Search

Este artículo presenta un análisis de los discursos producidos por Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) y Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) cada 2 de abril durante sus mandatos presidenciales de Argentina, en ocasión del Día de los Caídos y Veteranos de la Guerra de Malvinas (1982). Adoptando el análisis del discurso como práctica interpretativa (Arnoux “Análisis del discurso como campo académico,” Análisis del discurso. Modos de abordar materiales de archivo), se estudian distintos aspectos de la materialidad lingüística que exponen distancias interpretativas sobre la guerra. Específicamente, el análisis se organiza en cuatro ejes: la configuración del adversario, el tipo de emociones desplegadas, la consideración de la guerra como causa nacional o causa dictatorial y la representación de los combatientes. Comparar los discursos de ambxs líderes a partir de estas dimensiones permitirá comprender cómo la memoria de Malvinas se configura discursivamente desde posiciones políticas e ideológicas no exentas de tensiones. This paper aims to analyze the commemorative speeches produced by former Argentine presidents Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) each April 2nd, the Day of the Fallens and Veterans of the Malvinas War (1982). By adopting Discourse Analysis as an interpretative practice (Arnoux, “Análisis del discurso como campo académico,” Análisis del discurso. Modos de abordar materiales de archivo), we study different aspects of the linguistic materiality that uncover interpretative gaps about the War. We especially focus on five axes: the configuration of the adversary, the kind of emotions, the understanding of war as a national or a dictatorial cause, and the representation of combatants. Comparing the discourses of both leaders by taking these axes into account allows us to understand how the memory about Malvinas is discursively configured from a political and ideological position, not without tension.

This paper contributes to the understanding of media discourses surrounding the sustainability of nuclear energy, particularly within a crisis context. The study examines the implications of the adoption of the Complementary Delegated Act on EU taxonomy by the European Commission on July 6, 2022, which officially categorises nuclear energy as sustainable. Employing a critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology, the research explores the discourse strategies –nomination, predication, and argumentation– utilised across 695 news articles. The findings reveal the intricate representation of nuclear energy’s sustainability across the media. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict amplifies favourably the nuclear energy view as a reliable and sustainable energy source. However, the media discourse on nuclear energy’s sustainability reveals a variety of viewpoints. These varying outlooks provide essential insights for shaping effective energy policies. This research contributes valuable insights into understanding how media shapes and influences public perception of sustainability energy policies, amplifying specific actors’ voices and steering discourse toward distinct trajectories. Such insights are crucial in crafting energy policies.

In the last decades much research has been carried out on discourse as a form of social practice from the Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. The Vienna school of CDA led by Wodak and her associates has developed a discourse-historical approach to discourse which investigates the linguistic construction of national identities through a method of description and analysis which posits three categories –topics, strategies and linguistic devices– employed in the construction, perpetuation, transformation and dismantling of nations and national identities. Following this approach, the present paper aims to analyse the linguistic construction of Catalonia’s present and political future in a corpus of public discourse fragments produced by Catalan pro-independence leaders and activists during the so-called Catalan crisis. The analysis reveals that the linguistic construction of the Catalan present and political future relies on constructive, justification and dismantling strategies that seek to support self-determination and construe Catalonia as an independent Republic.

The issue of concepts formation has always been at the centre of debate among scholars in media and communication studies. This paper is an attempt to introduce the general principles of Gallie's essentially contested concepts in the light of the widespread use of concept misunderstanding in this field of research where discourse is of central importance to researchers. We argue that the present essay explores primarily the option of placing more attention on theorizing rather than on theory. Accordingly, this article does seek to address the concepts of discourse in the established schools of discourse analysis within Gallie's framework aiming at settling the conflict over discourse by constructing epistemological bridge with Sartori's ladder of abstraction to overcome the problem of essential contestedness in media and communication studies.

The concept of “civil religion” harks back to the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Emile Durkheim but its significance in United States context has been pointed out by Robert Bellah in his 1967 seminal article “Civil Religion in America”. In his analysis of famous speeches and writings by American politicians and thinkers, Bellah contended that religious language is a major feature of American rhetoric and that civic consciousness in the US is shaped by metaphors and ideas about God and Christian religion in general. The present paper examines the relevance of the concept in the field of African-American literature where it has remained largely unaddressed despite the bulk of African-American political speeches and their religious rhetoric. It seeks to unravel the religious dimension of Frederick Douglass’s discourse in its relation to American civil religion. Through a close reading not only of Douglass’s speeches but also of his autobiographies, notably The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and of his historical novel The Heroic Slave, it purports to highlight how Douglass at once relates to mainstream American civil religion and departs from its dominating white male discourse.

Vulnerabilities and ‘gatekeeping’ asymmetries often emerge throughout interactions taking place in institutional settings. This is especially true in cross-cultural interactions occurring in migration contexts, which are often characterized by an asymmetrical power distribution between the participants involved, namely Western experts vs. non-Western migrants, challenging a successful meaning negotiation. Starting from the assumption that mediation processes are central in migration contexts, where speakers from different sociolinguistic backgrounds interact in multilingual environments where there is an increasing use of lingua francas such as ELF, the paper will explore those pragmalinguistic processes and behaviours challenging successful meaning negotiation or leading to communication failure in such intercultural and multilingual contexts. A discourse analysis of spoken interactions involving asylum-seekers, language mediators and professionals unveiled participants’ use of strategies of hybridization, negotiation, and reformulation, activated in such cross-cultural mediation encounters, where meaning is negotiated at different levels – linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic – variously and creatively exploited by multilingual speakers. The ultimate aim of the exploration of spoken specialized discourse, related to medical and legal integration, to mediated migration narratives, as well as to cross-cultural representations of traumatic experiences, is to promote intercultural awareness, cultural diversity and plurilingualism, and to raise concern towards current ethical issues connected to identity and displacement in the new multilingual and multicultural European societies.