Representation Of Social Actors Research Articles

Critical analysis of dehumanizing news photographs on immigrants: Examples of the portrayal of non-citizenship

This paper analyses the main visual characteristics of sub-Saharan immigrants represented as non-citizens in a sample from the Spanish press, and deepens on how this contributes to perpetuating the ‘we-they’ dichotomy. The data consist of all the news items published on sub-Saharan immigrants in the digital editions of the Spanish newspapers El País and ABC from 1 January 2016 to 1 January 2021. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and van Leeuwen’s model for the visual representation of social actors will be the theoretical frameworks. The findings indicate that there are different visual ways to portray immigrants as non-citizens, which allows establishing this classification: representing immigrants’ arrival as illegal and clandestine, portraying them as invaders, representing immigrants as violent individuals or associating them with animalization. All these can be considered visual dysphemisms that problematize the arrival of immigrants and highlight the differences between Spanish population and immigrants.

A Corpus–assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Exclusion Strategies in Political Newspaper Articles: The March of Return in Gaza

This study examines if there is a favored linguistic exclusion strategy in Arabic and English newspaper articles reporting on the March of Return in Gaza and explores their potential impacts on the readers' minds. Ten newspaper articles were collected; five articles are in Arabic, each is from a different Arab country, while the others are the top-selling five newspapers in the UK. Data were analyzed by observing the linguistic structures and the representations of social actors from the CDA perspective adopted by Theo van Leeuwen and using two built corpora to calculate the frequencies of the exclusion linguistic structures found. The findings showed that Arabic and English newspaper articles used linguistic exclusion strategies differently to serve specific functions, such as: excluding the social actors involved in the case of the March of Return in Gaza, driving the reader's attention to the other social actor to view him as a victim or the party who abuses power, hiding or protecting the excluded social actor or driving the reader's attention to the event rather than the action.

REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL ACTORS IN THE JAKARTA POST AND TEMPO ABOUT MAKASSAR CATHEDRAL CHURCH’S SUICIDE BOMBING CASE AND PEACE JOURNALISM

Religious radicalism which leads to terrorist attacks has long been a thorn in Indonesia as a culturally rich secular country. In spite of that, present-day radical religious groups are weakened after years of spreading terrors. Their weakening is indicated especially by their shift to internet-based radicalization strategy. It opens up an opportunity for collective counterterrorism and deradicalization attempts regardless of how implicit and shrouded the strategy may be. One of ways to seize that, is the implementation of Peace Journalism principle which has been proven as successful in building peace and preventing the proliferation of violent radical ideologies. This Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) study aims at discussing the representation of social actors in The Jakarta Post and Tempo online news about Makassar Cathedral church’s suicide bombing case and its correlation to the implementation of Peace Journalism principles.

GENDER ĠN TURKĠSH CHĠLDREN LĠTERATURE (1): THE REPRESENTATĠON OF GĠRL AS A SOCĠAL ACTOR

Children's literature products; have an important function in terms of preparing children for life, setting an example for them and giving them experience. Regardless of the age group, the child identifies with the heroes of the stories he / she reads and creates a model for himself from these characters. Fictional characters have an important role in helping children acquire the necessary skills to solve the problems they experience in daily life. Children seek answers to the questions that arise in their minds through these characters in the books. This study is the first of a series of studies in which the concept of girl in Turkish children‘s literature is planned to be examined in different dimensions. In this study, the representation of the term girl in Turkish children's books was investigated in the context of gender and gender roles. In the study, the collocation analysis method was used with a corpus-based approach, aiming to reach objective and more generalizable results based on a large database. In this context, firstly, the collocations of the kız (girl) in the Turkish Children's Literature Corpus, which is the most comprehensive corpus on Turkish children's literature, were determined and then evaluated in terms of overdetermination, identification, appraisement, nomination, individualisation, assimilation, indetermination, and differentiation categories, which Van Leeuwen (1996) emphasized the importance in the representation of social actors. As a result of the analysis, it has been revealed that the collocation patterns in Turkish children's literature can cause the formation of a girl prototype drawn in the minds of children within the framework of gender stereotypes.

The Representational Strategies of Lionization and Victimization in ISIS’s Online Magazine, Dabiq

ABSTRACT This paper is a multimodal critical discourse study of self-representation in ISIS’s e-magazine, Dabiq, employing Social Movement Theory and Van Leeuwen’s Socio-semantic Inventory. By analyzing the linguistic and non-linguistic features in the representation of social actors and actions in Dabiq, ISIS’s implied ideology at the macro level, which is to convince the prospective recruits and at the same time, to legitimize its brutality, is revealed from both textual and visual perspectives. The results showed an interplay of the contradictory representational choices, namely “lionization” and “victimization” that has enabled ISIS to create a powerful narrative. By portraying its so-called “knights” as undefeatable lions and glorifying their acts of violence, while, excluding its killed, injured or imprisoned agents both textually and visually, ISIS has attempted to provoke admiration among its current or potential followers. Significantly, they simultaneously depict an air of victimhood to further legitimize their act of terror and represent themselves as the godsent saviours of the victims, and confer a sense of security in their hearts. Victimization, however, has rarely been applied to the Mujahidin of the State who are fighting at forefronts, but rather to the State itself as a territory (Caliphate) and to the Muslims who are presumably plagued by the enemies’ transgression and injustice.

Review on Cognitive Mediation in Social Actor Representation in Discourse

This paper has set off to unearth how cognitive construal operations anchor social actor representation is discourse. Most of the previous literature resorted to different approaches to deal with the domain of social actor representation focusing on analyzing the text itself rather than taking into concertation how the given linguistic choices provoke different conceptualizations in the mind of the reader. Thus, the present paper seeks to address the association between social and cognitive aspects of the text. It is motivated by the lack of rigorous critical sociocognitive analysis that address the enacted ideology as a social and cognitive phenomenon. Furthermore, the paper highlights the crucial role of cognitive conceptual abilities as a mediator between text and society and recommends the adaptation of sociocognitive multimodal analysis to qualitatively and quantitatively analyse text to cover both descriptive and interpretive levels of analysis.

Referential Strategies of the Correlation between Representational Gestures and Representation of Social Actors in Al-Fatlawi's Interview. A CDA Study

The present study deals with the gestural behavior in regard with linguistic manipulation and ideology in discourse, and how they work together to construct socio-cognitive representation of social actors; As a multimodal critical discourse analysis, the study seeks to diagnose representations in the communicative interaction in which gestures and speech function in meaning making, and to reveal the kind of ideas, absences and assumptions underlying the linguistic patterns expressed in speech and their associate representative gestures. The study works on uncovering the correlation between representational gestures (iconic, metaphoric and deictic) and specific linguistic patterns (circulating the representation of social actors with a polarization of Us and Them) in Al-Fatlawi's political speech (an interview on the channel of Al-Rasheed).

STRATEGIES FOR REPRESENTING SOCIAL ACTORS: A CASE STUDY

The study explored the strategies used for representing the two social actors, DonaldTrump and Hillary Clinton as a case-study. Data was the transcript of the speech delivered at the 2016Democratic National Convention (DNC) by President Obama. Grounded in the view that an actor isdefined in terms of who he is and what he does, the study adopted a combined approach drawn on vanLeeuwen’s social actor representation framework (SAR) and Halliday’s transitivity analysis. Findingsreveal the speaker deployed selected strategies to support, to identify with Clinton, and to other Trumpat the same time. The use of van Dijk’s ideological square showed how the Us vs. Them characterizationfunctioned as a strategy to further legitimation or de-legitimation of social actors. The study suggeststhat representations are potentially biased. However, it implicitly recognizes a more powerful role ofnon-discursive social practices. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered.

Heroes and villains: multimodal identity construction in children’s wartime visual narratives

AbstractThe article investigates the Self and Other binaries in wartime visual literature published in Bengali-language children’s periodicals in West Bengal, India during the Bangladesh Liberation Struggle 1971. The study applies a critical multimodal framework using the Social Actors Approach and Social Semiotics within the Discourse-Historical Approach. The binaries are defined by the representation and subsequent differentiation of physical, linguistic, and cultural features of the Bengali and non-Bengali social actors and through their actions in the plots. The representation of social actors in the texts conforms to as well as deviates from typical wartime propaganda.

Representation of Social Actors in Medical Humanities: A Multimodal Study of Selected English and Arabic Infographics on COVID-19

Representation of Social Actors in Medical Humanities: A Multimodal Study of Selected English and Arabic Infographics on COVID-19

Critical Discourse Analysis: The Negative Representation of the French President in France's English Online News

There is a scarcity of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) studies on the representation of social actors in news media, thus this study addressed this research gap by analysing the way news represented the French President Emmanuel Macron, regarding his controversial support of Samuel Paty, a history teacher in France who was murdered because he showed a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in his class. This research aims to see the representation of Emmanuel Macron from the perspective of the French media, The Connexion France, which published their news in English language online to reach world-wide audience. Four articles of the news were purposively selected for this CDA study, which were published from October 18 until November 1, 2020. The French President’s representation was analysed with the nomination and predication strategies. Results showed that the Connexion France uses four nomination strategies to refer Emmanuel Macron. The professional anthroponyms refer to Emmanual Macron as “the President”, proper names as “Emmanuel Macron” to be the centre of the discourse, synecdoche as “Emmanuel Macron”, and deixis as “he” to avoid repetition the subject of the text. Two predication strategies were also used, the explicit predicate of how the President “has promised” action against Islamists and presupposition from the way the news linked pictures of boycotted French supermarket products with the President. This research provides a take on fresh news with CDA and can beneficial for the students who learn English language by showing how the media uses language for political figures.

Government Agencies and their Discourses of Flood Disaster Preparedness: Impact on Response, Action and Community Empowerment

One of the severe global threats facing the world today is flooding. Similarly, Malaysia is faced with monsoon and flash floods which are the most severe "climate-related natural disasters" for the country. The Malaysian government is the main stakeholder and provider of aid in every stage of disaster. Consequently, the involvement of flood risk communities is said to be minimal and overlooked. Researchers have also stated that there is still a lack of research on human involvement and response. Thus, addressing these gaps, we take on a social constructionist view to situate flood disaster as a social practice and discourse to investigate how government officials ‘talk’ about their involvement in flood disaster mitigation and management. Our analysis is based on the perspective that their ‘talk’ evokes specific disaster discourses which relate to the different ways of understanding flood disaster, and that these discourses in turn shape and impact their response and action for flood mitigation and management as well as community empowerment. To this end, we adopt Van Leeuwen’s representation of social actors and social action framework to identify the disaster discourses drawn upon by the officials. The findings show that government officials employ various discourses that draw on the ‘ traditional framework of relief and rehabilitation ’ and a ‘ top-down government centric approach ’ that focus less on community empowerment. We see a need for the inclusion of a ‘ discourse of shared responsibility ’ that is part of a ‘ proactive approach ’, and sees all parties as partners, and in particular, flood risk communities.

Debunking Myths about Poverty: Social Actor Representation of the Participants of the Canceled Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to explore the representation of participants of the canceled Basic Income Pilot in Ontario, Canada. Applying social actor representation analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, we examined news articles and government Hansard records about the canceled Ontario Basic Income Pilot in 2018. A number of myths about poverty emerged in our analysis (e.g., “people are lazy, unmotivated, and need incentives to work”; “poor people are mentally ill and drug addicted”). We challenge the veracity of these myths, showing how they perpetuate an individual explanation of poverty, and are deeply flawed.

Representing people in execution news: Reference terms, identity, and ideology

Integrating a social psychological perspective into Van Leeuwen's framework of social actor representation (2008), this study investigates the ways in which various forms of person reference are selected to position executioners, executed persons, and victims in execution reports. Based on a corpus of major broadsheets in Thailand, the analysis reveals extreme and, oftentimes disturbing, labels that assign polarized identities to each group. Exclusion and impersonal nominations mystify the executioners. Oppositional functional and identification labels disparage the executed individuals by exaggerating impression of legal violation and brutality, while idealizing the victims by emphasizing innocence, vulnerability and helplessness. It is argued that the patterns therein, motivated by the retentionist ideology, are socially divisive: they work to facilitate the public's moral disengagement from feeling complicit in the execution and constitute key to normalizing the violence of state killing from that inflicted by the condemned.

Reading Peterloo as Social Practice: the Lexical Representation of Social Actors in Three London-based Papers

ABSTRACT This article provides a keyword in context analysis of three editorials published in London-based papers regarding the events of 16 August 1819 in Manchester: one daily paper, The Courier, and two weeklies, Sherwin’s Political Register and The Examiner. It aims to offer lexical evidence of the struggle for the cultural-political appropriation and representation of Peterloo ‘in public consciousness’. To this end, insights from critical discourse analysis, specifically social actor theory, are used, and elements of rhetorical and argumentative analysis are presented.

Twitter and abortion

AbstractThis paper explores the misogynistic abuse against female Chilean politicians who openly supported a pro-choice bill that allowed the access to abortion in limited circumstances. We analysed the verbal abuse targeted at these politicians during the legislation of the abortion bill (2015–2017) and the linguistic and discursive patterns of online abuse. To that end, we collected tweets from this legislation period and created a subset with specific milestones of the parliamentary debate. Further, we undertook a corpus-assisted analysis of the data, focusing on collocations and keywords, which were then analysed in the light ofvan Leeuwen’s (2008)framework on the representation of social actors and legitimation strategies. Results evidence that violence against women in power can take forms other than the explicit sexual, physical, and psychological threats that are commonly identified. Violence targets these women as it is claimed that they are unsuitable to legislate for allegedly having tolerated and protected crime. Therefore, the corrective function of abuse takes the form of legal actions against their crimes.

The newsworthiness of Li Na—A critical comparative analysis of Chinese and international news media

This paper compares the discursive construction of newsworthiness between Chinese and international media in their English-language news reporting about the Chinese tennis player, Li Na. Adopting corpus linguistic methods, discursive news values analysis framework (DNVA) and a modified network of social actor representation, this paper examines news values through key words, naming strategies and evaluative lexis in four news outlets from China, Britain, Australia and the United States. Li Na's Eliteness is enhanced through constructions of Superlativeness, Positivity, Impact and Unexpectedness in all news outlets. However, the international media highlight individualism and Li Na's rebelliousness in the face of systemic change in Chinese sporting culture, while Chinese media emphasizes collectivism and nationalism and Li Na's responsibility towards the nation. The corpus-assisted discourse analysis reveals the ideological forces that are at play in positioning her in relation to the roles and responsibilities she faces as she negotiates competing sports systems in China.

Character’s Exclusion and Inclusion Representations in Sinan Antoon's 'The Corpse Washer'

The current study is an attempt to demonstrate how characters are represented in Sinan Antoon’s Self-translated novel ‘The Corpse Washer’. The study adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis framework to analyse major characters' utterances through the use of van Leeuwen's socio-semantic Model ‘Social Actor Representation’. The linguistic analysis of characters' utterances aims at analysing the active and passive representation within the novel as well as the character’s importance by tracking the frequency of representation. The main aim of this study is to check the applicability of Social actor representation to literary social actors within novels since previous studies used this model to analyse non-fictional social actors. The result shows that the characters are included more than excluded and activated more than passivated due to the characters of the novel. Moreover, the chosen model for this study shows its effectiveness in analysing the selected data.

Political Myth in Trump's Speech on Immigration: A Discourse Historical Approach

Due to the ever-changing political scene and the increasing effect of political language on people's perception, linguistic analysis is inevitable to understand political matters. By using myths in speeches, politicians legitimise specific political actions and motivate the public to accept these actions This study inspects the concept of 'Political Myth' by Bottici (2007) within the framework of Discourse Historical Approach [DHA] and Van Leeuwen's model of Social Actor's Representation. The present study examines the utilisation of the political myth of Conspiracism in Trump's Immigration speech to legitimize the rejection of refugees. The USA, known as the land of opportunities, has a long history of rejecting refugees and immigrants based on the myth of Conspiracism. In the famous Immigration speech, former President, Donald Trump, relied on promoting anti-immigrant sentiments to justify rejecting refugees. The data under study comprises extracts that referred to immigrants/refugees and American citizens. This paper attempts to answer the questions: What is meant by Political Myth? What are the principles of the political myth of Conspiracism? What are the referential strategies used to depict the in-group and the out-group? To what extent did the depiction of the in-group and the out-group fulfil the principles of the myth of Conspiracism?. Overall, this study indicates the usefulness of examining political myth to understand the political status quo. Also, it sheds light on the importance of linguistic analysis to decipher and evaluate politicians' actions.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Gaza Marches of Return Coverage in Selected Newspapers

The current study aimed at discovering biases through comparing the used journalistic and lexicalizations practices in quotations patterns and representations of social actors in news coverage of the Gaza Marches of Return. The selected newspapers were The Guardian, the New York Times, The Jordan Times and Haaretz. The study sample comprised 32 news articles and 8 editorials. The findings of the study revealed that more space was given to Israeli political and military actors over their Palestinian counterparts in the New York Times and Haaretz. The Guardian and the Jordan Times quotations of Palestinian civilian actors focused on human suffering and casualties themes while Haaretz and the NYT quoted them instigating deadly attacks among other themes. The use of negative themes along with negative speakers’ descriptions of Palestinian political actors revealed biased stances against Palestinian Civilian Actors. In addition, the used reporting verbs, unbalanced quotations distributions and word counts of social actors’ quotations pointed at biased practices and adoption of one party narrative in the case of the NYT, Haaretz and the Jordan Times.