Crisis Discourse Research Articles

Earth-Man Relationship in Islam and Hinduism

The relationship between man and earth has been both sacred and tender since time immemorial. This bond is based on the guiding principles enshrined and practiced deftly in all religious scriptures. Islam and Hinduism are unique as having a deep sense of respect and consideration for Earth and its natural resources. Fazlun Majeed Khālid and Ranchor Prime being the contemporary scholars of Islam and Hinduism respectively, attempted to bring religious understandings of earth and the place of human beings on it into the discourse of the present ecological crisis. They shifted the global vision of the earth-man relationship to a religious understanding of ‘self and surrounding'. They tried to solve the current ecological crisis that our planet is facing after the advent of scientific knowledge and technological development in a purely eco-theological dimension. Khālid tries to address these issues from an Islamic understanding of nature while Prime attempts to deal with the ecological crisis from the Hindu faith. Both scholars criticized the anthropocentric value approach of the West and present the Cosmo-centric value approach as an alternative ethical approach to protecting our home planet Earth and its resources. This article presents a comparative analysis of their eco-theological thoughts to sustain an earth-man relationship in the 21st century. Keywords: Earth-man Relationship, Sustainability, Ecological Crisis, Secular Worldview, Anthropocentric, Cosmo-centric, Comparative Analysis.

Semantic-Cognitive Analysis of the Concept PANDEMIC (Based on English Media Texts)

Introduction. The purpose of this study is to conduct a consistent semantic-cognitive analysis of the PANDEMIC concept based on the material of the pandemic period current media texts. The present study examines the objectification of the PANDEMIC concept in English-language media texts. The relevance of the linguo-cognitive representation study of the concepts of the pandemic crisis discourse is beyond doubt, since the events and phenomena of the crisis period are directly reflected in these cognitive units, with the help of which certain images are constructed in the social consciousness and, thus, public opinion is formed on key socially relevant issues.Methodology and sources. While constructing the nominative field of the PANDEMIC concept, methods of discursive and conceptual analysis were used, including recourse to the analysis of dictionary definitions and synonymic series, as well as an interpretive analysis of the context based on media texts. The material of the study was the media texts of the news resources selected from March 2020 to January 2022.Results and discussion. As a result of the study of the PANDEMIC concept, numerous cognitive features were identified. At the core of the PANDEMIC concept there are two cognitive features: harm to health and spread over vast areas. The composition of the near periphery of the PANDEMIC concept included the following cognitive features: encouraging and forcing to vaccinate; using of personal protective equipment; social isolation or quarantine; fighting against the virus. The far periphery of the PANDEMIC concept consists of the following cognitive features: fear and anxiety caused by the virus; the negative impact of the pandemic on the business and economic development of countries; the positive impact of the pandemic on the business and economic development of countries; change in normal routine.Conclusion. The semantic-cognitive analysis allows for the transition from the semantic component of language units to the content of the concept. The stylistic and phraseological units that make up the figurative component and the interpretive field of the concept provide an opportunity to expand the boundaries of the cognitive unit and construct the image of pandemic even more thoroughly.

Ce que la crise sanitaire révèle du rapport à l’espace : le cas de la fermeture de la frontière franco-allemande en Alsace

IntroductionThe COVID-19 crisis of 2020 has led authorities to re-establish measures at the French-German border. The media refer to a “closure” of the border. This constitutes a rapid and brutal event in terms of the cross-border practices and mobility of local inhabitants. ObjectiveBy considering the closure period as a socio-spatial crisis, we question, first, the thematic structure of media discourse during the period of border closure, and second, the psychological continuity of the crisis discourse, by comparing it with pre-crisis interviews. MethodA thematic analysis of the discourse is done on a corpus of 407 local press articles, and on 12 semi-structured interviews with young, local inhabitants. ResultsThe analysis identified five themes which support the discursive media structure, and which organize and enable the debate. The international comparison and the use of historical and memorial content in the discourse enable actors to take a position on the border closure. The analysis of the links with the interviews shows that the relationship to the border during the crisis is structured on representational dimensions already present in the pre-crisis discourse of the inhabitants. ConclusionResults show a psychological continuity in pre- and post-crisis discourse: the media discourse reveals preexisting representations of the border, which act as generators of opinions on its closure. Additionally, we discuss the results by focusing on the place of identity-based feelings in the representational relationship to the border: this phenomenon is analysed here on a group and positional level.

Pull the weeds out or perish: Using pandemic metaphors to strengthen in-group solidarity in Turkish political discourse

ABSTRACT Political discourse relies heavily on specific discursive strategies to gain, exercise and sustain power. Among those are metaphors which have the power to persuade and the potential to carry certain ideological attachments with them. This study explores and discusses how political power holders in The Grand National Assembly of Turkey make use of conceptual metaphors while framing the COVID-19 outbreak. From 10 March to 10 June 2020, i.e. the time between the date of the first COVID-19 case in Turkey until the time when the government announced that the lockdown would start to ease, a total of 191 tweets were identified as metaphorically framing the pandemic. In accordance with Critical Metaphor Analysis and Discourse-Historical Approach, the results show that Turkish online political discourse uses COVID-19 metaphors in combination with specific argumentation schemes to foster self-presentationand promotes shared representations of Turkish national identity. The results also show that metaphorical framings of the pandemic in Turkish political discourse fit familiar experience patterns with roots in cultural and religious presuppositions. It is argued that the conceptual metaphors manifested in this crisis discourse act as significant tools to influence public opinion.

“This School is Killing my Soul”: Threat Rigidity Responses to High-Stakes Accountability Policies

Accountability-era reforms have promulgated a discourse of crisis and a looming threat for public schools. While these threats negatively affect all, this paper focuses on how schools’ responses to these threats shape novice Teach for America Corp Members’ (CM) socialization. By analyzing nearly 6,000 daily reflections from 38 CMs about their experiences during a high-stakes cheating scandal, we argue that schools’ responses indicated a threat rigidity response that allowed what we call the mesosystem of transgressions to occur. Our implications present ways to (a) mitigate threats inflicted on schools through unjust policies and practices and (b) enact equitable public schools.

Imagining Feminist Academic Collaborations Beyond Exceptionalized Crises

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, universities and colleges across the United States began to unroll plans to shift residential teaching to remote or virtual learning environments. As feminist scholars primarily located in the US academy, we are invested in mapping longer genealogies of crises in the settler-colonial US academy, delineating how racist, imperial, and hierarchical structures that are replicated and reinstated by the academy formulate continuous and ongoing discursive and material violence towards racialized, classed, and gendered minorities. By centering what we refer to as feminist modalities of care tthat center collective, communal, and transnational feminist interventions, this article challenges the imperatives of academic success and survival beyond the logics of emergency and crisis. We explore the interlinked transnational discourses of emergency and crisis, mapping their travels and circulations in local and global academic networks in ways that reproduce systemic inequalities and the politics of value that inform power hierarchies within the academy. Energized by a refusal to normalize crises, this essay is invested in showing how feminist interventions, here explored under three modalities, including research and teaching collaborations and coalitions that take place inside and beyond the academy and against its competitive logics, can challenge the imperatives of academic survival premised on notions of individualistic care, productivity, and worth.

‘The slow pandemic’: youth’s climate activism and the stakes for youth movements under Covid-19

ABSTRACT Pandemic conditions have affected social movement activity in various ways. In this article, we explore how young Cypriot climate activists, associated with the global Fridays for Future movement, attempt to integrate pandemic conditions in their mobilizing tactics, as well as how such conditions affect their collective youth agency. We first look into the strategic antagonistic framings they develop to counter dominant discourses of the pandemic as an unprecedented crisis and explore how these are informed by their understandings of, and emotions on, climate change as an effect of capitalism and overconsumption and as a type of ‘slow pandemic’. We argue that by extending climate change crisis discourse to encompass the cause of the pandemic, young activists assert temporality as continuity, rather than rupture, and challenge the distinction between the exceptional and the everyday on which Emergency governance is based on. By doing this, they unsettle adult hegemonic discourses on temporality, emergency and crisis that lead to an uneven world. Secondly, we reflect on the impact of Covid-19 on non-institutional youth activism by exploring the challenges these activists face to their sustenance and reproduction, given that access to public space, as we claim, is crucial for teenagers in developing the necessary relationality that is key for the maintenance of their social movement activity. We argue that youth movements emerge and operate within particular conditions which are currently under threat given the distinct mechanisms of governing populations engineered during Covid-19.

An Analysis of Intertextual Entanglements in Shimmer Chinodya’s Chairman of Fools

This article examines intertextuality in Shimmer Chinodya’s Chairman of Fools (Harare: Weaver Press, 2005), focusing on the novel’s entanglement with earlier texts and its extra-literary context. It argues that the text exhibits generic, stylistic, and thematic entanglements with its precursor texts, particularly Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988) and Dambudzo Marechera’s Mindblast, or, the Definitive Buddy (Harare: College Press, 1984), and with the post-2000 Zimbabwean context, in ways that enrich and extend current and earlier understandings of these texts. It establishes that, besides generic and stylistic entanglements, Chairman of Fools dialogues with these precursor texts in the representation of the figure of the non-conformist artist, discourses of gender, and discourses of mental breakdown. It also engages with discourses of the post-2000 Zimbabwean crisis, inclusive of the “crisis of masculinity”. The symbiosis of this intertextuality makes visible the non-hierarchical relationships that exist amongst these related texts, both literary and non-literary, and brings into focus the instability and permeability of the boundaries often used to order and create demarcations within and between these texts. The intertextuality also points at some of the literary continuities and discontinuities in the Zimbabwean literary canon—and hence its evolution—together with social and ideological shifts in Zimbabwean society.

Proximization Theory and Threat Construction in Selected E-Storybooks for Children on COVID-19

In the time of COVID-19 pandemic, discourse of crisis addressed to children should be structured in a manner that informs the child about the new threat without scaring him. Consequently, the child becomes ready to observe the preemptive measures, and the new lifestyle becomes legitimized. This research investigates nine e-storybooks addressing children on COVID-19. The study aims to illustrate the manner in which the discourse of threat is structured in children’s e-books. Framework of analysis is Proximization Theory and the relevant (S)patial-(T)emporal-(A)xiological model of proximization, which explain threat construction in discourse. Analysis shows that the selected storybooks depend more on spatial proximization through the embodiment of the threat and depicting it as being nearby. The metaphor CHILDREN ARE HEROES/FIGHTERS is detected in the stories, a thing which convinces the child that staying at home during the current pandemic is an act helping to fight and stop the outbreak of COVID-19. The study is original in its examination of threat construction in children’s e-books during coronavirus. It is suggested that more attention to children’s books should be paid.

Ali Smith's and Olivia Laing's Fictions of Immediacy

Ali Smith's and Olivia Laing's Fictions of Immediacy

Discourse of Socio-political Crisis and the Pandemic: A Linguistic Analysis of Jordanian Arabic Cartoons on COVID-19

COVID-19 has affected the lifeways of people all over the world. Hence, this study is mainly concerned with the discourse related to COVID-19. It investigated the way cartoonists represented this pandemic in Arabic and whether such a representation reflects the contemporary attitudes and values of the society. For this purpose, 150 cartoons were selected from Alghad, an online Jordanian daily in Arabic, published between the years 2020-2021. Data was analysed through a multimodal analysis. The study revealed ten themes related to COVID-19 and used by Arabic cartoonists including the quarantine and the lockdown, economic devastation, political discourse, social relationship discourse, wishes and occasions, greetings for medical staff, travel and tourism, work and education, health awareness, and dissatisfied citizens. Our study was in agreement with the results of Joubert and Wasserman (2020). They stated that editorial cartoons are important not only because they disseminate information during a public health pandemic but also because they are considered a great source of data to measure public perceptions and sentiments. 
 Keywords: cartoons, economic devastation, health awareness, political discourse, quarantine, social discourse

الخِطابُ المأزومُ في شعر (ليلى العربي) دراسة: في آليَّات التشکيل

الخطاب المأزوم في شعر (ليلى العربي) دراسة: في آليات التشکيل شعبان إبراهيم حامد أستاذ الأدب الحديث المساعد - قسم اللغة العربية، کلية الآداب، جامعة المنيا، مصر. البريد الإلکتروني: shabaanhamid123@gmail.com الملخص: يهدف البحث إلى دراسة الخطاب المأزوم في شعر (ليلى العربي)، بغرض التعرف على ملامح هذا الخطاب، وآليات تشکيله عند الشاعرة، ودلالات وجوده في شعرها. اعتمد الباحث على المنهج الوصفي التحليلي، الذي أتاح له رصد ملامح الخطاب المأزوم عند الشاعرة، وآليات تشکيله الست، کما استنتجها الباحث من قراءته الخاصة لشعر الشاعرة، وهي: العنوان، الموروث، الطبيعة، الطباعة، الصورة، الإيقاع. ومن أهم النتائج التي توصلت إليها الدراسة ما يلي: -شکل الخطاب المأزوم ملمحا مهما وبارزا من ملامح الشعر عند (ليلى العربي). مما جعل منه إشکالية بحثية مهمة تستدعي الدراسة والبحث. -جاء الخطاب المأزوم نتيجة وعي الشاعرة بذاتها وبقضايا مجتمعها ووطنها وانفتاحها على محيطها الاجتماعي والسياسي والثقافي. -کشفت آليات تشکيل الخطاب عن قدرة الشاعرة (ليلى العربي) على صوغ معانيها الشعرية بصورة أدبية وشعرية وجمالية. -اتخذت الشاعرة من آليات التشکيل أدوات حجاجية لإقناع المتلقي بتأزم الذات عندها. مما يدل على وعيها بأهمية التلقي في عملية الإبداع. -کشف الخطاب المأزوم عند ليلى العربي عن حالة الصراع التي تعيشها الذات المعاصرة بسبب الفجوة بين الواقع والمأمول. الکلمات المفتاحية: الخطاب، المأزوم، شعر، ليلى العربي، آليات التشکيل. The Crisis Discourse in the Poetry of Laila Al-Arabi-A Study of the Mechanisms of Formation Shaaban Ibrahim Hamed Department of Arabic Languge, Faculty of Arts, Minia University, Minia, Egypt. Email: shabaanhamid123@gmail.com Abstract: The present study aims to examine the crisis discourse in the poetry of (Laila Al-Arabi), in order to identify the features of this discourse, the mechanisms of its formation, and the implications of its presence in her poetry. This study adopts a descriptive analytical approach, which allows examining the features of the poet's crisis discourse, and the six mechanisms of its formation as concluded by the researcher from his own reading of the poet's poetry, namely: title, inheritance, nature, printing, image, and rhythm. The most important findings of the study include the following: The crisis discourse is a distinctive and important feature of poetry in Laila Al-Arabi that made her poetry a key research area worthy of study. The crisis discourse results from the poet's awareness of herself and the issues of her society and country, and her openness to her social, political and cultural surroundings. The poet (Laila Al-Arabi) employs the mechanisms of discourse formation as argumentative instruments to persuade her recipients of her distress. This indicates her awareness of the significance of reception in the creative process. - The crisis discourse of Laila Al-Arabi reveals the state of conflict experienced by the contemporary self because of the gap between reality and what is expected. Keywords: Discourse, crisis, poetry, Laila Al-Arabi, formation mechanisms.

Sea of bodies: a medical discourse of the refugee crisis in Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story

In the memoir Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story, Pietro Bartolo (2018) relates visceral descriptions of illness, injury and death endured by refugees on their journey of escape to the...

Ideological Apparatuses of Shari’ a and Reproduction of Domination: A Critique on the Book “ The Circles of Fear”

In this manuscript, we try to examine the connection between the interpretation of the sacred text, the ideology of language, and the apparatuses of domination in Abu Zayd`s “Circles of Fear: Reading the Discourse about Women” with a focus on the issue of women. “Circles of Fear” is based on the text-based historical hermeneutics and Abu Zayd has a post-secular humanistic approach. In “Circles of Fear” he has used critical approaches such as subaltern theory and critique of ideological apparatuses within the framework of historical structuralism, and in addition to his Qur'anic views, he has also developed a kind of critical political sociology. In Abu Zayd’s critical theory, the abstractedness of the situation arises from the intertwined relations of Shari'a, political economy, and ruling power. In his analysis, we can see a net of power that overshadows the exploitative financial and economic relations and the interpretation of Sharia and with its repressive mechanisms, prevents critical awareness in the social space. This refusal of awareness in the Egyptian space is more severe and worse for women. This article reviews Abu Zaid’s views critically in five parts: Abu Zaid and critical theory of society; reconstruction of reawakening discourse and the history of Etzali belief; women in crisis discourse, the ideology of language and the production of domination; the defeat and historical decline and critique of anti-woman practices and discourses on the eve of the transition to the information age; and the critique of the commodification of women.

Necessity, Norm and Missing Knowledge

This study examines modal verbs in German press coverage of COVID-19 during the first phase of the pandemic. The data basis is an 18-million-word corpus of newspaper articles. For analysis, a sample is drawn from the total number of modal verbs in the corpus and these are categorised according to their discourse function. The corresponding annotated data are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. For this purpose, the study draws back to Kratzer’s concept of conversational backgrounds. It turns out that in addition to normative speech backgrounds, goal formulations can be found above all. Normative backgrounds are evoked, on the one hand, to address official rules and their effects and, on the other hand in appeals and demands, to refer to social norms that are assumed as common ground. The fact that teleological backgrounds play a relatively large role indicates that the normalisation perspective is of great importance as a regulative in the crisis discourse. More positive than negative determining factors are indicated and uncertainty markings occur comparatively rarely. This points to successful crisis communication in this discourse phase.

Centrist utopianism in retreat: ideological fragmentation after the financial crisis

ABSTRACT This article explores utopian dimensions and reality problems in the intellectual production of leading Anglophone public intellectuals and policymaking institutions of Western capitalism. We argue that from the close of the 1990s, but especially in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–2009, elite discourse has splintered into three core strands or moments: first, a post-hegemonic, punitive neoliberalism of austerity, which retreats from leadership and seeks to preserve extant power relations; second, a pragmatic neo-Keynesian turn, which frequently combines the language of enterprise and competition with advocacy of selective political and economic re-regulation towards a more socially justified capitalism; and third, the advance of a ‘liberalism of fear’, which evokes a number of threatening dystopian figures in populism, protectionism, the 1930s, extremism and totalitarianism. This splintering effect, we argue, is one of the key features of today’s wider ideological-utopian constellation, entwined with the growth of the new far right and with radicalization on the left. Drawing on a Gramscian analysis of crisis, we argue that the ideological incoherence of the dominant intellectual elite, and the denuded utopian dimensions of their discourse, are both symptomatic and productive of the present organic crisis of Western capitalism and its attendant crisis of intellectual and moral leadership.

Toward a (co)relational border? Order, care, and chaos at Nordic borders

The events of the European migration ‘crisis’ of 2015–2016 left an indelible mark on the continent, evident within each of the four Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Migrant-centered agents (MCAs) played an important role in engaging and managing the border in the form of governmental and non-governmental agents during this time. Discourses of urgency and crisis were used to justify policies and practices to ‘mitigate’ the situation, administered (and engaged with) by MCAs. What ensued was a complex hybridity of Order, Care, and Chaos in each of the four countries, alongside the expansion and reclaiming of power by the nation-state. This paper uses semi-structured interviews to critically analyze such political unfoldings, drawing on notions of exceptionality, responsibility, and neoliberalization. The term ‘(Co)Relationality’ is proposed to the academy to reflect the reciprocal and re-enforcing relations between states and individuals in the subsequent governing and negotiating of the border, exemplified in the Nordic context. Chrono-political and spatial (co)relationality are put forward and developed regarding the theoretical premise that borders must be studied in relationship.

Metaphorical Representation of the Migration Crisis as a Natural Phenomenon of the Water Element (Based on American Media Texts)

Introduction. This article is devoted to the consideration of American media-political discourse in the context of the migration crisis and is a fragment of a large-scale study of migration, racist, media-political and crisis discourse, as well as the discourse of enmity. The relevance of the study of migration discourse is evident, as migration processes and, in particular, the migration crisis have a significant impact on modern society and raise a number of serious, sometimes unmanageable issues for politicians. The article provides an analysis of discursive strategies typical of migration discourse, including an evaluation information strategy and discrediting tactics, as well as the role of cognitive metaphor in their implementation. Consideration of the actualization of migration discourse strategies at the linguistic-cognitive level, in the context of the theory of conceptual integration, allows us to distinguish various ways of metaphorical understanding of migration and the migration crisis, which constitutes the novelty of this study. Methodology and data sources. The study was conducted using the American periodicals. Texts were selected by a continuous sampling method. The study was conducted in the context of a critical approach to the analysis of discourse at the linguistic and linguistic-cognitive levels. The linguistic plan of the discourse was considered through the study of communicative strategies and tactics involved in media texts, using methods of discursive analysis, and semantic-stylistic/lexico-semantic analysis at certain stages. The main method of studying the linguistic-cognitive plan of discourse was cognitive-discursive analysis of the conceptual metaphor within the framework of the blending theory. Results and discussion. In the American migration discourse, a persuasive strategy has become widespread, which is often implemented through the evaluation information strategy. One of the main means of implementing the evaluation information strategy is the mechanism of cognitive metaphor. The conceptual signs identified during the analysis of the metaphor as a natural phenomenon of the water element can be explained by the natural characteristics of water as liquid and correlate with the number of migrants: the heating of water to the boiling point correlates with the critical mass of the number of migrants, the sharp breakthrough of water through the dam is compared to an excessive increase in the number of migrants. Also, the identified conceptual signs are associated with the effect of the surprise of what is happening (an unexpected influx of migrants as a bursting of the dam), a gradual and inconspicuous development of events (undermining the foundations of society and oppressing migrants as a slow destruction of soil by groundwater). Conclusion. The migration crisis is one of the key social problems of modern American society. The research conducted within the framework of blending theory provides an opportunity to identify specific ways of metaphorizing the migration crisis and to analyze various implications and background knowledge that are actualized as two scenarios of the same metaphor are implemented and displayed in the emergent structure of the blend.

Cruising to nowhere: Covid-19 crisis discourse in cruise tourism Facebook groups

ABSTRACT In view of the unprecedented challenge currently facing the cruising industry, this research explored how online expressions in cruise tourism Facebook groups in Israel were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Using social exchange theory and uses and gratification theory we analyze types of messages and ideas informing Facebook posts, and the broad social meanings that can be inferred from them. In order to gain understanding of this online culture, themes were identified by netnography (virtual ethnography) that stressed a need for information to cope with the sudden cruise shutdown consequences. The findings also reflected a belief in public discussion, including sharing nostalgic moments of past cruises as a helpful tool for cruise tourism professionals to cope with the disappointment and fear of the unknown caused by the global pandemic. Furthermore, group member solidarity and the changing role of Facebook group administrators from objective representatives to intermediaries on behalf of cruise lines were highlighted.

Remaking higher education for the post‐COVID‐19 era: Critical reflections on marketization, internationalization and graduate employment

This Special Issue was conceived and developed following a series of international conferences held in Asia, with a particular focus on critically reflecting upon higher education development in the region from broader social and political economy perspectives. Some of the papers in this Special Issue were selected from presentations in the East Asia Social Policy (EASP) Research Network Conference successfully held in Taiwan in 2018, while others were chosen from international events held at Lingnan University in Hong Kong presenting critical reviews and reflections on internationalization, marketization and graduate employment of higher education in Asia. This introductory article puts the discussions of the selected papers in this issue in context, with critical reflections on the key issues being examined in these papers. The Special Issue is published when the world is still confronting the unprecedented global health crisis resulted from the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article discusses the higher education development trends in Asia through the massification, diversification and internationalisation processes in transforming the higher education system and examines how these development trends are affected by the COVID‐19 crisis.