Critical Discourse Studies Research Articles

A corpus-based study on the cognitive construction of security in discourse.

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

Recontextualising "Doing a doctoral degree" as a social practice complex: Evidence from Malaysia

The current study is part of a longitudinal research project into the relationship between students’ ways of recontextualising their doctoral degree experience and eventual programme completion. Building on earlier findings reported in De Rycker (2014, 2022), the objective is to examine the hidden ontology of “doing a doctoral degree”. The primary data consist in structured interviews conducted with 20 doctoral students at the Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Using Van Leeuwen’s (2008) socio-semantic model for the critical study of discourse, the analysis of the interviews produced two major empirical findings. First, doctoral students’ discourse is characterised by a strong sense of personal agency but also a lack of specificity and a simplification of the overall practice complex, in which doing research seems to be reduced to mere semiotic actions. Secondly, students construe “doing a doctoral degree” as a mystifying process replete with paradoxes. Further interpretative analysis suggests that semiotic action representations play a significant role as self-enhancing metonyms for “doing research”, helping students to demystify the academic practice and resolve some of its inherent contradictions. Implications for supervisory practice as well as the larger research project will be discussed.

Reconstructing Grammar Exercises: A Systemic Functional Grammar Approach

Despite the sufficient amount of language textbook analysis studies that have been conducted, little attention focused on grammar exercises analysis presented in the Indonesian junior high school English textbooks that facilitated the students to make meaning where functional grammar principles were adopted. This current study nuanced education artifacts analysis. The researchers intended to reveal to what extent the English grammar exercises present functional grammar exercises. Moreover, The study provided a practical suggestion to teachers, textbook developers, and language practitioners to revise and include the functional grammar approach in designing English grammar exercises. Anchored into critical document study, this study focused to find the representation of functional grammar exercises portrayed in an English language textbook where the mandated English language curriculum endorses genre-based and text-based language pedagogy in an Indonesian secondary school context. Two analytical tools were combined (i.e. transitivity analysis and critical discourse study) to reveal the existing English grammar exercises. The findings present a total of 88 English grammar exercises found in the textbook. However, 28 English grammar exercises indicated activities for the student to make meaning. The result provided a critical suggestion for grammar exercises revision that facilitates students to make meaning and understanding the social practices of the language. However, this study only provided a textbook analysis, further studies possibly focus on action studies where the functional grammar exercises were implemented in classroom activities.

Serbia and Kosovo between secession and normalisation

The Washington Agreement on Kosovo and Serbia economic normalisation (2020) is the subject of this enquiry, while its aim is to examine the role of news media in Serbia in the discourse on normalisation between Belgrade and Pristina. The main hypothesis is that the Washington Agreement was manipulatively used for self-promotion of political elites that negotiated in Washington. The research relies on Critical Discourse Studies, instrumentalist approaches to secession, media framing and agenda-setting theories. We conclude that the issue of Serbia and Kosovo normalisation in Serbian media is mostly framed with aim to mobilises citizens’ support for executive authorities. The media thus reproduce political hegemony within Serbian society, while pluralism is obstructed in a manner characteristic for competitive authoritarianism.

The Olympics, nationalism, and multiculturalism: News coverage of naturalized players in the Korean men’s national ice hockey team

The naturalization of athletes for the purpose of participating in the Olympics is a noticeable feature of today's superdiverse sporting contexts. Focusing on the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, in this paper, I explore how North American-born male ice hockey players who have become naturalized into South Korea are reproduced in media coverage of Canada and South Korea. Applying insights from critical discourse studies, transnationalism, and critical multiculturalism, I specifically examine how each country re/forms its own imagined community through these transnational sporting migrants and the ways that concepts of immigration, citizenship, whiteness, masculinity, and multiculturalism are linked, fused, and/or conflicted within it. Analysis suggests that in both countries, the hockey migrants have been illuminated as new national symbols enhancing the multicultural national brand of each country, whether as immigrants or emigrants, solidifying in the process the hegemonic position of whiteness as a global phenomenon beyond the West.

A social network approach to critical discourse studies

Abstract Viewing discourse as a social practice, one important task of critical discourse studies (CDS) is to unveil inequality, power, and ideologies through linguistic and discoursal analysis of social events, social identities, and social relations represented in oral or written texts. As such, it lends itself to social network analysis (SNA) which aims to discover relation patterns and structures among such social actors as people, organizations, and political entities. This article proposes an integration of SNA techniques into CDS and explores this possibility via an example in diachronic study on international relations represented in news reporting on China in The New York Times between 1980 and 2020 by examining subject–direct object pairs to approach the target relations between national actors. It is shown that the coupling of these two approaches effectively reveals international relation networks surrounding key national actors, based on which detailed linguistic and discoursal analysis further sheds light on the underlying ideological and socio-political factors in the news reports. Considering the fact that SNA consists of a great variety of network statistics, which can be broadly categorized into those related to the relative position of the actor in the network and those concerned with the structure of the network itself, there is vast space for the utility of SNA metrics in aiding CDS in further research.

Gender stereotypes in educational texts: A comparative study of Indonesian and international primary English textbooks

Despite the claim that the world is progressing toward gender parity, gender stereotyping continues to be a challenge for many countries, including Indonesia. This critical discourse study sought to investigate if gender stereotypes (still) exist in English language textbooks (ELTs) utilized in international and local (Indonesian) contexts. To this end, this study analysed visual texts portraying male and female characters from the student books of English Chest 6 and Let’s Go 6 from a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) perspective. In terms of gender representation and responsiveness, both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that both ELTs depict unequal portrayals. Furthermore, gender stereotypes were identified in both educational documents under investigation in two social settings, namely family and occupation/profession. This empirical research implies that, in order to achieve more equality in education, both textbook authors and schoolteachers around the world should be fully aware of gender issues encapsulated in educational documents.

Government nation building and memetic reactions: Different visions of the UK in COVID-19 related communication

The UK government uses news conferences, press releases, official websites, mainstream and social media to provide advice and information about the COVID-19 pandemic. This information has become ‘source material’ for social media users to react to government announcements in ‘digital popular culture’; that is, memes and short videos shared on social media. Close examinations of both reveal how different views of the nation are articulated whilst giving and reacting to pandemic information and advice. Here, we analyse a sample of official government webpages on COVID-19 announcements and reactions to these in digital popular culture. We employ Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies to understand how the modes of lexica and images work individually and together to articulate views on the nation. Through such an analysis, we reveal not only what the public ‘receive’ from the government, but also broadly held ideas and beliefs by the public on the nation.

Shaping Political Subjectivity through Media and Information Literacy

This article calls for an investigation of the way media and information literacy (MIL) projects construct and (de)legitimize particular forms of political subjectivity. The authors argue that the field of critical discourse studies (CDS) offers useful approaches to develop this line of inquiry. They demonstrate this point in a case study of the MIL project of the European Association for Viewers Interests (EAVI). The authors work with a concept of discourse understood as a performative articulatory practice, grounded in linguistic pragmatics and poststructuralist discourse theory. The article provides a qualitative discourse analysis of the way EAVI articulates MIL signifiers with specific concepts of critique and citizenship. The analysis shows that EAVI’s discourse promotes a holistic transformation of the self into an informed, reflexive and critical entity, as well as a type of society that is inclusive, cohesive and participatory. EAVI is also decidedly pro-EU and opposed to nationalist projects.

We Are Not “Newly Appointed Staff”

In contemporary societies, corporate organisations’ discourses are progressively colonising the everyday practices of individuals or collectives in organisational settings. In Ghana, the government mobilizes state institutions’ technologies for colonising the everyday practices of staff and management of public university organisations. One of such state institutional technologies and practices is the state’s migration of university staff onto the government mechanized payroll. The question is, how do state institutions colonize and control the everyday management practices of public university organisations including employee socialization practices, and what are the ramifications? Data for this study include text in the form of letters and press releases realised from mediated interactions between government institutions and university management and workers’ unions, and talk realised from interview. The data is analysed in relation to the new public universities’ management discourse inspired by dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse studies. This study demonstrates that the discursive practices of the government institutions and the migration of the staff of SDD-UBIDS onto the government mechanized payroll, IPPD2 technology is a political strategy to control public universities. The ramifications are that such institutionalized practices curtail academic freedom and competitiveness of public universities locally and globally as employees’ competing discursive practices, contestations and enactments are ignored. The highlight of this article is that, generally, in preparing the new public university bill and implementing new public universities’ regulations in Ghana, the government and the management of public universities strategically align and go along. However, an inclusive and pluralistic discourse to shape public universities’ regulation and management in Ghana to ensure academic freedom, and a competitive national and global higher education is badly needed.

China’s narrative of the fight against COVID-19: a case study of the representation of social actors in China Keywords

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese political leadership has devoted substantial efforts to shape, through media and institutional discourses, a specific narrative of its response to the crisis, framing it as a fight in which the Chinese people, under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, promptly came together to defeat the virus.
 The present paper examines this dominant narrative focusing on the Chinese language section on the fight against COVID-19 of the multilingual online platform China Keywords, a project run by State and Party-affiliated institutions. Drawing on the theoretical background and analytical tools from Critical Discourse Studies, the paper provides an analysis of the discursive representation of social actors constructed by this tool. The analysis shows how different discursive strategies employed to represent specific social actors contribute to reinforce the constitutive elements of the Chinese leadership’s dominant narrative of the events of early 2020. Moreover, the paper argues that the section of China Keywords on the topic should be understood as one of the products of the multifaceted institutional efforts to “tell China’s Covid-19 story well,” both domestically and internationally.

China’s narrative of the fight against COVID-19: a case study of the representation of social actors in China Keywords

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese political leadership has devoted substantial efforts to shape, through media and institutional discourses, a specific narrative of its response to the crisis, framing it as a fight in which the Chinese people, under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, promptly came together to defeat the virus.
 The present paper examines this dominant narrative focusing on the Chinese language section on the fight against COVID-19 of the multilingual online platform China Keywords, a project run by State and Party-affiliated institutions. Drawing on the theoretical background and analytical tools from Critical Discourse Studies, the paper provides an analysis of the discursive representation of social actors constructed by this tool. The analysis shows how different discursive strategies employed to represent specific social actors contribute to reinforce the constitutive elements of the Chinese leadership’s dominant narrative of the events of early 2020. Moreover, the paper argues that the section of China Keywords on the topic should be understood as one of the products of the multifaceted institutional efforts to “tell China’s Covid-19 story well,” both domestically and internationally.

The Myth of Choice in Maryam Lee’s Unveiling Choice

Malaysia has witnessed Islamic revivalism since the 1980s and its Islamisation is exemplified in the normalisation of hijab . Although the adoption of hijab is often cited as a choice in Malaysia, Maryam Lee’s controversial book Unveiling Choice presents an alternative portrait of choice in a society where hijab is a predominant practice. Using Wodak’s (Reisigl & Wodak, 2005, 2017; Wodak, 2001, 2018) Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), this paper explores the argumentation strategies used against women, particularly Maryam in challenging and delegitimising her de- hijabbing decision. The findings revealed how hijab is not only indoctrinated from childhood but the choice of removing it is delegitimised using linguistic means of topoi ; more specifically topos of authority, threat and consequence. This paper concludes by highlighting the implication of these topoi to women’s agency pertaining to hijab in a society where the pressure to wear it is indoctrinated and forceful, resulting in hijab becoming a tool of hegemonic gendered practice that works toward sustaining the patriarchal status quo in Malaysia.

A Critical Discourse Analysis Russophobia Rhetoric in UN Security Council's Speech by Antony J. Blinken

The purpose of this article is to explore Antony John Blinken's anti-Russian discourse that appeared in a speech at the 2022 UN Security Council after Russia invaded Ukraine. The discourse presented by Blinken implies various anti-Russian languages, especially in terms of security, namely the military. This study uses an ideological quadratic model under the umbrella of critical discourse studies using securitization theory combined with the concept of propaganda. Data collection, validation, and linguistic investigation are using the NVivo 12 Plus application and VOS Viewer. The data sources are literature studies through ebooks, news, and journals from Scopus and Google Scholar. The findings found that Blinken's propaganda scheme in his speech tried to portray Russia in negative terms. It is evident that many statements issued by Blinken discredit Russia and seem to regard Russia as a common enemy, with the invasion of Ukraine as a common latent danger.

The representation of Islamic value in government-mandated English language textbook: A critical discourse analysis

There is a vast amount of English for foreign language (EFL) textbook evaluation studies analyzing multi-dimensional values around the world. However, only a limited number of literature analyzes the Islamic value in EFL Textbooks, especially in Indonesia. To fill this glaring gap, the present critical discourse study aimed to investigate the intrinsic Islamic value contained in Indonesia's government-mandated English textbook for secondary high school students. Halliday’s systemic functional analysis and Kress and Van Leeuwen's visual grammar theory were then conducted to understand, analyze, and explain the content and the picture in the textbook respectively. Compassionate, respect, and care for life in all its forms; solidarity and conflict avoidance; and tolerance for cultures of the different ethnic and religious groups were found to be the major themes of Islamic values emerge from the textbook. Finally, conclusions, limitations, and recommendations were then discussed.

Comics and the Colombian Peace Process: Neoliberal Discourse and the Risk of Revictimization of Displaced Peasants

This article explores how two comics published by Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory engage with the ongoing peace process by promoting a neoliberal discourse. It argues that these comics are examples of narratives that focus on economic productivity to justify the peace process and restitution of lands. First, it shows how comics participate in the construction of collective memories. Second, based on critical discourse studies, it analyses the comics to trace the signs of the greater economic discourse. Finally, it underlies certain dangers of relying on this discourse to legitimize the peace process in Colombia.

(De-)constructing New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern’s initiative to wear the hijab after the Christchurch terrorist attack

Abstract This paper examines the discursive construction of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after she wore a veil following the unprecedented terror attack in two mosques in the city of Christchurch in 2019. The articles analyzed are collected from three main newspapers published in New Zealand’s three main cities. Analyzed using principles and tools from Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) more specifically, the articles reveal key arguments from both sides i.e. in support of and against this unparalleled initiative on behalf of a political leader in the western world. On the one hand, the majority of the news articles under analysis portray PM’s initiative as one that attempts to mitigate tension and conflict while bringing solidarity to a grief-stricken nation; and thus, are based on the ‘locus from ontological implications’. While the perspectives that oppose the initiative vary from explicit racist ones that present Muslims as threat to Zealand, to those who strongly believe such actions support the women oppression. Through a (de-)construction of the arguments opposing this move, the findings demonstrate that the opposition towards PM’s initiative is based on two main loci namely the ‘locus from correlates’ and the ‘locus from termination and setting up’

Unveiling the rationale of soft hate speech in multimodal artefacts

This article sets out to outline a methodological framework that enables us to unravel the underlying reasoning of covert hatred (i.e. soft hate speech), through an examination of the ways in which this is realised and, moreover, argumentatively justified in multimodal artefacts of the mainstream press. It focuses on a controversial case study – the release of the Italian hostage Silvia Romano – and how it was covered on the front pages of two right-wing Italian newspapers. It draws on the premises of multimodal critical discourse studies (MCDS), proposing a micro-level cross-fertilisation of a social semiotic discourse–analytical perspective for the analysis of multimodal meaning(s), realised on newspaper front pages, with the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT), which focuses on the analysis of argumentative inferences that stem from multimodal representational meaning(s).

Advocacy and civic engagement in protest discourse on Twitter: an examination of Ghana’s #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and #RedFriday campaigns

ABSTRACT This article examines tweets produced by Occupy Ghana during its #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and #RedFriday campaigns. It sheds light on how activist discourses are most persuasively narrativized when they capitalize on local sentiment and language features characteristic of local communities and audiences. The findings reveal three mechanisms employed in the tweets: constructing the Ghanaian government as insensitive, representing Ghanaians as the suffering masses, and exploiting stance for sociopolitical objectives. The article highlights the synergy between social movement theory and social media critical discourse studies.

Anti-populist populism: Musical challenges to Trump's America and Erdoğan's Turkey

AbstractPopulism is a discursive construct that represents popular interests and values by ‘pretend[ing] to speak’ for the people who are constructed separate and opposed to a powerful elite. Yet populism, in its various forms and accents, ‘can adapt flexibly to a variety of substantive ideological values and principles’. This is manifested in ‘the people’ not being a prefixed natural category, but a signifier that acquires meaning through discourses and contexts. This article considers how populism is articulated in hip hop videos that criticise two authoritarian-populist politicians: America's Trump and Turkey's Erdoğan. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies, Eminem's ‘The Storm’ and Ezhel's ‘Yarınımız Yok (We have no tomorrow)’ are analysed to demonstrate how oppositional popular music can articulate its own brands of populism, transcending contexts, yet shaped by them.