Discursive Meaning Research Articles

Visual Analysis and the Contentious Politics of the Radical Right

ABSTRACTAlthough images are very important for political actors and social movements, including the radical right (RR), empirical studies still rarely integrate visual material as relevant data for understanding radical right politics. This article outlines this new and growing field of research (i.e., visuality and the RR), critically reviewing existing studies from the perspective of both visual studies of social movements and contentious politics, which are rarely applied to the RR, and the methodology of working with images, offering empirical case studies (European and beyond) to illustrate the argument. The findings reveal the main functions of the use of visuals for the radical right, as well as the benefits (but also the challenges) of studying radical right politics through the lens of visual analysis. A conceptual framework is proposed to capture this dominant visual politics of the radical right. As shown, two dimensions emerge as the most theoretically relevant for the radical right: The discursive meaning of images (the story itself, telling the story, eliciting the story) and the communicative function of images (visual expression by the movement or others, visibility), which combine agency and addressee.

Beyond Kafala! Employers’ discriminatory attitudes and violations of the rights and freedoms of women migrant domestic workers in Lebanon

Abstract Women migrant domestic workers (WMDWs) constitute 7.7 per cent of migrant workers worldwide, of whom more than a quarter work in the Arab region under the exploitative Kafala, system. In this article, we center employers as key actors in the making of the discursive meaning of Kafala. Utilizing data from a mixed-methods study on Lebanese employers of live-in WMDWs, we investigate whether practices that violate the rights and freedoms of workers are determined by the employers’ knowledge of what Kafala and local legal obligations entail versus other factors. The findings reveal that, although knowledge of legal obligations increases compliance with basic worker rights, employers shape the meaning of Kafala through practices that resonate with their discriminatory attitudes and financial interests. Thus, whilst benefit may accrue from enhancing employers’ knowledge of local legal obligations, only anti-racism advocacy that addresses deep-seated discriminatory attitudes and mobilizes employer morality would improve the rights and freedoms of WMDWs. The article does not abrogate Kafala as an exploitative system but calls for centering employers who, through their daily practices, contribute to shaping its meaning and reinforcing its power.

What is a morphological future doing in a si-clause? Traces of mirativity in Spanish

This paper examines si-future exclamatives in Spanish, both synchronically and diachronically, with the aim not only of identifying their possible contexts of use but also of distinguishing their various semantic interpretations. In addition to permitting the redefinition of the space of insubordination and assessing the role of analogy in the continuing independence of the marker si, this proposal provides an explanation of Spanish mirative future as emerging from the emancipation of a previous structure, albeit that it retains the deictic value of morphological future –which becomes a functional feature in its new discursive meaning. From this perspective, the grammaticalization of morphological future in Spanish is not contemplated as a closed cycle, but rather as a still ongoing process. More broadly speaking, this paper helps outline the semantic array of mirative meanings through providing evidence about the type of mirativity that can be conveyed in Spanish.

THE CONCEPTS OF «LEFT» AND «RIGHT» IN UKRAINIAN AND CHINESE FIXED PHRASES AND PROVERBS

The purpose of the article is to identify the cognitive bases of asymmetry in the use and perception of the concepts «left» and «right» // // 左 [zuǒ] and 右 [yòu] by Ukrainians and Chinese. These concepts function in the linguistic space of the world as one of the universal binary oppositions. This is most clearly expressed in constant word combinations and paremies. An attempt was made to determine the differences between the Ukrainian and Chinese language worldviews in situations where these concepts are present. Ukrainian and Chinese fixed word combinations and paremias with the semantically core words left and right // 左 and 右 were chosen as the object of study. The subject of the research is the identification of common and distinctive features in the perception of the Chinese and Ukrainians of the views and habits of using the concepts of «left» and «right» traditional in their national language worldviews. The procedures of semantic, connotative, phraseological, linguocultural, conceptual, cognitive, comparative and quantitative analysis, as well as the descriptive method, were used in the research process. The results of the research were the identification of selected Ukrainian and Chinese phraseological units that contain indicators of the concepts «left» and «right» // 左 [zuǒ] and 右 [yòu], their classification by discursive meaning, sphere of functioning, axiological characteristics, and a comparative analysis of the linguistic and cultural principles of use in the Ukrainian and Chinese languages was carried out. Conclusions are made regarding the asymmetry of the traditional perception and functioning of the conceptual meanings of left and right in compared languages

AXIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LEFT AND RIGHT IN RUSSIAN AND CHINESE STABLE WORD COMBINATIONS AND PROVERBS

Summary. The purpose of the article is to reveal the cultural connotation and axiological characteristics of the concepts "left" and "right", which make up one of the universal binary oppositions, in Russian and Chinese stable word combinations and paremias in order to determine the differences between the Russian and Chinese language worldviews in the cognitive zone of the presence of these concepts. The object of the research is Russian and Chinese phraseological units with the key words left and right. The subject of the study is the determination of common and distinctive features in the perception of traditional views and habits by Chinese and Russians regarding the use of the above-mentioned concepts in their national language worldviews. The procedures of semantic, connotative, phraseological, linguocultural, conceptual, cognitive, comparative and quantitative analysis, as well as the descriptive method, were used in the research process. The results of the study were the identification of 74 Russian and 62 Chinese phraseological units with different structures, containing indicators of the concepts "left" and "right". They are classified according to their discursive meaning, sphere of functioning, and axiological characteristics. A comparative analysis of the linguocultural principles of their use in the Russian and Chinese languages was carried out. Conclusions are made regarding the asymmetry of the traditional perception and functioning of the conceptual meanings of left and right in the compared languages.

Analyzing Text and Images in Digital Communication: The Case of Securitization in American White Supremacist Online Discourse

Sociological research on online discourse increasingly uses digital data consisting of messages combining multiple modes of media, with meaning arising from contents’ interaction across modes. Yet, techniques to study this interplay are underdeveloped relative to the toolkit for analyzing solely texts. The authors introduce an automated approach for relationally analyzing texts and images, focusing on how to examine the discursive meaning emerging from concepts’ connections across associated text and image modes. The authors validate this approach using a crowdsourced task and obtain results suggesting that applying social network metrics to semantic space can generate useful insights into how people understand discourse. To illustrate this approach, the authors examine the concept of “securitization” in online white supremacist discourse. The findings indicate that ideas of securitization link notions of personalistic leadership with imagery of space and place. This analysis demonstrates how the authors’ approach helps researchers understand multimodal material and meaning-making in digital discourse.

Significant historiographic chronicle of inscriptions of patrimonial identification in Tampico, Tamaulipas

The built heritage located in the historic center of the city of Tampico, declared a heritage zone of historic and artistic monuments in 1990, was built between 1890 and 1930 from the Porfiriato period, considered the time of the oil boom. In that sense, the architectural and visual history of the city is compromised in its construction with a landscape built as a consequence of the social needs and consumption of merchandise; companies and industry, which were determinants of that historical moment and gave a representative cultural meaning. This study considers particularly those historical buildings that contain on their facade’s inscriptions, names, numbers or symbols, as a historiographic narrative of the visual and discursive meaning named identification inscriptions. The contribution of a formal study for the defragmented narrativity of the graphic historicity with its own inscribed characteristics of the culture of Tampico, which, due to the affectations caused by diverse factors, put at risk its permanence and veracity in a structural and formal way, becomes important. This is how the contextual historiographic narrative contributes to point out the inscriptional graphic value.

Discursive Quads: New Kinds of Lexical Co‐occurrence Data With Linguistic Concept Modelling

AbstractThis paper introduces linguistic concept modelling, a new computational approach to humanities‐driven analysis of meaning in large text collections, and presents illustrative examples of the approach applied to over one billion words of printed Early Modern English contained in Early English Books Online (Text Creation Partnership edition). Linguistic concept modelling methods and innovations are described in detail, and justified as a unique, new, powerful means for studying meaning in texts in relation to individual lexical items, sets of lexical items and entire text collections. Linguistic concept modelling is compared to established approaches of distributional semantics and topic modelling, to show how linguistic concept modelling overcomes the limitations of those approaches to support humanities research. Examples demonstrate how our approach can be used to explore and analyse semantic, pragmatic and discursive meaning in texts, highlighting the novel observations that our approach affords, and its benefits for humanities scholars.

Средства достижения функциональной эквивалентности при переводе английских дискурсивных маркеров в устной речевой коммуникации в правовой сфере

The aim of the study is to determine the features of translating into Russian the language units ‘really’ and ‘actually’, used in a discursive meaning, from the standpoint of achieving functional equivalence. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the study of the communicative effect when they are used in the process of oral communication in the legal sphere is carried out using a combined corpus-oriented approach with the help of quantitative and qualitative methods of comparative analysis. As a result, it has been revealed that along with the multifunctionality and functional commonality of the language units under consideration, there are various translation solutions due to the context of their use which is demonstrated by examples obtained by means of corpus technologies.

The incapacity to work as moving target. Exploring the possibilities of praxiography for analysing realities of disability in history

While acknowledging the discursive meaning of bodies, both gender and disability scholars try to overcome a strict nature–culture or medical model–social model divide. This article explores the possibilities of praxiography for disability history to overcome this divide. Praxiography, as introduced by Annemarie Mol, approaches the body and gender as something that is made up in encounters between people, objects, and practices. Mol has shown that, although a singular term may suggest there is coherence, this coherence is managed in practice. This article provides a practice-focused analysis of appeal cases in which incapacity to work was contested in the context of the first disability benefit act in the Netherlands (1901–1921) and shows how incapacity to work was made up as incapacity to earn a living and shifted to meticulous descriptions of the functioning of individual body parts. Although the topic of power remains to be explored, by looking at incapacity to work as a site of interaction, we can challenge perceptions of disability and gender as a biological or a cultural truth and incorporate matter into the historical analysis of the making of social categories.

Parenthetical clauses and speech reporting: the case of shriek

This study turns to the pathway of change whereby an originally intransitive manner-of-speaking predicate (e.g. babble, whisper, shout) comes to function in parenthetical clauses as a direct speech reporting predicate. On the descriptive plane, the paper presents a detailed analysis of the recent developments affecting shriek in Early and Late Modern English. The case presented here does not involve the standardly assumed ‘reduction’ of a main clause to an adverbial subject-verb phrase that seems to lack a clausal argument, but rather the augmentation of an intransitive predicate. It does not involve semantic bleaching to a core grammatical meaning such as epistemic hedges or mirative markers or a discursive meaning such as attention-getters, but instead maintains a lexically specific component of manner of speaking. The relevance of the case study is highlighted against the backdrop of broader trends related to transitivization processes with non-prototypical object patterns. The relatively abrupt development is in line with synchronic theories of event lexicalization, which predict that manner roots readily allow for certain argument augmentation patterns that derive a complex event structure. It can be explained on the basis of analogically facilitated co-optation, via a range of semantic and grammatical similarities to other predicates of manner-of-speaking. The study hopes to inspire studies comparing the pathways attested for different semantic subtypes of parentheticals, as well as their interaction, in the near future.

Looking for concepts in Early Modern English

Abstract The idea that conceptual meaning in discourse could be identified in constellations of lexical co-occurrences in a particular “universe” of discourse was key in guiding the computational historical semantic–pragmatic work conducted in the Linguistic dna project. The project mapped prominent lexical co-occurrences across the two hundred years of publications in Early English Books Online (eebo-tcp; Text Creation Partnership edition), yielding concept models – constellations of non-adjacent lemmas that consistently co-occur across spans of up to 100 tokens. The goal was to map meaning onto concept models as “discursive concepts”, using encyclopaedic knowledge, pragmatic analysis and context. The first question concerns the effectiveness of making early hypotheses about the discursive meaning of concept models based on the inferred connections between the lemmas in a quad constellation. The second question is whether the meaning of frequent, apparently stable concept models changes upon their closer scrutiny in the discourses they lead us into. A reader familiar with the particular universe of discourse in which these quads occur, and with the social, historical, literary and philosophical traditions, and the context that they occupy, might be effectively primed by their encyclopaedic knowledge to hypothesise this discursive meaning. This paper demonstrates the efficacy of hypothesis building using encyclopaedic knowledge and pragmatic analysis to interpret optimally relevant concept models.

Bliss beyond All Limit: On the Apabhraṃśa Dohā in Tantric Buddhist Texts

The Apabhraṃśa dohā is a literary medium from Indian antiquity, with early examples appearing in Kālidāsa’s plays around the 5th century and continuing in later Hindi-language Jain and Bhakti works in the early modern period. However, it was within Tantric Buddhist texts and traditions that the dohā truly came into its own as a literary genre. Particularly within the “Yoginī Tantra” strata of the Tantric Buddhist canon, Apabhraṃśa dohās appear in notable and formulaic ways, used within ritual contexts and other significant junctures, signaling the underexamined use of this literary form and its language of composition. This paper examines the use of dohās attributed to the mahāsiddha Saraha as they are used in the Hevajra Tantra, the Buddhakapāla Tantra, and some associated texts. In doing so, this paper demonstrates that as a literary genre, Apabhraṃśa dohās perform a similar function to mantras and dhāraṇīs, but are unique in their attention to phonology and discursive meaning. By examining the uses of these dohās during particular moments of Tantric Buddhist ritual syntax, this paper will then reflect on the later trajectory of these verses after the death of institutional Buddhism in India, and the reasons for their survival.

Islam de Belgique, islam moderne ou islam des origines ?

This article studies a large corpus of newspaper articles about Islam in Belgium. The analysis focuses on repeated segments, i.e., collocations that appear regularly throughout the corpus. Among all the repeated segments identified we isolated those that contain the word Islam, namely 27 definite or indefinite nominal expressions (Islam in Belgium, modern Islam). We will first observe the nature of these phrases (their syntactic structure and semantic content which enable them to behave as more or less fixed expressions) and, in a second step, their discursive meaning and referential properties through the study of co-occurrences. These repeated segments uncover a social endeavour to define Islam on the basis of competing representations which vary according to the place this religion is meant to have in Belgian and European societies.

The role of intonation in Construction Grammar: On prosodic constructions

In constructionist approaches, constructions are defined as pairings of phonological, morphological and syntactic form, and semantic, pragmatic or discursive meaning. However, in practice very few constructional analyses deal specifically with the intonational properties of constructions. Moreover, constructional approaches are not clear about the ontological status of intonation in a constructional model of language. Combining insights from Construction Grammar and Intonational Studies, specifically the Autosegmental Metrical framework of intonational phonology and the Tones and Breaks Indices (ToBI) transcription model, this paper discusses the role of prosody in a construction-based approach to language, through the analysis of the insubordinate conditional construction (ICC) in Spanish. Building on the analysis of the prosody of 90 tokens of the ICC uttered by 14 native speakers of Peninsular Spanish, we argue that the best way to account for the relationship between intonational patterns and (lexicogrammatical) constructions is to treat intonational patterns as constructions that pair a phonological form with a semantic-pragmatic meaning, which are then inherited by sentence-level constructions as long as their meanings are compatible.

Contemporary Art and the Problem of Music: Towards a Musical Contemporary Art

AbstractThis article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

Corpus-based methods in stylistic studies: reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in Fedor Dostoevskii’s individual style

The article discusses the idiolectic features of the adjective reshitel’nyi and the adverb reshitel’no in Fedor Dostoevskii’s writing style. Conceived as one lexical item, reshitel’nyi and reshitel’no have a semantic structure that includes three blocks of meanings: quality/mode of action; discursive meaning; intensity (corresponding to the lexical function Magn). The dictionary definitions suggest that all of them were common to reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in Russian language of the 19th century. Ноwever, a corpus-based study shows that reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in discursive or intensifying use is one of Dostoevskii’s idiolectic patterns. The study comprises 1219 contexts from Dostoevskii’s five great novels and from Leo Tolstoy’s, Mikhail Saltykov Shchedrin’s, Ivan Turgenev’s and Ivan Goncharov’s literary texts accessible in the Russian National Corpus. The analysis reveals the closeness of intensification tо discursive meanings up to nondistinction. Almost half of the contexts extracted from Dostoevsky’s texts are discursive or intensifying uses of reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no. This share is much smaller for the texts of other authors (12%, 22%, 15% and 14% respectively). The article considers some types of contexts and constructions that refer to discursive or intensifying uses of reshitel’nyi/reshitel’no in Dostoesvskii’s literary texts.

Egy dalszöveg a pedagógiai nyelvészet szolgálatában : Quimby: Magam adom

The paper offers an analysis of the lyrics of Magam adom ’I’m giving myself ’ produced by the Hungarian alternative rock band Quimby, arguing that the text can be fruitfully exploited by pedagogical linguistics. Drawing on but also taking issue with previous interpretations of the song by other linguists, the author highlights the following aspects of the tightly woven lyrics of Magam adom: (i) the demonstration of how Hungarian verbs can act as finite clauses by themselves, expressing highly complex meanings, (ii) the intricate network of phonological, semantic and morphological connections, which lends itself to analysis in Bybee’s morphological theory, and (iii) the interaction of various constructions derived from ad ’give’ that motivate a rich, emotionally ambiguous discursive meaning of the pattern megadom magam.

Neologismos fraseológicos en el español hablado en Argentina: los procedimientos de creación

Sabemos que los componentes de las Unidades Fraseológicas (UF) tienen diversos grados de fijación e idiomaticidad. Junto a estos cambios codificados y previstos en el sistema surgen otras UF de forma libre que expresan un significado nuevo o con un sentido discursivo propio. La neología da testimonio de la dinámica de la lengua en general y también en el plano fraseológico. El objetivo del presente trabajo se centra en identificar los mecanismos de innovación utilizados para la creación de los neologismos fraseológicos del español hablado en Argentina. Para la detección de candidatos a neologismos recurrimos a la recopilación de UF del campo semántico carácter-forma de ser recopiladas mediante encuestas. Aplicamos, además, el criterio de neologicidad de exclusión lexicográfica y comprobamos su uso en la variante argentina del corpus periodístico esAmTenTen11 (español de América) aplicando la herramienta Sketch Engine.

Aural epistemology

This article takes the Qur’an’s discourse on the sense of hearing as part of its greater world of emotion and affect, wherein sense perceptions can be understood as part of its felt landscape. Taking the prevalence of the Qur’an’s recitation in tradition and the Qur’an’s own discourse about orality and revelation as a starting point, the paper examines the understanding of the sense of hearing found within the text. Specifically, in the Qur’an, the sense of hearing is linked to ideas of cognition and comprehension. Understanding of the discursive content or meaning of a message is obtained through hearing.