{"title":"Book review: Anne-Mette Hermans, Discourses of Perfection: Representing Cosmetic Procedures and Beauty Products in UK Lifestyle Magazines","authors":"H. Ringrow","doi":"10.1177/09579265231152300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231152300","url":null,"abstract":"become inscribed into the objects, settings and actions we find all around us – into the very stuff of our realities, to take Hjelmslev’s expression. Van Leeuwen shows how multimodality offers a set of tools for revealing how this takes place. We can study how identity manifest itself semiotically. But to know what we are looking at in the semiotics, we must understand social and historical contexts. This very point was also at the heart of RI. But, for us, Multimodality and Identity really shows how to study this. And as such provides, we would argue, an invaluable resource for discourse studies right now. This book tells us what can multimodality offer that is unique. It shows what its inventories of meaning potentials add to existing knowledge. And of course as discourse analysts this is what we are about.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49315146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can space be conceptualized in a different way in political discourse? An extended application of Discourse Space Theory","authors":"Qian Ma, Qiufang Wen","doi":"10.1177/09579265231188956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231188956","url":null,"abstract":"Political discourse can be considered as consisting of conflictual discourse and cooperative discourse in view of the relationship between power entities. From the perspective of spatial conceptualization in cognitive discourse analysis, cooperative discourse is supposed to be different from conflictual one in terms of the spatial representation, with Chilton’s Discourse Space Theory, which mainly conceptualizes space as an inside/outside dichotomy, only accounting for the latter instead of the former. This paper attempts to further apply Chilton’s three-dimensional model to involve the alternative way of spatial conceptualization with different kind of construals and to compare the differences of the two types of political discourse in the construction of discourse space. Taking the speeches by two state leaders for the purposes of cooperation and accusation respectively as the cases in point, this paper concludes that cooperative discourse displays an outward-extensive discourse space representation as opposed to the inward-contractive discourse space representation of conflictual discourse. This study contributes to expand the scope of discourse space analysis, which is primarily for antagonistic relations only, to incorporate cooperative relations with an extended application of DST based on alternative ways of spatial conceptualization and an elaboration on the dynamics of its three dimensions, and hence to shed some lights on political discourse studies.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45543140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Value frames in discourse supporting transgender athlete bans","authors":"Kimberly Martin, Elizabeth P. Rahilly","doi":"10.1177/09579265231187058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231187058","url":null,"abstract":"American states began passing legislation that would ban transgender girls from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity in 2020. During legislative debate, supporters of transgender athlete bans adopted rhetoric that framed their arguments in terms of commonly held values. ‘Value frames’ establish connections between people and spoken values and have a powerful effect on the way that opinions about public policy are formed. We conduct a discourse analysis of video and audio footage from committee testimony and chamber debate from 18 US states to identify the major discursive themes used by the bans’ supporters. Themes include gender simplicity, male advantage, protecting women and preventing change. Our discussion and analysis connects these themes to long-standing value frames used by political elites, namely tradition, fairness and equal opportunity. The conclusion addresses the implications of this discourse for shaping the public’s understanding of sex and gender.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44354859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Discourse & SocietyPub Date : 2023-07-01Epub Date: 2023-01-10DOI: 10.1177/09579265221148691
Jilan Wei
{"title":"Kindness in British communities: Discursive practices of promoting kindness during the Covid pandemic.","authors":"Jilan Wei","doi":"10.1177/09579265221148691","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09579265221148691","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This research adopts Critical Discourse Analysis as a perspective to explore how kindness was expressed and promoted in university communities and city communities from January to March in 2020 when the Covid pandemic broke out in the UK and provide a window on British culture in which kindness was expressed and promoted through discourse. It combines a qualitative method with a corpus-based quantitative method. It is found that kindness was meant for providing support and showing compassion and inclusion to community members and that strategies in lexis, syntax and metaphor can reproduce or resist the expression and promotion of kindness in communities. During the pandemic, the intentional kindness expressed by community authorities was respect of diversity rather than inclusion of different values or ethnicity and no substantial support was provided to vulnerable members even though authorities were trying to impress the public by claiming that they were making constant efforts to support the community. Case studies revealed that we should caution against the use of passivation and the pronouns like <i>they</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834622/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41216175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Afro-diasporan racial discourse in Germany","authors":"S. Ajagbe","doi":"10.1177/09579265231179670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231179670","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the racial discourse in the Afro-diaspora group in Germany. It uses the ‘discourse-historical approach’ – a strand of Critical Discourse Analysis – for the three-dimensional analysis of language biographical data of 67 African migrants in Germany. The study provides African migrants’ accounts of racism, identifies four discursive strategies, and then examines the semantics of a counter-racialisation term developed to cope with racism. The study finds Afro-diaspora racial discourse as a site for confronting the racism problem, legitimising the race idea, and contingent on migrants’ access to material resources in Germany. Furthermore, the term ‘fake-oyinbo’ indicates an ability to use simple linguistic terms in an intended way of racial categorisation within race relations thinking. The paper concludes that Afro-diasporans’ racial discourse is a ‘grassroots’ minority discourse revealing a counter-racialisation linguistic action while explaining and justifying the condition of the ordinary black minority.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48272115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A radical point of view”: The discursive construction of the political identity of student activists","authors":"Sylvia Sierra","doi":"10.1177/09579265231174983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231174983","url":null,"abstract":"Recently there has been renewed interest in the intersection of identity and epistemics in social interaction, yet epistemics has still rarely been analyzed in political identity construction. This paper combines research on identity from a sociocultural linguistic perspective with epistemics using Conversation Analysis. The focus here is on understanding how a small group of student activists construct their shared political identities through epistemic stances towards their academic majors and career goals. Through a discourse analytic study of conversational data among these activists, I demonstrate the validity of the relationality principle of identity in accounting for how identities are constructed as related to one another. Furthermore, I examine the relational process of authentication in epistemic stances to legitimate claims to knowledge regarding political and academic identities, as well as alignment of stances in building group solidarity and shared political identity.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46721713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘I have controlled so much’: Discourse of prison violence","authors":"Jingrui Guo","doi":"10.1177/09579265231178230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231178230","url":null,"abstract":"Prison violence has been considered a threat to not only the safety of inmates, staff, and visitors but the day-to-day functioning of the prisons, and therefore is strictly forbidden and immediately punished. However, some inmates still turn to violence, which raises doubts about whether these inmates are naturally violent and impossible to change. This paper, based on in-depth interviews with 27 inmates who have committed violence and remained in solitary confinement in prisons in Zhejiang Province, China, examines how the inmates make sense of and describe their violent experiences. It is found that these inmates make efforts to construct their victims as deserving, acts as controlled, and punishment as acceptable through employing discursive strategies such as resorting to traditional values, conditional sentences, and repetition. In so doing, these inmates seek to redefine who they are not, how they should not be treated and what prison life should not be like. This paper could open up ways of better understanding why violence could be reduced but impossible to be eliminated completely in the prison context.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41983022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"(De)legitimation of COVID-19 vaccination narratives on Facebook comments in Romania: Beyond the co-occurrence patterns of discursive strategies.","authors":"Camelia Cmeciu","doi":"10.1177/09579265231174793","DOIUrl":"10.1177/09579265231174793","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The postmodern medical paradigm has empowered online users in the (de)legitimating process of health-related topics. By employing a co-occurrence analysis, this study identifies the thematic patterns used by Romanian online users in their multimodal comments to the #storiesfromvaccination Facebook campaign run by the Romanian government. The findings show that the commenters assessed source credibility through two thematic patterns: 'source exemplarity' and 'source distrust'. Health experts were more legitimized than laypersons and role models as sources in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Two thematic patterns emerged in the assessment of vaccination, namely: 'immunization - past and present challenges' and 'vaccination supporter versus opponent cleavage'. In the discussion on immunization, a polarization between a nostalgic longing for the past and a present corrupted medical and political system prevailed, whereas the important feature of discursive antagonism could be observed in the latter thematic pattern. The co-occurrences of (de)legitimation strategies are explained with reference to the political and medical context, along with the challenges of social media usage in online vaccination communication campaigns.</p>","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225811/pdf/10.1177_09579265231174793.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41216207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dispatching First Responders: Language Practices and the Dispatcher’s Operational Role in Radio Encounters With Police Officers","authors":"S. Clayman, Heidi Kevoe-Feldman","doi":"10.1177/09579265231164763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231164763","url":null,"abstract":"The delivery of emergency services is often contingent on social processes launched when someone calls to request help. While initial encounters between civilian callers and institutional call-takers have been extensively studied, little is known about subsequent encounters between dispatchers and first responders. This paper examines police radio dispatch calls and the language practices enacting the dispatcher’s operational role. It sketches the technological constraints and communicative challenges of the two-way radio medium, and the overall activity structure of radio dispatch. It then focuses on the design of dispatchers’ instructions to officers. The instruction has a recurrent base form but may be expanded with optional material addressing atypical or specialized circumstances. Accordingly, dispatchers are not passive conduits of information transfer; working within the constraints of the radio medium, they elaborate and reframe the available information in ways that triage the problem and aid in its downstream management.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49188614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}