Comparative Discourse Analysis Research Articles

Detecting stories

The article argues that notwithstanding politicians’ desire to conceal from the public parts of the content of their indoor discussions, we nevertheless find ‘traces’ of their closed door debates in their public addresses. The article suggests that we need to regard at least some of these traces as an inevitable part of the process of constructing political discourse. It provides a comparative analysis of in-camera and public political discourse in Israel, suggesting techniques for identifying unintentional disclosure of information. These techniques are applied to cases drawn from Israeli politics in which politicians have sought to conceal information in public and semi-public forums. Such scrutiny can not only help to sharpen our discernment of the hidden voices in political discourse, but also to understand a crucial mechanism for the construction of borders between confidential and public political discourse.

Substitute decision making in medicine: comparative analysis of the ethico-legal discourse in England and Germany

Health care decision making for patients without decisional capacity is ethically and legally challenging. Advance directives (living wills) have proved to be of limited usefulness in clinical practice. Therefore, academic attention should focus more on substitute decision making by the next of kin. In this article, we comparatively analyse the legal approaches to substitute medical decision making in England and Germany. Based on the current ethico-legal discourse in both countries, three aspects of substitute decision making will be highlighted: (1) Should there be a legally predefined order of relatives who serve as health care proxies? (2) What should be the respective roles and decisional powers of patient-appointed versus court-appointed substitute decision-makers? (3) Which criteria should be determined by law to guide substitute decision-makers?

Establishing Terminal Status in End-of-Life Discussions

The communicative purpose of an end-of-life discussion is to change the goals of treatment for a terminal patient from therapeutic to comfort care. In this study, the authors present a comparative discourse analysis of end-of-life discussions that reached a consensus to change the goals of treatment and discussions that did not. They found that the presentation of medical information was subtly different across these discussions: Decision-making discussions were based on a consistent accumulation of negative evidence, whereas non-decision-making discussions were inconsistent in this respect, including mention of positive rather than negative outcomes of medical problems, discussion of possible treatment options, and mitigating summary statements. The authors note that end-of-life discussions with these specific features do not progress to a decision to change the goals of treatment to comfort care.

Elitist with a Russian twist: Mass media discourses on European constitutional ratification in Estonia and Latvia

This article examines domestic debates on the European Constitution as reflected in the Estonian and Latvian print media during the period from October 2004 to October 2005. Data collected from six daily papers are analysed in quantitative as well as qualitative terms within the framework of comparative discourse analysis. The empirical findings suggest, first, that national media coverage of the constitutional debate in both countries was characterised by a strong legal-normative discourse among political elites and that the media failed to contribute to broader public discussion. Second, the political discourses were structured very differently in each of the two countries, with varying degrees of openness/closure to foreign public debates. And, third, in neither of these cases did the national mainstream media debates cover, let alone represent, the concerns of the sizeable, non-EU ethno-linguistic minorities permanently resident in both countries.

Populism as political communication style: An empirical study of political parties' discourse in Belgium

Abstract. The scientific debate about populism has been revitalised by the recent rise of extreme‐right parties in Western Europe. Within the broad discussion about populism and its relationship with extreme‐right, this article is confined to three topics: a conceptual, an epistemological and an empirical issue. First, taking a clear position in the ongoing definition struggle, populism is defined primarily as a specific political communication style. Populism is conceived of as a political style essentially displaying proximity of the people, while at the same time taking an anti‐establishment stance and stressing the (ideal) homogeneity of the people by excluding specific population segments. Second, it is pointed out that defining populism as a style enables one to turn it into a useful concept that has too often remained vague and blurred. Third, drawing on an operational definition of populism, a comparative discourse analysis of the political party broadcasts of the Belgian parties is carried out. The quantitative analysis leads to a clear conclusion. In terms of the degree and the kinds of populism embraced by the six political parties under scrutiny, the extreme‐right party Vlaams Blok behaves very differently from the other Belgian parties. Its messages are a copybook example of populism.

Professorn och kärleken - Sexuella trakasserier i fiktion och verklighet

"The professor in love: Sexual harassment in fiction and real life", by Cristine Sarrimo, senior lecturer in culture studies. Our scholarly and scientific ideals rarely allow the professional subject to be contextually situated; the researcher and teacher is supposed to have a strictly rational and objective approach, not only to his or her own profession, but also on matters involving passions and feelings. These rational ideals are based on the assumption that the division between reason and emotion, and the private and public, is possible to maintain. But academic institutions and their regulative authorities must handle emotionally charged conflicts. These disciplining procedures, meant to regulate the private and emotive sphere, are in reality a central part of how the academic subject is constituted. A comparative discourse analysis, based on J M Coetzee's novel Disgrace and an authentic case of sexual harassment, involving a professor and his student at a Swedish university, shows that it is necessary for the accused to embrace an emotive discourse, with religious and legal confessional traits, if he desires to protect his rationally constructed professionalism. Coetzee's heroe refuses to confess and is consequently disgracefully dismissed. Ethical dilemmas arise concerning the status of truth and the confessional, but power- and gender relations are also influenced in an intricate manner. The public and private, the emotive and rational, is intertwined in a complicated relational process, where professional and gender hierarchies shift. This leads to the conclusion thatthe professional academic subject is exposed to a discursively regulated disciplining process in which the supposed repression of emotion is essential, and therefore one of the subjecfs most constitutive traits.

To what extent are social work students in England and Denmark equipped to deal with child sexual abuse? A comparative discourse analysis between English and Danish social work education in relation to child sexual abuse

To what extent are social work students in England and Denmark equipped to deal with child sexual abuse? A comparative discourse analysis between English and Danish social work education in relation to child sexual abuse

Promoting group talk and higher‐order thinking in pupils by ‘coaching’ secondary English trainee teachers

AbstractOne hundred and eighty British secondary school pupils aged 11–12 and their six trainee teachers in five schools participated in an action research project, designed to improve the quality of children's group talk in English lessons, particularly their engagement in higher‐order thinking through ‘exploratory’ talk. The programme, supported by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), now Training and Development Agency, was devised by a team of mentors and an Initial Teacher Educator from Sussex University. It aimed to develop the trainees' skills both in planning challenging tasks for, and sustaining effective group talk, using ‘ground rules’ and varied teacher discourse strategies. The data include qualitative comparative analysis of discourse audiotaped before and after the intervention, taken from 66 pupils. Findings indicate a clear improvement in the quality of talk, in terms of pupils' collaborative engagement in higher‐order thinking. Further evidence from observations and interviews with all participants suggests confirmation of the programme's effectiveness in improving trainees' and pupils' skills in, and understanding of how to use group talk to reason.

Technology-Mediation and Tutoring: How Do They Shape Progressive Inquiry Discourse?

In higher education, there is a challenge to gain the full benefit of the potentials of learning technology for collaborative knowledge advancement and for scaffolding practices of academic literacy and scientific argumentation. The technology, ideally, would be used to provide support that enables students to deal with more demanding tasks than they could otherwise handle. We investigated the benefits of learning technology by examining the role of technology-mediation and tutoring in directing students' knowledge production in inquiry-based learning. A comparative analysis of inquiry discourse was conducted for 3 conditions between nonmediated and technology-mediated inquiry processes, the latter both tutored and nontutored. Qualitative content analysis was employed to examine how the scale of scaffolding related to the nature of knowledge produced. Furthermore, a descriptive analysis of the progression of discourse was conducted to examine evidence for deepening the question-explanation process, development of ideas in dialogue, and self-reflection. The scaffolding provided by the learning technology (The Future Learning Environment), together with the possibility for dialogue, appear to have supported practices of problem-setting, self-reflection, and collaborative development of ideas. Students in the 2 technology-mediated conditions were developing their ideas in dialogue, building on each other's knowledge and questions. Tutoring was found to be valuable for providing additional models and tools for advancing inquiry. Specific to the students of the nontechnology condition (who wrote learning-logs) was that they put more effort into understanding the theoretical content, evaluating and arguing it, but they did not engage in shared development of ideas. Through a combination of the practices, the authors foresee a potential, in higher education, for development of in-depth inquiry and practices of knowledge advancement including the nurturance of epistemic agency.

Los imaginarios de internet: una aproximación crítica a los discursos hegemónicos en el ciberespacio

The present paper has the aim of inquiring into the different social imaginaries which has appeared on the Internet since its beginning. Especially, we focus on the different social imaginaries about the concept of democracy. We have considered six relevant dimensions to the study of the concept of democracy: freedom, equality, partcipation security, rights and pluralism. We differentiate four social imaginaries (university/hackers; the market; Newest social movements and the State), working on the principle that each social imaginary has its particular discourse depending on how they understand the meaning of those dimensions (freedom, equlity...) and how they manifest their socio-political practice. Finally, we establish a comparative discourse analysis about the dimensions of the concept democracy to conclude with some ideas which encourage new research in this line.

Integrating Information and Communication Technology in the Classroom:

The discourse about information technology is often overlooked by researchers and scholars as a means of understanding the recent process of computerization in education. The research explores this phenomenon through a comparative discourse analysis of primary and secondary school teachers and promoters of ICT integration. The results show that promoters tend to view ICT as a way of transforming education whereas teachers see it only as a means to an end. The former's vision is borrowed from a prospective current of thought, a vision of social changes based on technological advances; the latter's considers only the needs of the students and the practical ways to respond to them. The research shows that teachers are not opposed to ICT integration; they're interested in effective ways to implement learning. The organizational context into which ICT is integrated is also a major impediment when it comes to changing the teacher's practice.

Expectativas de rol profesional de mujeres estudiantes de carreras típicamente femeninas o masculinas [Professional role expectancies of women students enrolled in studies typically considered feminine of masculine

The presence of women in the labor market and all the aspects involved in their professional development continue being a focus of interest nowadays. On a basis of a 51 women sampie, from which half of them studied the last courses of studies considered traditionally as "feminine" and the other half were students enrolled in studies considered as "typically masculine", a qualitative analysis was carried out, with 19 qualitative interviews and 8 focus groups. The main aim of this study is to develop a comparative discourse analysis of both groups of women, in relation to certain aspects conceming their career choice and their professional and personal projection, together with the comparison with their male peers in the mentioned aspects. The result of the discOl-lrse analysis points out how not only the election of the career, but also the expectancies of future professional and personal development were mediated by the existing stereotypes around the roles women are supposed to play in the environment of work.

Negotiation of Meaning in Conversational and Information Gap Activities: A Comparative Discourse Analysis

This article reports an investigation of how meaning is negotiated in two different types of interactions between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs): a relatively unstructured conversation and a two-way information-gap task. Three NS-NNS dyads were recorded as they engaged in these two activities, and the data were examined in detail. Negotiation exchanges, lexical and syntactic complexity, and various pragmatic issues were examined and compared qualitatively and quantitatively. The results suggest that conversational interaction has the potential to offer substantial learning opportunities at multiple levels of interaction even though it offered fewer instances of repair negotiation in the traditional sense than did the information gap activity. In addition, the NNS participants stated in subsequent interviews that they found the conversational activity to be more challenging than the information-gap activity because they had to pay attention to the entire discourse in the former but mainly focused on lexical items in the latter. This study thus raises questions about claims that conversational interactions do not provide learners with as much challenging language practice as do more highly structured interactional activities, such as information gap tasks.

"Lit. Theory" Put to the Test: A Comparative Literary Analysis of American Judicial Tests and French Judicial Discourse

"Lit. Theory" Put to the Test: A Comparative Literary Analysis of American Judicial Tests and French Judicial Discourse

Mistaken Identities: Tabloid and Broadsheet News Discourse

The author discusses two important perspectives on “tabloidization” and its supposed impact upon news discourses: the polarisation perspective attributes to the changes in news journalism a sharpening differentiation and polarisation between tabloid and broadsheet newspapers, while according to the homogenising view, sensational journalism which once seemed to be confined to the lowbrow media, now spreads to all media. The article argues that tabloidisation debates often do not compare like with like, which results in mistaken conclusions. A case in point is fabulous reportage as a specific form of journalistic discourse that cannot be considered a trivial form of news discourse, but a discourse sui generis, a distinct genre. Consequently, it does not make sense to compare broadsheet news discourse with fabulous reportage in tabloid newspapers; a valid comparison is between tabloid news discourse with broadsheet news discourse. The article presents such a comparative content analysis of news discourses in five broadsheet and five tabloid newspapers in the UK. The analysis if focused on five features of the supposed homogenisation: the coverage of foreign news, the use of pictorial material, the “softening” of hard news, and changes in topical patterns. It shows that the “classical” news discourse has not been “tabloidised,” and this may also hold good for news discourse in tabloid newspapers.

Equal Educational Opportunity for Language Minority Students: From Policy to Practice at Oyster Bilingual School

Based on a two year ethnographic and discourse analytic study of Oyster Bilingual School in Washington, DC, this article illustrates what equal educational opportunity means for the linguistically, culturally, and economically diverse student population who participate in this "successful" two-way Spanish-English bilingual program. The article begins by summarizing the Oyster educators' perspective on equal educational opportunity, and emphasizes their opposition to the notion of equal educational opportunity implicit in mainstream U.S. programs and practices. The majority of the article then provides a comparative discourse analysis of the "same" kindergarten speech event in Spanish and English to illustrate how the Oyster educators translate their ideological assumptions and expectations into actual classroom practices. The micro-level classroom analysis demonstrates how the team-teachers work together to distribute and evaluate Spanish and English equally so that all students acquire a second language, develop academic skills in both languages, and use each other as resources in their learning. The analysis also reveals systematic discrepancies between ideal plan and actual implementation which are explained by consideration of Oyster's sociolinguistic context.

Ethnic Identity, Intergroup Relations and Welfare Policy in the Canadian Context: A Comparative Discourse Analysis

Ethnic Identity, Intergroup Relations and Welfare Policy in the Canadian Context: A Comparative Discourse Analysis

Why are newspaper law reports so hard to understand?

Newspaper law reports are an important resource for teachers of legal English because they provide material for the simultaneous practice of legal and linguistic skills. However, the comprehension of law report discourse is shown, in this paper, to be particularly difficult for the non-expert reader. Comparative discourse analysis of the way a particular case is reported in the All England Law Reports and the law report section of The Times and The Independent shows that the discourse structure of the newspaper law report is not adequately signalled by the linguistic conventions in the text. This produces a complex conceptual structure which makes considerable cognitive demands on the non-expert. Pedagogical suggestions are made for dealing with the textual and cognitive difficulties arising from the analysis.

Review: Contrastive Textology. Comparative Discourse Analysis in Applied Linguistics

Review: Contrastive Textology. Comparative Discourse Analysis in Applied Linguistics

A formação de núcleos urbanos no Brasil Colônia: procedimentos para elevar freguesias a vilas na Capitania de São Paulo na segunda metade do século XVIII

As instituições municipais foram instrumentos essenciais na consolidação e defesa dos territórios coloniais. Durante o governo de Dom Luís Antônio de Souza Botelho Mourão (1765- 1775), o poder da Coroa na capitania de São Paulo se fortaleceu, a partir de ações militares, da produção de açúcar para exportação e da criação de uma rede de núcleos urbanos. Seus sucessores buscaram aprimorar estruturas que garantiriam os fluxos de pessoas e mercadorias no território e consolidar suas fronteiras. O trabalho é uma análise comparativa das práticas e discursos envolvidos na elevação de três freguesias a vila, em 1797, pelo Governador da capitania, Castro e Mendonça (1797-1802): Jaguary, Campinas e Araraytaguaba pertencentes às vilas de Atibaia, Jundiaí e Itu. O trabalho demonstra que as elevações respondem a diferentes estratégias de consolidação do território e fundamenta-se na documentação primária que representa os instrumentos de controle do território e do espaço urbano pela Coroa: cartografia, relações de população e ofícios das Câmaras e dos Governadores. O trabalho elucida o processo de constituição das vilas no território paulista no final do século XVIII, destacando o papel dos agentes do poder e demonstrando que o rito fundacional foi determinante na configuração espacial dos núcleos urbanos em questão.