Social Discourse Research Articles

PSYCHOLOGIC-PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF STUDYING GERMAN SOCIAL DISCOURSE (BASED ON VOCABULARY MATERIAL FROM HANDBUCH KNIGGE BY BIRGIT ALTHAUS)

On the basis of modern approaches, the article substantiates the problems of learning the vocabulary of German social discourse in classes at higher education institutions. The definition of discourse has been clarified according to various theories and approaches. The main aspects of studying the vocabulary of social discourse are highlighted. Based on the systematization and generalization of the theoretical assets of domestic and foreign researchers, as well as through comparative analysis, the main methods of learning social vocabulary were established: 1) use of factual material with a sufficient number of texts on social topics; 2) study of stable phrases and clichés; 3) the possibility of forming language competence with a set of exercises; 4) creation of conditions for independent work of students; 5) use of dictionaries and reference books. The method of working with the book Handbuch Knigge by Birgit Althaus, which is devoted to the rules of behavior and etiquette in various situations of everyday communication, is described. Based on the text, the choice of vocabulary of social discourse for students is substantiated (compound words, established clichés, non-equivalent vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, etc.). It was determined that vocabulary of social discourse has recently become one of the most studied spheres in modern linguistics. A comprehensive approach to the problem of learning social vocabulary stimulates the formation of language competence, which in turn leads to the formation of a holistic view of the culture and language of the German people. According to this, the research of social vocabulary for students with the aim of its further use in some day-to-day situations is promising.
 Keywords: social discourse; compound noun; stable expression; correct use; background knowledge; language competence; speech situation; mentality.

Discussion of Heated Tobacco Products on Twitter Following IQOS's Modified-Risk Tobacco Product Authorization and US Import Ban: Content Analysis.

Understanding public opinions about emerging tobacco products is important to inform future interventions and regulatory decisions. Heated tobacco products (HTPs) are an emerging tobacco product category promoted by the tobacco industry as a "better alternative" to combustible cigarettes. Philip Morris International's IQOS is leading the global HTP market and recently has been subject to important policy events, including the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) modified-risk tobacco product (MRTP) authorization (July 2020) and the US import ban (November 2021). Although limited in their legal implications outside the United States, these policy events have been quoted in global news outlets and Philip Morris International's promotional communications, showing how they may potentially impact global tobacco regulation. Given the impending return of IQOS to the US market, understanding how the policy events were received through social media discourse will provide valuable insights to inform global tobacco control policy. This study aims to examine HTP-related social media discourse around important policy events. We analyzed HTP-related posts on Twitter during the time period that included IQOS's MRTP authorization in the United States and the US import ban, examining personal testimonial, news/information, and direct marketing/retail tweets separately. We also examined how the tweets discussed health and policy. A total of 10,454 public English tweets (posted from June 2020 to December 2021) were collected using HTP-related keywords. We randomly sampled 2796 (26.7%) tweets and conducted a content analysis. We used pairwise co-occurrence analyses to evaluate connections across themes. Tweet volumes peaked around IQOS-related policy events. Among all tweets, personal testimonials were the most common (1613/2796, 57.7%), followed by news/information (862/2796, 30.8%) and direct marketing/retail (321/2796, 11%). Among personal testimonials, more tweets were positive (495/1613, 30.7%) than negative (372/1613, 23.1%), often comparing the health risks of HTPs with cigarettes (402/1613, 24.9%) or vaping products (252/1613, 15.6%). Approximately 10% (31/321) of the direct marketing/retail tweets promoted international delivery, suggesting cross-border promotion. More than a quarter of tweets (809/2796, 28.9%) discussed US and global policy, including misinterpretation about IQOS being a "safer" tobacco product after the US FDA's MRTP authorization. Neutral testimonials mentioning the IQOS brand (634/1613, 39.3%) and discussing policy (378/1613, 23.4%) showed the largest pairwise co-occurrence. Results suggest the need for careful communication about the meaning of MRTP authorizations and relative risks of tobacco products. Many tweets expressed HTP-favorable opinions referring to reduced health risks, even though the US FDA has denied marketing of the HTP with reduced risk claims. The popularity of social media as an information source with global reach poses unique challenges in health communication and health policies. While many countries restrict tobacco marketing via the web, our results suggest that retailers may circumvent such regulations by operating overseas.

Performing legitimate choice narratives in physics: possibilities for under-represented physics students

Higher education physics has long been a field with a disproportionately skewed representation in terms of gender, class, and ethnicity. Responding to this challenge, this study explores the trajectories of “unexpected” (i.e., demographically under-represented) students into higher education physics. Based on timeline-guided life-history interviews with 21 students enrolled in university physics programs across Sweden, the students’ accounts of their trajectories into physics are analyzed as choice narratives. The analysis explores what ingredients are used to tell a legitimate story of physics participation, in relation to dominant discourses in physics culture, and wider social and political discourses. Results indicate that students narrate their choice as based on motivations of physics being a prestigious and challenging subject, of a deep interest in and a natural ability for physics, as well as a wish to use physics for contributing to the world. While most of these affiliations to physics has been documented in earlier research, the study shows how they are negotiated in relation to social locations such as gender, class and migration history, and used to perform an authentic and legitimate choice narrative in the interview situation. Furthermore, the study reports and discusses the possibility of conceiving the role of physics in students’ lives as something beyond a “pure”, intellectually challenging, and “prestigious” subject. In contrast, and with implications for widening participation, the stories of “unexpected” physics students indicate that physics can be reconceived as socially and altruistically oriented.

Representation in Children’s Book Council of Australia Early Childhood and Picture Book Awarded Books (2018-2020)

The call for more diversity in children’s literature has increased over the past decade. Many researchers draw on Rudine Sims Bishop’s theory of Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Glass Doors (1990) to argue that children need to be able to see their lives reflected in the media they consume, not just as caricatures or tokenistic characters, but as protagonists and everyday people. The prizing of children’s literature acts as a stamp of approval for what is considered quality literature, and often results in an undiscerning market that purchases texts simply because of their awarded prize. The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year award is one of the most prestigious literary awards available in the country, particularly for younger readers. This critical content analysis examines the winners, honoured, and short-listed texts for the Book of the Year awards in the Picture Book and Early Childhood categories for the years 2018-2020. The analysis found that the majority of the texts reinforce the current social and cultural discourse of the straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied male. Given the social and cultural impact of the CBCA awards, it is essential that the discourses and ways of being that are represented in the awarded texts are critically investigated to ensure they are representative of their readership and do not perpetuate a damaging message to readers about their or others’ identity.

The Discursive Organization of Disability as a Moral and Epistemic Construct within a University Accommodations Office

Abstract Definitions of disability abound, but it has been represented in prevailing social discourses as both proper to the individual and the medical institution. Discourses that portray disability as such are inherently interdiscursive in nature, as they draw upon, and are embedded within, larger discourses of what counts as evidence of not only knowledge, but knowledge of disability in particular. By employing a discourse analytic approach to analyzing in-depth interviews with members of a university accommodations office, I show how they locally reproduce and inadvertently reaffirm such discourses of disability, as they organize disability according to type: physical and cognitive. In their talk, these categories of disability are presented as oppositional and hierarchical constructs, with physical disability being discursively constructed as preferable to cognitive disability. I consider how this practice ties into an empiricist tradition that argues that to know disability means that it must be observable, measurable, or otherwise verifiable.

Process of constructing alternative social work discourses in Asia: A case study of Buddhist social work as social representations

AbstractThis preliminary study examined the process of constructing alternative discourses on social work. It focused on the exploration of Buddhist social work by researchers and practitioners in Asian countries, including monks and nuns. The present investigation was grounded in the analytical perspective of the social representation theory posited in the domain of social psychology. Books, reports, and any relevant papers written in English were collected as primary data sources (n = 22), and a qualitatively descriptive analysis was conducted on these data. The scrutiny specifically attended to the mechanism of familiarization, which comprises the process of anchoring and objectifying. The study's findings revealed the process of intentionally (re)naming activities and related events that were previously not necessarily described as Buddhist social work. These practices and occurrences were then classified and positioned within a particular cross‐border paradigm. Additionally, some monks, nuns, and other stakeholders became conversant with discussion and research activities related to Buddhist social work. Objectifying actions, such as (re)discovering and reproducing, thus became taken for granted by such functionaries. These findings suggest that cross‐border Buddhist social work discourses were actively constructed through the usage of relevant terms and concepts. In other words, the results of this study indicate that alternative discourse is internationally becoming the familiar form of discussion within the discipline.

Bridging the cultural divide in social discourse, Part 5: Practicing intellectual humility in the real world

Bridging the cultural divide in social discourse, Part 5: Practicing intellectual humility in the real world In this fifth and final article in this series, Peter C. Hill discusses bridging the cultural divide in social discourse, mainly practicing intellectual humility in the real world. People will have differing views on almost anything of interest. So, the critical question is how we view the diversity of opinions and negotiate our differences when they occur. In the first four articles of this five-part series in Open Access Government, I have proposed a concept that has generated considerable research interest in the human sciences called intellectual humility (IH). The focus of this concluding article will be on how IH, as something good for individuals and society, can be put into practice in the real world.

AT THE ORIGINS OF BRITISH GOTHIC: SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES TITUS ANDRONICUS AND MACBETH

The study of the most ‘bloody’ Shakespeare’s dramas — his first tragedy Titus Andronicus (1588–1593, staged 1594) and the last of his four great tragedies, Macbeth (1606) — makes clear the presence and gradual sophistication of the gothic vector in his work, and reveals topoi that have become universals of Gothic literature. Among them are horror as an inescapable component of human existence; evil and villains who violate the moral norm and the balance in society and nature; victim heroines; mysterious, supernatural element; demonized past; and most importantly — the theme of God and devil. Titus Andronicus is considered here in a new perspective as a ‘tragedy without a hero’ and as a gothic grotesque with elements of the comic, which are supposed to dilute the atmosphere of horror but only intensify it. Shakespeare retained the ‘horror aesthetics’ in Macbeth, a play about ‘the drug of power’, but he transferred the source of evil, that shakes society and nature, into the consciousness of man. The metaphysical view of life is strong in Shakespeare’s tragedies, but there is no single religious ideology as in the poetry of Dante. Poet, sensitive to various trends which fed the air of the early Modern period, Shakespeare conveyed the unsteady atmosphere of life in the late 16th — early 17th century. The sources of horror in his tragedies one can find in historical and literary tradition (Ovid, Seneca, chronicles), but first of all — in the social and cultural discourse of the epoch. Following the tradition of Shakespeare who was the key figure of English literary mainstream, Gothic authors of the late 18th — early 19th centuries (H. Walpole, A. Radcliffe, W. Beckford a.o.) legitimized their own, considered marginal, genre.

The manosphere under the microscope: a critical discourse analysis of the news media reporting of Rowan Baxter’s murder of Hannah Clarke and her family

ABSTRACT This qualitative research addresses the question: how do antifeminist narratives emerge from Australian news media reporting of violence against women? Scholarship in this area is limited; however, emerging research reveals that antifeminist online communities are increasing and are becoming more volatile. Most concerning is their use of false and misleading news media reporting on violence against women to legitimise their ideology and promote recruitment. In this article, I will be informed by a Faircloughian critical discourse analysis framework underpinned by Lazar’s conceptualisation of feminist critical discourse analysis praxis methodology. One hundred and eight Australian traditional news media articles concerning Rowan Baxter’s murder of Hannah Clark and their three children Aaliyah, Laianah, and Trey, published between February 19 2020 and July 25 2020 are examined. A linear narrative arc unfolds within the media, beginning at initial reporting, to the story entering the social discourse. Two key antifeminist narrative themes emerged amongst the chaotic assemblage of discourses; incident and perpetrator as aberrant, and men as victims. Findings from this research contribute to the emerging research area of antifeminist discourses in online communities.

Iyotheethasariyam—A Historiography of the Marginalized People

Pandit C. Iyothee Thass, better known as Iyothee Thass Pandithar (1845–1914), was a social thinker who lived in Tamil Nadu and has now become a part of the social academic discourse of contemporary times. He is well-read in various disciplines like sociology, politics, religion, culture, medicine and journalism. His way of thinking is known as Iyotheethasariyam. Instead of the traditional Vedic history that focused on Brahmins and Hinduism, he created an alternative history named ‘Indra Desa Sarithiram’ by focusing on Buddhism and the oppressed people, which is considered the first subaltern history written in Tamil from the perspective of the oppressed. The article discusses the inadequacies of traditional histories and the need for alternative histories. Furthermore, it enquires about the importance of oral data in reconstructing the histories of the oppressed and neglected people by the ruling class, the methods of writing alternative histories, and the historiographical strategies that help the oppressed communities to reconstruct their histories through the thoughts of Iyothee Thass.

The Polish Uprising of 1863 in the Social and Political Discourse of the Czech Kingdom

The article analyzes the views of leading Czech public and political fi gures and publicists on the prerequisites, course, features and potential consequences of the Polish uprising of 1863, which broke out on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland and the Belarusian-Lithuanian provinces of the Russian Empire. Most Czech newspapers, initially striving for objective coverage of the uprising, soon completely switched to pro-Polish positions. This was explained both by the infl uence of Polish propaganda and by the position of the Western European press, which supported the Polish insurgents. At the same time, a number of leading Czech politicians, including the famous historian F. Palacky and F. Rieger, criticized the Polish uprising, noting that the plans of Polish politicians to include vast Ukrainian and Belarusian lands in the future Poland are unfair. In addition, Palacky sharply criticized the Polish rebels for their radicalism and the use of terror methods. According to Palacky, the Polish uprising was initially doomed to failure and was a colossal misfortune for all Slavic peoples, since objectively only opponents of the Slavs and Russia benefi ted from it. Similar criticism of the Polish uprising was made by a number of Czech scholars and publicists, including F. Jezbera and J. Rank. The ideological struggle and controversy surrounding the Polish uprising politicized Czech public opinion and contributed to the split of the previously unifi ed Czech national party into Old Czechs and Young Czechs.

Social exclusion in public policies and the micropolitics of an association founded by migrants

The theme of social exclusion has gained visibility in recent years through political discourse. This paper problematises the issue of social exclusion by analysing the hegemonic discourse in public policies and the alternative discourse grounded on the policies of an association, a civil society organization, facilitated by migrants and their descendants. The analysis is the result of a participatory research study based on the collection of documentation and semi-structured interviews. The hegemonic discourse on social exclusion was analysed through empirical data from the perspective of those who inhabit and/or intervene in a neighbourhood that is the object of public policies targeting the so-called 'excluded'. Several paradoxes were identified between the social exclusion discourses conveyed in public policies and in the micropolitics of this association. The discourse, goals and working methods that characterise the micropolitics of the association contribute to the emergence of new forms of singularisation, through adult education initiatives.

Power structures in economics and society: Some remarks on the future of non-mainstream economics

Economic approaches that emphasize power dynamics in the political economy or rely on a non-mathematical, non-positivistic, pluralistic methodology are either almost marginalized in (heterodoxy) or excluded from (transdisciplinary non-mainstream) the field of economics. Relying on a combination of the Discursive Political Economy of Economics and a critical sociology of economic knowledge, this article gives a sociological explanation of these paradigmatic conditions and the related future prospects of non-mainstream research within economics in Germany, by incorporating social theory, discourse, and power analysis, and philosophy of science. In doing so, the article argues for a special role of economics in the political economy, which is associated with a legitimatizing and economic-knowledgeproducing function for non-epistemic issues. In a dialectic understanding of society and science, the implementation of classification rankings such as rankings and of a pyramidal hierarchy of publications is viewed as the disciplinary response to its social role. This results in an unequal distribution of power in the field of economics in Germany. The article concludes that a pluralistic change in modern economics cannot be expected, as long there is no social change in terms of the interconnection between the two demands for academic reputation and economic knowledge.

Characterizing Precision Nutrition Discourse on Twitter: Quantitative Content Analysis.

It is possible that tailoring dietary approaches to an individual's genomic profile could provide optimal dietary inputs for biological functioning and support adherence to dietary management protocols. The science required for such nutrigenetic and nutrigenomic profiling is not yet considered ready for broad application by the scientific and medical communities; however, many personalized nutrition products are available in the marketplace, creating the potential for hype and misleading information on social media. Twitter provides a unique big data source that provides real-time information. Therefore, it has the potential to disseminate evidence-based health information, as well as misinformation. We sought to characterize the landscape of precision nutrition content on Twitter, with a specific focus on nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics. We focused on tweet authors, types of content, and presence of misinformation. Twitter Archiver was used to capture tweets from September 1, 2020, to December 1, 2020, using keywords related to nutrition and genetics. A random sample of tweets was coded using quantitative content analysis by 4 trained coders. Codebook-driven, quantified information about tweet authors, content details, information quality, and engagement metrics were compiled and analyzed. The most common categories of tweets were precision nutrition products and nutrigenomic concepts. About a quarter (132/504, 26.2%) of tweet authors presented themselves as science experts, medicine experts, or both. Nutrigenetics concepts most frequently came from authors with science and medicine expertise, and tweets about the influence of genes on weight were more likely to come from authors with neither type of expertise. A total of 14.9% (75/504) of the tweets were noted to contain untrue information; these were most likely to occur in the nutrigenomics concepts topic category. By evaluating social media discourse on precision nutrition on Twitter, we made several observations about the content available in the information environment through which individuals can learn about related concepts and products. Tweet content was consistent with the indicators of medical hype, and the inclusion of potentially misleading and untrue information was common. We identified a contingent of users with scientific and medical expertise who were active in discussing nutrigenomics concepts and products and who may be encouraged to share credible expert advice on precision nutrition and tackle false information as this technology develops.

East–West Encounters in Early Bulgarian Socialism: Dimitar Blagoev’s Theoretical Legacy in Three International Contexts

ABSTRACTThe problem of external influences is of primary importance for making sense of early Bulgarian socialism. The establishment of the first Marxist party in the Balkans, in a country with underdeveloped capitalism and almost no industrial proletariat requires explanations which are usually found in literature around the East–West (Russia-Europe) axis. This article proposes to analyse the theoretical legacy of Dimitar Blagoev (1856–1924), the founder of Bulgarian socialism, against the background of three intertwining discursive contexts: Western Marxism, Russian Narodnichestvo, and Russian Marxism. By doing this, it becomes possible to outline more clearly the basic features of Blagoev’s discourse on socialism as well as identify the ways in which external idea transfers are used actively to legitimise Blagoev’s own position. Making use of a discourse-historical approach and discursive genealogies, the research establishes Blagoev’s strategies of monopolising the Bulgarian socialist discourse through reappropriation of topics and recontextualisation of concepts from other socialist discources. The article argues that this monopolisation helped Blagoev overcome, for a time, the dilemmas and controversies in the Bulgarian Marxist left, to the benefit of his ideological authority.

Orthographic Analysis of Social Media Discourse: The Case of WhatsApp Messages of Undergraduate Students at the National University of Lesotho

This paper examined the orthography of words used by the National University of Lesotho undergraduate students on WhatsApp. Although language is regarded as a coherent and homogeneous system, it can also be studied in its variations across time and space and how it is actually used in social interaction. Youth immersion in the use of social media has successfully made the presence of the digital era to be felt not only in social life but also in communicative competencies. This paper recognised the youth linguistic creativity as a concept that characterised nomenclature of spelling conventions observed on social media. Using voluntary participatory approach, data was collected from undergraduate students majoring in English at the University who volunteered to share their WhatsApp posts for the purpose of this study. Data revealed that youths’ social media discourse featured different orthographic representations as a result of accent stylisation, substitution, acronym, hybrid, clipping, coalescence, onomatopoeic spellings and deletions. The paper concluded that youth social media discourse deviates from conventional spellings, and thus serves as a linguistic innovation from the part of the youths. It further concluded that social media discourse is a true reflection of language diversity in this digital era especially with regards to the language of the youth globally.

Glimpsing Indonesia’s Social Media Discourse: What Goes on During the Covid-19 Infodemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an "infodemic", of false and true information circulating on social media platforms. This phenomenon has posed various challenges in implementing disaster management programs to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, both globally and specifically in Indonesia. This study seeks to investigate the public's perception of social media discourse during the COVID-19 infodemic in Indonesia. Both primary and secondary data were collected to gain a comprehensive understanding of the issue. The primary data was collected through a focused group discussion (FGD) method. Meanwhile, secondary data sources were gathered using a literature review of scholarly articles. Approximately 60 articles were selected from sources such as Google Scholar and PubMed, published between 2019 and 2022. The articles were selected based on their relevance of the topic discussion. The study used Critical Discourse Analysis by Fairclough and Wodak (1997) to analyze the data. Both of the data were then synthesized to glimpse how the infodemic has impacted various disaster management efforts across various parts of the country. The results revealed that the infodemic has worsened public perceptions of how the Indonesian government handles COVID-19 as well as disrupting various disaster management processes. The study finds that the infodemic's impact on the public's perception has resulted in misinformation hampering effective pandemic management efforts. By recognizing the severity of the infodemic and working to combat it, Indonesia can more effectively manage the COVID-19 pandemic and minimize its negative impact on the public.

Discourses on language teaching, language learning and linguistic diversity in teacher education: the case of English in Iraqi Kurdistan

ABSTRACT In this study, we investigate linguistic diversity in teacher education in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a setting where discourses on emigration and re-emigration are strong. The aim is to explore social discourses on linguistic diversity as constructed in teacher training programmes for teaching English to primary and secondary school pupils, in course descriptions at two universities, and the implications of these discourses for the suggested teaching practices. Four discourses were identified: double monolingualism, contrastive perspective, linguistic diversity as one of many types of diversity and English as a gateway to future possibilities. Students’ earlier linguistic resources in other languages were treated as negative for the development of their English-language skills. English and Kurdish were treated in ways that suggest they should be kept separate and skills in other languages were rendered invisible. This is likely to have an impact on students’ teaching in the future, making them less inclined to recognise their pupils’ prior knowledge of other languages. We conclude that, more research is needed focusing on issues of circular migration and diaspora, and on other themes than those dominant in the West and the Global North, such as high number of immigrants and issues of integration and assimilation.

Does moving to paid work make me a better mum? Mismatches between political and social ideologies of ‘good motherhood’ and that of lone mothers in the UK

The current design of UK public policy and mainstream political and social discourse has consistently equated paid work with good citizenship and desirable parenting. The article presents findings from a recent qualitative study that explores how lone mothers with different moral rationalities judge themselves before and after making a transition from welfare (and being full-time carers) to paid work. The findings suggest that the design of public policy and related discourses worked well with the moral rationalities of some lone mothers who believed that paid work made them better mothers. However, it left others with moral values on direct care behind, as they suffered from physical and emotional exhaustion and feelings of guilt in paid work. The article highlights how dominant ideologies reinforce the pre-existing hierarchy of paid work and care, with the latter being viewed as deserving of less acknowledgement.

Social Deixis in Students’ Writing: A Case Study of Indonesian Secondary Students

The social position or role of participants in communicative events is referred to as social deixis. The parts of language structure that encode individuals' social identities are referred to as social deixis. The current study examined the use of social deixis in students’ writing. It focused on secondary students’ writing. The students were allowed to choose the topic of writing. Using qualitative research, this study collected the data through documentation. The data were analyzed through data condensation, data display, drawing, and conclusion. The findings revealed that students' writing only contained relational social discourse. The students' writing frequently used addressee honorific relational social discourse. For the purpose of showing respect, students frequently used relational social deduction. Readers are persuaded to do a particular action by the students' goal as well.