In recent years, research on conspiracy theories has expanded, yet few studies have examined them from a discursive post-structuralist perspective. This paper provides a theoretical mapping of the structure of conspiracism as articulated in political discourse. Drawing on the Essex School of Discourse Analysis, it highlights the main discursive features of conspiracy theories and the conditions under which political discourse can be classified as conspiratorial. Moreover, focusing on Greece—a country marked by recurrent political and economic crises—this paper analyzes how conspiratorial motifs are mobilized in the discourse of different political actors in the country, identifying their central or peripheral role. While the focus is not on verifying the truth of conspiracy theories or evaluating their political impact, we emphasize the importance of understanding how these theories are constructed and expressed in political contexts. In doing so, it contributes to a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the discursive architecture of conspiracism in politics.

This article examines the ideological discourse of violence in two influential Brazilian films, Elite Squad (2007) and Bacurau (2019), through a decolonial lens. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study explores how each film portrays violence as a narrative tool to convey broader social and ideological messages. Elite Squad depicts violence as a means to maintain hegemonic forces, while Bacurau presents it as resistance against colonial oppression. The research highlights the film’s divergent representations of power dynamics, racial tensions, and the role of the state, offering insights into the sociopolitical commentary embedded in Brazilian cinema. By analyzing these narratives, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of how films can reflect and shape collective consciousness within a post-colonial context.

This article introduces grounded discourse analysis (GDA) as a hybrid methodology for the investigation of language use and meaning-making in a range of social contexts. It demonstrates that grounded theory and discourse analysis can be fruitful methodological companions, with grounded theory offering strategies for research design and theory development that are rooted in social context, and discourse analysis providing an extensive toolkit for close analysis of the relationship between text, action and broader social structures. The article introduces three foundational principles for GDA projects: 1) inductive design, 2) socially situated theory-building, and 3) researcher reflexivity. Further, it sets out six flexible phases that guide the research from data construction to micro-level discourse analysis. In order to demonstrate how GDA can work in practice, the article draws on three empirical case studies from the author’s research in which grounded theory and discourse analysis are combined in pursuit of rich qualitative insights around the relationship between everyday parenting, gendered and familial structures, and social media practices. In each of these studies, a grounded discourse analytical approach produces rich, theory-driven analyses that are rooted in deep understanding of the research context and its related social phenomena, participants and practices.

Through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims to identify, analyze the topical structure and progression of the 2016 Republic Day speech of the current ruling president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The study also aims to shed light on elements of power and ideology in the speech through Topical Structure Analysis (Lautamatti, 1987; Connor & Schneider, 1990). This paper demonstrates how Topical Structure Analysis can reveal the ideological underpinnings of Erdogan’s speech by identifying topics and topical progressions. The study demonstrated that TSA facilitated a deep analysis of the political text, uncovering the intended overall discourse topic and the ideological background and underpinnings. The most significant topics were the War of Liberation, the Republic of Turkey, and the 2016 Coup Attempt. In terms of progressions, Sequential progression introduced new topics strategically, parallel progression identified explicit topics and underlying themes, while extended progression linked historical events to contemporary issues and future aspirations. The overall discourse topic was identified as The Coup Attempt of 2016 = War of Liberation for the Republic, uncovering the ideologies of Republicanism (Republic of Turkey and its historical context), Nationalism (Continuous references to the War of Liberation), and Revolutionism (defence against the Coup Attempt). Critical Discourse Analysis, Topical Structure Analysis, power, ideology, nationalism

The term sustainability is increasingly used in many aspects of our daily lives, including in higher education. Definitions often equate sustainability with sustainable development or follow the ‘three pillars’ of economy, environment, and society. These definitions serve to exclude non-human animals, and in doing so perpetuate an anthropocentric worldview which acts as a barrier to true transformation. Universities are centres of knowledge creation and dissemination, and the language they use to communicate about sustainability is important. This research takes a critical ecolinguistic approach to explore how sustainability is defined and operationalised by a Dutch university. The university definition of sustainability was evaluated through examination of the ‘strategic plan’ and ‘the sustainability roadmap’ of the university. We evaluate these definitions against the ecological philosophy of this research which embeds non-human animals in its definition. We find that the university tends to view sustainability as a broad version of the anthropocentric term sustainable development. The university’s message on sustainability is not overly coherent and the texts split their focus between the planetary aspects and the social impact of sustainability decisions. Animals are almost never mentioned in the definition, and are operationalised only in terms of what they can provide humans.

This study investigates the role of metaphors in COVID-19-related Sinophobic discourses, focusing on their functions in editorials and reader comments. While previous studies have highlighted the recurrence of specific frames (e.g. WAR, CRIME, etc.) when representing China (see Kim et al., 2022), little attention has been paid in the literature to the functions that metaphors perform in COVID-19-related Sinophobic discourses. This study addresses this gap by analysing the metaphorical representations of China in editorials and reader comments in one of Australia's most-read newspapers, the Daily Telegraph. Metaphors are analysed referring to Musolff's (2006) concept of scenarios. The results highlight that China is portrayed in both editorials and reader comments as an aggressive predator threatening Australia, as well as morally questionable and allegedly violating laws. Additionally, it is associated with ideological influence through communism, metaphorically compared to a contagious disease. Metaphors, especially in reader comments, seem to reflect perceptions of cultural superiority in Western societies by evaluating the out-group's behaviour as inappropriate (see Li & Nicholson, 2021). While metaphorical frames are shared between the corpora, reader comments exhibit greater diversity in their linguistic realisations. The findings suggest that metaphors play a crucial role in reinforcing Sinophobic narratives.

Migration is predominantly represented negatively within host societies’ public discourses. However, positive (stereotypical) images of migrants are also produced, resulting in what may be considered powerful, socially sanctioned constructions of ‘good migrants’. Discourse studies have detected positive evaluations in media discourse when positive economic effects brought about by migrant workers are mentioned. More broadly, social science research has identified cultural similarity, hard work, loyalty to the host society, suffering, victimhood, a history of forced migration and, partly, refugee or legal immigrant status as elements associated with more positive attitudes towards migrants. Stories of migrant experiences potentially problematise and offer alternatives to dominant representations; at the same time, however, they may reproduce ‘good migrant’ stereotypes for self-legitimation purposes. This study draws on a small dataset of online English-language first-person migrant narratives (written or in video transcript form) from five different document series, to compare the discursive constructions of migrants they offer through their use of evaluative language – Appraisal, and in particular Attitude – with positive stereotypical constructions held by host societies. The approach adopted (combining qualitative annotation with quantitative analyses) reveals that while features consistent with some stereotypes appear in several narratives and in all document series, they are never used in a discriminatory way, and can be balanced by stereotype-divergent elements.

Despite the implementation of ad hoc equality policies and the positive actions taken by organizations (European Commission, 2021; Council of Europe, 2016, 2017), the living conditions of people with disabilities (PWDs) remain a pressing concern. Discrimination against PWDs endures due to persistent stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes, which prevent them from fully participating in societal activities. Social Media Sites (SMSs) have been identified as active spaces for hate speech online (HSO) (Balirano & Hughes, 2020, 2024; Hughes & Nisco, 2022a; Matamoros-Fernández & Farkas, 2021; Wanniarachchi et al., 2023), as individuals often hide behind fake accounts to spread their derogatory viewpoints. However, these platforms also serve as gathering places where people with similar experiences can share their opinions, feelings, and emotions (Raffone, 2022b). As (digital) disability discourse is still under-researched in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) (Grue, 2011; Raffone, 2022a), this paper, guided by the principles of Corpus Linguistics (CL) (Baker et al., 2008; Baker, 2012a, 2012b), Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) (Fairclough, 1989; Van Dijk, 1998, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014), and Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS) (Döveling et al., 2018; KhosraviNik, 2010, 2017, 2020, 2023; KhosraviNik & Unger, 2016; KhosraviNik & Esposito, 2018), will explore PWDs’ digitally-mediated discourse to shed light on the persistence of ableism and how disabled individuals discursively attempt to resist and challenge pre-existing hateful and discriminatory attitudes in social media spaces.

In the digital ecosystem, memes are one of the most popular means of communication for Internet users worldwide. While some memes are harmless, others have become powerful means to disseminate hate messages against vulnerable categories and individuals. The ubiquity of the Internet and the potential for virality of malicious contents call for the improvement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to support humans in the prevention of online discrimination and cyberbullying. Research on AI-driven hate speech detection is currently making great strides. Still, it proves problematic in several areas, including the automatic interpretation of text-image clusters (TICs), such as memes. Based on the qualitative analysis of two different datasets (the Hateful Memes Challenge dataset, created by the Facebook AI Research group to train machines, and the TIC dataset, including user-generated memes manually collected by the researcher), this paper investigates memes’ multifarious meaning-making processes, whose interpretation requires pragmatic and intercultural skills, as well as the ability to understand visual/verbal interplays in English multimodal texts. The tools of sociosemiotic and multimodal critical discourse studies are adopted to analyze a set of hateful memes and, in particular, racist forms of dehumanization via simianization (i.e., the portrayal of individuals as primates). In conclusion, this study provides empirical indications about how multimodal-informed research can assist computer science in the development of AI systems for the creation of inclusive digital spaces.

While it is undeniable that over-reliance on AI-powered digital media has created a shift in epistemological understandings of how communication shapes, and is shaped by, the affordances of AI processes and power relations, it is equally true that the latest technologies function as multimodal resources for meaning-making with the danger of offering fertile ground for new forms of discrimination. The present study argues that AI-coded search engines function as semiotic resources where the interaction of the verbal and the visual communicates corporate interests and human bias that ultimately lead to structural gender- and sex-based discrimination. The aim of this study is to advance awareness on algorithmic discrimination by investigating asymmetric power relations and discriminatory frameworks in the combined visual/verbal representation of same-sex couples in Google Images from the vantage point of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. The comparative analysis concerns the Italian and the British digital landscape of Google Images, where same-sex couples are intended as a socio-culturally stigmatized group. The examination uncovers different levels of structural gender- and sex-based discrimination in Google Images computations of verbal and visual resources, whose final output are thumbnail captioned images. The latter are intended as multimodal ensembles representing how same-sex couples epitomize gender- and sex-based discrimination in Google Images digital landscape. Since the results of the queries are highly context-dependent, the comparison of the Italian and the British digital landscapes encodes different discriminatory frameworks and power asymmetries that should prompt effective measures to contrast the perils of heteronormative bias in AI-based search engines.