Discursive Argument Research Articles

Political Mediatization in Memes: A Netnography Study on Ganjar Pranowo & Mahfud MD Candidate Memes for The 2024 Period

Memes as digital content with humorous characteristics are an important part of online interaction on social media. The existence of memes in politics acts as a rhetorical tool and discursive argument, with its use to convey messages with political content. The use of memes as political mediatization in the 2019 elections in Indonesia as an expressive form of the success team of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates at that time. This study examines political mediatization through memes that occurred in the candidates Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD in the 2024 Indonesian President and Vice President elections. Using a netnographic method, the research identifies five categories of meme usage- pure humor, ridicule, general political information, candidate information, and expressions of support.. These memes, originally light-hearted, evolved into strategic tools shaping a relaxed and approachable political image. This study highlights how media logic has transitioned into social media logic, prioritizing personalized content and user engagement to influence public perception. This transition underscores the effectiveness of memes in altering political narratives and fostering voter interaction during campaigns.

Environmental Risk and Chemical Weapons Disposal: The Case of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Demilitarization Program

In 2023, the U.S. Army announced the completion of a decades-long effort to destroy the nation’s stockpile of chemical weapons. However, the years preceding this announcement were marked by significant discursive debate. We analyze the controversy over chemical weapons demilitarization to provide insight into processes associated with risk framing and counterframing between the military and the public. Research regarding environmental risk framing surrounding risky technologies emphasizes the role of power and information availability, especially in debates over military technologies and weapons. We ask how environmental activists engage in risk framing in cases where the military maintains a distinct power advantage and control over environmental risk management and decision-making. Our analysis reveals that activists engaged in risk framing that highlighted the failures of the Army’s demilitarization program over time. Our findings offer insights into the dynamic processes involved in framing regarding military technology and environmental risk decision-making.

Making the mos(s)t of nature? Cleantech, smart nature-based solutions, and the ‘rendering investable’ of urban moss

This article examines the ways in which ‘nature-based solutions’ (NBS) to urban environmental problems are contributing to a re-imagining of the forms and roles of vegetal life in cities. Specifically, we examine the versions of nature that are being produced within a subset of nature-based solutions described as ‘smart’ – that is, those involving the enrolment of non-human lifeforms into digital infrastructures comprising sensors, data flows and automated support systems. Whilst NBS are often celebrated for opening up cities to lively ecological processes – thereby contributing to more convivial, ‘more-than-human’ forms of urbanism – their smart incarnations are becoming a playground for entrepreneurial and financial actors seeking new ways to enclose, commodify and derive profit from non-human life in cities. To explicate this argument, we examine the case of a proprietary ‘nature-based solution’ to urban air pollution developed and sold to local authorities and corporate actors by a European cleantech start-up, predicated on optimising the air-filtering capacities of moss. Our analysis proceeds in three stages. First, we draw on scholarship on the bioeconomy to show how the commodification of moss in this case is predicated on discursive arguments which depict moss as at once inherently productive and regenerative, but also fragile and scarce in urban environments. Secondly, we show how this smart NBS is rendered investable through the enrolment of moss into a carefully designed digital apparatus, which purports to stabilise and optimise its air purifying work, thereby making its contributions to urban air quality continuous, consistent and calculable. Finally, building on an assessment of the entanglement of this example with specific urban geographies and modes of urban governance, we critically reflect on the role that smart NBS in general might yet play in either reinforcing or disrupting prevailing dynamics of privatisation, enclosure and green gentrification in cities.

Radical climate movements—is the hype about “eco-terrorism” analogy, warning or propaganda?

Is the hype about “ecoterrorism” analogy, warning or propaganda? In order to answer this question, we start by defining radicalization, terrorism, and civil disobedience to develop systematic categories which allow us to pursue two specific research goals: First, we analyse how the breadth of the German climate movement is represented in the media, how the issue of “terrorism” is taken up and with what consequences for the debate. Here we make a discursive argument. Secondly, we use the information provided by the media reports, triangulate it with primary data from the movements analysed and secondary data from academic publications in order to assess the validity of the accusation of terrorism. Here we make a factual argument about the current properties of the climate movement. Finally, we bring both arguments together and argue that even the more radical currents of climate activism should not be classified as terrorists. What we can see is that there has been an attempt to criminalize demands of the radical climate movement during which large parts of the German print media have become willing handmaidens in the delegitimization of more or less radical climate groups. More recently, very first signs of a backlash against the criminalization can be detected.

Cultural Studies and Soft Skills: An Integrated Approach

This paper aims to clear a space of critical intervention from within the discursive debates on soft skills by adopting a cultural studies approach and appropriating its precepts to develop what I call "the soft skilling process" which is a life-long experience of learning that denotes a mode of dwelling in a world of globalizing identities and travelling cultures, where identities are understood as being constantly on the move and in a process of becoming, emphasizing the postmodern notion of the creative performativity of identity. Instead of being static capabilities or fixed traits, soft skills must be inscribed within a multidimensional and developmental process in which individuals develop expertise in navigating and negotiating multiple cultural worlds and identities. My point is to shift the traditional focus from employability and professional skills, which is dominant in studies on soft skills, to a humanistic education that promotes cultural awareness, ethical responsibility, and sustainability: Openness to experience, active participatory learning, and biodiversity awareness are the objectives to reach this educational experience. The proposed educational framework aims to develop engineers who are not only technically skilled but also culturally and ethically aware global citizens.

The Twitter Battle over the Trans Law in Spain: Mediatization of rage in the case of the podcast Estirando el chicle

Anger has been a part of the public debate in Spain, especially since the 8 M feminist mobilization. This article analyzes whether the mediatized rage surrounding the discursive dispute on Twitter between supporters of the so-called Ley trans (Trans Law) and those that oppose the proposed legislation can open up cracks in the affective injustice suffered by the trans collective in Spain. To this end, we will address the discursive debate generated from a sample of 7734 tweets published on the Twitter account of the Spanish feminist podcast Estirando el chicle. We will analyze the tweets following an analytical model of operationalization of the concept of anger competence (Chemaly, 2018) structured across three dimensions utilized successfully in previous studies (Núñez Puente & Fernández Romero, 2023): (1) the construction of the subject that enunciates the anger, (2) that which the mediatization of the anger allows to emerge, linked to the conception of affective injustice, and (3) the effects of affects. Our analysis of the discursive dispute on Twitter shows diverse discursive positions which inhibits the visualization of a reparation of the systemic violence suffered by the feminist movement, and within it, by trans people.

‘Italians locked at home, illegal migrants free to disembark’: How populist parties re-contextualized the anti-immigration discourse at the time of COVID-19 pandemic

By drawing on a Critical Discourse Studies perspective, we analyze language and discursive strategies used by 36 Italian populist right-wing politicians in constructing the narration of immigration during the covid-19 period on their Facebook pages, combining Corpus Linguistics and the analysis of the discursive argumentation. The main aim is to verify a potential discursive construction between immigration and the spread of the virus also considering the change of the government and the role assumed by different parties. Results suggest that the connection between migration and pandemic has not been traduced in a discourse able to systematically blame migrants as vehicles for the virus, rather politicians operated a re-contextualization of past discursive strategies based on the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy. Moreover, lexicon and argumentative analysis identified interesting differences between parties especially with the change of government and the new conformation of the alliance. The article shows elements of continuity concerning the political discourse on immigration, but it also stressed important outputs concerning the politicization process showing that pandemic constitutes a critical ‘politicizing moment’ that operated as a mechanism of further normalization of anti-immigration discourse.

La educación tradicional en la esfera pública: Un terreno en disputa

El resurgimiento de la educación tradicional en los Estados Unidos ha generado un intenso debate en la esfera pública. Este artículo examina el debate discursivo que rodea este fenómeno. A medida que las críticas hacia los enfoques educativos progresistas se intensifican, defensores de la educación tradicional argumentan a favor de un retorno a métodos pedagógicos más tradicionales. Este resumen destaca el papel de la esfera pública como espacio de conflicto y negociación de ideas en torno a la educación. Al explorar las perspectivas y los argumentos en disputa, el artículo busca arrojar luz sobre el resurgimiento de la educación tradicional y su impacto en el sistema educativo de los Estados Unidos.

Understanding counseling challenges of dementia risk prediction through discourse‐linguistic approaches – the media perspective of the PreTAD study

AbstractBackgroundDiagnostics for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), using biomarkers, and dementia risk prediction are constantly evolving which will eventually lead to an extended availability even for symptom‐free individuals. These developments of predictive medicine are changing medical procedures and ways of thinking as well as opportunities for patients. Furthermore, they are slowly exerting influence on public attitudes towards medicine. The PreTAD project aims at providing insights on people’s perspectives towards prediction as well as the effect of predictive medicine on individuals and society from a clinical, ethical, legal and linguistic point of view.MethodIn the linguistic part of the PreTAD study, we address the fact that patients and their relatives bring common knowledge, discursive arguments and attitudes – and thereby certain expectations – into the doctor‐patient‐interaction, for example into a counseling visit for predictive interventions. Among personal sources, the origin and distribution of that knowledge can be the public media discourse (online and offline). On the basis of an empirical linguistic media analysis (German, English), we seek to determine public knowledge about AD and dementia risk prediction before we aim to elaborate communicative patterns and influential arguments of the public discourse on this topic.ResultThe findings of the linguistic approach of the PreTAD study contribute to the understanding of people’s perspectives, preconceptions, stereotypes, expectations and hopes regarding dementia risk prediction. To ensure good clinical practice regarding predictive interventions, especially in pre‐symptomatic at‐risk stages, the latter have to be acknowledged and carefully negotiated in doctor‐patient‐interaction.ConclusionA closer look at public knowledge, influential communicative patterns and attitudes towards AD, early detection diagnostics, and dementia risk prediction can shed light on the broader context of present counseling challenges.

Global constitutionalism and the People’s Republic of China: Dignity as the “fundamental basis” of the legal system?

Abstract The People’s Republic of China has declared dignity to be a foundational norm of its legal system, as institutionalized through a suite of constitutional and legislative reforms. Indeed, the 2017–21 period saw the adoption of some of the most far-reaching statutes in the history of the PRC, the centerpiece of which is the new Civil Code (2021). In both structure and content, provisions of the Civil Code comprise a quasi-constitutional charter of rights. Indeed, many Chinese scholars do treat the Civil Code as such, developing sophisticated constitutional theory along the way. At the core of these claims is dignity, which occupies a prominent position within the Civil Code, and from which a host of additional rights, including unenumerated rights, can be derived. After situating these developments in light of global constitutional practice, we examine the emergence of dignity as an officially sanctioned commitment device, and analyze the pertinent scholarly discourse, structure, and content of the new Civil Code, and the various roles that the Communist Party of China, the National People’s Congress, and the Supreme People’s Court are expected to perform in supervising the work of the judiciary in operationalizing the Civil Code. We conclude that while the PRC has not fully embraced the dignity norm in the way other constitutional systems have, it has nonetheless permitted significant discursive debates that deserve to be analyzed comparatively.

Arguing the Holocaust: Legal Anthropology and Theological Form

ABSTRACT This article’s basic focal point is a central argument concerning the Holocaust as an unprecedented event against the backdrop of other mass crimes. Alongside the empirical fact of distinguishing between death and death, my emphasis is on an argumentative figure reflecting the theological rejection of the biblical election of the Jews. Starting with the epistemic distinction between capital crimes in domestic criminal law – for example, the distinction between murder and homicide – I address why such factual distinctions are not made with respect to externally committed mass crimes. Instead, we find an evocation of collective images of a specific population chosen for victimhood, images evidently drawn on to justify the crime. When it comes to discourse concerning Jewish victims of the Holocaust, it is striking that essential arguments center on the question of exceptionality; more specifically, that what seems at stake is negating that exceptionality. In their formation, such negating arguments correspond to theological discourse concerning Jewish chosenness: the Nazi negative election of the Jews as their central ideological victims is denied, with reference made to other historical examples of victimhood due to mass crimes. The theological figure at work here is manifest both in the German Historikerstreit of the 1980s concerning the crimes of Bolshevism on the one hand and Nazism on the other, and the current widespread tendency related the priority of colonial crimes vis-à-vis the Nazi mass murder: What came before, what was the more original crime? In this article, I wish to focus solely on a discursive argument in view of an emerging theological form in secular garb.

Amor Fati: On ‘Crimes of Passion’ in Portuguese Law

The timelessness of the matters of love and heartbreak is evident from the place that these themes have historically held in the literature. Fictional representations of love and estrangement are frequently recovered within legal reasoning, because of the nature of the stories portrayed, or the ethical-normative judgements and frames of reference on which their literary enunciation is based. In the field of law, the formal structuring of these matters and its penal relevance draw on ‘crimes of passion’ as an example and a sign of the legal conditions, interpretative constructs, and sociological conceptions that organize and give meaning to subjects, facts, and norms. Whether it is the cause that justifies the fact, a mitigating factor that modifies the crime or punishment, or a particularly reprehensible and perverse circumstance, this ‘crazy little thing called love’ has provoked and shaped different levels of censure and comprehension throughout history. That very elasticity is the starting point for this article, which examines the legal frameworks and the legal, literary, and historical imaginations that circulate and connect diverse interpretative communities, as well as the discursive debates over authority and normativity, in the different fictions and functions linked by their aspiration to truth and justice.

Muslim saints contested: Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of al-Qushayrī’s Risāla

Abstract This article analyses Ibn Taymiyya’s neglected commentary on ʿAbū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī ’s Epistle on Sufism (al-Risāla al-Qushayriyya fī ʿilm al-taṣawwuf), in which he wages several intellectual battles simultaneously: with Ashʿarī theologians of earlier centuries, such as al-Qushayrī himself; with his Ashʿarī contemporaries like Ibn Jahbal al-Kilābī; and with advocates in Damascus and Cairo of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s monistic teachings. Ibn Taymiyya deploys a set of historical and discursive arguments rooted in the early Sufi historiography to argue that both Ashaʿrīs and monistic-minded Sufis do not have a rightful claim to the heritage of the early Sufi authorities. In the struggle to define ‘Islamic orthodoxy’, Ashaʿrīs and Ḥanbalīs evince two radically different approaches to Sufi sayings. Al-Qushayrī and Ibn Jahbal affirm the harmony between Sufi utterances and the rational proofs of speculative theology (kalām), while, in stark contrast, Ibn Taymiyya accentuates their ascetic-mystical connotations. This Ḥanbalī–Ashʿarī debate comprised two conflicting attitudes to the notion of ‘Muslim sainthood’ (wilāya): the Ashʿarīs insisted that early Sufi saintly figures (awliyāʾ) mastered the principles of kalām in order to explain the nature of God to different classes of the Muslim community, while Ibn Taymiyya believed that this type of theological reasoning undermined the very foundations of the spiritual teachings of the early Sufis and retarded the spiritual growth of those who undertook the Sufi path. These polemical exchanges demonstrate that Sufi figures, concepts, images, and texts became central to the articulation of theological arguments during the early Mamluk sultanate.

Normalising community-led, empowered, disaster planning: Reshaping norms of power and knowledge

Disasters (and the dynamics that proceed and follow them) are inherently disruptive of customary routines and taken for granted ordinariness. Many fear that in the context of climate change disasters will become “the new norm”. How we prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters provide a rich terrain for exploring “normality” and interrogating normalising processes. In this article we draw on insights from empirical research on policy efforts in disaster preparedness in New South Wales, Australia. This research suggests that understandings of “the norm” is a site of contestation. This discursive debate is most evident in policy and practice prescriptions for “shared responsibility”. International and national policy is shifting responsibility for disaster preparedness away from institutions of the State to the individual within the local community. In practice, we see this shift simultaneously resisted and embraced with “norms” in disasters reshaped in multiple sites and in multiple directions. The paper concludes that engagement in complex debates offers the possibility to disrupt traditional pattens and normalise community-led, empowered, responses to disasters.

Developing the Dead: Spirit Photography, Mormonism, and Noise

Developing the Dead: Spirit Photography, Mormonism, and Noise

Unconditional hospitality: art and commons under planetary migration

ABSTRACT In both European and non-European cities, public spaces are formed by racist and segregative politics that influence everyday life. Planetary migration flows and recently implemented border politics tend to leave the most vulnerable in precarious conditions, not only in the case of migrants/refugees but also in the case of citizens. This article focuses on how artistic methodologies in the context of migration/refugeehood can experiment with “alternative modes of existence”. How can newly imagined modes of co-existence contribute to the creation of minor public spaces as well as the transformation of institutions? How can public art construct different and diverse guest-host relationships? How can artistic research and actions reveal precarious labour conditions, stage radical discursive debates, and transform existing institutional practices? This article is based on theoretical discussions of commoning and decolonization practices. It will focus on the art and activist practices, and analyse such, of Al-Madafeh/Living Room (Sandi Hilal, Stockholm) and The Silent University (Ahmet Ogut), and others.

Nigerian Afrobeats, the Irony of Belonging and Here–Elsewhere Dialectics

This article reports on a study that examined the reflective experiences of a few Nigerian Afrobeats artistes on irregular migration and identified overlapping contradictory impulses in the Nigerian migration discourse (NMD). Ten song texts of eight of these Afrobeats artistes were purposively deconstructed to evince the conception of irregular migration as a discursive formation and musical argument. Deconstructive paradigm helped to determine the specific communicative purposes of the texts and accentuate Jacques Derrida's dual oppositions which provided a theoretical basis for interrogating conceptual models in the texts. To further strengthen the deconstruction of the texts, the study leveraged critical insights from social dialectical theory and phenomenology, interrogating the interplay of opposing social forces in the NMD. It related the discourse to a dialectical thinking underlying the use of songs by Afrobeats artistes to raise public awareness against irregular migration among an increasing number of Nigerian youths who regard south-north migration as the only panacea to their socio-economic woes. The study also investigated dialectical tensions in the song texts in order to foreground the agency of migrant actors, the multivocality of here–elsewhere dialectics in the NMD, and the perceptions of migrant actors on how the dialectics evolved an interplay of competing discourses.

Albrecht Classen, Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning and Relevance of Medieval and Modern Literature. Chisinau, Moldova: Eliva Press 2022, 406 pp.

Abstract Professor Classen’s electronic book includes eleven essays, published between 2012 and 2022 but not presented in chronological order. The essays appeared in such journals as Literature & Aesthetics, Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, and New Literaria: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. The context in which all the essays were composed is the increasingly disadvantaged position of academic humanities within universities and university curricula. While popular forms of the arts and humanities are generally thriving in America and Europe, the academic study of the humanities has lost favor with the general public as well as with many university administrators, who, increasingly wedded to data-driven decision processes, are inclined to fund faculty positions based solely on quantitative measures (such as number of majors) as opposed to philosophical or discursive arguments. As more and more students (and parents) seek areas of study promising training for specific post-graduation jobs, especially those tied to fields that seek to increase humankind’s power rather than those that explore humanistic meaning, majors such as biology, engineering, and health sciences experience robust growth, while departments of literature, history, languages, and philosophy languish for want of majors. Thus, we witness the disheartening plight of humanities departments just to replace retiring faculty, let alone grow.

Participation and deliberation in language policy: the case of gender-neutral language

ABSTRACT This paper investigates language policy formation through participatory and deliberative methods and, more concretely, the regulation of gender-neutral language in Barcelona City Council (Spain). Through an argumentative approach to policy, the paper examines a specific language policy idea, process and solution, and the accompanying discursive argumentation used by decision-makers. The paper (a) shows that linguistic preconceptions and power relations may constitute a potential barrier to effective deliberation on language, and (b) argues that if local modes of governance (as opposed to the centralised role assigned to language academies) are going to be used to prescribe language practices in institutional contexts, arrangements should be put in place to provide access to a full range of views about language, generate reflective judgments and promote a public exchange of arguments. The paper concludes with a discussion about the implications of this study for the inclusion of deliberation in language policy-making.

From Suits to Royals: The politics of Meghan Markle's racial ambiguity

Meghan Markle's ascension into the Royal family and subsequent exit caused a media flurry at the same time as sparking conversations about race, royalty, and representation. Markle's public persona as biracial locates her at the nexus of racial and class politics. We analyze her self-definition and presentation in contrast to her reception by media outlets and the public and present the biracial identity as both transgressive and limited. We question the concepts of race and royalty as fixed categories and explore how biracial identity offers a possibility for an ambiguous middleground. In this article, we consider how Markle's biraciality is contextualized within contemporary portrayals of black and multiracial individuals in the media. We analyze popular media representations of Markle to reveal the significance of the discursive debate over her public identity. We argue that Markle's biraciality is a demonstration of her agency in shaping the public perception of her racial identity that challenges biological constructions of race. At the same time, her inability to transcend racial classification reveals the limitations of an individual's ability to control and define their public persona.