Showing papers in "Discourse, Context and Media in 2017"
TL;DR: In this paper, a discourse analytical perspective is adopted to examine the visual-discursive features of Internet memes in relation to the candidates for the 2016 U.S presidential election, focusing on how memes attempt to create a negative view of the candidates and reduce their legitimacy as presidential candidates.
Abstract: Internet memes are a contemporary phenomenon situated at the nexus of language, society, and digital communication, and represent a relatively new form of participatory culture that can offer certain demographics an opportunity for political expression, engagement and participation which otherwise might not have been accessible. This article adopts a discourse analytical perspective to examine the visual-discursive features of Internet memes in relation to the candidates for the 2016 U.S presidential election – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Specifically, memes are analyzed in line with Van Leeuwen׳s (2007) framework for the analysis of legitimizing discourse in relation to how they de-legitimize. That is, the focus is on how memes attempt to create a negative view of the candidates and reduce their legitimacy as presidential candidates. The analysis reveals that the (de)legitimization strategies of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization and mythopoesis are all evident within Internet memes.
118 citations
TL;DR: In this article, face work in Instagram posts is examined by using the hashtags #brag and #humblebrag to negotiate an appropriate level of self-praise and positive self-presentation.
Abstract: Social media can be seen as “sites of self-presentation and identity negotiation” whose affordances facilitate the production and promotion of both individual and collective identities (Papacharissi, 2011, pp. 304–305). From a pragmatic perspective, self-promotion and self-praise are interactionally risky acts. While some studies have shed light on self-praise in online communities, little attention has been paid to the pragmatic function of the affordances of digital media such as hashtagging and multimodality in self-praising discourse. This article contributes to filling this research gap by examining the ways in which posters of “bragging” Instagram photos do face work by using the hashtags #brag and #humblebrag in interaction with positive (im-)politeness strategies. It presents the results of both a small-scale quantitative study of face work in Instagram posts labelled #fitness, #brag and #humblebrag, as well as a qualitative analysis of the mitigation and aggravation strategies used in explicitly self-praising posts. The article argues that the hashtags #brag and #humblebrag have a clear metalinguistic function as a reference to the illocution of the speech act. It also shows that they are used in a balancing act of face mitigation and aggravation strategies. Overall, the study suggests that the hashtags #brag and #humblebrag function as part of a strategy that negotiates an appropriate level of self-praise and positive self-presentation. The study adds to an understanding of the pragmatics of self-presentation on social media, and raises questions regarding the new literacies that digital media require.
71 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated whether users writing in different languages constitute differentiated speech communities with different discursive norms or rather share the same norms and discourse habits and found analogous (although not identical) patterns for the three features.
Abstract: In this empirical study, we investigate whether English-, Dutch- and Italian-written negative hotel reviews on TripAdvisor show similar or divergent characteristics. The main goal is to find out whether users writing in different languages constitute differentiated speech communities with different discursive norms or rather share the same norms and discourse habits. To answer this question, we examined 100 reviews for each language and analysed three features, namely the types of speech acts that they use, the specific topics that they evaluate and the extent to which they up-scale or down-scale their evaluative statements. The main conclusion of the cross-linguistic analysis is that there is a general trend towards similarity between the three language user groups under examination. We found analogous (although not identical) patterns for the three features. Within this overall trend towards similarity, specific divergences can be detected, for example regarding the status of positive comments in English-written reviews, or the status of the ‘interpersonal’ topic in Italian-written reviews.
70 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a narrative-discourse perspective on how hashtags are used as resources for sharing and story making is provided, foregrounding narrative as a circulatory drive on social media.
Abstract: Uses of hashtags as storytelling devices have received little attention so far in the field of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. This article seeks to fill this gap by providing a narrative-discourse perspective on how hashtags are used as resources for sharing and story making (Androutsopoulos, 2014; Georgakopoulou, 2015a, 2015b, in press), foregrounding narrative as a circulatory drive on social media. The data for analysis are drawn from Twitter and the Guardian ’s rolling coverage of the deadly attacks at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo offices on January 7th, 2015. The analysis looks at the emergence and circulation of hashtags #CharlieHebdo and #JeSuisCharlie in their polylingual instantiations. Its findings point to the hashtags’ metalinguistic, metadiscursive and metanarrative functions in relation to positions of narrative stancetaking made available to networked publics. It is argued that hashtag sharing in this case attests to a shift from modes of ecstatic global news reporting and spectatorships of suffering (Chouliaraki, 2006) to modes of ecstatic sharing on social media which create dividing lines of evaluative assessments of the events. The study contributes to the empirical study of hashtagging as social and discourse practice.
68 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored how hashtags are used to coordinate and accentuate the values construed in a corpus of Twitter posts (tweets) about depression, and employed a discursive system, communing affiliation, to interpret how particular values about depression are positioned as bondable in this ambient environment.
Abstract: Social metadata is an important dimension of social media communication, and closely associated with practices such as curating, tagging, and searching content. This article explores how hashtags are used to coordinate and accentuate the values construed in a corpus of Twitter posts (tweets) about depression. In other words, it explores how people use hashtags as a resource to ‘convoke’ communities of feeling around values realised as ideation-attitude couplings. The aim is to extend work on dialogic affiliation (Knight, 2010a, 2010b, 2013) in order to account for ‘ambient’ affiliation via social media, where participants do not necessarily interact directly. We employ a discursive system, communing affiliation, to interpret how particular values about depression are positioned as bondable in this ambient environment. The focus is on understanding how people are forging alignments and negotiating meaning through social tagging practices.
63 citations
TL;DR: This article showed that the range of pragmatic functions of hashtags is likely to be reduced, and will be motivated by factors other than an impoverished discourse context, and that spoken hashtags seem to be largely restricted to their interpersonal "metacomment" function, and are most commonly used to provide evaluative judgements on the rest of the utterance and to guide inferences concerning the speaker's attitudinal stance.
Abstract: Hashtags online perform a range of linguistic (Zappavigna, 2015) and pragmatic (Scott, 2015) functions alongside their categorising and searching functionalities. In Scott (2015), I argued that these different functions are, at least partly, driven by the properties associated with mediated discourse. However, hashtags are also sometimes produced in spoken discourse, where the interlocutors share a physical context and are likely to have access to a range of contextual assumptions and non-verbal cues that are unavailable online. In face-to-face communication the audience is less likely to be “imagined” in the sense of boyd (2010) and the speaker is less likely to have to negotiate “context collapse”, as identified by Marwick and boyd (2011) . Drawing on principles from the relevance-theoretic pragmatic framework (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/95), I argue that in such an enriched context, the range of pragmatic functions of hashtags is likely to be reduced, and will be motivated by factors other than an impoverished discourse context. I draw on data from attested spoken examples and show that spoken hashtags seem to be largely restricted to their interpersonal “metacomment” (Zappavigna, 2015, p. 6) function, and that they are most commonly used to provide evaluative judgements on the rest of the utterance and to guide inferences concerning the speaker’s attitudinal stance.
61 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between mobile phones and users' identities in three cultures that differ geographically, historically, and culturally: Oman, an Islamic social monarchy in the Arabian Gulf; Ukraine, a post-Soviet Eastern European country; and the United States of America.
Abstract: This study explores the relationship between mobile phones and users’ identities in three cultures that differ geographically, historically, and culturally: Oman, an Islamic social monarchy in the Arabian Gulf; Ukraine, a post-Soviet Eastern European country; and the United States of America. A Likert-style questionnaire that also included open-ended questions was distributed to 393 college students to elicit answers on how they relate to their mobile phones. Findings indicate that mobile phone users of different nationalities and genders perceive and use their mobile phones differently for self-expression and identity display, with Omani women most likely to orient to their phones as identity-relevant, and Ukrainian men least likely to do so. Americans showed more mixed results, with American women more prone to treat their mobile phones as objects that relate to identity expression. Further, while Ukrainians and Americans tended to view their mobile phones primarily through the lens of utility, Omanis tended to take a more affective/romantic perspective. To explain these findings, we demonstrate, following Al Zidjaly and Gordon (2012), that mobile phones are productively understood as what Scollon (2001) calls cultural tools, or the material and symbolic means people use in culturally- and historically-enabled and -constrained ways to accomplish actions such as identity display.
59 citations
TL;DR: An overview of the research conducted within the Genre and Multimodality framework, which has been used to describe the multimodality of page-based documents and other multimodal artefacts over the past 15 years is provided.
Abstract: This review article provides an overview of the research conducted within the Genre and Multimodality framework, which has been used to describe the multimodality of page-based documents and other multimodal artefacts over the past 15 years The article explicates the motivation and inspiration for developing the framework, introduces its central theoretical concepts and presents its applications across a number of case studies Finally, the article discusses the criticism directed towards the model and identifies avenues of future development
44 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors employ multimodal discourse analysis to explore how mothers represent their everyday experiences of motherhood on Instagram through different forms of self-portraiture, and investigate whether the "selfies" that they share can be characterized as a visual genre.
Abstract: This article employs multimodal discourse analysis to explore how mothers represent their everyday experiences of motherhood on Instagram through different forms of self-portraiture. It investigates whether the ‘selfies’ that they share can be characterized as a visual genre and identifies four subgenres: presented, mirrored, inferred and implied selfies. The article illustrates the different ways in which the photographer’s perspective can be represented in each subgenre. The aim is to show that the function of the selfie as a multimodal genre is not solely to represent ‘the self’ but rather to enact intersubjectivity, that is, to generate various possibilities of relations between perspectives on a particular topic, issue, or experience and hence to open up potential for negotiating different points of view.
42 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined multilingual hashtags as discourse of emotions about social movements, with a focus on the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, and found that a significant proportion of Instagram hashtags about the Umbrella movement are also affective in function (e.g. #ilovehongkong, #hate).
Abstract: This paper examines multilingual hashtags as discourse of emotions about social movements, with a focus on the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. With the Chinese search word #雨傘運動 (“Umbrella Movement”), over 9000 hashtags were collected from 700 posts on Instagram. These hashtags were coded by language choice and their broad discourse functions of fact, opinion, and emotion. Our analysis suggests that while stating facts and expressing opinions, a significant proportion of Instagram hashtags about the Umbrella Movement are also affective in function (e.g. #ilovehongkong, #hate). These hashtags convey emotions associated mainly with political demands, solidarity, unity, hatred, frustration, and dissatisfaction. We also conducted online interviews with selected Instagram users to understand better their multilingual hashtagging practices and language attitudes. Overall, the present study suggests that affect was expressed and experienced through a common set of linguistic resources - Cantonese, mixed code, and traditional Chinese characters - which then became codes of unity and solidarity in difficult times. Interviewees also produced discourses of pride in Cantonese which further suggest the use of Cantonese in asserting their unique Hongkonger identities. Drawing on Ahmed's (2004) notion of ‘affective economies’, this article concludes by unravelling the relationship between language, emotion, digital technologies, and politics.
40 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the use of the word mansplain in social media and found that men and women use the word to critique, evaluate and/or normalize the appropriateness of other users' language.
Abstract: This study considers uses of the word mansplain as a phenomenon of gendered metapragmatics, or metalinguistic commentary related to male-female communicative dynamics. Mansplain (a portmanteau of man and explain), a neologism recently popularized on social media, is typically used by women to describe men speaking to women in a patronizing manner. However, the analysis of social media discourse reveals a wider range of meanings and uses, as users employ the word to critique, evaluate and/or normalize the appropriateness of other users’ language. From a dataset of 200 Twitter and Facebook posts, the study analyzes patterns of the word’s functions, showing how uses of mansplain not only expose varying beliefs about how men and women should or should not talk to each other, but also communicate affective and epistemic stances about the value of discussing other people’s language use more generally. Some reactions to the prevalence of the word are observable in various usages of mansplain, demonstrating both acceptance and rejection of gender-specific metalanguage. For example, some use the term deliberately to exhibit metapragmatic self-monitoring (e.g., “Not trying to mansplain but…”). However, others who reject the legitimacy of the term consider it to be a linguistic weapon used to unduly silence men’s voices. I argue that online comments using the word mansplain illuminate multiple sociocultural issues such as: how women, by labeling their verbal repression, are empowered to defy it through metapragmatics; how users retaliate against a gendered term; and how a word can be re-contextualized and re-appropriated transforming its meaning to reflect multiple viewpoints.
TL;DR: The authors examined the way people appeal to the lived experiences and moral assumptions of members of their own social network in order to request funding on GoFundMe and argued that self-positioning distracts from the injustices of a free-market medical system that depletes people's resources and renders them precarious subjects at the mercy of donations from individuals in the same socio-economic boat.
Abstract: While research into crowdfunding in general has been steadily increasing, few studies have looked at how requests are formulated on personal fundraising sites. Through a narrative analysis of 105 medical campaigns on GoFundMe (GFM), we examine the way people appeal to the lived experiences and moral assumptions of members of their own social network in order to request funding. While requests are deeply embedded in the suggested scaffold of the GoFundMe platform, authors depart in codified ways from the strategies recommended by the site. These vernacular departures serve to position people in dire need of assistance as respectable and worthy of help. We argue such self-positioning distracts from the injustices of a free-market medical system that depletes people’s resources and renders them precarious subjects at the mercy of donations from individuals in the same socio-economic boat.
TL;DR: This paper found that the media was seen as a driving force behind negative stereotypes about Muslims, and this resulted in pressure on Muslims to present themselves in nonthreatening and welcoming ways to others, despite being subjected to covert and overt discrimination which participants felt in various contexts.
Abstract: Stereotyping of Muslims in media and political narratives can have tangible effects on the day-to-day lives of young people. Using data from focus groups with 19 university students in London and Birmingham, UK and focusing on extracts from the data in which participants tell stories about their own experiences, this article explores how young British Muslims position themselves in response to negative media narratives about Muslims, particularly after terrorist attacks. The analysis shows that the media was seen as a driving force behind negative stereotypes about Muslims, and this resulted in pressure on Muslims to present themselves in non-threatening and welcoming ways to others, despite being subjected to covert and overt discrimination which participants felt in various contexts. Participants suggested that discrimination could be difficult to identify and quantify, and even when discrimination was overt, it could be illogical and incoherent, and therefore difficult to respond to in a meaningful way.
TL;DR: It is argued that a more explicit and refined semiotic foundation has much to offer and only with such a foundation can sufficiently fine-grained theoretical and methodological tools be constructed capable of tracking both media evolution and media interrelationships in detail.
Abstract: A prerequisite for approaching the study of changes across media and their evolving roles in society, especially when ‘new’ media emerge, is that one has a good theoretical grasp of just what ‘media’ are and how they may be approached analytically. To support insightful analysis going beyond description and cataloguing, there is a need to make current notions far more precise. In this paper, I evaluate some of the more developed proposals made for characterizing relations between media to date and argue that a more explicit and refined semiotic foundation has much to offer. Only with such a foundation can sufficiently fine-grained theoretical and methodological tools be constructed capable of tracking both media evolution and media interrelationships in detail. The paper concludes that the incorporation of a particular definition of semiotic modes in the context of multimodality allows more discriminating characterizations of ‘media’ and ‘mediality’ in general.
TL;DR: This article examined polylogue online stories about postnatal depression (PND) on the popular parenting website Mumsnet and showed how a narrative discourse-analytical approach can reveal narrative practices used to project and transform illness identities.
Abstract: Health research highlights transformative and therapeutic effects of peer-to-peer online communication. Yet, we still know little about the practices and processes that generate such effects. This paper seeks to contribute to this understanding by examining polylogue online stories about postnatal depression (PND) on the popular parenting website Mumsnet. Drawing on the notion of narrative, small stories and positioning, this study shows how a narrative discourse-analytical approach can reveal narrative practices used to project and transform illness identities. At the micro level, the analysis shows that the small stories studied here draw on two big canonical narratives confession and exemplum . Whereas confessions are a ‘way in’ to disclose PND, the ‘didactical’ exempla serve as a knowledge resource and tools of alignment, and validation helping women to narratively repair ‘spoiled’ identity. At the macro-level, the analysis highlights tensions that exist between hegemonic discourses about motherhood and personal PND stories in which women appropriate and re-work these discourses to break silence and exercise agency. This study shows how together with technosocial factors these narrative practices can work to produce transformative effects of trouble telling and sharing online and contributes to a better understanding of digital practices underlying peer-to-peer interactions about stigmatised conditions.
TL;DR: This paper investigated the use of English-language swear words by Swedish, non-native speaker PewDiePie in the context of self-recorded, Let's Play horror videos uploaded to the video-sharing website, YouTube.
Abstract: This article is an investigation of the use of English-language swear words by Swedish, non-native speaker PewDiePie in the context of self-recorded, Let’s Play horror videos uploaded to the video-sharing website, YouTube. Situating PewDiePie within the greater media landscape to establish both his success and notoriety, this article addresses the local interpretation of the globalization of English and the use of English swear words in Swedish media. The practice of swearing in the gaming context is discussed, and swearing instances in a selection of three of PewDiePie’s horror game videos are analyzed. The article puts forth the argument that the use of English swear words contributes to the performance of PewDiePie as a specific, online persona, one that is both in line with the context of video gaming and conducive to a para-social relationship, allowing PewDiePie to achieve the overall goals of communicating with his viewers as peers and reducing the social distance between them. The article concludes that PewDiePie’s practice of social swearing not only simulates casual conversation between friends, but actively reduces social distance, creates the illusion of intimacy, and contributes to his unprecedented success on YouTube.
TL;DR: In this article, a qualitative, interpretive discourse analysis draws on central concepts from Bakhtin, and shows how authors of Chats rely on creative practices, such as polyvocality and double-voicing, in order to produce posts that other Tumblr users are likely to find humorous, and/or relatable.
Abstract: Research examining linguistic creativity on the internet has tended to describe various forms of creativity found in online “chats”: that is, in technologically-mediated “conversations” taking place synchronously among multiple users interacting in the same virtual space. In this study however, we focus on a different type of “Chat”: a newer social media discourse genre, and one that is a built-in feature of popular microblogging platform, Tumblr. These “Chats” are brief, imagined dialogues, posted by a single user. Focusing on a representative selection of 90 popular (i.e., highly reblogged) Chat posts, we illustrate two common strategies used by authors of creative Tumblr Chats: intertextual references to a wide range of cultural phenomena, and those referring to “relatable” first-person situations (i.e., “Me” posts). Our qualitative, interpretive discourse analysis draws on central concepts from Bakhtin, and shows how authors of Chats rely on creative practices, such as polyvocality and double-voicing, in order to produce posts that other Tumblr users are likely to find humorous, and/or relatable.
TL;DR: The authors examined news stories about China published in Newsweek and the Korean translations of these stories in Newsweek Hangukpan, the Korean-language version of Newsweek, to identify the manner in which China is constructed in the articles selected to be translated for Newsweek Hugukpan and to examine any discursive shifts in the Korean translation.
Abstract: Employing a corpus-based methodology and drawing on critical discourse analysis, this study examines news stories about China published in Newsweek and the Korean translations of these stories in Newsweek Hangukpan , the Korean-language version of Newsweek . In so doing, it aims to identify the manner in which China is constructed in the articles selected to be translated for Newsweek Hangukpan and to examine any discursive shifts in the Korean translations. The corpus for this study consists of two separate sub-corpora, designed and compiled using the same criteria and specifications: one sub-corpus consists of English-language texts published in Newsweek from 2005 to 2015, and the other sub-corpus consists of their corresponding Korean-language translations published in Newsweek Hangukpan during the same period. Since news texts produced outstrip the translations, the selection process is largely inevitable and only certain texts are selected for translation; and the socio-political principles or slants of particular news outlets affect which texts are so selected. In this context, the analysis reveals that Newsweek Hangukpan emphasises issues that are directly related to South Korea by prioritising, translating, and highlighting these materials, among other news available for translation; simultaneously, it distances itself from certain views advanced in the English source text by reconstructing the voice from its own perspective and using subtle linguistic changes whenever an argument cannot be applied to the South Korean context, such as by downgrading the marked voices in the Korean translations.
TL;DR: In this paper, quoting in e-mail communication and retweeting in Twitter message streams is analysed as users’ recontextualization practices which share formal features but serve different communicative needs.
Abstract: In this paper, quoting in e-mail communication and retweeting in Twitter message streams is analysed as users’ recontextualization practices which share formal features but serve different communicative needs. After a short discussion of user related push factors and medium specific pull factors and their interplay in computer mediated discourse, quoting in e-mail discussions is characterised as a CMD practice through which users manage interactional and topical coherence problems caused by technological factors. Retweeting, conversely, is characterised as a platform-specific variant of “sharing” digital objects which is afforded through social network sites. A formal and functional analysis of edited and unedited retweets reveals that this recontextualization practice shares formal properties with quoting but that it is mainly used for interpersonal rather than for topic- and interaction-oriented ends. The results lay the basis for some generalisations concerning the conceptualization and the interplay of communicative push and pull factors in current accounts of the adaptation of existing and the emergence of new social practices and genres in CMD.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors trace popularity-driven coverage of climate change in New Scientist with the special aim of identifying which aspects of the issue have been backgrounded, and find that the coverage relies on threat frames, privileges novelty and the timeliness and impact of climate science, avoids responsibility and adaptation frames, and endorses the so-called progress narrative.
Abstract: This study traces popularity-driven coverage of climate change in New Scientist with the special aim of identifying which aspects of the issue have been backgrounded. Unlike institutional communication or quality press coverage of climate change, commercial science journalism has received less attention with respect to how it frames the crisis. Assuming that the construction of newsworthiness in popular science journalism requires eliminating, or at least obscuring, some alienating information, the study identifies prevalent frames, news values and discursive strategies in the outlet’s most-read online articles on climate change (2013–2015). With the official statement of the World Meteorological Organization (2014) as a reference, it considers which dimensions of the coverage have been backgrounded, and illustrates how language is recruited to de-emphasize some representations through implicitness, underspecification, or syntactic and compositional devices. It finds that the coverage relies on threat frames, privileges novelty and the timeliness and impact of climate science, avoids responsibility and adaptation frames, and endorses the so-called progress narrative. It discusses how this may forestall social and personal mobilization by placing trust in science institutions and technologies to confront the crisis.
TL;DR: This article evaluated the discourse of this new section of the CosmoVotes website, together with readers' responses, concentrating on evaluative language and the role that verbal processes play in the expression of meaning.
Abstract: Before the US midterm elections of November 2014, the well-known women’s magazine Cosmopolitan decided to include politics in its contents. The editorial board stated that their aim was to encourage readers to vote and to be engaged with women’s rights advocay in the election process. To that end, Cosmopolitan created a new website, CosmoVotes, with content ranging from discussion of political issues to endorsement of specific candidates who were believed to advance women’s issues. Topics include labour rights, abortion, contraception, health, minimum wage and social equity. This paper evaluates the discourse of this new section of the Cosmopolitan website, together with readers’ responses, concentrating on evaluative language. In particular, we are concerned with differences between the editorial position and readers’ responses as viewed through the Appraisal framework (Martin and White, 2005), and the role that verbal processes play in the expression of evaluative meanings. The corpus used for the analysis consists of a selection of articles and readers’ opinions from CosmoVotes. The methodology is based on annotation of Appraisal features and processes related to the interpersonal dimension of meaning. Those features reveal how attitudes are evaluated and capture ideological positionings in this discourse. Our results show that CosmoVotes has special characteristics, such as a predominance of high intensification in the readers’ opinions, and strong negative judgements and expressions, while the magazine’s pieces on political issues are more nuanced and eschew intensification.
TL;DR: This article proposed a cross-cultural examination of commenting, comparing responses to opinion editorials in the internet sites of the Washington Post and its ideologically-aligned counterpart in Israel, NRG, three op-eds for each language.
Abstract: Readers’ comments on op-eds have mostly been analyzed by researchers as cases of disagreement, and in the Israeli context they are further described as aggressive and abusive. These insights have been gained based on the use of offensive vocabulary and un-hedged directness. The present contribution proposes a cross-cultural examination of commenting, comparing responses to opinion editorials in the internet sites of the Washington Post and its ideologically counterpart in Israel, NRG, three op-eds for each language. To do so, we (a) introduce a coding scheme which accounts for commenting, based on a distinction between agreement/disagreement, logos-oriented vs. ethos-oriented (ad-hominem and ad-personam) comments, and literal vs. ironic keying; (b) postulate a scale of threat to negative face; and (c) compare the use of the various commenting strategies in two sets of data, the internet sites of the Washington Post for American English, and the Israeli NRG site for the Hebrew. Findings indicate (1) a higher preference for the more threatening no-logos and ad-personam comments in the NRG data as compared to the WP, (2) similarities between the two sites in the use of irony vs non-irony, with preference for ironic keying in anti-ethos as compared to anti-logos. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the commenting arena in the public sphere.
TL;DR: In this article, news discussion forums are defined as a vernacular public discourse since users base their reasoning on private sphere stancetaking, and their views do not receive legitimation.
Abstract: In this paper, news discussion forums are studied as vernacular public discourse and as a communicative genre in the digital context. First, these forums are defined as a vernacular public discourse since users base their reasoning on private sphere stancetaking, and their views do not receive legitimation. Additionally, the participants comprise a hybrid public that shares networking but not necessarily a common ground on the topic being discussed. Second, news discussion forums are based on the communicative activity of commenting as they are initiated by a news article or other types of professional news content. They can be compared to content-based and knowledge-based discussions in social media, but they have their own specific characteristics. Third, the users do not necessarily reveal their source of knowledge, but when they do, references are of a general nature or they are anchored in the private sphere of the participants.
TL;DR: The authors consider how the social meanings of digital discourse are metadiscursively framed and structured by a combination of language, media and semiotic ideologies; that is, culturally shared beliefs about how words, technologies and meaning-making work.
Abstract: This paper considers how the social meanings of digital discourse are metadiscursively framed and structured by a combination of language, media and semiotic ideologies; that is, culturally shared beliefs about how words, technologies and meaning-making work. Illustrated with examples drawn from news-media stories and other mediatized texts, I demonstrate what this looks like in practice through a three-part, multimodal analysis of “sexting” as a case in point. Grounded first in the linguistic and visual accomplishment of three familiar language-ideological strategies (i.e. iconization, erasure, recursivity), my analysis is then expanded to incorporate four closely related media-ideological issues (materiality, authorship, remediation, historicity) before turning to mode/modality and performativity as two key instantiations of semiotic ideology. While digital discourse studies should certainly not “forget about the words”, it needs always to stay attentive to the complex intersection of language with media and semiotic ideologies. This analytical principle has particular importance for critically-oriented work concerned with the way digital media are used to discipline, for example, sex and sexuality.
TL;DR: The authors investigated the formation and re-negotiation of widespread social stereotypes and language ideologies concerning immigrants and their use of Greek in fictional data and found that although humor is exploited so as to expose and stigmatize racist practices, the data under scrutiny end up reproducing the ideology of ethnic monolingualism.
Abstract: Immigration that has taken place from early 1990 onwards is said to contribute to the development of a globalized landscape where strict ethnic boundaries and traditional social delineations have become fuzzy (Blommaert and Rampton, 2011). This study investigates the formation and (re)negotiation of widespread social stereotypes and language ideologies concerning immigrants and their use of Greek in fictional data. We investigate an online antiracist campaign that officially aims to dissolve the disclaimer “I’m not racist but…”. We specifically analyze three antiracist clips uploaded on YouTube representing encounters between majority members and immigrants. We focus on humor through which antiracist messages are aimed to be communicated to the public. Our findings confirm that although humor is exploited so as to expose and stigmatize racist practices, the data under scrutiny end up reproducing the ideology of ethnic monolingualism. Through an analysis of the linguistic and stylistic resources assigned to the represented characters, we reveal the deeply entrenched indexical order of the Greek language monopoly which goes hand in hand with racist attitudes. To this end, the disclaimer “we stigmatize racism, but we expect immigrants to assimilate to our language and culture” arises, thus, broadening the spectrum of racist discourses.
TL;DR: In this article, a synthesis of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Language Ideology (LI) is proposed, using a sociolinguistic study of fiction, since it has largely failed to account for the ideological role of fictional discourse to contribute to the shaping of socio-inguistic diversity.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the emerging discussion about the necessity of getting in dialogue the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the Language Ideology (LI) fields (Milani and Johnson, 2008). In particular, I attempt to combine a CDA with a LI view, using, as example, the sociolinguistic study of fiction, since it has largely failed to account for the ideological role of fictional discourse to contribute to the shaping of sociolinguistic diversity. Besides, both CDA and LI have much to gain by engaging with each other. On the one hand, CDA might extend its scope of interest, by viewing language not only as a vehicle through which social inequalities are perpetuated, but also as a topic of social inequalities in itself. On the other hand, LI could be enhanced by the methods of closer textual analysis which is characteristic of CDA. Specifically, I draw on the sociocultural CDA approach of Fairclough. Moreover, I exploit both a macro-level approach of language ideologies as widely shared beliefs about language and a micro-level conceptualization of language ideologies as schemata held by speakers to construe the social meaning of particular instances of language use. To illustrate the proposed synthesis, I use one example from representations of youth language in a Greek family sitcom.
TL;DR: This article employed textual analysis in the cultural studies tradition to analyse Reddit discussion forums dedicated to the use of Grindr to solicit sex in exchange for cash, which is in violation of the Grindr's terms of service.
Abstract: This article employs textual analysis in the cultural studies tradition to analyse Reddit discussion forums dedicated to the use of Grindr to solicit sex in exchange for cash, which is in violation of Grindr’s terms of service. Of particular interest is a canvasing of the motivations behind amateur use of the app for paid sexual encounters. More than six hundred comments from twenty-two relevant threads are selected for analysis, drawn from the popular ‘Gaybros’ subreddit forum. I nominate three key ‘scripts’ from the discourse. Namely, from the perspective of the individual seeking payment: ‘cash strapped student’ and ‘alternative to porn’; and ‘naive millennials’ from a community responder perspective. These scripts offer insight into the profit-seeking motivations behind exploiting a popular sex-seeking tool, in particular by participants who would not otherwise engage in ‘cruising for cash’. The discourse supports my view that the young men seeking payment conceive of themselves as mobile pornographers, a concept that embodies their willingness to exploit the affordances of mobile technology and the profits to be gained from youth and sex, without the digital traces of more traditional pornographic forms.
TL;DR: In this paper, a cartography of an online fashion shopping site is provided, showing how it consists of an array of micro genres, which can be navigated in different ways, yet always connect to purchase options.
Abstract: Departing from systemic-functional studies of the genre of face to face shopping, the paper provides a cartography of an online fashion shopping site, showing how it consists of an array of micro genres (themselves hybrids of genres such as advertisements, fashion spreads, lifestyle magazine articles and Instagram style social media photography) which can be navigated in different ways, yet always connect to purchase options. Multimodally, online fashion shopping entextualizes face to face fashion shopping and in the process transduces embodied modes of communication into text and image, relying a great deal more on language than its face to face equivalent.
TL;DR: This paper examined the relationship between news and readers' discourse in the context of right-leaning news websites and found evidence for stereotypical representation of these religions, as applicable to new media contexts and enacted in the websites of traditional print media.
Abstract: The recent growth of populism has resulted in dramatic political change in British, European and American politics. Given the role of right-wing media in legitimising and encouraging traditionalist, nationalist or sometimes far-right populist discourse, the linguistic and semantic relationship between news and readers’ discourse in the context of right-leaning news websites merits investigation in the current climate. This paper examines the relationship in terms of representations of Islam and Catholicism in Daily Mail and Telegraph websites. Empirical keyword analysis of news articles and linked comments is presented. Key semantic categories revealed evidence for stereotypical representation of these religions, as applicable to new media contexts and enacted in the websites of traditional print media. Results highlighted that long-term themes such as ‘Islamic terrorism, war and extreme belief’ and ‘the Pope, Vatican and scandals in the Catholic Church’ continue to dominate news stories online. 18 out of 19 categories in Islam news repeated in comments, and 9 out of 13 in Catholicism news repeated in comments. This strong overlap indicated close connections between news and comments and shared ideologies. Higher numbers of semantic categories in comments showed greater variation of topics than news, with 15 and 23 additional categories in Islam and Catholicism comments respectively. However, key multi-words reflecting collectivisation of communities, such as Muslim country, were identified in news and repeated in comments. Investigation of Muslim country revealed nationalistic and polarising statements by readers, while investigation of penitents revealed portrayal of Catholics as an ‘out-group’ through lexis which denoted violence, shock and crime. Closer analysis of some keywords revealed polarity between readers displaying differing views in relation to various aspects of religion. Taken together, however, findings suggested that age old stereotypes of minority religions were perpetuated in new media contexts.
TL;DR: This article examined the global spread of Chicano rap by conducting a multilingual, multimodal critical discourse analysis of several videos by Sad Girl, a Japanese rapper whose lyrics switch between Japanese, Spanish, and English.
Abstract: Sociolinguistic studies on the globalization of hip hop have focused on multilingual lyrics as emblematic of superdiversity and hybrid identity, but the multimodal turn in sociolinguistics suggests the need to consider how lyrics interact with musical and visual features. Drawing on studies of music videos, TV ads, and film in cultural and media studies and multimodal studies, this paper examines an under-researched area of hip hop, the global spread of Chicano rap, by conducting a multilingual, multimodal critical discourse analysis of several videos by Mona AKA Sad Girl, a Japanese rapper whose lyrics switch between Japanese, Spanish, and English. This genre-based study looks at how the artist constructs a feminist glocal identity through a combination of song lyrics, musical style, cultural iconography, body decoration, gesture and film techniques that localize the oppositional super-vernacular of Chicano rap while challenging discourses of patriarchy and nationalism. The study also takes into account data from an interview with the artist and social media to gain insights into issues of authenticity and cultural appropriation.