Discourse Analysis Studies Research Articles

Gender Discourse of ‘Equal Opportunity’ for Male and Female in Pakistani English Textbooks: A Critical Discourse Analysis Study

The aim of the present article is to investigate the representation of male and female within the gender discourse of ‘equal opportunity’ in Pakistani English textbooks. The present study has focused on if the gender discourse of ‘equal opportunity’ resisted or supported in Pakistani English textbooks at varied educational levels and in what ways such discourse manifests gender notions in Pakistani society. The paradigm of this research is descriptive and qualitative. The corpus of the study is collected from the English textbooks of 5th, 6th and 8th classes of the Punjab Textbook Board Lahore through purposive sampling. The theoretical framework of the research is based on Critical Discourse Analysis approach. Within the paradigm of CDA, Van Leeuwen’s (2008) “Social Actor Network” model has been applied to analyze the gender representation in the text and the visuals. The results have shown that the discourse of ‘equal opportunity’ has been resisted in these textbooks as females have not been given the equal and fair representation. The findings are a vital source for the policy makers and the textbooks designers to improve the mistreated areas in future and keep in accordance with the policy of Education for All in real sense. This research is limited to the school textbooks of three levels only so further research can be done on other textbooks in future.

Green conflicts in environmental discourse. A topos based integrative analysis of critical voices

ABSTRACT ‘Green’ concerns about nature, the environment or the climate have traditionally been juxtaposed with concerns about economic growth or job creation. Recently, however, a new type of conflict has appeared, in which different green concerns, for instance regarding mitigation of climate change and protection of landscape qualities, seem to collide. These environmental conflicts have so far received little scholarly attention. This article addresses the issue by a study of national and in particular local news media discussion on the construction of wind turbines in Denmark, bringing together research traditions from environmental communication, discourse analysis, and place studies. Analytically, the study employs the notion of topos as the key meaning unit, referring to the premises upon which an argument is based. In addition to the empirical findings, the study points to methodological potential of the concept of topos to integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches within a discourse studies framework.

Stand Up Comedy Indonesia as Anecdote Text Learning Media in Senior High School: Study of Critical Discourse Analysis

This research is a descriptive qualitative study that examines the relevance of social criticism on Stand Up Comedy Indonesia towards anecdotal text learning in high school. Stand Up Comedy is a form of comedy or comedy that is delivered monologically to the audience. Stand Up comedy is not only an entertaining spectacle, but every material that is aired is criticized or the message delivered. The purpose of this study was to identify the relevance of social criticism on Stand Up Comedy Indonesia towards anecdotal text learning in high school. The data in this study are in the form of a Stand Up Comedy Indonesia video. The primary data source in this study is Stand Up comedy Kompas TV documents and videos on YouTube. While secondary data sources are relevant primary books, international journals, papers, etc. that are needed in the study of theory. The data collection technique in this study is by documentation and literature. The analysis technique used in this study uses qualitative analysis techniques. Because the data obtained are in the form of texts from various different literary sources, a text analysis is needed. The results of this study are three things. 1) The discourse of stand Up comedy academy has the same structure , namely based on the genre of discourse. 2) The schema and discourse sequence of stand Up comedy academy are in accordance with anecdotal texts, namely those that have components of abstract structure, orientation, crisis, reaction and code. The division of structures can be divided into two parts, complete structure and incomplete. 3) The implementation of the results of this study can be used as teaching material at the eleventh grade high school about producing coherent anecdotal texts in accordance with the characteristics of the text made both orally and in writing.

Beyond motion: ‘Come’ and ‘go’ in Persian oral narratives

AbstractThis paper presents a discourse-analytic study of the verbsaamadan‘come’ andraftan‘go’ in Persian as they appear in thirty oral elicited narratives and uses English narratives based on identical stimuli as a reference point for a comparative analysis. The paper argues that despite certain similarities, the two sets of verbs in English and Persian have clear differences, both in terms of the syntactic structures in which they appear and their functions within the stories. Notably, beyond the expression of translational motion,aamadanandraftanencode aspect, subjectivity, and the speakers’ perspectives on certain elements of the events as the stories unfold in their memories. Such choices in grammatical structures of the narratives can reveal much about the speakers’ underlying cognitive processing and contribute to the understanding of the speakers’ conceptual image of the story line.

Graffiti Discourse Analysis in Bontoc, Mountain Province: A Corpus-Based Study

This paper analyses the fabrication of graffiti as an unconventional communication channel for the locals of Bontoc, Mountain Province focusing in language content, purposes, discourse domains and themes using the writings collected on public transportations particularly on tricycles and on public spaces. Insights from Corpus-Based Theory utilizing Braun & Clarke’s (2006) Thematic Analysis and Fairclough’s (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis which concerns the usage of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), a concept proposed by M.A.K. Halliday that offers the basis for language study in context and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) recommended by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) which was beneficial not only in examining the texts, but also analysing the visual components. These theories were used to answer the following problems: (1) to determine the various discourse domains of public transportation and public spaces graffiti in central Bontoc; and (2) to examine the communication content that includes the intention of inscription. Qualitative method was employed in the analysis and it was interpreted that graffiti on the selected sites contribute a collective interactive linguistic style employed to show the inscribers’ creativity, imagination, and freedom of expression. In Bontoc, Mountain Province, graffiti have been observed as a noteworthy and substantial cultural sensation over a long period. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijhss.11.2.1

Uber’s entrepreneurship discourse and its neoliberal appeal: analysis of coverage in English-language dailies in India

ABSTRACT This study examines how the top two English-language newspapers in India constructed the entrepreneurship discourse used by online cab aggregator firm, Uber Technology Inc., in India, its second-largest market after the United States. A critical discourse analysis study of related news coverage in The Times of India and the Hindu newspapers was undertaken in three stages including an analysis of media texts, discursive practice and social practice. This paper unravels how the dominant discourses reproduced and reinforced Uber’s entrepreneurship rhetoric, embedded in the neoliberal assumption that the self-reliant, individual entrepreneur is the ideal person who will play an important role in the story of India’s economic growth. Counter-discourses that challenged such assumptions were limited and found primarily in a few opinion pieces in the Hindu newspaper. While media-centric factors such as news values and journalistic routines often privilege established sources of news, in this case, Uber officials, this study also highlights the influence of a media organization’s corporate policy and economic imperatives on news discourses. Further, this study highlights how Uber’s entrepreneurship discourse was strengthened by political actors eager to reap rewards from portraying a greater role in generating employment and attracting investments.

Affective and Discursive Outcomes of Symbolic Interpretations in Picture-Based Counseling: A Skin Conductance and Discourse Analytic Study

ABSTRACTThe relationship between symbolic expression and affect tends to be investigated from the perspective of recipients in contexts like media, politics, and advertising. A more producer-centric context is picture-based counseling (PBC) where clients are prompted by counselors to interpret pictures creatively as part of the treatment process. Nevertheless, the affective and discursive outcomes of these interpretations remain poorly understood. This paper reports a combined experimental and discourse analytic study which compares prompting strategies in terms of affective engagement, contrasts the discourse characteristics of interpretations following “topic-present” and “topic-absent” prompting strategies, and offers potential implications for PBC practice. Analysis of skin conductance levels suggests that the two prompting strategies which invite symbolic interpretation are more affectively engaging than the literal control (F(2,32) = 6.356, p = .005), but not significantly different from each other. A follow-up discourse analysis revealed the prominence of metaphors in symbolic interpretations, as well as nuanced differences between the discourse outcomes of prompting strategies. Topic-present interpretations tended to produce more systematic ensembles of metaphorical expressions, while topic-absent interpretations were less systematic. The combined findings suggest that orienting clients towards symbolic interpretation is affectively engaging, but the ideal prompting strategy is best determined by context-specific circumstances to be judged by counselors.

YouTube Commentaries on Trans Time-lapse Videos: Transforming Misgendering Stances into Pedagogical Moments

The distribution and consumption of transgender time-lapse videos on YouTube have increased over the last few decades, providing trans communities with a valuable resource for self-making. On YouTube, vloggers can present images and videos of their bodies as they document their gender transitions through several practices that rely on temporality and time-space compression. As a genre, time-lapse videos comprise creative worldmaking practices where users document their gender transformations using hundreds to thousands of still photos or video segments which show their social, somatic, and biochemical changes. Although scholars have discussed different worldmaking and community organising practices that take place as trans vloggers display their gendered subjectivities online, there is sparse scholarship studying the recurrent patterns of behaviour on the comment space below these videos. In this article, I draw on critical discourse analytic studies of new media and stance-taking as I review and analyse discriminatory strategies – principally misgendering and ungendering – that YouTubers used to denigrate the self-identified gender of a given vlogger. Stance-taking enables us to identify and track reoccurring attitudes steeped in cisgenderism. At the same time, capturing how vloggers and trans allies respond to (intentional or unintentional) text-based forms of prejudice, can create teachable moments for YouTube spectators. While misgendering stances aim to pressure their targets into certain kinds of gender and sex embodiments, insurrectionary stance-acts co-opt and call out the language of discrimination, lending legitimacy and authority to trans vloggers to create, enact, and live their own genders.

World Englishes in professional communication

AbstractCommunication in international professional contexts, whether in spoken, written, or digital form, often involves participants from a variety of contexts in terms of variations in their use of language and cultural norms, discourse strategies, and expectations of participating members of specific professional communities, and as such, invariably reflects a multi‐norm rather than a mono‐norm native model of language use. However, very little attention has been paid either in world Englishes (WE) or discourse analytical studies to communication in professional practice, in particular with a focus on text‐external contextual factors. The major emphasis has so far been on the analysis of textualisation of discourse. Drawing on recent insights from critical genre analysis (Bhatia, 2017), I would like to argue that discursive data from professional practice provides additional support and convincing argument in favour of Kachru's (1985, p. 30) call for multi‐norm standards in international communication and for a need to consider ‘new paradigms and perspectives for linguistics and pedagogical research’ in national as well as international contexts.

Kontroversi Gaya Komunikasi Politik Presiden K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid

K.H Abdurrahman Wahid is a religious and political figure in Indonesia. As a religious leader Gus Dur was known as the Chair of the PBNU and the great ulama of the descendants of the Banu Hashim. As a politician, Gus Dur is the fourth President of the Republic of Indonesia. Gus Dur's political communication as a religious figure and the President was known to be controversial. The controversial rhetoric of political communication turns out to have a hidden meaning that can be expressed through the study of discourse analysis using the method presented by Teun A. van Dijk. This study uses an interpretive approach with a critical paradigm. The 2001 Presidential Decree became the main focus of the author in expressing the meaning contained in the controversial phenomenon. The results showed that controversial political communication carried out by Gus Dur turned out to save the people from unconstitutional actions. Key words : Political Communication, K.H Abdurrahman Wahid, Critical Discourse Study.

Resisting and Rewriting English-Only Policies: Navigating Multilingual, Raciolinguistic, and Translingual Approaches to Language Advocacy

The field of writing studies has highlighted the limitations of a monolingual orientation towards language, particularly in the context of English-only language policies, but there have been fewer accounts of how people actively navigate and advocate for alternatives. Drawing on a recent ethnographic, discourse analytic study of how writers reshaped a local language policy, I argue that there are advantages to cultivating and combining multilingual, raciolinguistic, and translingual approaches to language advocacy, yet at the same time, arguments for multilingualism risk eclipsing, and ultimately undermining, these other approaches.

Argumentation in the 2016 US presidential elections: annotated corpora of television debates and social media reaction

In this paper we present US2016, the largest publicly available set of corpora of annotated dialogical argumentation. The annotation covers argumentative relations, dialogue acts and pragmatic features. The corpora comprise transcriptions of television debates leading up to the 2016 US presidential elections, and reactions to the debates on Reddit.These two constitutive parts of the corpora are integrated by means of the intertextual correspondence between them. The rhetorical richness and high argument density of the communicative context results in cross-genre corpora that are robust resources for the study of the dialogical dynamics of argumentation in three ways: first, in empirical strands of research in discourse analysis and argumentation studies; second,in the burgeoning field of argument mining where automatic techniques require such data; and third, in formulating algorithmic techniques for sensemaking through the development of Argument Analytics.

A Force for Democracy? Representations of the US Government in American Coverage of Venezuela

Abstract: Since the election of Hugo Chavez the United States has played a highly questionable role interfering in Venezuelan politics, funding, training and supporting attempts at coups to remove democratically elected presidents. Yet the American media (The New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald) have presented the US overwhelmingly positively, portraying it as a force for democracy and stability in the region, contrary to the wealth of official evidence. This content and discourse analysis study focuses on the coverage of four key events in recent Venezuelan history and concludes that the concept of “democracy” in the media is automatically applied to official US policy, whatever it happens to be. Thus, the official American ideology of its fundamental benevolence and exceptionalism is not disputed, even when circumstances clearly challenge this concept.

Hope, burden or risk: a discourse analytic study of the construction and experience of fertility preservation in the context of cancer

Objective: Infertility is a significant concern for people with cancer and fertility preservation is often recommended. However, uptake of preservation interventions remains low. In this study, we examined how people with cancer construct their subjectivity – their sense of self – in relation to decision making and processes of fertility preservation.Design: Six-hundred and ninety-three women and 185 men completed a self-report survey; 61 women and 17 men participated in semi-structured interviews. Subject positions adopted in relation to constructions of fertility preservation in transcripts and open-ended survey responses were examined using thematic decomposition.Results: Three main discursive themes were identified: ‘Limited agency and choice, or resisting risk: not taking part in fertility preservation’, ‘Fertility preservation as a means to retain hope and control’, and ‘Fertility preservation as uncertain and distressing’.Conclusion: It is important for health professionals to provide accurate information, acknowledge the complexity of fertility preservation and implications for ‘liminal’ survivorship where exclusion, uncertainty or unsuccessful interventions have occurred.

A Study of News Discourse Analysis in Chinese Colleges' English Audio-Visual Teaching

A Study of News Discourse Analysis in Chinese Colleges' English Audio-Visual Teaching

Wheels in motion: a discourse-analytical study of the transformation of the German automobile industry

Wheels in motion: a discourse-analytical study of the transformation of the German automobile industry

Spoken Discourse Analysis: A Case Study of Kathmandu Shiksha Campus

Discourse analysis has emerged as a gradually-growing discipline because of growing interest of linguists in studying language in natural setting: Some study of spoken discourse analysis in the few last decades has manifested that spoken discourse is sometimes highly-organized (in a fixed pattern) and sometimes loosely organised. In this paper, I have attempted to analyze how naturally occurring spoken discourses are organized in natural as well as in formal setting. This analysis is based on Sinclair- Coulthard analysis model developed in 1975. I have analyzed three different discourses; viz. Classroom Discourse, Discourse outside the classroom and Talk as Social activity observing the three different settings; viz. classroom, outside the classroom and social (where more than two participants are involved) settings. The findings of this analysis show that classroom discourse occurs in a fixed pattern rather discourse outside the classroom and talk as social activity do not occur in a fixed pattern.

법원통역인 면접조사를 통해 본 사법통역 동기와 경험

Court interpreting is a special domain within the realm of legal interpreting. The existing literature has examined court interpreting mainly through discourse analytic studies and surveys of key stake holders, such as interpreters and legal professionals, but little research has focused on interpreters engaged in the occupation of court interpreting. In this paper, the term, court interpreter, refers to interpreters engaged in court proceedings, regardless of their professional training and qualifications. This paper seeks to highlight the human aspects of court interpreting based on one-one-one interviews with fifteen interpreters who have been working at criminal courts and administrative courts in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. The findings reveal the personal profiles of court interpreters, how they started court interpreting, what motivates them to continue court interpreting, how they perceive court interpreting, including its positive and negative aspects, their role as interpreters, and their court interpreting experiences. The main reasons for their interpreting at courts are intrinsic, mainly a sense of satisfaction derived from serving the society at large, and partly financial remuneration. While they find court interpreting rewarding, stimulating, and interesting, they also find it challenging and frustrating because of the lack of understanding and cooperation from court officials including judges. Drawing on the interview data, this paper offers some suggestions to improve the court practices of engaging interpreters in the legal procedure.

Trans-mediatized terrorism: The Sydney Lindt Café siege

This article presents an empirical analysis of the Australian media representation of terrorism using the 2014 Sydney Lindt Café siege as a case in point to engage with the notion of moral panic. Deploying critical discourse analysis and case study as mixed methods, insights into trans-media narratives and aftermath of the terrifying siege are presented. While news media appeared to collaborate with the Australian right-wing government in the reporting of terrorism, social media posed challenges and raised security concerns for the state. Social media heightened the drama as sites were variously deployed by the perpetrator, activists and concerned members of the public. The amplified trans-media association of Muslims with terrorism in Australia and its national and global impact, in terms of the political exclusion of Muslims, are best described in this article in the form of an Islamophobic Moral Panic Model, invented for a rethink of the various stages of its occurrence, intensification and institutionalization.

Os sujeitos e suas representações: a educação a distância e os dizeres dos alunos acerca da modalidade

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar os sistemas de representação que emergem do discurso de sujeitos que concluíram (ou estão cursando) o ensino a distância, levando-se em conta: 1) a imagem que esses sujeitos constroem a respeito da modalidade; 2) a imagem que elaboram a respeito do perfil de aluno que frequenta esse tipo de ensino. No início do século XXI, com o fortalecimento das Novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação incorporadas ao contexto educacional, ainda havia muita desconfiança do mercado de trabalho e das instituições de ensino presenciais acerca do êxito profissional desses alunos. Entretanto, com os resultados positivos da inserção desses profissionais em setores especializados da sociedade, a modalidade alcançou novo status nas práticas educacionais. Dessa forma, parte-se da hipótese de que a construção das representações desses sujeitos no contexto sócio-histórico-educacional contemporâneo é positiva. Pressupostos da Análise de Discurso francesa e dos Estudos Culturais fundamentarão a análise.