Discursive Construction Research Articles

On the road to Mecca: Branding discourses and national identity on coffee shop signage.

Commercial branding stands as a discursive and cultural facet of the contemporary global era where competing brands construct their own identities. From a discourse perspective, a brand is discursively constructed on commercial signs. Accordingly, this study examines the interplay between coffee shop branding and national identity in Saudi Arabia. In so doing, the study investigates the competing branding discourses associated with coffee as well as the space given to national identity. To achieve this task, the study developed a conceptual framework grounded on critical discourse analysis (CDA) and linguistic landscape (LL). The data consists of 88 commercial signs of coffee shops collected by driving on a road from Najran to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The research site was then verified through Google Maps. The data built a communicative event for an empirical mixed-method research design. CDA linguistic and multimodal toolbox was utilized. The analysis showed that three names of coffee are found on the road to Mecca: qahwa (Arabic), coffee (English), and kufi (transliteration). With these names, four discourse are in competition. For globalization, English-Arabic glocal discourse (34%), and English global discourse (8%) are competing to construct coffee branding. For national identity, Arabic local discourse (42%) and Arabic-English glocal discourse (16%) are associated with qahwa; something that gives substantial space (58%) for national identity. These findings enhance our understanding of the linguistic and multimodal dimensions of globalized spaces and their discursive construction of branding at the local scale of globalization. The study recommends further research and suggests some cultural and pedagogical implications for authorities, translation, bilingual awareness, teaching, and learning.

Discursive construction of ethnicity in the herdsmen and farmers discourse

The contact between herdsmen and farmers has a long history in Nigeria. The contact has witnessed harmonious relations over the years until recent events that have been characterised by reports of killing, kidnappings, attacks, etc. in the media. Several efforts have been made to end the conflict between the two groups in the country. Scholars have addressed the conflict from non-linguistic perspectives such as the ecological, political and economic ones. Meanwhile, approaches using linguistic orientation have ignored discursive analysis of ethnic ideologies of the discourse thus undermining a holistic understanding of the conflict. To this end, this study proposes to interrogate ethnic groups’ representation in herdsmen-farmer discourse, as social actors are discursively constructed to project different ideological beliefs in the discourse. The study adopts a content-based and qualitative analytical approach because of an emphasis on context in meaning-making. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is also adopted as a framework for the analysis to unearth what is meant but not explicitly stated in the discourse. Data for the study were collected from four major Nigerian newspapers’ online versions. The study interrogates the relationship between text and context, and identifies different forms of ethnic representation in the discourse. The study identified the Fulani as marauders, troublemakers, agitators, and the Agatu, Yoruba, Ibo and, Tiv as victims. These representations are divisive and can promote ethnic, terrorist and humanitarian ideologies.

“Can I Tell What It Is that I Really Want?”: The Formation of Multiple and Unintelligible Selves in Ding Ling’s “Miss Sophia’s Diary”

Abstract “Miss Sophia’s Diary” 莎菲女士的日記, Ding Ling’s 丁玲 (1904–1986) debut on the literary stage in 1928, made her a nationally recognized figure. The first-person narrative and diary form of this iconic text is most representative of May Fourth intellectuals’ incessant quest for modernity and a modern selfhood through self-conscious experimentation with forms and genres.Yet previous scholarship on “Miss Sophia’s Diary” paid little attention to the use of “I” as well as the formal and generic characteristics of the diary form. Drawing on the sociolinguistic theory on the intersubjective, social and performative nature of the “I,” existing discussions of formal features of the diary, and a poststructualist reading of autobiography as a figure that precedes and produces the self, this paper examines the use of “I” and the formal and generic features of the diary form. It is my contention that the formal and generic multiplicity of the diary narrative written in the first-person perspective problematizes subject formation and attests to the difficulty and even impossibility of representing the self and rendering it intelligible. The formal and generic multiplicity produces a performative, fragmented and contradictory selfhood, which in turn resists any fixed subject position. This paper reveals not only the limits of the autonomous, bounded selfhood modeled on Western Enlightenment epistemology but also the complicated processes of how the concepts of the self and subjectivity, as discursive constructs, are contested and negotiated in particular historical and social conditions.

Queer food futures: recommendations for inclusive support systems for LGBTQ+ communities affected by food insecurity

ABSTRACT Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexually and gender diverse (LGBTQ+) communities experience higher rates of food insecurity than their heterosexual and/or cisgender peers. LGBTQ+ people also face unique barriers to accessing healthy and nutritious food. This qualitative study aimed to examine the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in Nova Scotia who face food insecurity, focusing on their interactions with food support services such as food banks, meal programs, and shelters. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 self-identifying LGBTQ+ people and analyzed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. Two discursive constructions are reported. The first is discourses of safety and dignity, highlighting wariness toward religious institutions, apprehensions about data collection by food banks, and a perceived lack of staff and volunteer knowledge regarding LGBTQ+ individuals. The second discursive construction envisions queer futures by examining past experiences to inform innovative operational strategies for food support services. The insights gained are intended to guide the development of policies and practices that enhance accessibility, safety, and structural competence in these support services. Key recommendations are provided to transform food support services to more inclusive to LGBTQ+ people.

Unveiling hydrosocial dynamics: discourse and power in Peña Blanca

Water is not just a material element but a socio-natural object of knowledge whose conceptualisation, policing and management carry symbolic and material implications. This issue becomes especially evident in territories where water scarcity and drought pose heightened social and environmental challenges, not least in the face of climate change. Against this background, our research looks at the long history of water privatisation in Chile and at how it has profoundly impacted water scarcity issues, exacerbated desertification, and led to water conflicts. In particular, in Peña Blanca, an agricultural community in northern Chile, these dimensions intertwine and shed light on the territory’s hydrosocial components. Water and fog tell histories of social dynamics, conflicts, cooperation, and climate change. Taking a discoursive approach to ethnographic fieldwork, the paper will analyse interviews carried out with local actors against the background of on-site observation to explore the discursive construction of water and its sociopolitical consequences in Peña Blanca. The paper aims to provide an original perspective on the symbolic and material implications of hydrosocial identities in climate-exposed communities struggling for autonomy, agency, and self-determination.

The design and discursive construction of a ‘speaking’ vacuum cleaning robot for assistive purposes

This sociolinguistically informed study deals with the design and discursive construction of a voice assistant (Amazon’s Alexa) in a project that develops a vacuum cleaning robot (‘Smart Companion’) capable of detecting a fallen person and providing assistance for older people in case of an emergency. The paper investigates sociotechnical ensembles along the co-constitutive lines of users, the technical device, and society, with communication ideologies (e.g., assumptions about the communicative nature of technical devices) emerging from and influencing this complex triad. The qualitative analysis of interactional data and interviews suggests that communication ideologies materialize in the way how participants interact with Alexa, by drawing on human-human communication strategies and adapting their linguistic behavior if interactional problems occur. Communication ideologies include assumptions about the ontology, (linguistic) agency, the purpose of the voice assistant / robot, and the relationship between the user and the voice assistant / the robot. Discursive constructions include anthropomorphization and hybrid, partly hesitant ontological categorizations, combining both human and non-human qualities. Participants show an interest in the Smart Companion, but do not yet consider themselves as being in need of assistive technologies like the Smart Companion, reiterating the importance of taking the users, their self-image and discourses into account.

Imagined communities, third space and heritage preservation in the digital age: Exploring the discursive construction of Jewish identity on the terrain of Facebook

This study takes a discourse-oriented ethnographic approach to three Facebook (FB) groups of Jewish interest to examine how the members of these specific groups create their own ‘third space’ and maintain their cultural and religious identities by emphasising the Facebook polymedium as an ‘imagined community’. By introducing an interdisciplinary approach, based on a combination of digital ethnographic approaches, drawing on multi-sited ethnography and Critical Discourse Studies’ (CDS) analytical framework, especially the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) and its argumentative strategies, this study examines how members of the FB groups under investigation shape a Greek Jewish heritage by sharing cultural dynamics and collective memories, especially at a time of a worrying surge in antisemitism. The article also explores how these FB groups’ members negotiate the digital juxtaposition of space via the dichotomy of ‘here’ and ‘there’, as well as the division between ‘then’ and ‘now’, or past and present.

The Discursive Construction of “Truth” in the Email Newsletter of an Anti-Genderist Polish NGO

Since at least 2012, right-wing politicians, media, and the Catholic Church have been demonizing the LGBTQ+ community as promoters of the “LGBT ideology,” a substitute term for “gender ideology” in Poland. The vitriolic anti-LGBTQ+ discourse has become a central resource in the right-wing construction of Polish patriotism and national identity. This discourse is adopted by many mainstream conservative public figures and is part of the global anti-genderism register that has been taken up by transnationally linked actors and institutions. In this article, I adopt Critical Discourse Analysis, Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, and the Discourse Historical Approach to examine how anti-genderist actors in Poland discursively construct “truth” through what looks like logical argumentation and appeals to assumed “common sense” knowledge, and how such constructions are used to support appeals to emotion and Catholic faith while also co-opting and redefining progressive terms and concepts in service of right-wing agendas. This strategy departs from the anti-intellectual rhetoric typical of right-wing populism. The article is based on an analysis of 216 emails sent in an email newsletter by the ultraconservative Catholic NGO Centrum Życia i Rodziny (Center for Life and Family) between September 2020 and July 2023.

Constructions of choice in U.S. education policy discourse, 1994–2020: a corpus-assisted analysis

ABSTRACT This study uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the way U.S. secretaries of education have discursively constructed the topic of school choice in their public speeches over the course of 27 years, spanning four presidential administrations (1994–2020). Collocation and concordance analyses reveal a series of evolving discursive constructions: a public institutional frame favoring the prevailing logic of public schooling; an overtly neoliberal frame touting free markets, consumerism, and accountability for public systems; a depoliticized and technocratic neoliberal frame emphasizing high performance; and a populist, anti-institutional frame advocating choice as an end in itself. This study demonstrates how the language of school choice can tell us much about ideological trends in education reform. In particular, the analyses reveal an erosion of concern for the publicness of public schooling in federal school choice discourse.

Discursive Construction of CNPC’s Eco-friendly Image in Its Corporate Social Responsibility Report: A Legitimation Strategy Analysis

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports are important non-financial disclosures that provide insights into an enterprise’s commitment to social and environmental responsibilities. With the escalation of global environmental challenges, the focus on the disclosure of environmental responsibility information within CSR reports has intensified. As CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) is an environmentally sensitive corporation, this study investigates the legitimation strategies utilized in the environmental discourse of the CNPC’s English CSR Report of 2022, aiming to understand how CNPC constructs its legitimacy in sustainable development for international audience. The findings reveal that: (1) five principal legitimation strategies are employed—authorization, moralization, rationalization, mythopoesis, and altruism—with rationalization as the dominant strategy, representing 65.45% of all cases; (2) these strategies are grounded in diverse sources of legitimacy, such as collective authority and moral values, and are manifested through distinct lexical and syntactic choices; (3) these legitimation strategies constructs an authoritative and credible corporate eco-friendly image for CNPC. These findings contribute to the understanding of legitimation strategies in institutional environmental discourse and offer practical implications for enterprises aiming to enhance their international reputations in sustainable development and facilitate global expansion.

Health, human rights and freedom at stake? A critical discourse analysis of the Swedish media debate on the national COVID-19 pandemic strategy

ABSTRACT Purpose The aim of this study is to, in the Swedish media debate, explore the discursive constructions of challenges in human rights and freedoms following the national spatial strategy for health and survival during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods The study, inspired by a critical discourse analytic approach, focused particularly on the issues addressed, subject positions, relations and rhetoric. Seventeen opinion articles published in Swedish national newspapers December 2019 - February 2022 were analysed. Results The main contents were threats to democracy, threats to the freedom and rights of specific groups, and threats to the debate itself. Contents were expressed through three discourse dichotomies: contribution vs interjection, documented vs alarmistic, and active on the stage vs commenting from the balcony. Conclusions Striking about the results is the absence of dialogue, the one-way communication, and the absent politicians. It seems that the analysed debate on the challenges of the Swedish COVID-19 pandemic strategy, based on its impact on overall freedoms and rights, has not been the focus of decision-makers during the pandemic. They have neither addressed the threats highlighted in the articles, nor contributed to the discourse. This is worrying for the long-term maintenance and development of a healthy democracy.

Negotiating shared responsibility for sustainable urban development: pronouns and in-here-ness as rhetorical resources

PurposeThis article explores how issues of shared responsibility are discursively negotiated within the realm of managing collaborative efforts between organizational actors for sustainable urban development abiding to the agenda 2030.Design/methodology/approachThe research explored shared responsibility as localized, micro-discursive negotiations within and between local organizations in Sweden.FindingsAnalysis displays how speakers’ use of rhetorical resources vacillates along two continuums: the who responsible for sustainability and the discursive construction of agency. This shows that the position where the actors share responsibility, that is when the actors are constructed as both able and willing to take responsibility and as sharing a collective identity, is continuously being negotiated in communication.Originality/valueThe article contributes to literature on collaborative ways of organizing and managing complex public challenges. With a focus on the discursive construction of shared responsibility, the concept of in-here-ness is introduced to denote accepted and assumed responsibility, which may shift through the use of pronouns: from a narrow “I” or “we” of stakeholders to a wider “we” of collaborating parties. The article further contributes to the empirical field of sustainable development at the municipal level.

Cracking the Code: Lionsgate Studio's Ongoing Pursuit of the Latinx Audience

Within film industry discourses, U.S. Latinxs are said to be important to the future of Hollywood due to their sheer size and buying power. However, Latinxs remain underrepresented both in front of and behind the camera. Focusing on Lionsgate as a case study, I examine how studio executives have discursively constructed the “Latino audience” and the degree to which this construction allows for films that are oppositional to hegemonic narratives. I ground my analysis in critical political economy and base my findings on a review of Lionsgate's internal and public facing documents, industry reports, and press coverage of Lionsgate's Latino initiatives. I argue that, as a discursive construction, the Latino audience has two defining characteristics. First, they are a market to be exploited rather than a public to be served. Second, studios have been incentivized to conceptualize U.S. Latinxs as part of a transnational market, which imagines the audience as residents of some other nation. Finally, I argue that this conceptualization of the audience limits the resources invested in Latinx films and the kind of counter-hegemonic discourses which Latinx filmmakers can engage.

The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality: CADS Approaches to the British Media, edited by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)

The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality: CADS Approaches to the British Media, edited by Eva M. Gómez-Jiménez and Michael Toolan (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)

Teachers' Discursive Constructions of Adolescent Sexting, Consent and Gender

ABSTRACTSexting is the exchange of sexually suggestive content through technological means. Despite being tasked with addressing such incidents in schools, teachers are underrepresented in sexting research. The present study explores teachers' discursive constructions of sexting, consent and gender using Critical Discursive Psychology, analysing 30 interviews with educators and safeguarding staff. The first key finding uncovers the interpretative repertoire of ‘Sexting as a threat’. This repertoire showcases the gendered positions teachers assign adolescents to, positioning ‘Boys as oppressors; girls as victims of sexting’, with girls being simultaneously constructed as sexting to attract boys' attention through the ‘Girls as the validation‐seeking Other’ position. Regarding consent, we explicate three repertoires: ‘Consent as an oxymoron in relation to non‐consensual distribution’, ‘Consent as illegal’ and ‘Coercion as a power imbalance’. We contextualise and discuss these findings within the socio‐political discursive terrain. We highlight their ideological implications and the need to initiate emancipatory positions and discussions regarding inclusive sexting education. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's .

Alcohol industry discourses about LGBTQ+ communities: genuine allies or partners for profit?

Background Sexual and gender minority people have been found to drink more heavily than heterosexual and cisgender populations. Alcohol companies target rainbow communities by promoting alcoholic products through various promotional strategies. The current study examined the discourses that alcohol companies employed in their publicly available material when discussing LGBTQ+ people and rainbow communities. Methods Eight online websites containing alcohol and marketing content were identified. Across these websites, 4,353 alcohol-related documents were published from 2017–2023. We searched within these documents for texts that were freely available and included terms related to LGBTQ+ populations, leading to 53 texts that were downloaded and analysed using discourse analysis. Results Alcohol companies used three primary discourses when outlining their engagement with LGBTQ+ communities, namely ‘exceptional support and pioneering philanthropy’, ‘genuine allyship’ and ‘shared values’. These discourses functioned to enable companies to overcome seemingly contradictory constructions of being authentic and genuine allies, while also being profitable businesses that are building their market share and profits. Conclusions The alcohol industry deflects accusations of rainbow-washing through discursive constructions that highlight their genuine and committed dedication to rainbow communities. These normalise alcohol within these communities, and function to enhance and promote alcohol brands while obscuring their negative consequences.

Cohesion in physical movie releases: developing a framework for the multimodal analysis of complex three-dimensional packaging

Three-dimensional packages are complex multimodal ensembles and serve important communicative functions for the discursive construction of marketing strategies or social and cultural values to be conveyed by the products they contain. One particularly interesting type of such packages is that of physical movie releases. In this article, we offer an exploratory study into how multimodal cohesion analysis can be applied to these artefacts. While multimodal cohesion has mainly been analysed in narrative artefacts such as films or comics, the examination of three-dimensional packages is a new field of application within the broad context of multimodality research. Building on existing theories and frameworks for multimodal cohesion analysis, we suggest a five-step framework to fit the genre of three-dimensional packaging. A case study using three releases from the film distribution company Eureka is employed to test the developed framework. The analysis shows that the majority of relations between units in and on these packages is of the type ‘repetition’. These relations are established both through verbal and visual elements, both with regards to form and content. The repetition of style results in a strong uniformity, whereas the repetition of contents allows the object to understandably convey information despite its three-dimensional non-linear structure.

Framing flooding in African Cities: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of the phenomenon in the Ghanaian Press

Abstract Increasing climate change and urban planning deficiencies have exacerbated flood disasters in African cities, attracting widespread media discussion and public concern. This study examines the discursive construction of perennial flooding in Accra, in the Ghanaian press, to bring to light how the phenomenon is represented with regards to whether or not it contributes to a proper appreciation of the situation in attempting to address the problem. It uses as dataset an 86,602-word specialised corpus built from news reports on flooding and a 422,436-word reference corpus (written component of International Corpus of English, Ghana). The study employs a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach to explore the discourse using Keyword analysis, Concordance lines and Collocate analysis. Findings revealed framing of perennial flooding in the city as an unwelcome threat, as it is found to colligate with: “problems, damage, death and loss”, giving it a negative discourse prosody. In addition, there is unclear (de)construction of the major cause of the floods in the news, as experts assert that siltation of the drains is the major challenge, but what is often projected by the media as the cause is choked gutters. The findings inform policymakers that robust proactive measures, public education and sensitisation, and a firm commitment on the part of the government in particular are needed to tackle the perennial floods in Accra.

The Good, the Bad and the Other: Discursive constructions of nations in Voice of America’s international news

This research analyses Voice of America’s discursive construction of nations in its international news reporting, based on Van Dijk’s sociocognitive discourse analysis approach and his concept of the ideological square. Through a combination of content analysis, corpus-assisted linguistic analysis and manual critical discourse analysis, this research examines how countries are constructed as part of an in-group and out-group. The findings show that US interpretations of democracy, freedom and human rights are used ideologically to emphasize positive aspects of in-group members and negative aspects of out-group members, while they are absent in justifications of military involvement by the in-group. The analyses also reveal the countries and regions of the world that are discursively overlooked or relegated to simply providing context for other nations’ activities.

Discursive constructions of mental illness in statutes across the 50 United States.

Discursive constructions of mental illness in statutes across the 50 United States.