Discourse Patterns Research Articles

Organizational sensemaking in tough times: The ecology of NGOs’ COVID-19 issue discourse communities on social media

NGOs are important civil actors in societies' emergency and disaster responses, and they come together on social media to identify prominent issues and coordinate issue responses. This research explores how U.S. NGO form topic-driven communities on social media to discuss and build representational strategic networks around issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from Issue Niche Theory, we examined how NGOs' networks and discourse evolved before and after the general public paid great attention to the COVID-19 issue and how such patterns changed across the whole issue niche and sub-issue niches. We analyzed the evolution of Twitter-based networks and discourse of 2,588 NGOs in the first five months of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Our analysis revealed important factors that shape tie formation patterns in the NGOs' communities in this novel issue niche. The findings show that NGOs’ discourses help to orient the organizational community to identify most salient issues. Finally, changes in the discourse patterns reflected changes in the communication networks in the NGO community.

Disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies: a semantically-enhanced discourse study of 2011 Queensland Floods

Natural disasters, such as what are known in English as ‘floods’ and ‘wildfires’, are increasingly a topic of concern due to the climate emergency, and their vocabulary and public discourses hold much to be explored through linguistics. This article inaugurates the examination of public discourse about extreme weather events through semantically-enhanced discourse studies, an approach which is based on Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and developed herein. Taking the example of floods in the particular geographic, cultural and historical environment of the Australian state of Queensland in 2011, this transtextual study draws on a public inquiry into the event and English as spoken in Australia, more broadly, along with media reports, and literature from humanities and social sciences. Five case studies of vocabulary and discourse patterns are presented to cast cultural and semantic spotlights on the public discourses. It is demonstrated that this approach can provide high resolution analysis of discourse and bring out cultural and historical factors at play in extreme weather language thereby contributing to disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies.

Computer-Mediated Consent to Sex

This paper reports an interview study about how consent to sexual activity is computer-mediated. The study's context of online dating is chosen due to the prevalence of sexual violence, or nonconsensual sexual activity, that is associated with dating app-use. Participants (n=19) represent a range of gender identities and sexual orientations, and predominantly used the dating app Tinder. Findings reveal two computer-mediated consent processes: consent signaling and affirmative consent. With consent signaling, users employed Tinder's interface to infer and imply agreement to sex without any explicit confirmation before making sexual advances in-person. With affirmative consent, users employed the interface to establish patterns of overt discourse around sex and consent across online and offline modalities. The paper elucidates shortcomings of both computer-mediated consent processes that leave users susceptible to sexual violence and envisions dating apps as potential sexual violence prevention solutions if deliberately designed to mediate consent exchange.

Enhancing Language Services to Native American Children: A Look From the Inside

Enhancing Language Services to Native American Children: A Look From the Inside

“Shh!”: Shifting discourse patterns and techniques of surveillance in middle-school mathematics classrooms

The growing body of empirical studies on discourse in mathematics education have drawn on, broadly, sociocultural or situated views of learning but do not make issues of power central and/or explicit. For this reason, then, we situate the present analysis within the intersection of two bodies of literature: professional development focused on mathematics classroom discourse and Foucauldian analyses of power relations. In our poststructural analysis of a mathematics classroom, we interrogate the use of surveillance and its relation to meaningful mathematical discourse. Using Foucault’s techniques of surveillance and modalities of power, we analyze videos from one teacher-researcher’s (TR) classroom at two snapshots in time to answer the questions: What happens to a mathematics TR’s use of teacher discourse moves (TDMs) and surveillance practices across three years of doing action research on their classroom discourse? and How might we know whether these TDMs are doing ‘good’ things in the classrooms? Our findings show the complex ways that a TR’s work on classroom discourse is intertwined with modes of power and techniques of surveillance. First, we found that shushing and silencing, normalized as a part of teaching, decreases when a teacher positively values the use of (mathematical) language by students. This decrease in shushing and silencing details what we understand to be ‘the good’ and constitutes the primary finding of this study as we seek to expand what is understood by enhancing student language: an overall increase in language use by students and an overall increase in their use of mathematical language.

Bayesian Generalized Linear Mixed-Model Analysis of Language Samples: Detecting Patterns in Expository and Narrative Discourse of Adolescents With Traumatic Brain Injury.

Purpose Generalized linear mixed-model (GLMM) and Bayesian methods together provide a framework capable of handling a wide variety of complex data commonly encountered across the communication sciences. Using language sample analysis, we demonstrate the utility of these methods in answering specific questions regarding the differences between discourse patterns of children who have experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI), as compared to those with typical development. Method Language samples were collected from 55 adolescents ages 13-18 years, five of whom had experienced a TBI. We describe parameters relating to the productivity, syntactic complexity, and lexical diversity of language samples. A Bayesian GLMM is developed for each parameter of interest, relating these parameters to age, sex, prior history (TBI or typical development), and socioeconomic status, as well as the type of discourse sample (compare-contrast, cause-effect, or narrative). Statistical models are thoroughly described. Results Comparing the discourse of adolescents with TBI to those with typical development, substantial differences are detected in productivity and lexical diversity, while differences in syntactic complexity are more moderate. Female adolescents exhibited greater syntactic complexity, while male adolescents exhibited greater productivity and lexical diversity. Generally, our models suggest more advanced discourse among adolescents who are older or who have indicators of higher socioeconomic status. Differences relating to lecture type were also detected. Conclusions Bayesian and GLMM methods yield more informative and intuitive results than traditional statistical analyses, with a greater degree of confidence in model assumptions. We recommend that these methods be used more widely in language sample analysis. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14226959.

Yes but: developing a critical stance toward evidence

ABSTRACT Agreement has become widespread that students’ peer-to-peer argumentation should play a central role in science classrooms. Coordinating evidence with claims lies at the heart of a skilled argument. Yet evidence takes numerous forms that pose different interpretational challenges. Might cognitive limitations on the part of the individual student in this regard constrain the potential effectiveness of classroom discourse? This possibility has received limited recent attention relative to the contemporary sociocultural focus on examining and optimising patterns of classroom discourse. We examine seven forms of evidence in the context of two scenarios and document the challenges eighth-grade students exhibit in relating them to a claim. Our analysis led us to propose an overarching challenge across the different forms: establishing the relation that two assertions (claim and evidence) bear to one another, rather than address only one of the two and from the perspective of one’s own beliefs. In Study 1, we present this analysis and report on the limited levels of mastery students exhibit across the different evidence types and in Study 2 on an effort to foster such mastery in early adolescent students.

The Effect of Study-Abroad on Pragmatic Transfer

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the effect that studying abroad may have on pragmatic transfer in requests, refusals, and expressions of gratitude, produced by Japanese learners of English. Twenty-two Japanese college students completed a multimedia elicitation task (MET) before and after studying in the US for one semester, together with twenty-two L1 English speakers and twenty L1 Japanese speakers as baseline data. The MET is a computer-based instrument for eliciting oral data. Unlike previous studies on pragmatic transfer, which often lack statistical evidence, this study includes statistical analysis. The analysis revealed that negative pragmatic transfer occurs within a limited range. The identified transfer includes pragmalinguistic transfer, whereby, assuming that their politeness levels are equal, learners directly translate L1 expressions into L2; and sociopragmatic transfer, whereby learners transfer L1 discourse patterns and functions. Resistance to L2 norms and increased fluency can be influencing factors. The results indicated that the effect of study-abroad is limited because most of the negative transfer which was identified before studying abroad remained after studying abroad. Thus, the necessity of explicit pragmatic instruction was proposed.

Tense in Khorchin Mongolian: an interpersonal perspective

This paper examines the tense system in Khorchin Mongolian from an interpersonal perspective based on the theoretical assumptions of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Previous studies on tense in Khorchin Mongolian have mainly taken a representational view, focusing primarily on the way different tense suffixes construe relationships between events. However, this perspective cannot sufficiently address the distinction between participle and non-participle tense suffixes (e.g. -x vs. -n for non-past, -sɘn vs. -tʃϵ for past). This paper, on the other hand, interprets the difference in meaning between the participle and non-participle realizations of tense from an interpersonal perspective in relation to the co-occurring modal particles and interrogative particles at the level of clause by drawing on the discourse patterns in exchange and the phenomenon of embedding. It is shown that while the non-participle tense suffixes in Khorchin Mongolian are involved in the process of settling propositions, the participle tense suffixes are not. The paper complements the representational perspective on tense in Khorchin Mongolian and models a methodology for interpreting morphological distinctions in the context of larger and more abstract units.

Framing of Youth as a high-risk population in Canadian disaster news media

Community disaster risk reduction practices have been tested repeatedly in the past decade. In Canada, for example, Ottawa-Gatineau and cities across Alberta have experienced numerous disasters, garnering widespread media coverage. Along with their families, youth were impacted by these disasters, but they also contributed to the response and recovery efforts in their communities. In this paper, we present a critical discourse analysis of the journalistic coverage of five Canadian disasters, including the Alberta floods (2013), Fort McMurray wildfires (2016), Ottawa-Gatineau flooding (2017 and 2019), and the Ottawa-Gatineau tornadoes (2018). This study is part of a broader project focused on the representation of high-risk populations in disaster-media. In this paper we discuss how disaster-media portrays youth, and their contributions to disaster preparedness, response and recovery. We inductively analyzed 259 articles across the five disasters to identify and document the patterns of discourse in news media around youth in a disaster context. Our findings reveal that the Canadian disaster news media framed youth using fives lenses: 1) the vulnerable status of youth; 2) youth as passive bystanders; 3) adult-centered narratives in media coverage of disasters: children as a burden on adults; 4) youth as active agents – jumping into adulthood; and 5) youth as a ‘legitimizing criteria’ in disaster response. The results of our study point to a need for a shift in the framing of youth in disasters to highlight their assets and actual/potential roles in disaster risk reduction efforts. Media can help to shift the narrative around youth by avoiding reductive, one-dimensional representation of youth as vulnerable victims.

REPRESENTATION OF THE SPIRIT OF TIMES IN ACADEMIC PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE DEPARTMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY, ISI YOGYAKARTA

Art activities, both fine art and applied art, can never be separated from the process of collective interaction. An art creator is indeed in the artworld influenced by several factors, such as economy, technology, and social institutions related to the making of art itself. Those three factors greatly contribute in determining the pattern of production, distribution, and discourse of artwork in the society. This research will examine how the social factor, technology development, and industrial culture influence the look of photography artwork as both the archetype of fine art and applied art among the students who are the representatives of photography academicians. The methods employed in this research includes observation, study of documents, and interviews which later the data collected will be elaborated to be interpreted and concluded. Throughout 1998-2020, the photography artworks of students on their final project during their final year at the Department of Photography, Faculty of Recorded Media Arts, Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) Yogyakarta have shown a positive advancement as the consequence of the changing spirit of times. The Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 has also shown a significant impact on the process and the result of the students' works.

Cold War Discourse and Geopolitical Flashpoints in Post-Covid-19 Northeast Asia

ABSTRACT This paper examines the possible ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic as they relate to changing American strategic posture and geopolitical dynamics in Northeast Asia. Since the spread of the pandemic, the overall security situation in Northeast Asia appears to be worsening, contrary to public expectations. Disputes over the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic between Beijing and Washington have aggravated the Sino-American relationship, already shifting from the existing “cold peace” between the two into a Cold War. The authors explore the new and rapidly evolving Cold War discourse in the United States and traces its geopolitical implications across Northeast Asia. The first section examines emerging patterns of new Cold War discourse and practice in the United States. The second discusses four major geopolitical flashpoints in the region: the dynamics of military modernization and strategic arms races between China and the United States, Taiwan Strait relations, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula. Finally, the paper makes suggestions to mitigate rising geopolitical tensions in Northeast Asia.

Symbol of Reconciliation and Far-Right Stronghold?

In the eastern German city of Dresden, populist and nativist far-right groups, such as the homegrown pegida and the AfD, enjoy particularly robust support among the population, even though Dresden is presented as a symbol of peace and reconciliation. Many residents base their personal and social identity on Dresden’s long-established narrative as an iconic baroque city that suffered an unparalleled loss and victimization in the 1945 Allied bombings, prior to its post-reunification revival. However, this narrative includes a blind spot about the Nazi context of the destruction, opening it up to various political appropriations from the gdr era to today. I suggest that the strength of the far right in Dresden is caused by a seamless linking of Dresden’s perception as a victim due to cultural losses and the far right’s fear of losing a unique German identity and homeland. As examples, I analyze discourse patterns of remembrance during the bombing anniversaries in 2015 and 2020.

Virtual Reconstruction of Historical Objects as a Research Domain (1996-2020): the Structure of Scientific Discourse through Citations Analysis

The article searches for and analyzes stable scientific discourse patterns within the subject area named by means of bibliometric tools. To achieve this goal it uses analytical opportunities provided by the Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU. Its platform has a selection of Russian research papers studying virtual reconstructions of historical and cultural heritage objects. The author has selected a pool of highly cited works and by means of Gephi software has created an oriented graph that provided for visualizing the links between the selected works, identifying "sub-subject" areas and finding their interaction and mutual influence within this research domain. The research novelty is the use of citation data to identify and analyze the structure of communications in this subject area. As a result, the article clarifies and supplements the existing typology of this research field. The author has distinguished seven relatively independent types of virtual reconstruction technologies use in history and has identified the leading research teams affiliated with Moscow State University, Siberian Federal University, Novosibirsk State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Moscow Institute of Architecture and Center for Virtual History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is these research groups whose papers have had a significant theoretical and methodological influence on other authors in the process of formation and development of this research domain and thus confirmed their scientific value.

Developing subject knowledge co-construction and specific language use in a technology-enhanced CLIL programme: effectiveness and productive patterns

ABSTRACT This study investigated Chinese bilingual learners’ subject knowledge co-construction and business English language use in a Technology-enhanced Content and Language Integrated Learning (TECLIL) programe. Four intact classes of Year One University business-major students were exposed to two different learning environments – a TECLIL project-based learning environment using Knowledge Forum (KF), and a CLIL project-based learning environment. Data included student oral business presentations, written business reports, subject knowledge test results, student KF server log information, and online interaction records. The results indicated that the TECLIL project-based learning classes outperformed the comparison classes on both subject concept learning and business English language use. The quantitative analysis found that students’ KF participation was associated with their content understanding and language development. Micro-level discourse analysis of students’ online discussion notes further revealed bilingual students’ productive discourse patterns in the TECLIL environment. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

Gender, Justice and Deliberation: Why Women Don't Influence Peacemaking

AbstractScholars have pinpointed that women's underrepresentation in peacemaking results in gendered outcomes that do not address women's needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peacemaking outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women's influence is curtailed. We examine women's speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men's domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women's needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome. The sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women's deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women's limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the microlevel of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peacemaking.

Neoliberal discourse, actor power, and the politics of nutrition policy: A qualitative analysis of informal challenges to nutrition labelling regulations at the World Trade Organization, 2007-2019.

Unhealthy diets are increasing contributors to poor health and mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Government interventions targeting the structural drivers of unhealthy diets are needed to prevent these illnesses, including nutrition labelling regulations that create healthier food environments. Yet, implementation remains slow and uneven. One explanation for slow implementation highlights the role of politics, including powerful ideological discourse and its strategic deployment by economically powerful actors. In this article, we advance research on the politics of nutrition policies by analysing political discourse on nutrition labelling regulations within an influential and under-studied global institution: the World Trade Organization (WTO). We identified WTO Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee meeting minutes with reference to nutrition labelling policies proposed by Thailand, Chile, Indonesia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Uruguay (2007-2019; n=47). We analysed the frames, narratives, and normative claims that feature in inter-country discourse within TBT meetings and examined how actors mobilize ideological and material sources of power via these statements. We find that informal government challenges to nutrition labelling proposals within the Committee featured a narrative that individualized the causes of and solutions to poor diet, downplayed harms from industrialised food products, and framed state regulation as harmful and unjust. These non-technical claims mobilised neoliberal ideology and rhetoric to contest the normative legitimacy of members' proposals and to de-socialize and de-politicize poor diets. Furthermore, high-income countries (HICs) re-framed policy goals to focus on individual determinants of poor nutrition whilst calling for their preferred policies to be adopted. Patterns of discourse within TBT meetings also had striking similarities with arguments raised by multi-national food corporations elsewhere. Our findings suggest that non-technical and ideological arguments raised during TBT meetings serve as inconspicuous tools through which nutrition labelling policies in LMICs are undermined by HICs, industry, and the powerful ideology of neoliberalism.

Discourse patterns used by extremist Salafists on Facebook: identifying potential triggers to cognitive biases in radicalized content

ABSTRACT Understanding how extremist Salafists communicate, and not only what, is key to gaining insights into the ways they construct their social order and use psychological forces to radicalize potential sympathizers on social media. With a view to contributing to the existing body of research which mainly focuses on terrorist organizations, we analyzed accounts that advocate violent jihad without supporting (at least publicly) any terrorist group and hence might be able to reach a large and not yet radicalized audience. We constructed a critical multimodal and multidisciplinary framework of discourse patterns that may work as potential triggers to a selection of key cognitive biases and we applied it to a corpus of Facebook posts published by seven extremist Salafists. Results reveal how these posts are either based on an intense crisis construct (through negative outgroup nomination, intensification and emotion) or on simplistic solutions composed of taken-for-granted statements. Devoid of any grey zone, these posts do not seek to convince the reader; polarization is framed as a presuppositional established reality. These observations reveal that extremist Salafist communication is constructed in a way that may trigger specific cognitive biases, which are discussed in the paper.

Talkin’ bout a revolution: an expert interview study exploring barriers and keys to engender change towards societal sufficiency orientation

Representative studies report high levels of acceptance of environmental protection and approval for stricter political measures to ensure a liveable future. However, in the last years, climate-damaging emissions did not decrease in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and important societal actors failed to implement effective strategies that could promote a socio-ecological transformation. Sufficiency with its underlying ‘mind-set’ can be a seen as leverage point for transformation and thus is targeted within our qualitative study. To explore barriers that prevent the implementation of knowledge about the sufficiency approach and ways to encourage sufficiency orientation on a societal level, we conducted interviews with experts from science, politics and economy (N = 21). Using qualitative content analysis, we identified keys for change, i.e., narratives, rewards and recognition, time structures and responsibilities that could have a leveraging effect towards system transformation. We propose an exploratory framework that points out main barriers, keys in terms of levers and experts’ visions towards a sufficiency-oriented society. Furthermore, we outline that the sufficiency discourse contains ambiguities and varieties concerning the experts’ perceptions regarding effective levers for a transformation. Through brief discourse pattern analysis, we highlight different perceptions regarding the role of technology, social responsibility and the societal change and time. The proposed framework can inspire future research and policy-making on sufficiency.

Developing phraseological competence in L2 legal translator trainees: a proposal of a data mining technique applied in translation from an LLD into ELF

ABSTRACT Evidence from the contemporary translation services market and many centuries of translation practice demonstrate that translation into a non-native language (L2 translation) can be performed effectively, despite the once-strong resistance to it on the grounds of it being perceived as unprofessional and inherently deficient. L2 translation is in fact unavoidable in the case of so-called languages of low diffusion, the command of which happens to be rather limited among native speakers of major languages. However, although the academic dispute about the validity of L2 translation seems decidedly milder now, there is still a lacuna within L2 translator training that needs to be addressed. This paper indicates that what usually betrays an L2 translation is its phraseological profile, often recognised as unnatural by native speakers of the target language. The aim of this paper is to propose a corpus-based data mining technique that may help L2 legal translator trainees become more observant with regards to phraseological patterning of foreign legal discourse, and more self-confident in taking well-informed translation decisions.