Discourse Practices Research Articles

Formation of national image and translation practice of Chinese political discourse in the context of the digital age - on the example of Chinese diplomatic communiqués

This study aims to analyze the impact of Chinese political discourse translation practices on the formation of state image in the digital era, using Chinese diplomatic documents as illustrative material. Diplomatic documents, including diplomatic communiqués, play a crucial role in political propaganda and international communication, holding significant strategic value in international relations. Analyzing the processes and strategies involved in translating diplomatic documents allows for a deeper understanding of how different translation methods influence the portrayal of a state. The accuracy and cultural adaptation of diplomatic translation directly affect the perception of Chinese policies and the image of the state by foreign audiences. While literal translation may preserve the accuracy of the original, it does not always convey cultural context and political intentions. In contrast, free translation and cultural adaptation contribute to a better understanding and acceptance of political information and the state's image by the target audience. Thus, the translation practice of diplomatic documents is not only a linguistic process but also a crucial strategy for shaping the state's image. This study employs textual analysis methods and is grounded in translation theory to analyze the use of vocabulary and sentence structure in the translation of diplomatic documents. The research aims to identify translation strategies used and to uncover hidden national images. The findings indicate that different translation strategies significantly influence the formation of the national image. Literal translation maintains the accuracy of the original but may miss cultural nuances. Paraphrasing enhances the perception and understanding of the text. Cultural transformation facilitates better adaptation of the text to the local audience. The scientific novelty of this research lies in its empirical investigation based on the translation of political discourse to reveal the formation of the state's image. The research results can be applied in diplomacy, international communications, and intercultural interactions, providing empirical support and guidance on translation strategies to enhance the national image. The study underscores the importance of translating political discourse for shaping the national image in the digital era. Under the influence of national ideology, the translation of political texts requires reevaluation and a forward-looking approach. In the digital era, the translation of political texts should aim to maintain and strengthen the national image.

The paradigm shift: Business associations shaping the discourse on system change

AbstractThis Agenda 2050 piece is a call to action for management scholars to follow the lead of business associations, foundations, and businesses in studying and understanding the transformative change needed to bring about a more equitable and flourishing world for all living beings—including humans and other‐than‐humans. These entities advocate for a significant paradigm shift in how business is practiced as a way of responding to ‘polycrisis’—the interrelated set of civilization‐threatening crises that includes climate change, social inequality, and biodiversity loss. Yet management scholars lag behind business discourse with issues of sustainability and ecological flourishing, adapting to the type of leadership needed for the future, and understanding the need for system change. We provide four keystone pathways to help scholars shape future discourse in business scholarship, practice, and curricula: 1) structural changes to management education, 2) piloting social impact, 3) development of regenerative business models, and 4) moral, legal, and financial cases for action.

The Relationship between Financial Literacy and Retirement Planning among Informal Sector Workers in Randburg, South Africa

Abstract Research background Retirement planning is viewed as one of the cornerstones of long-term household financial security. The responsibility of retirement planning has now been shifted to the individual and is no longer the responsibility of the employer. Purpose This paper examines the link between financial literacy and retirement planning among informal sector traders in the Randburg area of Johannesburg, South Africa. Research methodology A questionnaire approach was used to collect data from 269 randomly selected informal sector respondents. The data was analysed using ordinal regression. Robustness tests were executed using the Wald test. Results Findings reveal that financial literacy is linked to retirement planning, and especially with reference to informal sector workers. Additionally, education, income and the informal business sector were observed to have a positive and significant influence on retirement planning. Novelty The paper contributes to both theoretical and practical discourses on retirement planning for informal sector entrepreneurs which has not received much attention. These results are important for policy makers in retirement planning as well as curriculum development.

Concept-space analysis through architectural discourses

This study aims to reveal the concepts that constitute space through architectural discourses. Within the scope of this study, a conceptual reading model has been developed based on theoretical and practical discourses on space by 9 prominent architects from the 1950s to the present day. The content analysis method and the MAXQDA program have been utilized as the interface for evaluating these discourses, yielding a model that can be tested across various architectural typologies and/or individual cases. In this context, four main components that constitute space, namely ‘change, meaning, syntax, and vital comfort’, have been identified. Alongside these, a network of relationships has been constructed with quantitatively prominent subconcepts. Based on all analysis outputs obtained, it has been recognized that space constitutes a dialectical relationship as a whole, capturing the era through change, taking form through syntax, quantifiable through vital comfort, and ultimately creating memory through the meaning it acquires.

Aboriginal plant foods policy in Australia: a critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT The Australian continent has over 6500 edible endemic plant species, fourteen of which have been certified for commercial consumption. This paper seeks to critically analyze select Australian Commonwealth Government policy relating to these Aboriginal plant foods. The aim is to purposefully examine the positioning of non-Indigenous people in Aboriginal plant foods policy discourse and reveal tacit settler colonial power relations. This is in response to a call to action from Indigenous scholars to examine how settler colonialism manifests in regulatory mechanisms, such as government policy. This paper offers a theoretically informed critical discourse analysis methodology for examining Australian Commonwealth Government policy relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. Analysis comprised an explanation of the socio-political context of Aboriginal policymaking in Australia, textual analysis of policy texts related to Aboriginal plant foods and an interpretation of discourse practice to reveal how policy discourse tacitly promotes ideological agendas. This analysis revealed that Australian Commonwealth Government Aboriginal plant foods policy is framed according to settler terms and upholds neoliberal interests. Considerable rethinking is required about how power is exercised in Commonwealth Government policy relating to Aboriginal plant foods to ensure it does not replicate and perpetuate unjust settler colonial power relations.

University students’ use of language learning strategies in English-medium instruction classes

Abstract The last twenty years have seen dramatic growth in the provision of English-medium instruction (EMI) courses at universities. On such courses, many students learn academic content through a language other than their first language (L1). This often poses significant language-related challenges to students which can impede content learning. To cope with the linguistic challenges, students sometimes employ language learning strategies (LLS). However, despite the rapid growth in the provision of EMI, little research has been conducted into LLS use in an EMI context. This systematized review examines 36 relevant studies. The findings show that over time EMI students modify their strategic behavior as they become more aware of the strategies which meet their learning needs. Furthermore, learners gradually use more content-related strategies as they progress through their EMI courses. Although strategy deployment is generally self-directed, the findings indicate that LLS instruction can benefit learners. Therefore, it is recommended that EMI courses be supported by embedded EAP courses which provide strategy instruction alongside the teaching of discipline-specific vocabulary and discourse practices. The review also raises questions about the role of students’ L1 in EMI. By shedding light on existing studies in the field, the review highlights opportunities for future research.

Benlik ve Ekosistem Arasındaki Duyarlı ve Sorumlu Karşılıklılık: Mânevî Hümanist Bir Yaklaşım

This paper investigates possibilities for ‘responsive and responsible mutuality’ between the human self and her ecosystem from the perspective of ‘Spiritual Humanism’. Spiritual Humanism is a global discourse emerging out of third-epoch Confucianism (so-called ‘Contemporary Neo-Confucianism’). As a theoretical framework, Spiritual Humanism places Humanity (ren) in the center; all four dimensions - self, community, Earth and Heaven - are transfused with the active vital power (qi) of Humanity (ren). The implications of this discourse for ethical practice, particularly in the context of the global ecological movement, are significant: corresponding human reverence for the natural world, rooted in ‘spiritual’ or anthropocosmic rather than merely ‘secular’ or anthropocentric humanism, is a precondition for both environmental and intergenerational justice.

The Representation of the Indonesian Government in Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Rempang Island Conflict

The Indonesian government has come under intense scrutiny for its actions in the agrarian conflict in Rempang Island, Batam City, Riau Islands Province. The conflict was triggered by the government's forced relocation of the Rempang Island community in the context of the Rempang Eco City development funded by a foreign investor, Xinyi Group. The incident captured the attention of the public and the media due to the large scale of the case. This research aims to see how the Indonesian government is represented in the Indonesian news media regarding the discourse of the Rempang Island case. This research uses the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis initiated by Fairclough (1995) and Transitivity by Halliday (2014). The method used in this research is content analysis method to elaborate the image constructed by the media against the Indonesian government. The data in the study amounted to six data taken from Tempo.co media, and Batamnow.com which were analyzed through three stages, namely textual, discourse practices, and socio-cultural practices. The results showed that the Indonesian government was represented negatively by labeling it as the party that violated human rights and the perpetrator of crimes against humanity.

Investigating Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Resilience: A Comprehensive Review within the Context of Climate Change

This review seeks to enhance the understanding of the critical concepts of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience within the context of global environmental challenges, with a particular focus on climate change. Climate change is characterized by rising global temperatures and an increase in extreme weather events, making the comprehension and addressing of these concepts crucial for effective adaptation strategies. Despite widespread recognition of the interconnectedness of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience, there remains a gap in a comprehensive understanding of how these concepts interrelate. Through synthesizing existing literature, this review provides a detailed examination of their definitions and the interrelationships among vulnerability, adaptation, resilience, and climate-related disasters. Additionally, it explores the impact of climate change on future disaster risk reduction efforts by analyzing the nexus between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Key findings highlight the necessity of incorporating social, institutional, economic, and environmental factors into adaptation planning and call for innovative approaches to boost adaptive capacity and resilience. This review not only furthers the discourse in research, policy, and practice in this vital area but also offers strategic insights for developing more resilient and adaptive societies amidst the challenges posed by climate change.

Religious and Counseling Discourses in Clinical Practice

The study expands the authors' previous findings to examine counseling and religious discourses more closely. Three themes were identified: value of Catholic Christian faith for life and counseling; autonomy and obedience; and healing, renewal, and the call to serve. Interview transcripts were reviewed through the lens of constructs from discourse analysis, including hegemony, analogization, and dialogism. Dialectics between the domains of counseling and religion were identified in the samples of discourses and their analyses. The results indicate the potential for integration of domains and strengthening of religious and counselor identities.

Analysis of the Deviant Usage of Criticism in Discourse Innovations of Cancel Culture and Woke Culture

The research analyzed the deviant usage of critique in discourse innovations in the form of cancel culture and woke culture. These innovations represent modern ways of criticism, which rapid spread is due to network communication. The basis for classifying these types of criticism as deviant usage is the destruction of the locus of critical rationality. The problem is that the heuristic ideal of critique may be changed significantly due to the legitimation of non-standard forms of criticism. The authors identified several clusters of the normative ideal of critical activity in the form of negative assessment, logic, social constructivism, in which the category of rationality is considered. This category allows us to analyze the discourse practice of critique regarding the correspondence theory of truth using linguo-argumentative method of analysis. While using these strategies the authors came to the following conclusions. The verbalization of cancel culture represents a reactive action of critique that implements polemical negation. Criticism in woke culture reveals signs of descriptive negation. The deviant usage of critique as reasoning in the innovations under discussion is represented by errors in argumentation, factoid nature of discourse, and a mixture of stylistic modes belonging to discourses of varying degrees of institutionalization, which constitute aberrations of the rational standard of criticism.

Topic models indicate textual aboutness and pragmatics: Valuation practices in Islamophobic discourse

This study investigates the analysis of evaluative linguistic patterns within the context of the German-language Islamophobic online blog PI-News. The corpus consists of texts that refer to the Quran. The innovation of this research lies in two primary dimensions: Firstly, it adopts John Dewey’s pragmatism to establish an explicit valuation theory. Secondly, it extends the boundaries of topic modeling in the digital humanities by integrating van Dijk’s differentiation between aboutness and pragmatic macrostructures of texts. Notably, within these pragmatic macrostructures, the study highlights the practice of quoting Quran suras as a significant linguistic pattern. Together with the analysis of topic distribution and topic pathways in texts, the paper illustrates how evaluative practices reinforce the ideal of an Islam-free Europe.

Power Relation of a Sexual Harassment Victim in Penyalin Cahaya: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study aims to analyze the struggle of sexual harassment victims depicted in the film entitled Penyalin Cahaya. This study uses Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) model and the Outrage Management model (Scott & Martin, 2006) to examine the verbal and visual aspects of the film. The dimensions that are analyzed include the text, the discourse practice, and sociocultural practice. The key dialogues and scenes are extracted by selecting and retrieving excerpt of dialogues and scenes which depict conflict and power imbalances between the victims and the perpetrators. The results show that power imbalance and its manifestation between them can be found by observing the dialogue and the scenes. It demonstrates that there are several ways through which the abusers exercise their power over the victims. It also highlights the attempts by the victims to fight against sexual harassment, which is often ignored. Furthermore, the sociocultural state of Indonesian society, especially regarding patriarchal culture and power struggles over women, became the main driver that led to the production of this film. The significance of this study is that it can provide insight into the positions, emotions, and obstacles faced by sexual harassment victims in Indonesia, as depicted in the film.

Catcalling as Street Harassment: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study aims to explain the issue of catcalling as a form of harassment against women on the street. This research applies descriptive qualitative method which tries to identify, describe and explain phenomena through linguistic data along with the social and cultural context. The data were collected according to the research goal namely to explain the issue of catcalling depicted in the news text. The data were gathered by retrieving news text on catcalling issue from wollipop.detik.com and analyzed it using Fairclough's CDA framework. The results of the analysis show that in terms of text descriptions, the news writer used a variety of non-standard languages, informal word choices and the involvement of sources to support the issue. In terms of text interpretation, this media concentrates its news presentation on women-related issues by presenting its news which involves several sources to strengthen its reporting objectives. On the explanatory side of the text, the practice of discourse is associated with the socio-cultural context. Wollipop.detik.com alignment with the victim in this report confirms indirectly that the act of catcalling is a form of harassment against women. Readers are led to the understanding that as subtle as catcalling is, it is still a form of violence against women. Readers are also led to raising awareness of their impact. Readers' opinions are directed to provide a positive image as an active media in providing useful information to women as well as to play an active role in voicing injustice and inequality that occurs in society.

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF RISHI SUNAK’S FIRST SPEECH AS PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

This research analyzes Rishi Sunak’s first speech as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on October 25, 2022, through the lens of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Applying Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, the researchers explore Sunak’s speech in text, discourse practice, and social levels to unveil the underlying meanings and intentions behind his words. Through a micro and macro-level analysis of Sunak’s use of linguistic devices, along with investigations into the discourse practice and social context of the speech, the researchers discover Sunak’s commitment to: (1) addressing the UK’s pressing issues, prioritizing economic stability, and strengthening key policy areas; (2) acknowledging past mistakes and emphasizing a willingness to learn from them; and (3) bridging the gap between the government and the British public and uniting the country during the challenging time.

Лингвопрагматическая характеристика аннотаций массовых открытых онлайн-курсов (на материале немецкого языка)

The aim of the research is to provide a linguistic-pragmatic characterization of annotations of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a type of text. The article analyzes the semantic and linguistic content of the elements comprising MOOC annotations. The scientific novelty of the study lies in offering a comprehensive linguistic characterization of MOOC annotations in the German language for the first time. The research findings establish that MOOC annotations are secondary reproductive texts that provide a recipient with brief information about the content and structure of the primary MOOC text. They are hybrid formations, combining features of academic and popular scientific discourses, as well as techniques typical of advertising and hospitality discourse practices. The substantive structure of MOOC annotations is more diverse than their compositional structure. Not all content components are strictly tied to specific compositional elements; they may be repeated in different variations within the same text. The choice of linguistic means in MOOC annotations largely depends on the communication style preferred by the course creators and the intended target audience.

'Like we definitely have to go greener, but…': Analysing affective-discursive practices in populist environmental discourse.

Previous studies on environmental issues in right-wing populism have mostly focused on political actors and their argumentation. In contrast, this study examines environmental populist discourse from the perspective of laypeople in Finland. We used interviews (n = 25) to analyse affective-discursive practices in environmental talk, identifying four partly interrelated practices: belittling the 'annoying liberals', constructing the ordinary rural people as victims, externalizing blame to the 'real' polluters, and glorifying Finnish nature. These practices shed light on subject positions, affect, and functions in environmental discourse. Our contributions to the field of social psychology are threefold. First, we apply an affective-discursive approach in a novel context, deepening our understanding of affect in environmental populism. Second, we explore the nuanced features of populist reasoning and argumentation, shedding light on the functions and social implications of populist environmental discourse. Third, our analysis of identities and the discourse of laypeople provides insights into the dynamics that contribute to the polarization around environmental issues in society. We argue that the sceptical environmental discourse associated with right-wing populism may persist precisely due to the affective and polarized nature of environmental issues.

Writing and Power

The primary aim of this theoretical and methodological paper is to conceptualise early school writing instruction (with 6 and 7-year-old students) through a critical discourse analytical (CDA; Fairclough, 2003) perspective. By drawing on empirical examples from two L1 classrooms, the paper provides an example of how a CDA analysis may be operationalised, particularly in an educational setting in primary school years. In doing so, the paper unveils how social power permeates the discourse practices of early school writing and how its effects on writing instruction may be understood. The data consists of video-recorded observations of writing instruction in two classrooms and transcribed semi-structured interviews with two teachers. The conceptualisation shows major differences in the effects of power in discourse in the two classrooms, shaping the discourse practice in various ways. It furthermore becomes evident that these classrooms are sites of power struggles with effects on discourse and where discourse practices, in various ways, (re)construe both the social world of the classroom as well as what is being taught. However, rather than reproducing social power structures per se, this paper suggests that the classroom holds potential for contestation and transformation of structural power, not least dependent on the actions of the teacher.

“When anybody speaks, we all need to be involved”: Classroom conditions that support dialogic space

ABSTRACT This article discusses classroom conditions that support the co-creation of dialogic space—where our different ideas and perspectives are in conversation with others such that we might take in what other people are saying and be open to it affecting our thinking. Drawing on ethnographic case study data, we provide context to illustrate ways this classroom community was committed to practicing behaviors that support the likelihood of dialogic space. We then focus on a whole-class lesson to elucidate ways 2 related discourse practices—response-able talk practices and language of possibility—signal a dialogic discourse modality that supports exploration of differences in ways that can deepen and widen our understandings.

If you are learner-centered and you know it, raise your hand: Perspectives on and implementation of pedagogical changes by science instructors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) faced significant hardships while trying to learn through emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research aims to investigate if science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instructors thought about and enacted more learner-centered teaching practices to alleviate some of this stress encountered by their students. Using semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, we utilized inductive and deductive qualitative research methods to examine two questions: (1) To what extent were STEM instructor's perceived pedagogical changes learner-centered during ERT?; and (2) To what extent were STEM instructor's teaching behaviors and discourse practices learner-centered during ERT? Our findings revealed that during ERT, STEM instructors described using a variety of pedagogical changes that we identified as learner-centered under the Weimer framework, including ideas such as enacting flexible late policies and increased usage of formative assessment. Interestingly, we found that many of these learned-centered changes were happening outside of the classroom. Classroom observations assessing instructor behaviors and discourse demonstrated that STEM instructors enacted practices that aligned with Weimer's five constructs of learner-centered teaching. Our research highlights implications of learner-centered teaching practices for STEM instructors as well as researchers.