Exploring Sinophobic discourses during the COVID-19 pandemic: A corpus-assisted study of metaphor scenarios in editorials and reader comments

The concept of ‘metaphorical framing’ is currently witnessing renewed interest in metaphor research, but for discourse-oriented work it remains a problematic analytical tool given the variety of senses it has been employed with. The present paper considers an approach to metaphorical frames in discourse, by proposing the notion ofdiscursive metaphorical framesto capture the complex, systematic metaphorical representations prominent across discourse. The perspective follows the direction of recent integrated approaches to metaphor, frames and discourse (e.g.,Burgers et al., 2016;Cameron et al., 2009;Semino et al., 2016) and is proposed as particularly suited to studying public discourses, as ideologically laden, multi-textual and multi-voiced. The approach is illustrated through an analysis of metaphorical representations of language in Serbian and British newspapers. The analysis reveals the deeper social ideologies underlying the newspaper discussions on language in Serbia and Great Britain, including similarities as well as notable differences, pointing to the diverse ideological processes shaping contemporary media metadiscourses. The results are also discussed in relation to the adopted approach, to frames of presentation, (sub)domain representations and the dynamics of metaphor use in public discourse.

For the last thirty years or so, many Western societies have been engaged in a programme of wide-ranging social and economic reconstruction. In this process, everything associated with the rise of the post-1945 welfare state has come to be discredited: the role of the state as the provider of welfare services has been undermined by privatisation; public expenditure has been cut; economies have been deregulated; and direct taxation has been lowered while indirect taxes have been raised. In such ways, modern societies have been reconstructed, as if the previous commitments to welfarism and the high levels of expenditure and taxation that were needed to pay for it had been some sort of ghastly aberration which, from the 1980s, political parties of both Right and Left - certainly in the Anglophone societies - have been keen to correct. By getting the state out of people’s lives, it has been claimed, entrepreneurial energy and dynamism would be freed up, bringing about much greater wealth creation as individuals took on more responsibility for the course of their lives. In an article titled Brick by Brick, We’re Tearing Down the Big State, British Prime Minister David Cameron has thus written that: State bureaucracy has proved too clumsy and inefficient, stifling the innovation we need at a time when value for money is so critical. I also have an instinctive belief that parents, patients and professionals are so much better equipped to make the choices that will drive improvements in our public services. Give the power to them, allow new providers to come forward with new ideas, and good things will happen. (Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2012: 9)

Men’s mental health has long been stigmatized in Western society. The media plays a substantial role in emphasizing the importance of mental health; however, a gender disparity exists as men are often less highlighted than women in regard to this subject. This study investigated whether a difference in men’s mental health portrayal exists between progressive and conservative news media in the United Kingdom. Using Factiva, eight news articles were analysed; these included: The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph, and The Times, yielding a sample size of 32. Five criteria were established to score the articles on a Yes (1) or No (0) scale. An ANOVA and a t-test were used to determine the statistical significance of the results. The analyses showed significantly higher scores for progressive news media than conservative news media, whereby The Guardian had the highest percentage of articles that included criteria 1 through 4. The findings revealed a significant difference between how men’s mental health is portrayed in progressive versus conservative news media. Specifically, there was a better representation of men’s mental health in progressive news outlets. Since a limited number of papers were analysed, further research should be conducted to better understand the portrayal of men’s mental health in the media.

The media coverage of an out-of-control teenage party in the Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren on 12 January 2008, and its construction of the protagonist who threw the party, has highlighted once again the inequitable treatment of youth, particularly adolescent males, in the Australian media. This paper examines the coverage in terms of the discursive strategies used by the mainstream Australian media to legitimise and naturalise the denigration and humiliation of the boy involved. It will discuss the ongoing demonisation of young males in general, and the concomitant ‘panics’ about their degeneration into moral lassitude, as well as the particular ethical and legal issues raised by the non-compliance with the industry code of ethics displayed in the news reporting of the Boy’s activities. The Incident One Saturday in January 2008, the Boy decided to have a get together in his suburban Melbourne home while his parents were away, however as news of the event spread via the internet and SMS, the crowd swelled to apparently 500 people, many of whom were gate crashers from a nearby party which had been closed down. After neighbours complained about the noise, police arrived and clashed with the party goers, some of whom threw bottles, broke a letter box and damaged cars. Police later threatened to charge the Boy and his family for the AUD$20,000 clean-up bill (The 7.30 Report, “Teen Faces $20,000 Bill”). On 14 January, journalist Leila McKinnon presented a report on the Nine Network’s A Current Affair which was the first in a series of reports demonising adolescent males in general and the Boy in particular. As discussed in more detail below, the construction of the Boy as ‘bad’ was blatant and the interviewer skilfully goaded him and ignored any comments that indicated maturity, contrition or other socially acceptable reactions, countering with condescension until she provoked the ‘desired’ response which would support the stereotype of the rebellious adolescent male. The public humiliation of the Boy instigated by A Current Affair continued for several weeks and at the time of writing the Boy was still being used as an example of the strange and unpredictable ways of children: “The aggressive, moody, whiny, excessive behaviour that drives the parents of teenagers wild is all part of the lopsided way the adolescent brain matures. That’s especially true for boys, as Melbourne teenager [the Boy] demonstrated when he hosted a wild party …” (Dayton 3). This was despite the fact that these character traits hardly seem to fit [the Boy] who was described by his parents, even at their most outraged, as “independent, socially active” with, “a lot of friends” (A Current Affair, 14 Jan. 2008) and as someone who was, “loving, kind and a fun boy who always has time for his family” (Jo and Steve Delaney). The clear ideological inflection of the McKinnon interview, and other media coverage, suggested that the positioning of the adolescent male in this discourse warranted further examination. Television news and current affair coverage of the incident between January 14 and January 20 was analysed, producing a sample of 13 stories on the topic of the Boy. Print media articles were retrieved using the Dow Jones Factiva search, which produced 1341 stories. The stories were coded and analysed using methodology commonly used in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (for example by Fowler et al.; Fowler; Van Dijk, News; Racism; “Principles”; “New(s)”; and Fairclough, Media; Language; and “Dialectics”). This paper draws on the first stage of the analysis which described a broad characterisation of the newspaper discourse surrounding the Boy’s party. The microstructural analysis of the coverage is a longer term project and still in progress. All the News That’s Fit to Print One of the prevailing aspects of the media coverage of this incident was the ubiquitous abandoning of the ideals of objectivity and ethical reporting. The Boy was presented as media savvy and uncaring about public opinion, but this should not influence the application of the journalists’ code of ethics. For example, rule 2: “ do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including … gender, age … family relationships” or rule 8: “never exploit a person’s vulnerability” or rule 11 “respect … personal privacy”? (MEAA). Nor should it be considered a waiver of the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example article 3 which states “the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration”; or article 16 “no child shall be subjected to … unlawful attacks on his or her honour or reputation”; or article 40 “the right of every child alleged as, accused of, or recognised as having infringed the penal law to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth” (United Nations). Yet the Boy was denied rights for fair representation by the media. About a Boy The sixteen year old who threw the party has been charged as a result of events that night and so is not named here, although the blanket media coverage has meant that it is unlikely that anyone reading this paper does not know his name. None the less, he is a child; a boy; an adolescent; a minor; but what does this really mean? The term ‘Boy’, like other gender identifiers, is a contested, social construction; a malleable liminal state in which the young male is neither fully a child nor an adult; and this uncertainty feeds the cultural anxiety that permeates public displays of pubescence. Age is certainly one of the major cultural markers that western societies use to distinguish between an adult and a child, however it is applied arbitrarily. For example, in Australia, childhood appears to be defined by the activity in question. Children can legally have sex – which some might consider an adult activity – at the age of sixteen yet they can’t marry without permission; vote; own land; hold a driving or gun licence or buy cigarettes or alcohol until they are 18. Forty years ago, Philippe Aries stimulated a debate, which continues, about the concept of childhood through time, claiming that the current conception of children as a discrete group, separate from other humans in various ways is a characteristic of western industrialised society (Aries). For example adolescence is generally considered as a biological marker, rather than a cultural construct, in the process of human development, yet the concept as generally understood and applied in discussions about young people did not exist before the last two decades of the nineteenth century (Demos and Demos 632). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is quite clear, in Article 1, that, “a child means every human being below the age of 18 years” (UNCROC). Not withstanding the fact that the concept of child is contested, and socially constructed, children in general are a contradiction in 21st century western society. On one hand, society pays lip service to their importance as, ‘our future,’ and our most important asset, yet on the other they are perceived as problems to be solved by regulation. As Angela Shanahan wrote in her column for The Australian: What is to be done with the [Boy]s of this world? On one hand we know they are silly children whose parents should take more control. But, on the other hand, as anyone who has had a child go off the rails knows, the ability of parents to discipline adolescents is severely limited and often thwarted by the medical and educational establishments and by the various agencies of the social welfare bureaucracy. In fact, there is a growing institutional bias against parental authority. (26 Jan. 2008) In just one paragraph Shanahan manages to denigrate the Boy as a “silly child”; blame parents for not being more authoritarian; and invoke the need to ignore those children’s rights which are protected by bureaucracies. Even the choice of the word “bureaucracies” instead of organisations connotes incompetence. The discourses of regulation and rationality run through this column, whose header reads, “Science says teens don’t have the brains to cope”, thus invoking the authority of science to support her call for greater oppression of youth. Her strategy is to cite experts who can prove that the teenage brain is unformed and inferior to the normal, that is, adult, brain. Richard Kerbaj, also writing in The Australian, employs a similar discursive strategy, using “experts” who call on parents to, “take a more hardline approach” and suggest punishments for the Boy because otherwise, “we’ll have copycat parties throughout the place”. Kerbaj has no doubt about what young people want when he describes “every teenager’s dream: throw a party when the parents are out of the house, make international headlines and watch mum and dad get blamed for it” (Kerbaj). This level of premeditation and malice wasn’t present in the Boy’s answer, during a grilling on A Current Affair (14 Jan. 2008), to the question, “why did you do it?” BOY: Um I don’t know. It was just a get together with a couple of mates at first and then we thought we might as well just have a bit of a party and then it just sort of got out of hand … The interviewer doesn’t appear interested in any retrospection or acknowledgment of being unable to deal with the situation on the Boy’s part, but seems intent on proving that the Boy is irresponsible and unremorseful. Failure to show “appropriate” emotions during public media appearances have dire consequences. For example the demonisation, and subsequent imprisonment, of Lindy Chamberlain almost 30 years ago seemed to be at least partly the result of her inability to display the ‘right’ response, and her refusal to break down on camera was seen as evidence that she was capable of murdering her own child. More recently, British tourist Joanne Lees was positioned as suspect rather than vict

This paper looks at the use of metaphor and its effect on the interpretation of the ‘quality of law’ of contracting parties in Art. 8 cases of the European Court of Human Rights. This paper demonstrates the Court’s reliance on and reproduction of specific metaphorical frames - a finding consistent with the use of metaphor in judgment experiments in cognitive linguistics, but a first in studies of legal language. The Court employs metaphors conceptually coherent with those used in their cited precedent, in their representation of the successful pleadings within their judgments, and insists (implicitly) on different metaphors in dissent. This paper argues that rather than being simple judicial rhetoric, the use of congruent metaphors may be indicative of metaphor as a modulating factor in how judges reason. In the least, it is a significantly understudied phenomenon and this paper provides evidence for the saliency of its approach for understanding judicial reasoning. It approaches case law as data to understand the effects metaphorical framing has within them.

This chapter avers that special education in the Global South has been tainted by ideological influence from the Global North. The entire architecture of special education has evolved from a Eurocentric worldview, which ignores the views and thoughts of societies that are different from the Western society. The knowledge system of special education also fails to take into account the colonial history of states that were subjected to the trauma of colonialism and which continue to manifest through coloniality and continue to exacerbate the educational disparity in these states. The gap between privileged schools and those that are marginalised continues to grow. The chapter asserts that ubuntu lens provides for a framework that can meet the needs of most developing states, which seek to experiment with a new way of thinking about special education.

Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships

In recent years, social media has been recognized as instrumental in shaping the discourse around displaced persons, particularly through the power of metaphorical framing. Given that online communication can lead to real-world consequences for individuals, X (formerly known as Twitter) now stands out as a crucial platform for discussing migration issues in Turkey. However, while Twitter holds significant sway over public discourse in Turkey, there remains a research gap concerning its role in migration-related metaphorical framing. This study, employing critical metaphor analysis (CMA), delves into the metaphorical representations associated with the terms göçmen (‘migrant’), sığınmacı (‘asylum-seeker’), and mülteci (‘refugee’) in the tweets of four major Turkish media outlets: Hürriyet, Haber Türk, Sözcü, and Cumhuriyet. The findings reveal a predominant negative framing of all three terms, with göçmen and sığınmacı often equated with crime and mülteci with objectification. Also, the political inclination of the media outlets played a role, with those aligned closer to the Turkish government showcasing fewer negative frames. In conclusion, the study highlights the profound impact of media’s metaphorical framing, revealing its capacity to color public perceptions about displaced populations, a phenomenon accentuated by the specific terms chosen and the media’s political leanings.

The article addresses the divergent responses of the radical Left in Britain and France to the emergence of Muslims as a political subject in the advanced capitalist countries. It takes the case of a recent book by Daniel Bensaïd to illustrate the influence of a secular republican ideology that acts as an obstacle to French Marxists' recognition that assertions of Muslim identity should not simply be dismissed as reactionary but understood as potentially a rejection of the oppression suffered by Muslims in Western societies. The article calls for a recognition of the positive aspects of postcolonial theory and concludes that the Marxist interpretation of religion as a search for an other-worldly solution to real suffering and injustice should be applied consistently to all expressions of faith.

Despite a rapidly growing body of literature on marriage behaviors in China, we know very little about the changes or continuities of marriage values that accompany or underlie these behavioral transformations. Using nationally representative samples from the 2006, 2010, 2012, and 2013 Chinese General Social Surveys (CGSS), we investigate the patterns and determinants of marriage values across birth cohorts of men and women. Analyses reveal an increase in acceptance of premarital sex, same-gender sex and cohabitation across birth cohorts, but little change in attitudes toward singlehood and out-of-wedlock childbearing, and a slight decline in approval of divorce. Educational attainment and exposure to Western values, measured by Internet usage and English proficiency, are positively related to approval of premarital sex, cohabitation, and same-gender sex, but have no effect on acceptance of out-of-wedlock childbearing. Moreover, attitudes toward premarital sex and cohabitation show a widened gender gap across birth cohorts, with men showing a greater increase in acceptance than women. The results suggest that the Chinese marriage institution has had a unique pattern of evolution that is distinct from that of marriage in Western society. Desire for the traditional cultural ideal of forming and continuing a family has been unwavering, leading to early and nearly universal marriage. At the same time, longing for increased personal freedom and individualized property rights has weakened the marriage institution in China as manifested in increasing rates of divorce and marital infidelity. We discuss the paradox seen in marriage values and behavior resulting from the influence of state regulations, traditional ideologies, and Westernization.

This paper looks at the use of metaphor and its effect on the interpretation of the ‘quality of law’ in Art. 8 cases of the European Court of Human Rights. It demonstrates the Court's reproduction of specific metaphorical frames ‐ a finding consistent with the use of metaphor in judgment experiments in cognitive linguistics. The Court employs metaphors conceptually coherent with those used in their cited precedent, in their representation of the successful pleadings within their judgments and insists (implicitly) on different metaphors in dissent. This paper argues that the use of congruent metaphors may be indicative of metaphor as a contributing factor in how judges reason. In the least, it is a significantly understudied phenomenon and this paper provides evidence for the salience of its approach for understanding judicial reasoning.

The purpose of this scientific article is to determine the actual problems of combating the spread of religious extremism among prisoners in Western Europe, Russia and the CIS. The question of activation of ideology of radical political Islam and its new forms – «Islamism» and «jihadism» is raised. The process of spreading radical Islamism among the criminal part of Western and post-Soviet society is comprehensively studied and analyzed. It is emphasized that in the context of the decline of all ideological constructs of European origin, claiming to own and universal project, Islamism is becoming more and more clearly and clearly a «new alternative style» with impressive prospects of covering a variety of social groups not only in the countries of traditional spread of Islam, but also in Western Europe. It is emphasized that Islam with its egalitarian ethos has a historical experience of ideological expansion to the masses. The problem of the wide spread of Islam as a religion and ideology of Islamism among those serving sentences in the penitentiary institutions of Western Europe is particularly raised. In particular, the authors draw attention to the existing processes of symbiosis of Islamic radicalism and criminality both in penitentiaries and in the wild after release from prison. Such processes tend to further entrench and spread on the territory of Russia and the post-Soviet States of Central Asia. The reasons for the spread of radical Islam in places of deprivation of liberty are formulated. The article analyzes the most effective measures in the world to counter radicalization in places of detention, examines domestic and foreign programs of de-radicalization. The author emphasizes the timeliness and importance of the development of Islamic education as a factor to prevent the influence of extremist ideology on believers.

The article examines cross-cultural aspects of metaphorical framing in political discourse. The author notes the importance of conceptual metaphor in framing the conceptual domain of politics, political discourse as a whole, its perception as well as political reality itself. The author shares an opinion that the metaphorical structure of basic concepts of a nation always correlates with its fundamental cultural values. However, the examination of political discourse from the cross-cultural perspective reveals the cases of metaphor uses that don't meet the requirements of cultural coherence and may lead to negative cognitive and communicative consequences. Along with admitting a wide discrepancy between metaphorical models in western and oriental political discourse, the author gives some examples of metaphorical coherence as well as its violation in a number of basic metaphors in American, British and Russian political discourse. To illustrate how cross-cultural factors determine the specific character of metaphorical framing, the article analyses the dynamic character of metaphorical models that can realize diverse scenarios in different national varieties of political discourse. An observation is made about the dependence of metaphoric scenarios in different national varieties of political discourse on the cultural, historical, social and political components of the national cultural cognitive map. The latter is heterogeneous as it is structured by the objectified individual, group, and national verbal and nonverbal experience. This explains, for instance, why there are examples of similarity as well as discrepancy between metaphorical framing in ideologically different party varieties of political discourse within the national political discourse as well as in the rhetoric of politicians belonging to different generations. The observations are illustrated by cross-linguistic data proving the dynamic character of metaphorical models, their variability and potential for conveying new meaning nuances that reflect culture-specific characteristics of the political situation in discourse.

New technologies, continuing ideologies: Online reader comments as a support for media perspectives of minority religions

Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and cultural linguistics (CL), which form the chief theoretical anchor for this study, express the role of language, culture and cognition in the construal and expression of human experiences. The approaches posit that the metaphorical use of language by an individual or group is shaped by their ideological orientation, knowledge of their natural and social world, and their cultural worldview. This study investigates the metaphorical use of language by the Nigerian print media in their attempts to express ideation on corruption in the Nigerian public sector. There has not been any deliberate and rigorous attempt to study the metaphorical representation of corruption in the Nigerian media discourse, hence this study aims at addressing the lacuna. Thus, this study uses insights from CMT and CL to identify, classify and analyse some of these metaphors in six Nigerian newspapers, namely; The Guardian, Punch, Daily Trust, The Nation, Vanguard and The Sun. The study shows that print media reports of corruption in Nigeria involving powerful social actors such as politicians, government appointees, career civil servants, academics, the military, the media and others have often used metaphorical frames that emanate from the domains of disease, war and conflict, enmity, impediment to movement, violent natural forces, monstrosity, among others, to describe the incidence, scope, effects and consequences of public sector corruption in Nigeria.