Cultural Discourse Analysis Research Articles

"Life is about trying to find a better place to live": Discourses of dwelling in a pro-recovery suicide forum.

In the two decades since the advent of Web 2.0, scholars of cybersuicide have identified many beneficial and harmful uses of the internet. However, the discursive meanings interactionally created by suicide website users have scarcely been attended to. The present study uses the theory and method of cultural discourse analysis (CuDA) to arrive at meanings about place that radiate from online communication among users of SuicideForum.com (SF), a pro-recovery website. Analyses of 2,119 posts across 131 threads reveal two overarching discursive themes. The first speaks to problematic discourses about place, including the role of placelessness and entrapment in the genesis of suicidality and its affective states, leading to further diminution of experiential worlds. The second theme taps into participants' notions of what constitutes safe spaces, such as the presence of empathetic others who respect one's timetable for personal disclosure, and the freedom to experiment with new ways of inhabiting the world. The study has numerous implications for clinical practice, including recasting psychological disturbances in terms of self-world relations and reconsidering involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in light of forum participants' preoccupation with entrapment.

FASHION, CINEMA, AND GERMAN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN 1930s BUCHAREST

This paper explores how Bucharest’s cinema-going public perceived the Nazi influence on Hollywood in the 1930s. The aim is to identify how Nazi propaganda was disseminated and consumed in interwar Bucharest and its similarities to the idea of glamour, relevant both to fashion and cinema. Considering the links between Goebbels’ propaganda machine and certain entities or individuals in Hollywood, US cinematography becomes a more complex medium of dissemination beyond a mere promoter of modernity’s technological and consumerist ideas. Romania’s situation in the 1930s, especially the increasing leaning towards the extreme right then inform movie star image, particularly through a gendered lens, as perfect tools for propagandists. The interwar cinema-centered Romanian discourse involves a triple filtration, through Hollywood, Berlin, and Bucharest, as a complex depiction of the Romanian public’s ideals and views. To illustrate these points, I will analyze relevant written and visual texts from the interwar era, including fiction, memoirs, essays, nationally and locally spread cinema-centered and general periodicals, postcards, or photographs. The interdisciplinary research will include cultural studies (fashion, media, cinema, gender), history, and discourse analysis. This innovative perspective on fashion and cinema in an interwar Romanian context adds to the existing knowledge by opening new research topics and subjects in the fields of fashion studies and Romanian studies.

“Terrorism”, “democracy” and the Spanish 1978 “constitution”: transitional concepts, post-transitional metaphors

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that during the Spanish Transition (1975–1982) there was a gradual semantic displacement that would strongly condition subsequent usages of the terms “terrorism”, “democracy” and “Constitution” in mass public discourse as supposedly designating self-evident realities, rather than ontologically unstable and socially constructed entities. While the meaning of these three signifiers had been hotly debated as part of the transitional process, by 1982 “democracy” had been reduced to its understanding as a reform of (rather than a break with) the Franco regime; “terrorism” was consistently used in public discourse as synonymous with sub-State political violence (as opposed to State political violence); and the so-called “Constitution” had assumed the mantle of sacrosanct foundation of the current “democratic” order. Accordingly, since the Spanish Transition, real and fabricated “terrorist” attacks have been constantly instrumentalised to reinforce (the perceived need of protecting) “democracy” by opposition, particularly as enshrined in the 1978 “Constitution”. From the perspectives of cultural sociology and critical discourse analysis, I carry out a critical revisionist account of the classical state-centric views on the transitional period to show how the Spanish post-transitional regime has been built not only despite terrorism, but also through it.

Māori ways of speaking: Code-switching in parliamentary discourse, Māori and river identity, and the power of Kaitiakitanga for conservation

ABSTRACT While colonial worldviews and practices continue to cast a long shadow, indigenous efforts to reflect and protect their humanature relationships mark a striking form of political resistance within modern legal contexts. One particularly revealing case is that of Aotearoa New Zealand during the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River) Settlement Bill in 2017, where Māori parliamentarians successfully advocated—after decades of struggle—for the granting of rights to a natural entity through nuanced code switching strategies between English and Te Reo Māori (the Māori language). Drawing on cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), we showcase how their code-switching practices highlighted cultural differences, built identities, and advocated for kaitiakitanga (the Māori worldview of guardianship). By looking at code-switching through CuDA's discursive hubs, we found that speakers relayed complex humanature worldviews and navigated the linguistic, colonial, political, and environmental struggles experienced within them. Speakers performed culturally distinct practices counter to Western derived hegemony, with regard not only to its depictions of the environment, but across its designations of what a culture should encompass regarding humanature relations within an intercultural setting such as Parliament.

Imagining Afrodescendance and the African Diaspora in Spain: Re-/De-Centering Belonging in Literature, Photography, and Film

In recent years, an increasing number of African and Afrodescendant artists in Spain have been speaking from an in-between space defined by the experience of being perceived as the “racialized Other.” Their work is characterized by a political commitment and an aim to provide visibility to their communities and (re)value their African heritage. From a cultural studies and discourse analysis perspective, I explore three diverse examples, poems by Yeison García López, a photobook by Rubén H. Bermúdez, and a documentary by Sergio Aparicio, that all imagine Afrodescendance as a shared narrative and empowering moment relating Africa and her diaspora. In their works, García López, Bermúdez, and Aparicio conceptualize Afrodescendance as a powerful source of belonging. Relating to the multitude of African/Afrodiasporic realities, they offer a decentered space of identification that enables the subject to embrace (new) networks of solidarity and, through active self-positioning, transcend an experience of marginalization characteristic of her/his diasporic condition.

СЕМІОТИКА СУБ’ЄКТИВОВАНОГО ЛАНДШАФТУ В НАРАТИВНОМУ ДИСКУРСІ АНГЛІЙСЬКОГО РОМАНУ ХІХ СТ.

Semiotic relations between the homo sapiens and his/her topos or environment have recently become the focus of eminent or mediated fictional subjective modelling. In the course of research with the tools of the cultural discourse analysis (CDA), a range of communicative practices has been unveiled. These include among others verbalized images of the topi, descriptive outlines of the localities and directions, ways of showing, symbolic representations of typical animals, topographic lexis, verbal and non-verbal means of the visualization of the surroundings etc. The object of the research constitutes the semiotic potential of the “ethnic-physical nomenclature”, which presupposes the application of the cultural discourse analysis to the environment as a form of subjectivized reality of the human being. Victorian writers provide us with the well of unlimited material in this respect as the experiencing subject of pre-industrial England has been portrayed as a sensitive agency in the imaginative fictional narrative world. Therefore, Victorian’s world outlook becomes the research objective of ecocriticism, a new direction of critical discourse analysis. The aim of cultural discourse analysis in symbiosis with the ecocritical approach is to investigate ways and means of correlation of verbal and non-verbal discourses and their material and physical embodiment in culture. Ecocritical reference to the Victorian period has been considered prolific in terms of discursive means disclosing complicated relations of the approaching technological progress, great discoveries in the human physic and Nature. Positing the human being in the centre of all the animal species stressed a universal character of semiosis, where the global ecological view was put on the core of the scientific and fictional manifestation. A prominent example of this cosmological feeling is seen in a close correlation of the narratives with the setting and psychological foregrounding in the novel of George Eliot “Middlemarch”, where the main character Dorothy Brooke symbolizes the Nietzschean idea of eternal return, demonstrating clear awareness of George Eliot of the evolution of species multiplied by theological subtext.

Cultural Norm Configurations in Acehnese Lullaby

This study is aimed to provide an overview of the cultural reality of lullaby, doda idi from Acehnese family habit. This study describes the cultural norms and values configuration viewed from an ethno-pragmatic perspective and the local wisdom identified from the discourse. This study presents the cultural script approach. This approach is a descriptive technique that has grown out of the cross-cultural semantic theory proposed. The cultural discourse analysis of norms and values on natural semantic meta-language theory. It is considering that cultural norms and values constituted rules and regulations in social communication interaction practices. This lullaby linked to particular ways of speaking in the family's private domain, in this case, from mother and her child. Generally speaking, most cross-cultural communication styles assume that within a particular speech community, there are certain shared understandings about how it is appropriate to speak in a particular and cultural situation. A certain methodological technique is adopted to describe speech patterns and identify the relevant cultural values of this speech pattern. The proposed Acehnese cultural script is linked with (1) Showing high respect, (2) patriotic spirit, and (3) giving advice. The configuration of these cultural norms and values is the understanding of knowledge and wisdom in terms of the lullaby system. The configuration is constructed in low-level scripts with lexicons in semantic primes.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Use of Metaphor in Online Car Advertisements

The objectives of the current study are threefold: a) to investigate what types of metaphors are used in Arab and Western car advertisements and why they use them, b) to explore how metaphors are used in Arab and Western car advertisements, and c) to explore how cultural attributes are used along with metaphors in Arab and Western car advertisements. The study adopted a descriptive approach through content analysis using three models: cultural (Hofstede, 2005), metaphorical (Lankoff & Johnson, 1980), and contrastive discourse analysis (Farclough's, 2001), approaches to analyze the data. The study sample comprised 30 car advertisements from Holland, France, Germany, Italy, the US, and Arab countries, each with five advertisements published online in 2016. The findings of the study show that car advertisements frequently use metaphorical strategies. In addition, the study revealed differences between Arab and Western advertisements in terms of the employment of cultural attributes. Finally, the study also indicated that even within the Western context, there is a different use of metaphorical strategies with subtle differences.

Islamic Discourse and Baduy in Tanah Ulayat Kanekes: Contestations and Connections

The Cicakal Girang village, known as the village where the Muslim Baduy lives, has different religious practices from the Baduy. Obedience to Baduy customs is very loose in this village, which the Baduy indigenous community permits. This study investigates the cultural discourse producing the Cicakal Girang village and the reproduction of such discourse as well. The empirical data were collected through fieldwork and analyzed with the cultural discourse analysis method. This study finds that the Cicakal Girang and its Islamic activities practice the existing discourse system, namely the Cicakal Girang as a place of the 'penghulu ratu’ (the queen) of the Baduy community. Such discourse situates the Cicakal Girang as a connection space for the Baduy community with the outside world. It is reproduced in the interaction between Cicakal Girang and the Baduy community. Keywords: Baduy, Cicakal Girang, communication geography, cultural discourse analysis

The Suicidal Self in Cyberspace: Discursive Constructions of Identity in a Pro-Recovery Suicide Forum

The proliferation of suicide-related content online has led to widespread fears that suicidal persons are at elevated risk in our networked society. Though much research has been done on the benefits and harms of digital technologies, few studies have attended to the deep discursive meanings co-created by suicidal users. The present study attends to meanings about identity interactionally created by members of SuicideForum.com (SF), a pro-recovery website. Methodologically, I collected a purposive sample of 2,119 posts across 131 threads, which I then examined using cultural discourse analysis, tracking discursive hubs like “suicide” and “suicidal” to arrive at corresponding radiants of meaning. Findings reveal two sets of discursive themes: one set speaks to problematic identities, the other to a self emancipated from suicidality. The suicidal self is expressed in discourse as the product of a fractured identity, marked by schism between an authentic “inner self” and a socially aligned but inauthentic “outer self.” However, resolution of fractured identities depends not on harmonious fusion but on reconciliation. Moreover, staying alive—continuing to be—is contingent upon recognizing that every life, including one’s own, has value, finding purpose and meaning, and tending to others’ well-being. The analysis uncovers discrepancies between SF users’ folk understanding of the suicidal self and that espoused by dominant (i.e., biopsychiatric) models. Their implications for clinical and therapeutic practice are discussed.

Regenerative crisis, social media publics and Internet trolling: A cultural discourse approach

Given that a regenerative crisis life cycle is no longer static, communication dynamics have extended beyond organization-receiver relationship to receiver-receiver relationship in the social media environment. This paper analyzes and explicates the socio-cultural meanings in the interaction processes of the crisis publics with a specific socio-political context by blending the concept of Internet trolling into predominant crisis communication theories (i.e. social-mediated crisis communication and regenerative crisis model).Using cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), we analyzed the top influential posts, comments and responses created by both influential social media users and general followers based on the five discourse hubs or radiants of identity, relation, action, dwelling, and emotion in the Lancôme case, which was regarded as the most heated crisis in Hong Kong after and influenced by the Umbrella Movement. The findings suggest that the motivations and behaviors found within each of the crisis publics––influencers and followers––are fundamentally different from each other by nature along the situated regenerative crisis. Two types of social media influencers (i.e. primary and secondary influencers) were identified. We propose a regenerative crisis model of publics to highlight their roles, purposes, behaviors, interaction processes, and emotions within a situated socio-political tension. This paper also discusses the theoretical implications for social-mediated crisis communication literature and the practical implications that take contextual factors into consideration.

Using cultural discourse analysis and storytelling to design an applied intervention for U.S. English language education

ABSTRACT Applied communication interventions call for detailed knowledge of the scene and the cultural assumptions that inform the communication taking place. This paper shows how Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) was used to study the practice of ‘conversation’ in English language learners (ELLs) groups at a public library in the Western United States. The analysis demonstrated that ‘conversation’ is a culturally specific practice requiring elucidation. This led to the design of storytelling workshops that helped participants improve their language skills and cultural knowledge. Data were collected in a three-phase project: (1) a preliminary ethnography(2) a design phase to create a strategic plan for addressing concerns, and (3) an applied communication intervention consisting of storytelling workshops for ELLs. The paper provides a model for conducting applied communication research using an ethnographic, culture-centered approach, and demonstrates the value of storytelling as a practice for improving English language education.

Understanding organizational and socio-cultural contexts: A communicative constitutive approach to social license to operate among top Hong Kong companies

Embracing a constitutive view of communication, this study explores how organizations in Hong Kong make sense of and negotiate their corporate societal commitment. It does that by examining how the considered organizations construct their engagement in society and talk of their aspirations on identified society-oriented doings by cultural discourse analysis. Findings show that the studied Hong Kong companies constructed their engagement by communicationally relating to other societal actors, establishing we-ness in community engagement actions, incorporating elements of the local cultures (languages and places) and in their reasoning and disclosing emotion-rich considerations. Aspirations were instead presented through a constant reference to stakeholders’ interests and concerns and local and international standards’ precepts. Companies also tended to recognize that interventions had to be undertaken steps by steps, while searching for credibility in “more-balanced” vision-statements. This study offers a socio-cultural perspective complementary to studying social license to operate in public relations research.

Strategies and Tactics of Brand Formation (Based on the Material of Advertising Slogans in French, English, and Russian)

This article describes communicative strategies and tactics used by companies to build a brand. The diachronic method made it possible to observe brand development strategies. The analysis featured 104 advertising slogans of 11 companies. Strategies and tactics of communicative influence were identified according to Yu. Pirogova’s classification of communicative strategies. The authors see strategies as the goals of creating a company's image, while tactics depend on specific vocabulary, syntactic structures, and means of involving the addressee in the advertising discourse. The list of prevailing strategies included those implemented by the following tactics: Compliance with the needs of the addressee, Increasing brand value in the eyes of the consumer, Informing about brand products, Intimization, Product metaphorization and Influence on the senses. The strategy of rationality was embodied by the tactics of Popularization of a healthy lifestyle and Demonstration of practical benefits. The value-oriented strategy was characterized by the tactic of Informing about brand products. The research results contribute to a better understanding of strategies and tactics in business communication and can be used as demonstration and evidentiary material in teaching cultural linguistics and discourse analysis, as well as for copywriting purposes.

Sexism in Film ‘Tilik’: Representation of Film Industry Alignment with Patriarchal Ideology

‘Tilik’ is a short film dominated by female characters. It covertly depicts sexism and frames it into entertaining humor. Tilik illustrates women as a group who enjoy gossip, are irrational, become the object, and also subject to sexism. In this film, sexism is presented as if it represents the character of women and is very close to the reality of their life. This paper aims to look at how sexism is practiced and reproduced; and how the film industry presents stereotypes of women as a spectacle. The research uses a cultural studies approach and critical discourse analysis as the method. The results show that sexism in Tilik was represented by various texts, visual images, the characters' symbolic annihilation, and text flow. Within the duration of 30 minutes, it’s found various texts with the connotation of sexism. Visually, the camera focuses on the female mouths depicting a bitchy character. The good side of the two figures who are the objects of sexism is intentionally not shown (character annihilation). This representation illustrates the stereotype of women as irrational figures, victims of sexism, and at the same time as subjects of sexism to other women. Film ‘Tilik’ represents and emphasizes the film industry alignment with patriarchal ideology.

What Constitutes a “Due” Burden on Women’s Access to Abortion: A Cultural Discourse Analysis of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt

We can find numerous international treaties and legal documents that support women’s choice for safe and legal abortion. However, there are constant different, incompatible and even opposing discourses around abortion globally. This paper examines a 2016 legal case (Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt) to explore how anti-abortion discourse in the U.S. has found its way into the legal text. I begin by addressing women’s right to abortion as a human rights issue and then I investigate how U.S. abortion law entangles with social and cultural reality in the country; I then offer a close reading of the Supreme Court’s judgement and discuss the implications of such a legal text. Public opinions on reproductive rights in the U.S. are closely related to the dynamics between religious culture and feminist activism, and political manipulation leads to divided opinions over the issue. A close reading of the case shows that the court’s constant emphasis on “right to privacy” sets the stage for the current fragility of the reproductive rights in the U.S. cultural and political context. First, it opens a gate for anti-abortion groups to burden women with moral responsibility; second, under TRAP laws it becomes difficult for the abortion providers to justify their stand. I further argue that the undue burden test, which was central to winning this case, is not a strong test for future lawsuits over abortion rights.

‘Eligible to be heard’ in transportation planning

ABSTRACT Planners often use the phrase ‘hard-to-reach’ to describe youth, people of color, and people with low incomes, people from whom they need information but are unsuccessful in reaching. Consideration of cultural premises for communicating can help explain why some people are ‘under-heard’ rather than ‘hard-to-reach.’ This study uses cultural discourse analysis to study under-represented community group deliberations about transportation, convened through a model of public engagement for environmental justice. Data include transcripts of 29 group deliberations and fieldnotes. Analysis and interpretation of cultural discourses about public participation processes focuses on three radiants of meaning: (1) respect for users and sociability, (2) being involved and efficacy, and (3) having a voice and feeling worthwhile. The model of engagement in deliberative processes allows for a reconfiguration of notions of being, acting, relating, and feeling in which participants give themselves amplified voice and agency. It contributes to literature on public engagement and how culture is conceived.

Discourse Analysis for Intercultural Competence Development

This article aims to explicate the connection between discourse analysis and interculturality in intercultural-communication education. Although communication researchers and students have been using discourse analysis as a method to investigate conversations in intercultural situations for decades, interculturality as a concept has been largely untapped in analysis and applications. Drawing from interdisciplinary insights, this article will discuss how the concept of interculturality and the lens of discourse analysis contribute to the study and teaching of intercultural communication. As examples, two different types of intercultural-communication courses serve to illustrate how educators can apply discourse analysis to facilitate development of intercultural competence. Learning outcomes of the two tested courses indicate that cultural discourse analysis, along with critical discourse analysis and ethnography of speaking, promises to be a useful pedagogical approach for facilitating the development of the competence required for dealing with interculturality.

…y no se ha de ver más que la luz: Rodolfo Walsh y Cuba en los orígenes compartidos del testimonio latinoamericano y el Tercer Cine

Este artículo explora, por medio de un análisis comparado de prácticas y discursos culturales, parte de la actividad literaria y militante de Rodolfo Walsh en relación con algunos de los aspectos más significativos en el surgimiento compartido entre el testimonio latinoamericano y el Tercer Cine. Para ello, el texto indaga en el papel jugado por las instituciones y publicaciones revolucionarias cubanas (Casa de las Américas e ICAIC; y revistas Casa de las Américas, Cine Cubano y Tricontinental) en la legitimación y difusión de estas propuestas literarias y cinematográficas. Esta política cultural formaba parte de un tipo de confluencia muy particular entre cultura y política, que se inscribía dentro de un proyecto revolucionario latinoamericanista y tercermundista. La posición cubana problematizó la cuestión del potencial revolucionario de las artes entre escritores, intelectuales y artistas, algo que alcanzaría un momento crítico con la percepción de agotamiento de ciertas formas de expresión y la trágica muerte del Che Guevara en 1967. Este contexto condujo, en definitiva, a las fuertes polémicas y propuestas radicales que darían pie a la aparición del testimonio y el Tercer Cine. Walsh, en diferentes grados, transitó esta experiencia, materializando tanto en su obra como en su experiencia militante las particularidades de toda una era cultural; una época de tal calado para Latinoamérica y el Tercer Mundo que acabaría por impactar también en el Primer Mundo.

The Geographical imagination of Israeli tourists to Turkey

PurposeThis study aims to examine changes in the discourse concerning Israeli tourism to Turkey between 2000 and 2014.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the concept of geographic imagination and using a critical cultural discourse analysis of travel stories published in the Israeli media, the authors analyze the extent to which changes have both reflected and resulted from changing relations between the two countries.FindingsThe analysis reveals that before 2010, Turkey was depicted in largely positive geo-cultural terms, imagined as a desired cosmopolitan, culturally “authentic” destination, which elicits feelings of joy and peacefulness. More recent narratives, however, highlighted its negative geopolitical qualities, underscoring its anti-Israel stance and invoking a fearful discourse of political and ethno-religious radicalization.Originality/valueThe study makes three contributions. First, by attending to the significance of perceptions in the social construction of tourist destinations it brings the fields of tourism and cognitive geography into a closer dialogue. Second, by using a critical discourse analysis it highlights the changing cultural contexts within which places are imagined and constructed by tourists. Finally, by uncovering the geographic complexities that undergird the discursive construction of places as tourist destinations, it illustrates how everyday narratives change over time, reflecting the dynamic nature of inter-state relations.