Prisoners signify: a political discourse analysis of mental illness in a prison control unitIncreasingly, US prisoners diagnosed with mental illness are housed in control units, the most restrictive form of confinement in the US prison system. This situation has led to intense debate over the legal, ethical and clinical status of mental illness. This is a semiotic struggle with profound effects, yet most related work treats mental illness as a neutral, individual variable. Few analyses locate mental illness (...) within a larger sociopolitical context. Fewer still focus on discursive practice. None critically analyze the accounts of control unit prisoners, who talk about extreme marginality and risk for victimization. This paper has two aims: (i) to develop a systematic method of analysis that accounts for signification as discourse‐in‐action; and (ii) to show how prisoners’ signification of mental illness articulates agency through and against marginalizing discourse. Political discourse analysis demonstrates how control unit prisoners with psychiatric diagnoses signify mental illness, and articulate safer identifications in the process. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the significance of incorporating decolonial methodologies in analyzing political discourse in a postcolonial world, particularly in Africa. The decolonial approach to...

The paper examines the epistemological side of the Laclau’s political theory, incorporating tools that aim to convert discourse theory into a rigorous, useful, and valid method for socio-political and critical analysis in social sciences. In the first part, it displays some epistemological assumptions and arguments. The second part analyses some problematic epistemological aspects derived from the arguments. The proposal is based on Laclau’s main texts, complementing the analysis with related tools from critical hermeneutics and existential (...) phenomenology. It is argued that the incorporation of these tools to political discourse analysis contribute to solve some of the methodological and epistemic deficits of the theory of hegemony. El trabajo examina el plano epistemológico de la teoría política de Ernesto Laclau, aportando herramientas que tienen por objeto convertir a la teoría del discurso en un método riguroso, útil y válido para el análisis sociopolítico y crítico en ciencias sociales. En la primera parte, despliega una serie de postulados y presupuestos epistémicos. En la segunda parte, analiza algunos aspectos gnoseológicos problemáticos que se derivan de los postulados. Para desarrollar la propuesta, se toman como base los principales textos de Laclau, complementando el análisis con herramientas afines provenientes de la hermenéutica crítica y la fenomenología existencialista. Se sostiene que la incorporación de estas herramientas al análisis político del discurso contribuye a resolver algunos de los déficits metodológicos y epistémicos que presenta la teoría de la hegemonía. (shrink)

1. Firmly grounded in Political Discourse Theory (PDT), this article is a study of how the spatial–political imaginary of conservative Protestants in nineteenth-century Derry city, a contested spac...

The author of the article discusses a political discourse of the US president Donald Trump. The political discourse is considered to be a type of discourse based on views and beliefs, the purpose of which is to manipulate the consciousness of the addressee using strategies in order to form certain beliefs. The strategy in this case means the plan of implementation of the communicative task, necessary for effective achievement of the addressee’s goal, realized with the (...) help of certain tactics. The choice of the subject matter is determined by the interest to political communication. The author analyses discourse strategies and markers, stylistic and lexico-grammatical means used as manipulative means in Donald Trump’s Acceptance Speech, Victory Speech, and Inaugural Address. Special attention is given to the strategy of improvement, strategy of enhancement, and strategy for evaluation of alternatives. It is known that presidential public addresses are of great importance, therefore communicative skills of politicians and ability to speak in public play a great role in their political career. The analysis of D. Trump’s presidential discourse has revealed the use of discursive manipulative strategies and manipulative markers, numerous repetitions, calls for joint action, the use of ‘unifying vocabulary‘, slogans, inversion. It is noted that the presidential political discourse is an effective means of manipulating the consciousness of the nation and the formation of its outlook. The author concludes that speech manipulation is a complex phenomenon, the effectiveness of which depends on linguistic, psychological, extralinguistic, and social factors. (shrink)

In this article, we analyze a seven-page speech delivered by Sukarno, first president of Indonesia, at the opening of the First Asia-Africa Conference where he advocated Afro-Asian unity/ solidarity as the panacea for colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism. Our aim, by focusing on a single text, is to demonstrate the role of an intensive analysis of ‘outstanding’ singular texts within the broad field of discourse analysis. The analysis is rooted within a positive discourse analysis (PDA) (...) framework, with special focus on lexical choices and variation, modality, intertextuality/interdiscursivity, metaphorical representations, ideological use of pronouns, indexical meaning, and strategies of argumentation. Through these rhetorical techniques, we illustrate how an independence leader constructs an emancipatory discourse aimed at reconciling the ideas and beliefs of the leaders of two continents that have a common history of colonialism. The study sheds light on the role of key speeches and political leaders in promoting an emancipatory discourse, and exemplifies how (presidential) rhetoric can be construed as offering a message of hope, strength, and inspiration while playing the role of a unifier, thereby highlighting the major underlying assumption of PDA: a commitment to a discourse of social change. (shrink)

Bishop Desmond Tutu's call, in 2013, for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes, led to much reporting and comment in the online pages of UK newspapers. At first sight, it was a topic that seemed particularly conducive to the attraction of trolling, flaming and Ebile in the comments posted below journalistic pieces. Both Tutu and Blair are controversial and divisive characters, and the context of the Iraq War seemed fertile ground for heated exchanges. A (...) content analysis of 2,476 comments and 27,970 likes/dislikes offered a fairly substantial for identification of and evaluation of the value this discourse. In the event, trolling, flaming and Ebile were rare in the context of this political discourse, suggesting, at least a form of discourse closer to the ideals of Habermas. (shrink)

Digital peddling of fake news is influential to persuasive political participation, with veritable social media platforms. Social media, with their instantaneous and widespread usage, have been exploited by ‘anonymous’ political influencers who fabricate and inundate internet community with unverified and false information. Using van Leeuwen’s Discourse Legitimation approach and insights from Discourse Analysis, this study analyses 120 purposively sampled fake news posts on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, shared during the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. WhatsApp (...) allows for the easy and fast sharing of fake news as it pulled the largest occurrence of legitimation strategies, followed by Facebook. Authorisation is the highest occurring legitimation strategy at 46.6% frequency; this is followed by Moralisation which has 27% and Rationalisation at 26.4%; while Mythopoesis did not feature at all in the sampled data, leaving it at 0%. In particular, expert and role model authority are most often deployed to validate fake news such as the demise and cloning of President Buhari, ruling party’s plan to rig and destabilise the 2019 election, massive corruption in the current administration and imminent ethnic violence. The study argues that these strategies are viable persuasive tools owing to their use of discourse markers like make-believe images, emotive language, appeal to emotions, rational conclusions, hateful comments, verbal indictment and coercive verbs. (shrink)

GILLETT K. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 297–307 A critical discourse analysis of British national newspaper representations of the academic level of nurse education: too clever for our own good?This critical discourse analysis examines articles about the academic level of nurse education that appeared in British national newspapers between 1999 and 2009. British newspaper journalists regularly attribute problems with recruitment into nursing and nursing care to the increasing academic nature of nurse education. It is impossible to separate (...) discourse about nurse education from the wider nursing discourse. Many journalists laud a traditional and stereotypical construct of nurse identity and suggest that increasing nurse education produces nurses who are ‘too clever to care’. This article argues that whilst nurses lack a voice in the National press, they have little input into the construction of newspaper discourse about nurse education and subsequently, limited influence on resulting public opinion, government policy and the morale of nurses. (shrink)

This article explores the comedic construction of national identity in Nigerian stand-up comedy. By national identity, I mean collective perspectives on the sociopolitical and cultural realities of postcolonial Nigeria. While critical discourse analysis provided the framework for interpretation, data was derived from purposively sampled recorded videos of Nigerian stand-up comedians. Such collective perspectives are constructed when a comedian indexes cultural/political events and situations in a monologue. The investigation reveals four identity mapping strategies: performing theatrical identities, using the (...) comedy voice to indicate multiple identities, constructing a trickster identity and constructing a resilient spirit identity. These strategies entail foregrounding assumptions about the Nigerian state and using language in a strategic way to indicate sociopolitical and cultural realities. (shrink)

Previous studies have revealed the importance of studying spoken professional–client/outsider interaction, especially the Q&A session, in various professional settings. However, most of the studies are located in non-religious professional settings. This article presents research in a particular religious professional setting, daee/propagator of Islam–client/outsider interaction. The research aims to study the daees’ spoken discourse when interacting face to face with their clients/the outsiders. This particular article focuses on the analysis and discussion of the daees/propagators of Islam’s spoken discourse (...) strategies when interacting with non-Muslim individuals/potential converts who seek conversion to Islam in a communicative event called the Conversion to Islam Ceremony at a da’wah/islamic propagation center in Malaysia. Ethnographic discourse analysis is employed to examine the daees/propagators of Islam’s spoken discourse strategies in managing and maintaining involvement when interacting with their client during the Q&A session of the event. The analysis reveals that the daees, in order to propagate Islam, engage politeness strategies, topic management strategies, code-switching and humor. (shrink)

This article examines resistance discourses created and disseminated by a religious minority in Indonesia called Gerakan Ahmadiyah Indonesia (GAI) to counter any negative portrayals and religious-based discriminations. Ahmadiyah is a self-defined sect of Islam that has been the target of physical attacks and discursive discrimination in Indonesia. This analysis focuses on identifying discourse topics raised and strategies employed by one of the Ahmadiyya groups in the country called GAI to reveal their resistance and defend their ‘Islamic’ faith. Various (...) texts produced in different genres namely statements and comments published in media, books, speeches and various articles published online in GAI’s official websites are used as the data which were collected during field research in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The analysis found that, in order to counter discriminatory discourses, the GAI Ahmadis present various resistance discourse themes such as distinguishing themselves from Jemaat Ahmadiyah Indonesia, justifying their Islamic understanding by highlighting religious freedom discourse, including themselves as Muslims and presenting themselves as peaceful movement. (shrink)

The article suggests a new framework for the structural analysis of political narratives using the concept of ‘concise narrative’. These are segments of a speech that contain its entire temporal range in a few paragraphs. Based on the analysis of Israeli ministerial discourse during the early years of the state, the article argues that these ‘concise narratives’ can shed light on the infrastructure of political narratives. A study of ‘concise narratives’ can also illuminate how (...) class='Hi'>political values, identities and ideologies are combined with day-to-day politics while being transferred from the speaker to his audience. The epilogue examines the intertextual relations between different political narratives, focusing on the transition of ‘concise narratives’ from the early days of Israeli politics to contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

This article analyses the discourse of three prime ministers to explore how each leader identified the political self and constructed and promoted a particular relationship with the voter before the general elections. The outcome indicates the emergence of a new political communication style based on a partyconsumer. Whereas Aso's patronconsumer discourse of both Koizumi and Hatoyama demonstrates the entrepreneurial leadersconsumer model might have played a role in attracting a large number of unorganized voters to Koizumi in (...) 2005 and in turn to Hatoyama in 2009. (shrink)

This study examines the complex dynamics of communication in the changing field of journalism influenced by the use of media. It specifically focuses on how thoughts and perceptions are expressed in this evolving landscape. Information and communication technologies significantly influence journalism by rapidly disseminating news, updates, and societal impacts. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, the study aims to reveal systematic language usages and uncover latent meanings beyond news texts. Focused on the 2023 Turkish Presidential Election, news texts from four (...) prominent international newslets Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and Euronews are analyzed. The comprehensive analysis of international media coverage investigates the interplay of linguistic and thematic choices in shaping narratives. With a dual focus on macro and micro levels of discourse, the study uncovers diverse approaches among foreign media outlets. Each outlet adopts a distinctive thematic approach at the macro level, emphasizing key figures and sociopolitical contexts. Al Jazeera spotlights competition, BBC underscores post-election polarization, CNN focuses on Erdogan's victory, and Euronews provides insights into national challenges. Visual elements, like photographs, contribute significantly to framing events, offering nuanced political messaging. Micro-level analysis explores linguistic choices, syntax, and rhetoric, emphasizing the active voice to underscore leaders' agency. Deliberate use of the passive voice in presenting election results maintains a neutral tone. The way sentences are structured and the cause-and-effect connections help readers understand political developments by providing context. The study underscores the importance of media literacy in decoding political event representations, emphasizing the multifaceted complexities of media discourse. (shrink)

With its connotations of superior moral integrity, exceptional leadership qualities and expertise in the science of government, the modern ideal of statesmanship is most commonly traced back to the ancient Greek concept of πολιτικός and the work of Plato and Aristotle in particular. Through an analysis of a large corpus of modern English translations of political works, built as part of the AHRC Genealogies of Knowledge project, this case-study aims to explore patterns that are specific to this translated (...) discourse, with a view to understanding the crucial role played by translators in shaping its development and reception in society. It ultimately seeks to argue that the model of statesmanship presented in translations from ancient Greek is just as much a product of the receiving culture as it is inherited from the classical world. (shrink)

This corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of news reports on air pollution published from 2008 through 2015 by China Daily, China’s largest official English-language newspaper, reveals a significant attitudinal shift around the end of 2011 as regards public awareness of increasing air pollution levels in China and related public criticism. It also constructs a clear image of the increasing determination and resolve of the Chinese central government over the course of this 8-year period to take action to effectively reduce (...) air pollution. This study highlights the submissive role played by the official Chinese press in their reporting on air pollution under the strict censorship system of the Communist Party of China, as well as the socio-political role that international sporting events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games played in raising both public and governmental awareness of environmental issues. (shrink)

The menace of conflicts and natural disasters in different states of the world had spiralled into a global phenomenon of Internally Displaced Persons. These are groups of humans who had helplessly drifted away from their natural and ancestral home due to conflicts and disasters but had not crossed international boundaries into another country. They merely take solace by the protection offered by the spirit and letters of relevant international laws which have domesticated by member states. This paper seeks to answer (...) the question regarding the extent to which the IDPs have become a menace in Nigeria. The paper reveals that many governments’ actions are the primary and the root cause of the IDPs while others are recipient of the domino effect. The paper relies on a panel data elicited from thirteen out of the thirty six states in Nigeria. The paper reveals the need for urgent measures by government to douse the upsurge in the number of IDPs. The political settlement analysis was used to proffer a better way of culminating the crises. Recommendations are directed to the individuals, civil societies and the government at all levels. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to explore the discourse strategies of the Party of Labor of Albania to eliminate its enemies in the early years of establishing communism in the country. The contention is that PLA and its leaders made possible the elimination of thousands of people by normalizing the process. The enemies of the party were declared enemies of the people and as such, they had to disappear in one way or another, so that the integrity of (...) the body politics could be preserved. The class enemy was considered a parasite that should be eliminated in the name of social prophylaxis. By using discourse analyses the paper will investigate the discursive strategies followed by the communist party and its leader when addressing the class enemy. Speeches of Enver Hoxha in Party Congresses, Plenums, and gatherings with people will be analyzed. Only by normalizing the process of elimination of everyone who was depicted as an enemy, did the communist party make possible the elimination of thousands of people. Normalization is understood as the standardization of the procedure so that everyone knew in advance what would happen if someone had to be declared an enemy of the people. The paper will analyze the vocabulary used to portray the class enemy and his/her destiny in specific cases. The study has analyzed the speeches given to justify the elimination of Patër Anton Harapi, Lef Nosi, Maliq Bej Bushat, dom Lazër Shantoja, dom Ndre Zadeja, and the sabotage group of the Maliqi swamp. The analysis covers the period immediately after the end of the IIWW when communists seized the power. (shrink)

Here I use aspects of Phil Graham’s discourse analytical work to examine forms of e/valuations and critically analyse the formulation of truths in the constitution of Artificial Intelligence (hereafter, AI). This paper focuses on two 2019 documents: Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI (AI HLEG, Citation2019a) and Policy and investment recommendations for trustworthy AI (AI HLEG, Citation2019b). My aim here is to provide a timely contribution to contemporary philosophical–methodological innovations in documenting the constellation of values that are prefigured in human-centric (...) constructions of AI. The analysis is informed primarily by principles from Graham’s distinctive approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA), which I take to be the philosophical study of valuation. In that approach, political economy is taken as a composite formulation of values whereby neo-liberalism is discursively entwined and progressed through a system of principles of e/valuation. This paper presents a roadmap to demonstrate the usefulness of a philosophically grounded interdisciplinary piece of linguistic research through which evaluative semantic categories can be usefully synthesised with CDA to systematically expose the assumptions which underpin current truth claims and values – in this case, about and around the ethics of AI. (shrink)

This paper examines political protest in 40 purposively sampled internet memes circulated among Nigerian WhatsApp users during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a view to exploring the thematic preoccupation, ideology, and the representation of participants and processes in the memes. The data, which were subjected to qualitative analysis, are examined from a multimodal critical discourse analytic approach. The analysis reveals that the memes are used to protest corruption, perceived government deceit, insecurity, hunger, and inadequate health facilities and (...) other social amenities. These are done in order to project and resist an anti-welfarist ideology and emphasise the negative representation of the government. (shrink)

The Serbian Orthodox Church has been described in scholarship as having had a significant impact onto the social and political life of Serbia, especially since the wars of the nineties. With the coming of the age of the Internet and social science automation, however, more options have gradually become available to researchers in the recent years. For this reason, this article will tackle the official rhetoric of the Serbian Orthodox Church in relation to the sociopolitical with the assistance of (...) social science automation. Forming an examination via the methodological lens of Operational Code Analysis, this article delves into the Church’s discourse on Kosovo, via heavy vetting of all official statements given on the website of the Serbian Orthodox Church. It also expands upon the initial methodology – Operational Code Analysis – to an analysis of an institution with a uniform discourse, which has so far not seen light in scholarly production. (shrink)

This is an essay introduction to a special edition of Critical Discourse Studies on the work of Phil Graham. It is a critical overview and reappraisal of his major interdisciplinary contribution to the field: an axiological approach that focuses on meaning and values in a materialist political economy of language. The contributors to this volume enlist Graham's approach to trace the aftermaths and discontents of neoliberalism: nothing less than resurgent nationalisms, monoculturalism and autocracy, fuelled by social media and (...) digital communications. This new political economy of discourse raises substantive ethical and moral challenges for the future of critical discourse studies. (shrink)

A 21st-century growth in prevalence of extreme right-wing nationalism and social conservatism in Australia, Europe, and America, in certain respects belies the positive impacts of online, new, and alternative forms of global media. Cross-national forms of ‘far-right activism’ are unconfined to their host nations; individuals and organisations campaign on the basis of ethno-cultural separatism, while capitalising on internet-based affordances for communication and ideological cross-fertilisation. Right-wing revolutionary ideas disseminated in this media, to this end, embody politico-cultural aims that can only be (...) understood with attention to their philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on a dataset of articles from the pseudo-news websites, XYZ and The Unshackled, this paper investigates the representation of different rightist political philosophical traditions in contemporary Australia-based far-right media. A critical discourse and content analysis reveal XYZ and TU’s engagement with various traditions, from Nietzsche and the Conservative Revolution, to the European New Right and neo-Nazism. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in integrating Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) into political analysis. However, CDS has largely centered around Western Europe, the USA and Australia, and barely touc...

The political media discourse and its pragmalinguistic peculiarities are analyzed in the paper. The choice of the subject matter for the analysis is determined by the interest to media communication. It is noted that the political discourse is one of the effective means of influence on the collective consciousness. Various definitions of the concept ‘discourse‘ are given; special attention is paid to the presidential discourse. Discourse as a communicative event taking place in (...) a social context is based on pragmatic situations and is studied taking into account such factors as a communicative situation, the addresser and the addressee of speech, the content of the communication, the pragmatic meaning of language units. The author analyses compositional, stylistic, and lexico-grammatical means used to create a pragmatic effect in the annual New Year addresses of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin. The effectiveness of presidential discourse is achieved due to the choice of words with positive connotation, the use of repetition, use of personal and possessive pronouns in the first person plural, the use of parallel syntactic constructions, and the use of both formal and informal styles. The author concludes that pragmatic means are of great importance for media discourse studies and presidential public addresses play an important role in shaping the moral values of the nation. (shrink)

Due to the increasing concern about gender equity in the U.S., song lyrics with political activism are receiving more attention. As reflected through lyrics and the artist’s tumultuous life events, ‘thank u, next,’ Ariana Grande’s fifth album, has been reviewed by media outlets, such as Billboard as mirroring Grande’s public persona of self-empowerment. iTunes (2019) describes the album as Grande’s embraced position of – ‘complex, independent, tenacious and flawed.’ This study investigates how these claims came about by adopting Fairclough’s (...) Critical Discourse Analysis three-dimensional framework. It examines how the discourse of self-empowerment is portrayed in her lyrics, and what linguistic strategies are deployed to portray the discourse. This study hopes to add texture to existing literature by examining the production of young women’s empowerment ideology and the meanings of neoliberal feminism in relations to the use of language in song lyrics. Linguistic strategies such as the use of metaphors, overstatements and presupposition manipulation have been investigated through textual, and social analyses of the songs to demonstrate the ideological concepts of a ‘self-empowered woman’. The concepts found include independence, self-love/growth, owning of sexuality, and being needy. The concepts also revealed that Grande’s lyrics mostly support ideals of gender equity and female empowerment. (shrink)

News Simulcast, the flagship news program for China Central Television, has been widely studied by Chinese scholars. However, little attention has been paid to its representation of ideological meanings. To address this issue, the present study, drawing upon Van Dijk’s framework of three-level analysis of discourse structure, carries out a comprehensive discourse analysis of the news broadcast on this program. A corpus of 10 episodes of News Simulcast was selected as the database, from which a subset (...) of four episodes were thoroughly examined from the macro-level of discoursal and thematic structure to the micro-level of linguistic and semiotic structure. It demonstrates that, due to its historic background and political privilege, News Simulcast broadcasts news with an authoritative national voice, speaking primarily in the interests of the Communist Party, the government and the people, and it thus forms a rather stereotyped discourse structure: positive ‘us’ versus negative ‘them’. (shrink)

The speeches delivered by Former U.S. President Donald Trump during his last presidential campaign (2015–2016) included hateful remarks against Muslims and immigrants. This study explored strategies of hate speech used in Trump’s political discourse against out-groups. The data consisted of a corpus of Trump’s speeches and interviews. Our analysis was based on Whillock’s [ 48 ] criteria of hate speech and Erjavec and Kovačič’s [ 13 ] strategies of hate speech. The results revealed that Trump employed re-articulation (...) of meaning and renaming by attributing any problem to immigrants and Muslims to express hatred against them, using direct hatred words. His overt use of hate speech strategies stemmed from his legitimate power and social authority as a successful businessman in his field. (shrink)

After the Second World War Albania was left under the Eastern Bloc. In 1967 Enver Hoxha, the leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, decided to implement the Chinese Cultural Revolutionary model. This article analyzes his speech, on February 6, 1967, before his comrades, who were supposed to be his eyes, ears, and mouth. It was in this way that his face, his thoughts and his words became ubiquitous throughout the country. In a highly authoritarian society (...) class='Hi'>political discourse has a direct and pervasive impact on peoples’ lives and all aspects of the society. This article is organized by analytical themes based on aspects of discourse analysis, but we have also applied the cognitive approach and imagology as auxiliary theories in order to achieve a better understanding of mental representations, especially the ones used to reinforce stereotypes about rural people. Given that these mental representations are still fostered by current politicians in order to establish power, we note how important it still is to analyze them. Considering that political discourse is a product of individual and collective mental processes it is important to show, especially to younger generations, where these mental schemas come from. (shrink)

This article examines how colonial mentalities of subjectifying the people are reinstated in postcolonial Northeast India through the media. Using the Bodos as a context of the argument, the paper studies The Assam Tribune news headlines during the 2021 Assam Legislative Assembly election. By studying both micro- and macrostructures of news headlines, using critical discourse analysis, the article argues that the media continue to reify the subjective consciousness of the population as a discourse that dominates the conflicting (...) ground of social, cultural, and political coexistence across the multi-ethnic populations. While deflecting the government’s divisive policies, the media portrays the government as the source of ‘solution’. Although the technique of governance differs from colonial to postcolonial regime, the objective to constantly subjectify the multi-ethnic population within their realm of subjective consciousness for the purpose of governance remains the same. (shrink)

This paper addresses responses to news about the imposing of a local lockdown in a UK city. The opposition to the measure shows it to be controversial as does the associated rejection of the grounds for taking action against covid more generally, which comes alongside the devaluing of expertise, resistance to public health responses, a proliferation of conspiracy theories and misinformation and the harm that can be caused by focussing on non-adherence to covid measure. The research question for this (...) class='Hi'>analysis is therefore: how are arguments about the local lockdown discursively formulated in online discussions? Discursive analysis of online discussions following four newspaper articles identified six arguments used that range from scepticism to conspiratorial: scepticism over (1) the prevalence and; (2) severity of covid; (3) lockdowns generally do not work and (4) the specific city lockdown will not work; (5) lockdowns are overly risk averse; and (6) there are hidden political motives for lockdowns. The discussion shows how both the ‘conspiratorial’ and non-conspiratorial arguments are potentially harmful from a public health perspective. (shrink)

Through this paper, we convey a comparative analysis of how Google Inc. and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) discursively construct and contest Android, a dominant mobile operating system. Methodologically, we use political discourse theory to engage in the textual analysis; identify and compare key signifiers and nodal points across the exemplary texts from the two actors, and interpret their meaning vis à vis contextual insights about the political economy of Android’s production. Albeit being marketed (...) as ‘the first truly open platform’ for mobiles, through our analysis we find Google’s definition of open source practices strictly conditional. We argue that Google’s usage of compatibility rhetorically as well as techno-legally justifies the conglomerate’s control over the platform. By contrast, the discursive moment by free software activists, through a campaign ‘Free Your Android’ deconstructs the discourse on open source and attempts to politicize the access to code in the mobile domain. This is done by extending from the well-known developer’s four freedoms onto users’ privacy, due to personal character of mobile devices. Such articulation of free software in relation to privacy of user data is a new development and arguably has a potential to contribute to widening support to the movement. (shrink)

This paper argues that the proliferation of the new term ‘baby man’ has an impact on reconstructing established gender relationships and resisting China's authoritarian political power in a highly-censored online environment. This study employs feminist critical discourse analysis to investigate how Chinese feminism adopts the discursive construction of ‘baby man’ and how they echo the complex historical and sociocultural backgrounds through a case study of 43 posts containing ‘baby man’ on Chinese social media. The finding suggests that (...) the term ‘baby man’ is employed in discursive strategies, namely, double irony, the blunt resistance against both gender and power relationships that deconstruct the heteropatriarchal gender norm through the mother – son female gaze and contempt for the nation's past and current population policy. It argues that despite perennial censorship, these three discursive strategies help reconstruct the extant gender hierarchy backed by conservative Confucianist ethics and represent a grassroots challenge to the political authoritarianism indoctrinated by the state. (shrink)

Having been recognised as a “resource-intensive” economy, the People’s Republic of China has been experiencing major implications in terms of ecological environment degradation, which continuously harms the health of the Chinese people and the productivity of China’s economy. Among the political efforts set forth by the Chinese central authorities, the claim of promoting a “National Ecological Accounting and Auditing Scheme” has been drawing nationwide attention. Through a series of critical discourse analysis on relevant written texts produced by (...) the central authorities, mainstream media and the Chinese academics, this paper sets out to analyse the historical evolution of the institutional context in relation to the establishment of such a scheme, and further, to decipher the ideological underpinnings that have shaped this context. The findings indicate that the signification of NEAAS goes far beyond the environment protection, in that, this scheme constitutes a fundamental institutional reform that the Communist Party of China seeks to conduct. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBased on an overview of the ways in which politics and the political have been thought in critical discourse analysis, the author calls for a focus on the metapolitical dimension of discourse. The author develops his notion of metapolitics on the basis of post-foundational insights into politics, the political and processes of politicization. Metapolitics refers to projects and struggles where conflicting modes and models of politics clash. Metapolitical debates potentially reshape the structure of the public (...) realm as well as the entities, borders and processes that constitute it. The author differentiates his descriptive and analytic use of the term from the way this signifier has been used programmatically by the anti-democratic New Right and its heirs. He demonstrates that metapolitical projects can be democratic as well as anti-democratic. In order to facilitate discourse analyses of metapolitical projects, debates and struggles, the author suggests that the metapolitical dimension of contemporary debates can be explored further by integrating insights from governmentality studies, studies of political rationality and the discourse theoretical logics approach with CDA. Moreover, a further exploration of the linguistic and textual underpinnings of metapolitics constitutes a promising pathway for future investigation. The study of metapolitics should be part and parcel of the transdisciplinary domain of critical discourse studies so that our understanding of the linguistic and non-linguistic features of metapolitical projects can be developed in equal measure at multiple levels of abstraction. (shrink)

This paper attempts to signal the potential relevance of A Test of the News, written by Lippmann and Merz, for Critical Discourse Analysis. It seems that the study is overlooked by CDA’s experts as a pioneering work in press analysis. In order to demonstrate links between CDA and the research, in the first part, the work of Lippmann and Merz is situated within a wider picture of the theoretical and historical background as well as common views on (...) politics and the role of the press. Then, the reasons for the choice of the Times as a medium of research and the Russian Revolution as a topic are stated. The authors’ methodological assumptions are discussed in brief. The second part begins with an attempt to define the concept of CDA. The next section presents a theoretical framework of CDA in order to indicate that Lippmann’s and Merz’s analysis demonstrates a similar theoretical approach. Additionally, the tools used by authors are compared with those used in CDA. The parallel between the central role of the media discourse in CDA and the concern of the authors of the role of the press is also discussed. Since the active role of the reader and the hearer in constructing the meaning of the text corresponds with the views of the authors on the discrepancy between the real world and its representation, the next section is devoted to this issue. Finally, readers’ abilities, discussed by Lippmann and Merz, are viewed in relation to the significance of reader’s experiences in constructing the meaning of a text. (shrink)

This study examines specifically, the mission statement and ideology as discursive practices of the Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox (MMM) Ponzi scheme. As the demand for transparency in governance, public and private practices increase, there is also a rising proliferation of counter forms of transparency in financial sectors. While studies have focused on the practices of transparency in the reports of public and private institutions, very little attention has been paid to the perils of transparency in mission statements of online scam practices (...) such as Ponzi schemes that parade as transparent financial schemes. Using a critical discourse analytic approach, this study investigates Ponzi schemes in Nigeria and their ideology of a ‘transparent economic system’. These schemes claim to operate a mutual benefit fund for the poor and discourage individuals from investing in banks. The critical discourse analysis draws attention to masked discourses of MMM and examines how the transparent discourse of the MMM generally constitutes deceptive discourse. The findings of the study reveal that factual and political arguments and propagandas are strategies of negative other representation that attempt to discredit the government and other legitimate financial institutions and at the same time attempt to control the mind of the participants by presenting the schemes as reliable thereby defrauding their victims. (shrink)

The Swedish welfare debate increasingly focuses on market liberal notions and its healthcare perspective aims for more patient‐centered care. This article examines the new Swedish Patient Act describing and analyzing how the patient is constructed in government documents. This study takes a Foucauldian discourse analysis approach following Willig's analysis guide. The act contains an entitlement discourse for patients and a requirement discourse for healthcare personnel. These two discourses are governed by a values‐based healthcare discourse. (...) Neo‐liberal ideology, in the form of New Public Management discourse, focusing on the value of efficiency and competition, is given a hegemonic position as laws and regulations are used to strengthen it. The new Swedish Patient Act seems to further strengthen this development. The Act underlines the increased entitlement for patients, but it is not legally binding as it offers patients only indirect entitlement to influence and control their care. To safeguard the patient's entitlement under the Patient Act, healthcare personnel should be made aware of the contents of the Act, so that they can contribute to the creation of systems and working methods that facilitate respect of the Act's provisions in daily healthcare work. (shrink)

Critical Discourse Analysis/studies has been applied in the study of news discourse for more than 30 years. In order to gain an in-depth understanding of the research in this field, this article uses the Web of Science core database to investigate their evolution and envision of the application of CDA/cds in news discourse. Moreover, CiteSpace is employed to draw visualization maps of scientific knowledge of this field, hoping to provide the meaningful guidance for the later research. (...) The results are as follows: The diversification and multi-dimension of theoretical approaches and analytical methods is a highlight of CDA applied in news discourse; Various theories of other disciplines combined with CDA have been embraced by news discourse such as journalism, ecology, politics, sociology, and cognitive psychology, which shows the advancement and diversification of interdisciplinary trends in news discourse; The application of CDA in news discourse covers various research domains from people’s livelihood issues to national strategic issues; The availability of emerging corpus analysis tools has helped the application of CDA in news discourse to spur on further discourse excursions with corpora, promoting the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the research advances in this field. (shrink)

This article attempts to study the way the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar (Burma) is represented or framed in the press. The researcher selects four newspapers for this study. They are namely, Myanmar Times, Arab News, The Guardian, and Global Times. The reason behind choosing these newspapers is that it is important to illustrate how the Rohingya Muslims are framed from a Burmese newspaper, foreign newspaper, Saudi newspaper, and Chinese newspaper. Some selected news stories are analyzed from the selected newspapers. The (...) stories concern the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Pan and Kosicki (Political Communication:55?75, 1993 [ 1 ]) framework is chosen to illustrate the way the Rohingya are represented or framed in the selected newspapers. The framing analysis of the Rohingya news stories shows that each newspaper uses the discourse of the positive selves and negative others representation ideologically in the crisis. (shrink)