Search

Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher education institutions respond to gender-critical controversies sparked by their staff members. Adopting Teun van Dijk's sociocognitive approach, we analyse the University of Sussex's crisis responses on Twitter (known as X today) concerning de-platforming campaigns against Kathleen Stock. The analysis unpacks how Sussex employs various discursive strategies to validate its institutional stance in the Stock incident. Sussex's communicative actions aim to mitigate reputation damage caused by the incident. However, such discursive practices simultaneously indicate the university's attempt to evade its institutional responsibility for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) advocacy, neither do they address the reputation crisis caused by fellow Twitter users' counter-narratives. The analysis points towards the need for a sociocognitive analysis of crisis responses to hold higher education institutions accountable for their core mission, amid trans-rights debates unfolding in wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discourse-based approach to understanding security has been explored in the study of International Relations, yet how other agents rather than the political agents speak to conceptualize the emotive appeal in unconventional security issues is less discussed. This corpus-based cognitive critical discourse study examines security by combining the International Relations' theory of securitization with the proximization approach in Critical Discourse Studies. As a case study, texts concerning Confucius Institutes on the National Association of Scholars' official website from 2014 to 2020 were collected to discuss how the threat is constructed discursively and cognitively for an endeavor to influence the public and the political decision-making process. The corpus was further divided into two sub-corpora in order to expose the difference in their cognitive construction of Confucius Institutes. The findings show that the American academia delivers a bottom-up securitizing move by constructing education security discourse on Confucius Institutes in the initial process, yet later the whole-of-society security narratives interacting with a top-down securitizing move from the political agents have been adopted. As indicated by the corpus statistics, the concerned discourses are discursively constructed by following the "Self-Other" dichotomy security narratives, in which Confucius Institutes are cognitively transformed from an academic issue to a national security issue and legitimized through proximization in the spatial, temporal, and axiological dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, the mobilization of refugee and migrant populations towards the European Union has at times monopolised public debate, and the so-called 'refugee crisis' has put fundamental European values, such as solidarity, to the test. In this article, the authors focus on Greece with the aim of examining the extent to which manifestations of discriminatory discourses crop up in the discussion of the 'refugee crisis' in two mainstream news portals (i.e., Próto Théma and Efimerída ton Syntaktón) with different ideological orientations (i.e., center-right vs. center-left, respectively). In doing so, the authors specifically focus on the framing of the EU and its institutions as main actors in the management of the situation, showcasing how the discursive emergence of discriminatory attitudes in the context of the mainstream media discussing EU policy forms a solid argumentative basis on which European solidarity is continuously challenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current work is aimed at analyzing the speech of nine Brazilian teachers who teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) for three renowned institutions of English language teaching in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, so as to verify if the mental models built justify polarization of the groups denominated as groups of US and THEM (VAN DIJK, 2015a). Such polarization has occurred in a reverse way, since Brazilian EFL teachers look up to the American culture in detriment of their own. This polarization reversal was caused in Brazil, not only by the exposure to American products, but also by the country's historical context. The influence of the American government upon Brazil, and its hegemonic power, began effectively around the 1940s, when they established a Bureau in Brazil to foster cultural exchange. Nonetheless, its creation favored the implantation of the American hegemony, which was channeled by diplomatic agreements with Brazil, which were established by the American government and materialized by institutions along with the export of its English language. This research uses a qualitative, transversal and analytical methodology and analysis was guided in the light of Critical Discourse Studies, having Van Dijk (2015a) as the main theoretician. It will support us to comprehend the socio-cognitive discourse aspects and their components, using the discourse triangle proposed by the author, discourse-cognition-society, as well as Souza (2018) and Moita Lopes (2003) among others to understand the historical context of the North American culture coming to Brazil and the mental representations built subjectively.

Recent years have witnessed a flourishing development in the field of Public Relations (hereinafter as PR), which adjusts its scholarly attention from the quantitatively inclined studies on behavioral effectiveness to more of a critical discussion about social power and ideological influence within PR practice, consequently in favor of an interpretivist approach with a qualitative methodology toward a holistic analysis of a series of PR performances. Driven by the rise of this critical perspective in qualitative PR research, this paper aims to argue for a critical PR approach, tentatively by integrating a linguistic perspective from Critical Discourse Studies to discuss crisis communication as a social practice. Technically drawing on the theories of Political Public Relations (PPR in short) and Critical Discourse Studies, the proposed framework attaches equal importance to ideology, power, and identity instead of merely management function. It is illustrated that a critical investigation of PR performances approaches both media and institutional discourses, which are constructed by different social actors to frame a crisis and issue immediate responses, exercise its power control and maintain stakeholder relationships, and ultimately restore media and institutional images. On the one hand, the embedded ideologies enacted by the institutional control the media power and construct positive image representations. On the other hand, in order to exercise its administrative control, the institution must emphasize the need for all the stakeholders and the affected group to devote to resolving the crisis. The paper then concludes that the integrated framework together with the qualitative method of linguistic analysis offers PR scholars insights into the relationship between discourse, ideology, and crisis communication, as well as proposes implications on the interdisciplinary research from which general qualitative researchers could benefit. Hopefully, this integrated approach to crisis communication will contribute to broadening the research scope of analyzing communication as a social practice toward a comprehensive model.

This paper examines the reasoning lines in PM Alexis Tsipras' political discourse in critical moments of SYRIZA's tenure as the ruling party in Greece. Adopting a CDS perspective, we zoom in on the patterns that underlie the (de)legitimization of the crisis-ridden EU in three seminal speeches by PM Tsipras during the Greek/EU financial crisis. To this end, we integrate systemic-functional and cognitive linguistic tools with a view to scrutinizing representational meaning, before turning to employ the notions of endoxon and topos/locus as a means of studying the particular argumentative inferences, triggered by the respective discursive representations. Through this lens, we show how the overall argumentation can be seen as supporting the (de-)legitimation of dominant EU austerity perspectives while transforming SYRIZA into a pro-austerity voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iran has undergone a metamorphosis in its ideological and national identity due to its historical upheavals in the past century, e.g. the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1906–11), Islamic Revolution (1979), Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). This paper aims to present the diachronic changes in the Iranian official national anthems' lyrics. Through a critical discourse lens, I demonstrate how the socio-political changes have influenced these anthems and how such transformations have shaped the ideological identities of Iranians' pre- and post-Islamic revolution to outsiders via lyrics. More specifically, I show how these identities are constructed through texts and via intertextual means. The findings display that the changes in Iranian anthems not only index a socio-historical transformation, but also a kind of acceleration in terms of political developments in contemporary Iran, and the ways in which the leaders may have employed their own ideological views to project Iranian identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 political discourse focuses on the ways politics in postcolonial context is imbricated in the logic of coloniality. Decolonial approach is considered necessary rather than sufficient in interrogating the hegemonic structure of colonialism in Africa's political discourse. The paper uses critical discourse analysis situated within decolonial methodologies to analyze former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan's declaration-of-intent speech to seek re-election. The paper specifically draws on [Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures decolonial options. Duke University Press.] and [Macgilchrist, F. (2014). Media discourse and de/coloniality: A post-foundational approach. In C. Hart & P. Cap (Eds.), Contemporary critical discourse studies (pp. 385–405). Bloomsbury Publishing] decolonial frameworks and [Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse. Routledge] legitimization model. Situating decolonial approaches together with Chilton's legitimization model is, on the one hand, a way of interrogating hegemonic structures in Goodluck Jonathan's speech and on the other hand works to show the limitation of Chilton's theory in analyzing discourses from Africa. This limitation of Chilton's model underscores the need to bring decolonial approaches in constructing a nuanced understanding of Africa and its epistemic diversity because it is impossible to think of overcoming the coloniality of power without approaching it from the perspective of the colonized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Since the late 1970s, inflation-adjusted wages have stagnated as workers' bargaining power has diminished. The discursive environment in which workers' wage entitlements is contested is an important--yet often neglected--influence on worker bargaining power. Analysis The authors examine editorials published in the Globe and Mail between 1970 and 2015 related to postal workers' wage bargaining to examine the criteria advanced to evaluate the legitimacy of workers' wage demands. Conclusions and implications The discourses examined contribute to normalizing and legitimating postal worker disentitlement by emphasizing harm as the evaluatory criterion by which workers' demands are judged. This framing of postal workers and their wage struggles contributes to an environment in which the legitimacy of wage demands is undermined, contributing to the overall economic and political climate in which wages have stagnated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing competition and metrics focusing on teaching quality (e.g. the teaching excellence framework or TEF), there is a spotlight on learning and teaching (L&T) in policies and practices within universities. Bodies at national and institutional levels focus on disseminating policy ideas on L&T which are oriented to government priorities. This article focuses on how policy itself is discursively constructed in selected L&T policy documents and explores the means of the recontextualisation of policy discourses. I discuss the following three findings: (1) the construction of policy as 'embedded within processes and practices', (2) shifts in genre and discursive strategies as policy ideas become short guidelines and (3) the role of 'discursive mechanisms' in forcing engagement with policy ideas. Through an analysis of discursive strategies and recontextualisation, I demonstrate the seeming insecurity around policy compliance and show how constructions of L&T are never value-free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of a critical discourse historiographical (CDH) approach to critical discourse studies (CDS), this article applies a range of theories to the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, or Hong Kong Occupy Movement, to understand it as a discursive event. The CDH approach argues that a diachronic, historiographical approach can contribute to historiography, the writing of history, in that it can create first readings and interpretations of important events. The approach focuses on critical moments in discourse, of which the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement is considered an important one in the context of Hong Kong’s ongoing socio-historical development. Four theories are applied, in addition to the historical analysis, to further interpret the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement phenomenon: social movement theory, performance theory, identity theory and social action as text theory. It is concluded that the CDH approach to CDS and findings of the study may be useful in the consideration of other social movements and Occupy movements globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discourse-based approach to understanding security has been explored in the study of International Relations, yet how other agents rather than the political agents speak to conceptualize the emotive appeal in unconventional security issues is less discussed. This corpus-based cognitive critical discourse study examines security by combining the International Relations' theory of securitization with the proximization approach in Critical Discourse Studies. As a case study, texts concerning Confucius Institutes on the National Association of Scholars' official website from 2014 to 2020 were collected to discuss how the threat is constructed discursively and cognitively for an endeavor to influence the public and the political decision-making process. The corpus was further divided into two sub-corpora in order to expose the difference in their cognitive construction of Confucius Institutes. The findings show that the American academia delivers a bottom-up securitizing move by constructing education security discourse on Confucius Institutes in the initial process, yet later the whole-of-society security narratives interacting with a top-down securitizing move from the political agents have been adopted. As indicated by the corpus statistics, the concerned discourses are discursively constructed by following the "Self-Other" dichotomy security narratives, in which Confucius Institutes are cognitively transformed from an academic issue to a national security issue and legitimized through proximization in the spatial, temporal, and axiological dimensions., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Hu.)

The goal of this paper is to show how proximization theory, a recent cognitive-pragmatic model of crisis and threat construction, can be applied in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). It is argued that the rapidly growing, intergeneric field of CDS is in need of new, interdisciplinary methodologies that will allow it to account for an increasingly broader spectrum of discourses, genres and thematic domains. Thus, proximization theory is used as a candidate methodological tool to handle three sample discourses – health, environment, modern technology – with a view to further applications. The results seem promising: the theory elucidates well the key features of public discourses within the CDS scope, especially the legitimization patterns in policy communication. The analysis of the three discourses demonstrates a consistent reliance of policy legitimization on discursively construed framework of fear and threat, both material and ideological. Equally promising are the prospects for proximization theory itself to continue to draw empirically from the expanding CDS territory. The most fruitful seem those of CDS domains whose discourses (ranging from war discourse to cancer treatment discourse) force a direct and growing conflict between symbolically demarcated “home” and “external” entities, thus sanctioning urgent preventive actions against the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to show how proximization theory, a recent cognitive-pragmatic model of crisis and threat construction, can be applied in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). It is argued that the rapidly growing, intergeneric field of CDS is in need of new, interdisciplinary methodologies that will allow it to account for an increasingly broader spectrum of discourses, genres and thematic domains. Thus, proximization theory is used as a candidate methodological tool to handle three sample discourses--health, environment, modern technology--with a view to further applications. The results seem promising: the theory elucidates well the key features of public discourses within the CDS scope, for instance legitimization patterns in policy communication. Equally promising seem the prospects for proximization theory itself to continue to draw empirically from the expanding CDS territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]