point Chow illustrates in the closing chapter by referencing Naoki Sakai’s book Translation and subjectivity: On ‘Japan’ and cultural nationalism). Chow seems to suggest that we should acknowledge the inevitability of referentiality and look at the challenges to it in terms that address the inequalities and injustices in people’s lives. Here, a return to the questions of modern war and warfare would have constructively grounded the discussion in an undeniably salient exteriority.
TL;DR: This paper traced the negotiation of national and ethnic identities in the USA in the early twentieth century, a time of intense anti-immigrant and anti-German war sentiment, focusing on a particularly infamous ban on all non-English languages in the state of Iowa.
Abstract: This study traced the negotiation of national and ethnic identities in the USA in the early twentieth century – a time of intense anti-immigrant and anti-German war sentiment. The public discourse analyzed centered around a particularly infamous ban on all non-English languages in the state of Iowa. This ban symbolized the hegemonic definition of national identity at the time, one that implicitly equated national identity to Anglo ethnicity. Alternatively, non-Anglos re-positioned ethnic differences through a discourse of patriotism (e.g., praying in a ‘foreign’ language for US victory in the war was an innocent practice of ethnic difference in the service of the nation). Equating ethnic differences to patriotism, however, resulted in the de-legitimization and erasure of non-Anglo ethnic identities. By pointing to past discursive struggles to define national identity featuring ethnic groups who are today readily accepted as ‘American’ (e.g., German-Americans), we can recast today's predominant and highly ...
TL;DR: In this paper, a short overview of European smoking bans is given, and the authors analyze and discuss what can explain this wave of smoking bans, not only regarding the similarities of the bans themselves, but also of the arguments proposed in favor of them, and how the selective framing of knowledge and innocent victims can help to explain the strong impact of this particular policy proposal.
Abstract: Most European countries have adopted partial or comprehensive smoking bans in public places within a short period of time, although the underlying evidence on the risk of second-hand smoke is almost 20 years old. After giving a short overview of European smoking bans, the article aims to analyze and discuss what can explain this wave of smoking bans, not only regarding the similarities of the bans themselves, but also of the arguments proposed in favor of them. While typical explanations in public policy studies fall short of explaining the momentum and similarity of smoking bans, the article discusses how the selective framing of knowledge and innocent victims can help to explain the strong impact of this particular policy proposal.
TL;DR: CorDis as mentioned in this paper ) is a collection of essays on the reporting of the Iraq War and its aftermath, focusing on journalistic balance and bias in reporting the Iraqi war and their aftermath.
Abstract: This collection of essays is a timely contribution to the growing interest in journalistic balance and bias in reporting the Iraqi war and its aftermath. The data analysed is cross-cultural, based on evening flagship news programmes in Britain (BBC One), Italy (RAI Uno and Canale 5) and the US (CBS). It also involves an analysis of both public service broadcasting (BBC One and RAI Uno) and commercial broadcasting (Canale 5 and CBS). This collection is part of a wider research project allied to several Italian universities entitled ‘Corpus and Discourse: a quantitative and qualitative linguist analysis of political and media discourse on the conflict in Iraq in 2003’, referred to throughout this collection as ‘CorDis’. Whilst the CorDis project involves the analysis of a wide variety of texts (including Hansard records, White House press briefings and print media), the collection here confines itself to the detailed analysis of broadcast media collected from the first day of the war, 20 March 2003 until the end of the week following the ‘fall of Baghdad’ on 9 April 2003. The essays in this collection all adopt various permutations of the developing research paradigm of corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS), which combines quantitative methods of analysis of more extended electronic corpora with the close reading and subjective, qualitative methods of more established models of discourse analysis. Using WordSmith4 for initial analyses, the tagged corpora have been converted into XML TEI-conformant corpora for use with Zaira software across the CorDis corpora. Anna Marchi and MarcoVenuti explain this conversion process in more detail in Chapter 1 of this collection. In Chapter 2, Linda Lombardo uses CADS to analyse the role of the television news presenter across all three national cultures, in both English and Italian, and including both public service and commercial broadcasters. The conclusions of this chapter point to greater differences between nations than expected in terms of the national concept of public service broadcasting. The BBC serves as a ‘national watchdog’ to challenge official sources while RAI Uno edges towards a greater political neutrality. CBS’s commercial impetus shows a tendency towards greater tabloidization in terms of both the personalisation of the news presenter and the type of stories covered. This chapter is followed by one in which Laura Ferrarotti continues the discussion of professional persona of the news presenters, focussing on the use of pronouns in broadcasts on each of the four news channels. In Chapter 4, Caroline Clark extends this overarching discussion to include an analysis of the persona of the embedded war reporter in the BBC and CBS corpora. Chapter 5 focuses on the final evaluative elements of the reports by the various correspondents across all four broadcasters, with Louann Haarman offering a very interesting but tentative explanation for some of the marked differences between the English language and Italian data in her sample. A welcome chapter on the visual elements of television news by Maxine Lipson offers an insight into the importance of camera techniques in the construction of meaning, with particular reference to the ideological presentation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ that is explored in several other chapters.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the lack of full public participation and consequent democratic deficit on the issue of capital punishment in the UK, and argue that a range of tendencies operating in the public sphere are responsible for the absence of full participation and democratic deficit.
Abstract: In this paper I investigate the lack of full public participation and consequent democratic deficit on the issue of capital punishment in the UK. In so doing I critically analyse the media institutions and practices of the UK public sphere within which the death penalty discourses unfold, and several printed media contributions to the capital punishment discourses around abolition in 1964/1965 and in 1994, the last debate to date on the issue in the UK Parliament. Consequently, I argue that a range of tendencies operating in the public sphere are responsible for the lack of full public participation and democratic deficit on this and other issues. While I am sympathetic with present abolitionist penal policy, I nevertheless argue that these tendencies constitute dominatory practice. In conclusion, by way of remedial practice, I recommend the breakdown of the separation of the institutions of state and civil society and the collective appropriation and social control of the institutions of the public spher...
TL;DR: This paper examined the language of nine interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and argued that Rice used her media access as a platform to encourage audiences to see Iran's nuclear program as a nuclear weapons program, often with the complicity of her interviewers and always without evidence.
Abstract: Iran's nuclear program has garnered a great deal of media attention for nearly a decade, yet critical discourse scholars have been relatively silent on the matter. To spur more scholarship on the nuclear controversy, this study examines the language of nine interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Analyzing the opening questions of topic shifts, the relationship of scope and topic, and Secretary Rice's portrayal of the US and Iran, I argue that Rice used her media access as a platform to encourage audiences to see Iran's nuclear program as a nuclear weapons program, often with the complicity of her interviewers and always without evidence. In the wake of the unilateralist American invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rice also worked to rebuild a positive image of the White House as she presented the US as a proponent of multilateral diplomacy as opposed to her portrayal of the Islamic Republic as a rogue state.
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative systemic functional linguistics-based discourse analysis of 10 modern British and Italian versions of the popular fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood is presented, showing that very different messages may be conveyed to children in relation to their own and their parents' responsibility for problems and solutions.
Abstract: It is widely accepted that stories for children may function as educational vehicles to the extent that they model and reflect expectations about children's and adults’ roles and responsibilities. The educational message may be communicated directly through explicit evaluation of characters and events by the narrative voice or indirectly through the writer's representation of the main characters (their actions, experiences and words). This paper presents the findings from a comparative systemic functional linguistics-based discourse analysis of 10 modern British and Italian versions of the popular fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. The analysis shows that – even when telling the same story – very different messages may be conveyed to children in relation to their own and their parents’ responsibility for problems and solutions. It is argued that the insight provided by this study may add to the understanding of cross-cultural differences in pedagogical goals and inform the practice of storytelling in educ...
TL;DR: The authors examined socio-cognitive dimensions in the production and reception of political speeches and argued for the centrality of the macro-linguistic textual notion of hybrid genres to the understanding of the socio-cultural makeup of speaker-audience relations and dynamics.
Abstract: This paper aims at providing a better understanding of the workings of political rhetoric in the discourse of Hizbollah by examining relatively underexplored socio-cognitive dimensions in production and reception of political speeches. It argues for the centrality of the macro-linguistic textual notion of hybrid genres to the understanding of the socio-cultural makeup of speaker–audience relations and dynamics. The adequateness and uniqueness of the Lebanese, and by extension, the Middle-Eastern context are more clearly evident in the overwhelming dominance of dogmatic discourses which, I argue, both trigger and aid the perpetual construction and reconstruction of ideologically susceptible audiences. Elements of these discourses such as religious, political, military and even literary blend in a unique way in public, normally political, speeches to produce a type of hybrid genre which helps construct constantly shifting audience roles with varying effective power. A pragmatic–stylistic analysis of the dis...
TL;DR: Baumgarten et al. as discussed by the authors used a corpus-linguistic discourse-analytical model to investigate the underlying political and ideological motivations that drive the choices of decision-makers involved in the translation of Mein Kampf.
Abstract: Interest in the translation of political texts has been growing during the last decade. Modern translation studies have increasingly focused on the complexities of power relations implied by the act of translating, but most of this work has dealt with postcolonial literature, while the analysis of political discourse in translation has been explored only recently and by a few scholars. Translating Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a groundbreaking attempt to bring together different disciplines and elaborate an analytical framework to investigate the underlying political and ideological motivations that drive the choices of decision-makers involved in the translation of political texts. As Baumgarten explains, Mein Kampf in translation is a fertile research ground for the study of subtle interrelations of power struggles and ideologies and how they have found their way into textual practices. His choice is certainly felicitous, as the vast amount of material analysed (11 English translations) allows the researcher a wide perspective and the possibility of comparing several translation choices and account for repeated tendencies. The book belongs to the framework of descriptive translation studies and critical discourse analysis. Its author argues in favour of greater interdisciplinarity between the two disciplines, as both attempt to shed light on hidden ideologies inscribed in language, but CDA often limits itself to a monolingual framework and does not account for the subtleties of cross-cultural exchange, while descriptive translation studies is enriched by the insight provided by CDA when dealing with hidden ideologies and power relations. This book convincingly demonstrates what interesting findings Baumgarten’s interdisciplinary approach can lead to. Through his innovative corpus-linguistic discourse-analytical model, the author answers his two research questions, namely to what extent competing ideologies and power struggles determine the English translations of Mein Kampf, given the highly politicised atmosphere of the 1930s and 1940s, and how such ideologies and struggles are reflected on the textual level of the translations. Readers who do not know German will not be able to understand a few quotations, but their overall understanding will not be hindered. The structure of the book starts from the meta-theoretical, theoretical and methodological foundations, which are outlined in Chapter 2. This chapter is an informative overview written in a lucid and agreeable style and would also prove a very useful introduction to the disciplines, if used with students. The author then moves to a description of the context in which the book was first written and then translated. Chapter 3 delineates the sociocultural conditions both in Germany and in the target countries (Britain and the USA), and Chapter 4 narrows the focus down to the level of the translations and provides the immediate context in which they were created, while also introducing the distinction between compliant and resistant translations, which proves helpful further on in the book. Chapters 5–7 make use of a corpus-based and corpus-driven approach to scrutinize how ideological struggles and relations of power within the individual translation profiles. Chapter 8 reports Baumgarten’s conclusions and interesting suggestions for future research. Most translation studies scholars would agree about the necessity of closer cooperation between their discipline and neighbouring ones. Baumgarten’s work is a possible answer in that direction, as his findings should be of interest to scholars working in political science or
TL;DR: This paper explored a unique poetic narrative from two perspectives: a sociolinguistic point of view within the framework of functional discourse analysis and a literary critique through the prism of Indian philosophic ideas in the text.
Abstract: This study explores a unique poetic narrative from two perspectives: a sociolinguistic point of view within the framework of functional discourse analysis and a literary critique through the prism of Indian philosophic ideas in the text. The research method is based on juxtaposing a social-semiotic interpretation and a literary commentary. Firstly, the article applies the Hallidayan model of the dimensions of discourse – field, tenor and mode – to an excerpt from Yeats's poetic drama, as the context of situation. Secondly, the article identifies specific Indian philosophic concepts in the text and establishes how they influence the structure of dramatic verse and the characterization of protagonists. The discussion reveals the extent of complementarity and tension between the two approaches and how they change the reading of the text when open to disparate disciplinary perspectives. Final results signify the potential and applicability of the analytical categories to research across diverse discourses.
TL;DR: The early findings of ongoing research on the representation of labour, workers, industrial relations and their context in Argentine political discourse have been discussed in this paper from the standpoint of Sociological and Linguistic Discourse Analysis.
Abstract: The paper discusses the early findings of ongoing research on the representation of labour, workers, industrial relations and their context in Argentine political discourse. Argentine Presidents' first addresses to Congress from 1983 to 2010 are examined from the standpoint of Sociological and Linguistic Discourse Analysis. The linguistic resources used by the speakers are explored, as well as their relation to the argumentative strategies through which proposals are justified.
TL;DR: The authors explored the types of discourse being put forward in these efforts, using Fraser's categorisation of needs talk within the process of politicisation and found evidence of oppositional, expert and reprivatisation discourses and suggests that these have emerged in a way that reflects the distinctive histories of disabled people as well as feminist explanations of domestic violence and abuse.
Abstract: The abuse of disabled women is an issue that has not historically been given a great deal of attention. More recently, efforts to raise awareness of this particular set of needs have been ongoing but largely limited to the specialised spheres of domestic violence and disability activism. This paper explores the types of discourse being put forward in these efforts, using Fraser's categorisation of needs talk within the process of politicisation. It finds evidence of oppositional, expert and reprivatisation discourses and suggests that these have emerged in a way that reflects the distinctive histories of disabled people as well as feminist explanations of domestic violence and abuse.
TL;DR: Mayr as mentioned in this paper introduced the concept of language and power in the context of institutional discourse, and provided an introduction to institutional discourse and its relationship to power and language. But this volume addresse...
Abstract: Language and power. An introduction to institutional discourse, by Andrea Mayr, London, Continuum, 2008, 204 pp. ISBN: 978-08264-8743-8 (hardback), 978-08264-8744-5 (paperback) This volume addresse...
TL;DR: Focusing on the philosophical thought of three giants of Western philosophical tradition is relevant and timely as mentioned in this paper, and Fillion states in the preface that he is primarily concerned with the articulation of both the telos (i.e. goals, end) and the dynamics of history in the philosophical work of Kant, Hegel and Marx.
Abstract: Given our current preoccupation with global multiculturalism, diversity, and racial/ethnic politics, Professor Fillion’s focus on the philosophical thought of three giants of Western philosophical tradition is relevant and timely. As an applied linguist, I am often frustrated by superficial writing on multiculturalism, politics and education, which is often devoid of historical and philosophical underpinnings. Fillion states in the preface that he is primarily concerned with the articulation of both the telos (i.e. goals, end) and the dynamics of history in the philosophical work of Kant, Hegel and Marx. Where we are headed, in our complex multicultural world, riddled by political and economic conflict, is the overarching question posed by Fillion. Although he mentions some current examples such as the US occupation of Iraq, the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian struggle, and the expansion of biotechnological events, he points out that he is not concerned with the empirical validity of his observations about the world, but with an examination of the assumptions that underlie our observations about the world. Two aims of Fillion’s philosophical investigation are clearly stated in the introduction. The first one asks how we are to situate ourselves within this evolving world. The second concerns a two-part observation: that the world is becoming increasingly multicultural, and that this appears to mean that the world is becoming one world. Making sense of different perceptions of the world, however, involves making use of the philosophical concepts of the past, present and future, which allows us to consider history as a whole. From this perspective, one is capable of producing knowledge (evidence, historical facts from the past), observing the unfolding of the historical present and anticipating the future. In this section the author also addresses some current questionable assumptions: our having reached a final destination as proposed by Francis Fukuyama in The end of history and The last man, and the equally flawed argument presented by Samuel P. Huntington’s The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. Both approaches take as given ‘the present circumstances as ordered and organized’ (p. 13). Fillion delves into the modal concepts from classical philosophy – possibility, necessity and contingency – and how these relate to the unfolding of our lives. Questions about contingency, necessity, causation, explanation and others can be traced to the cosmological argument of classical natural theology, which was first seriously challenged in the eighteenth century by David Hume and then by Immanuel Kant. Hume regarded causality as a product of the mind, not present in reality. Kant interpreted empirical reality, including causal relations, as a product of human mental activity. Kant’s philosophical treatise, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, is carefully examined by Fillion in Part I. Kant’s cosmopolitan view allows him to consider the whole of history, attempting to understand the world by the use of one’s rational faculties. Kant saw the regularities manifested in Nature and reasoned that rational structures might also manifest themselves in History. In an attempt to explain the historical process, ‘Universal History’, Kant proposes nine theses, which Fillion proceeds to unpack. While he is personally concerned with the question of whether or not there is a way of life to which all human beings should aspire, he recognizes