Discourse Research Articles

Special section introduction: epistemic politics in international and comparative political economy

ABSTRACT Economic orthodoxy has faced multiple challenges over recent years, ranging from the global financial crisis and economic populism to the Covid-19 pandemic and the spectre of stagflation. This has generated significant policy innovations, like quantitative easing and the furlough schemes, while heterodox economic ideas (briefly) gained notoriety. Yet these shifts have frequently been grafted onto pre-existing institutional and discursive templates, anchored by the assumption that they represent a temporary deviation from ‘normal’ equilibrium conditions. To make sense of these dynamics of crisis, change and continuity, this special section showcases an ‘epistemic politics’ approach that foregrounds the political life of economic knowledge. It is framed around three questions. What has been the role of economic knowledge and expertise in shaping policy and regulation over the past decade? To what extent have dominant economic ideas, theories and models been impacted by political conflicts and emergent issues? How have policy makers navigated economic crises and uncertainty through cognitive and discursive practices? This introductory paper sets out the ambition for the special section by defining our understanding of epistemic politics, before detailing the threefold contribution it makes to wider scholarship in IPE and CPE. It concludes with an overview of the five papers.

Is making alternative? Rethinking development in Germany’s makerspaces

This paper explores the ideological backgrounds, normative motivations, and the degrees of alterity among makerspaces in Germany. It does so by connecting the question of alterity to discussions on development, and exploring to what extent and in which ways makerspaces aim to challenge the hegemony of traditional growth-oriented development. The study engages with a broad literature to conceptualize development as a hegemonic discourse and present main lines of thought that aim to challenge it. In parallel, it presents the history and diverse trajectories of makerspaces and the makers’ movement in Germany and beyond, rendering the question of their ideological backgrounds and their level of alterity as open. Empirically, the work engages with the Verbund Offener Werkstätten (Association for Open Workshops) and analyzes the content and language by which makerspaces – members of the association – describe themselves in their digital communication. Finally, the study proposes a new categorization for makerspaces – that can be generalized to other alternative spaces – regarding their level of alterity and degree of reproduction or opposition to the hegemonic views, values, and norms of growth-driven development. Through the engagement of diverse literature and analysis of the aforementioned digital texts, this paper offers important insights regarding: a) makerspaces’ alterity in relation to their typology and geographical location; b) the importance of analyzing the discursive practices of alternative economic and political spaces; and c) the transformative potential of alternative spaces in Germany and beyond.

The distorting effects of the for-or-against binary in the representation of European refugee hosting societies in 2015–6

Abstract European receiving societies’ reactions to the increased refugee arrivals of 2015–6 were represented through a for-or-against binary, which focused on whether locals were hospitable or hostile to refugees. This article offers a critical examination of the making and effects of this binary, examining its discursive unfolding in the Greek island of Chios. Its findings show that the repeated use of the for-or-against framing by different actors resulted in the acceleration of the polarization that this representational scheme was purporting merely to describe, benefiting anti-refugee actors on the ground, obscuring a more complex understanding of the root causes of the developing ‘crisis’, and closing down the possibility of host societies imagining a future with refugees. This research contributes to a clearer understanding of the way host societies have been represented in recent years and of how radical political actors took advantage of these discursive practices to claim a central political role.

Translating official documents: an art of governance by translation in the Qing dynasty

State governance is, in many ways, a discursive practice that relies on the creation, translation, and transmission of governance-oriented texts. The act of governance by translation typically occurs in multi-ethnic, multilingual, and unified political contexts. When translation adheres to established patterns and effective regimes, it forms a governance technique known as “translation governmentality.” In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), confronted with the challenge of governing a vast territory with diverse ethnic groups speaking different languages, the Qing authorities prioritized the translation of official documents to implement this translation governmentality. Despite its significance, a comprehensive overview of official document translation in the Qing dynasty within the framework of governance by translation has not received sufficient attention. This study employs documentary analysis to understand the historical contexts of official document translations, interpret the motivations behind these translations, and reconstruct the organized regimes of translation practices in the Qing period. The findings reveal that the Qing dynasty developed a relatively organized and mature translation regime for official documents by establishing translation agencies, appointing specialized translation officials, and adopting multilingual translation modes. This governance-oriented translation regime effectively shaped the core concepts, institutional systems, and organizational mechanisms of state governance in the Qing dynasty. Additionally, it contributed to establishing the legitimacy of state governance during that era.

What's left when a language recedes? Belonging and place-making in the linguistic landscape of Hancock, Michigan

Our study examines how meanings related to Finnishness are reflected in the linguistic landscape of Hancock, Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Centering on Benedict Anderson’s (1983/2003) concept, imagined communities, we investigate how discursive strategies in public spaces index belonging and place-making. The social correlates that underpin this reimagining affect ways of understanding larger sociocultural meanings about identity, place, and language use (Cornips & de Rooij 2015; Blommaert 2013; Bucholtz & Hall 2004; Leeman & Modan 2009). We aim to answer three questions: 1) how is Finnishness discursively indexed in Hancock’s linguistic landscape?; 2) how are meanings represented as recognizable and valued?; and 3) what are the ideological effects of the discursive practices and related meanings? Our analysis demonstrates that both linguistic and metalinguistic practices are abundant in Hancock. The ideological effects of Finnishness in the landscape reinforce values of Finnish identity and language, while simultaneously erasing (Gal & Irvine 2000) languages and identities of other residents, past and present. The collective discursive practices function ideologically to affect belonging and place-making.

Students' Meaning‐Making of Nature of Science: Interaction Between Visual, Verbal, and Written Modes of Representation

ABSTRACTStudents' understanding of nature of science (NOS) has been largely examined primarily in written or verbal modes. The visual, verbal, and written modes are essential for students' meaning‐making of NOS. However, research has sidelined the interaction among these three modes in understanding students' collaborative discourse of NOS. Informed by theories of multimodality and social semiotics, this paper investigates the interactions between the visual, verbal, and written modes as groups of students engaged in explicit‐reflective multimodal representation during NOS instruction. Utilizing a collective case study approach, we planned NOS instruction with teachers, and videotaped how each focal group of students in two grade seven classes in Hong Kong constructed multimodal representations of NOS. Multimodal discourse analysis revealed that the three modes fulfill various purposes during students' co‐construction of multimodal representations of NOS. The interaction between the three modes facilitates meaning‐making of NOS in four ways: (a) students' re‐semiotization of discursive scientific practices into their multimodal ensembles; (b) bridging students' writing of scientific reports to scientists' social certification and dissemination; (c) connecting students' decontextualized meaning‐making to contextualized meaning‐making of methods and methodological rules; and (d) facilitating students' embodied semiosis in social organizations and interactions of science. Focusing on four episodes of co‐constructing multimodal representations of NOS, we illustrate how students' meaning‐making of NOS is multimodal in nature and how various modes have their own affordances. We discuss future research directions on how multimodality can facilitate students' meaning‐making of NOS.

Conventionalized impoliteness formulae in third-party assessments

Abstract The paper examines the ideological work accomplished by the use of conventionalized impoliteness formulae in third person reference, when the person being criticized or brought into disrepute is not present in the here-and-now of interaction. Drawing on Interactional Linguistics and data from audio-recorded informal face-to-face Greek conversations, the study shows that speakers mobilize conventionalized impoliteness formulae, along with other linguistic resources, in the course of third-party assessments to evaluate sociocultural experience, and establish interlocutors’ shared negative affective stance toward the third party picked on due to their national group membership. This practice reproduces everyday nationalism that unites offenders against national ‘others’. The study enhances our understanding of the recontextualization of conventionalized impoliteness formulae in talk-in-interaction, and the role of affective stance in the discursive formation of (national) identities.

The Leaky Home: Conceptualizing the Remote Control of Smart Technologies in the Domestic Sphere

Today many homes are accessible from afar, with mobile phones functioning as remote controls for technologies within the home. In this article we propose the ‘leaky home’ as a conceptual figure to understand how automated homes that leak through connected devices and sensors that collect, transmit, receive and share data are experienced and sensed by bodies within these distributed spaces. The leak brings together postmodern metaphors of fluidity and the 21st century discourse of information leaks, while maintaining infrastructural connotations of substances that shift domain in very tangible ways. By looking at a series of examples from media accounts and research conducted in Denmark, the UK, the USA and Australia, ranging from everyday family practices to digital coercive control, we explore how the care-control complex of the home is impacted by its leaky nature.

Mapping epistemic pluralism: A network analysis of discursive practices in communities promoting refused knowledge about healthcare and wellbeing

This article presents an analysis of discourses performed in communities that share and disseminate knowledge refused by institutional science. The study focuses on an online community concerned with alkaline water, food, and lifestyle, aiming at understanding how promoters of refused knowledge in this community enrol other forms of knowledge, including science. Theoretically, this work is framed in Science & Technology Studies, and in the tradition of actor-network theory, situating itself in a recent turn that takes epistemic instability and pluralism into due consideration, thus overcoming opaque views of the opposition between science and non-science. Empirically, this fine-grained analytic purpose is addressed by a mixed-method strategy in which discursive practices are observed through a web-ethnography conducted between January 2020 and December 2021 on the relevant online spaces and then analysed qualitatively and quantitively by means of formal techniques. Relying on the tools of social network analysis, the discursive space of the community under study is formalised as a two-mode network of knowledge claims and heterogeneous actors enrolled in discourse to sustain those claims. Then, community detection is performed to map the different assemblages of claims and actors and the relevant repertoires characterising those assemblages. Finally, multiple correspondence analysis applied to two-mode networks is used to highlight the dimensions of concern and meaning expressed in the knowledge organisation of this community.

Going against the grain? Appraising the aesthetic labour of male beauty influencers on Instagram

Despite the proliferation of scholarly studies on social media in recent years, not many have focused on male social media influencers in the beauty industry, which is often viewed as a feminine preserve with the vast majority of ‘beauty influencers’ being female. This study focuses on the discursive practices of two male beauty influencers to examine how their visual self-portrayal contributes to their popularity and influence. A total of 752 photographs collected from their Instagram accounts were examined using a visual appraisal framework adapted from Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory described in The Language of Evaluation, focusing on normality, capacity and authenticity. The authors’ findings show that both influencers, who are openly gay, portray themselves as gender norm transgressors whose performance of capacity and authenticity as social media celebrities is a highly contested and conflictual aspect of their identity construction as beauty influencers. These findings not only shed light on the visual discursive processes and practices through which beauty influencers perform their aesthetic labour to enhance their popularity and influence but they also contribute to our understanding of how they perpetuate mediatized and marketized stereotypes of beauty and being as part of the broader sociocultural phenomenon of the celebrification of social media influencers in contemporary society.

Why English Legal Discourse is Difficult to Understand

To date, language complexity has come to the fore of modern linguistic research, which is related to scientific discussion of similarity / difference in the degree of complexity between various languages. There is general agreement among various linguists that it rests on a great number of parameters, which is the result of the lack of uniform knowledge about this relatively novel linguistic phenomenon. Under any circumstances, though the dichotomy principle underlies several approaches to the definition of complexity, i.e. it can be absolute (objective) and relational (subjective); systemic (paradigmatic) and structural (syntagmatic); the universal three-dimensional nature of language can serve as the guiding principle for the analysis of complexity parameters in any type of discourse. Thus, the paper highlights the lexical, syntactic and pragmatic parameters of English legal discourse (LD) language complexity based on the generally accepted semiotic triad. These elaborations are also complemented by the deployment of the research framework consisting of three models “language-communicator”, “language-language” and “language-discourse” which, though initially designed for different purposes, can as well be successfully applied to the study of language parameters as factors stipulating the language complexity of LD. The given models are illustrated by the relevant examples of legal and juridical nature.

Untangling anti-Indian narratives in the 2019 Bolivian crisis: violence, anxiety and discourse

ABSTRACT The 2005 arrival of Evo Morales to power came with high expectations about the increased participation of indigenous people in the country’s social and political life. However, the violence perpetrated against urban indigenous people allied to MAS from the moment Morales stepped down has shone a light on the volatile nature of unresolved racial tensions in Bolivia. This article centers on the rapid escalation of anti-Indian racism during the 2019 electoral crisis and ensuing political conflict and the weight of anti-Indian racial narratives at the heart of the violence. Through an analysis of archives and data collected during the conflict through mediated approaches , this paper examines the 2019 crisis, focusing on the surge in anti-Indian violence, and briefly discusses pre-crisis anti-racist efforts by the MAS administration. Then, it reflects on the idea of the ‘savage Indian’ and racial regimes that produced key ‘discursive formations’ that continue to polarize Bolivia. It then critically assesses the ideology of mestizaje’s racial role in the crisis, positioning it within a broader anti-Indian narrative that confines Indianness to the past while hindering acknowledgement, reconciliation, and healing from racial trauma.

Functional and pragmatic parameters of speech acts with the explicit mode of ignorance in scientific dialogue

The article is about identifying functional aspects of 1st-person statements with the explicit mode of ignorance (messages like I do not know… / We don’t know… I don’t know / We don’t know ...) in scientific discussions as a genre of scientific discourse. The relevance of the analysis is predetermined by the necessity to study various parameters of discourse (including both epistemic and pragmatic) as closely connected. The main research method is contextual and pragmalinguistic analysis. The sources of the material are transcripts of modern English and Russian scientific discussions in various fields of knowledge. The article identifies the illocutionary properties of ignorant statements, establishes their pragmatic functions, as well as determines their position in the traditional classification of speech acts. Taking into account the illocutionary orientation of references to ignorance makes it possible to identify representative, interrogative, axiological varieties of ignorance messages as well as their subtypes differentiated on the basis of the degree of their expressiveness, their vector of evaluation, the nature of the representative and interrogative role of speech acts with the mode of ignorance: fully expressive and conditionally expressive, positive and negative, preventive and hesitative, etc. The criterion “pragmatic functions” helps us specify additional functions of references to ignorance in scientific dialogue: to indicate a certain degree of the speaker’s epistemic responsibility for their words, to serve as a means of avoiding the answer, a way to prevent criticism, etc. Moreover, the work identifies factors determining the illocutionary nature of ignorance speech acts: the surface structure of the message, the general context of utterance, the position of the ignorance message in the dialogical unity, sincerity and felicity conditions of speech acts formulated as ignorance messages. References to ignorance are concluded to be quite a significant phenomenon in the structure of scientific dialogue, since they perform a number of important functions in it. The analysis scheme can be used to study statements with other explicit modes (knowledge, opinions, etc.) in various types of discourse.

Negotiating Prejudice and Equality: Analysing Gender and Sexuality Discourse Among Supporters of Populist Radical Right Message in Switzerland and Finland

ABSTRACTResearch on gender, sexuality and the populist radical right has revealed the contradictory positions of such parties and politicians regarding gender issues. However, less is known about the perspective of laypeople on these matters. This study focuses on supporters of a radical right populist message and analyses how prejudice is constructed in populist gender discourse. Analysing interview material from two countries, Finland (n = 55) and Switzerland (n = 33), this study adopts a discursive–rhetorical approach and identifies six key discursive practices: radical supporters of gender equality, privileged gender and sexual minorities, assimilating individuals as exceptions, sexual minorities excluded from normality, the unprejudiced self distanced from the discriminating party and the self aligned with the rational party. First, this study sheds light on supporters' constructions of equality, gender and feminism in contemporary discourse. Second, our discursive–rhetorical analysis shows how different categorisation strategies are used in negotiating prejudice. Third, the study further complements existing research on gender populism by examining gender issues from the demand side, illustrating the appeal of radical right populist ideology among voters. We conclude that discursive category constructions and exceptions allow including, excluding and delegitimising gender and sexual minorities and their supporters while distancing and aligning oneself with (un)prejudiced positions in gender discourse. Please refer to the Supporting Information section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Formation of a Unified Educational Space of the Union State from the Perspective of the Policy of Patriotic Education

Introduction. Awareness of the commonality of geopolitical and civilizational challenges of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus pushes for deepening integration cooperation in different directions. Close attention is paid to the problem of security, interpreted in an expanded way. Its provision correlates with the strengthening of the humanitarian dimension of the Union State, including the formation of a unified educational space. In modern conditions, its correlation with the consolidation of the policy of patriotic education in the integration field is being actualized. The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of their coupling, taking into account the dynamics of union construction. Materials and Methods. The research is based on the methods of binary comparison, traditional and discourse analysis of official texts. An additional method is a formalized correspondence expert survey. The key materials are normative legal acts of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, interstate, intergovernmental and integration agreements, information content of the web resources of the Union State. The theoretical and methodological foundations of the research are a new political institutionalism, a multidimensional model of social action, and the paradigm of “political unification”. Results. The article describes the normative foundations of state policy in the field of education and integration guidelines in the cultural and humanitarian plane within the framework of the movement towards the Union educational space. The demanded categories of the axiological plan are revealed, referring to the relationship between education and upbringing. The key lines of discursive practices at the sites of the union institutions are shown. The understanding of the need to adapt education systems to the requirements of the time and the linking of patriotic education with the protection and preservation of common historical memory are emphasized. Discussion and Conclusion. The results of the study and expert assessments suggest the articulation of not only positive changes, but also urgent vectors for improving national approaches and integration solutions. They correspond to the elimination of conflicts, the development and adoption of new documents at the level of the Union State, the implementation of value categories and new areas of unified policy. The results obtained may be of interest to public authorities and union institutions, participants in patriotic education in the territory of the Union State.

The Making of Good News: Discursive Construction of Good News Through News Values

ABSTRACT Good news aims to redress the balance from negative bias and contributes to a more comprehensive form of journalism. This article explores the largely ignored discursive construction of good news through news values. It first investigates the features of good news stories as against top news stories in the mainstream media, and then identifies differences in the discursive practices by the mainstream media and the good news outlets in covering the same events. The findings show that in the mainstream media, top news stories tend to highlight Eliteness and Negativity, whereas good news stories give emphasis to Personalization and Positivity. When covering the same events, reports by the good news outlets show an overemphasis on Positivity, and those by the mainstream media demonstrate a more balanced distribution of the major news values. It is proposed that good news can serve as a valuable complement to top news in the mainstream media. Reports in the mainstream media tend to be more comprehensive and informative, and the relatively shorter reports in the good news outlets pay more attention to the positive aspects of the event that are effective in uplifting the readers’ mood.

Sharing Stories Versus Explaining Facts: Comparing African American Children's Microstructure Performance Across Fictional Narrative, Informational, and Procedural Discourse.

Both fictional oral narrative and expository oral discourse skills are critical language competencies that support children's academic success. Few studies, however, have examined African American children's microstructure performance across these genres. To address this gap in the literature, the study compared African American children's microstructure productivity and complexity across three discourse contexts: fictional narratives, informational discourse, and procedural discourse. The study also examined whether there were age-related differences in microstructure performance by discourse type. Participants were 130 typically developing African American children, aged 59-95 months old, enrolled in kindergarten through second grades in a Midwestern U.S. public school district. Wordless children's books were used to elicit fictional narratives, informational, and procedural discourse. Indicators of microstructure performance included measures of productivity (i.e., number of total words and number of different words) and complexity (i.e., mean length of communication unit and complex syntax rate). The effects of genre and age on microstructure performance were assessed using linear mixed-effects regression models. Children produced longer discourse and used a greater diversity of words for their fictional stories compared to their informational or procedural discourse. Grammatical complexity was greater for fictional narratives and procedural discourse than informational discourse. Results showed greater productivity and complexity among older children compared to younger children, particularly for fictional and informational discourse. African American children exhibit variation in their microstructure performance by discourse context and age. Understanding this variation is key to providing African American children with support to maximize their oral language competencies.

The discursive construction of tradition and modernity in counter-homophobic discourses in China

ABSTRACT This study investigates the counter-homophobic discursive construction of tradition and modernity in China, focusing on Sina Weibo users’ comments on anti-same-sex marriage arguments. The study reveals how proponents of same-sex marriage in China actively imagine and project a China that is inclusive of gay rights by (re)constructing China’s tradition as tolerant of homosexuality and positioning China’s pursuit of development and modernity as entailing gay rights development. Yet, analysis shows that the discursive construction of tradition may potentially romanticize China’s tradition as if it were devoid of homophobia, and the discursive construction of modernity, by representing China’s gay rights development as merely playing catch-up with the purportedly already modernized West, sometimes implicitly produces a homonationalist binary of modernism versus traditionalism. However, from a postcolonial transnational perspective, the paper argues that contrary to the homocolonialist representation of China as essentially homophobic, these discursive practices may work partially to confront and contest Western exceptionalism.

Discursive Practices during an Electoral Cycle: Public Opinion and Political Disillusionment on Twitter

Electoral cycles are highly charged, politically intense moments that influence public discourse. Political elites, citizens, and the traditional news media seek to generate opinions and interactions on social networks. This research is motivated by the following questions: What are the communicative and deliberative practices used in these spaces? Is it possible to identify the characteristics that –through deliberative conversations– potentially foster or undermine democratic debate, particularly when using populist and polarizing discourse? Using a mixed methods approach, we apply a social network analysis tool to track conversations and identify the volume of political discourse (N=346,000). Using selective and staged filtering, we identified posts from nine Peruvian Twitter accounts during the September 2022 electoral campaign in Lima: three candidates, three media outlets, and three accounts with high levels of engagement. Our data comprised the comments from these nine accounts and was extracted using an Application Programming Interface (API). Subsequently, we carried out ethnographic content analysis on publications with more than 30 comments. In this phase, we analyzed Twitter comments using a codebook to identify deliberative practices and user responses. Our findings underscore the significant role of principal media outlets in shaping political conversation on Twitter. We also discovered that attempts to interact and deliberate were often overshadowed by heated comments attempting to impose opinions on others. Most importantly, our research reveals a widespread disillusionment with politics, political institutions, and even the political preferences of fellow citizens in Peru, highlighting a key challenge for democratic discourse on social media.

A discursive analysis about the dissemination of voice in the newspaper Estadão

This article aims to describe and interpret the meaning effects of the voices propagated in the Estadão newspaper, using the well-established interpretive tool of Discourse Analysis. To this end, the following Estadão articles, all from 2015, were chosen as corpus for this study, according to the criterion of having the voice lexical marker as an integral part of the text: "Tony Bennett reinvents himself in a new album" (ESTADÃO, 2015) and "Julião Pinheiro, son of Paulo César Pinheiro and Luciana Rabello, releases album" (Pennafort, 2015). The notions of conditions of production, discursive formation and interdiscourse, and their respective intertwinings, are used. The analytical vectors described above are applied to examine the discursivity invested in the sayings about the voices projected in the media, in the interpretive procedure. As one of the main results, it appears that the liberal discursive formation of the market predominates in both periodical products, forming the sayings about the voice and, through this expedient, pointing to a conservative aesthetic of the successful voice, in the media outlet in question, with his perception goes back to other voices in the entertainment industry.