Critical Discourse Studies

Tourism and self-Orientalism in Oman: a critical discourse analysis

by William Feighery

It is established in the literature that touristic images of the Orient  are grounded in Occidental authority and... more It is established in the literature that touristic images of the Orient  are grounded in Occidental authority and dominant global power relations. Scholars have suggested that indigenous image creators in the Middle East continue to read from an Occidental script, perpetuating oppositional perspectives of us and them, the familiar and the strange, the dynamic and the atrophied – fuelling the development of neo-Orientalist tourist sites/sights. This paper explores the extent to which such scripting continues to persist in official representations of rentier states in the Arabian Peninsula. Through a critical discourse analysis of the Omani tourism promotional film Welcome to My Country, it is suggested that when Oman speaks for itself within a Western discourse of tourism promotion, what results is a form of self-Orientalism.

Der Cyber-Krieg der (so) nicht kommt: Erzählte Katastrophen als (Nicht)Wissenspraxis

by Myriam Dunn Cavelty

forthcoming in: Leon Hempel, Marie Bartels (eds), Aufbruch ins Unversicherbare - Zum Katastrophendiskurs der Gegenwart (transcript 2012).

Das vorliegende Kapitel untersucht narrative Praktiken im Fall der Cyber-Apokalypse. Es geht der Frage nach, welche... more Das vorliegende Kapitel untersucht narrative Praktiken im Fall der Cyber-Apokalypse. Es geht der Frage nach, welche Methoden und Praktiken bei der Generierung von Narrationen im politischen Prozess angewandt werden, welche inhaltlichen Ausprägungen diese Narrationen im konkreten Fall aufweisen und was die Konsequenzen solcher Praktiken sind. In einem ersten Kapitel wird die Idee der erzählen Katastrophe näher erläutert und auf ihre spezifischen Merkmale eingegangen. Insbesondere wird die Rolle von Nichtwissen hervorgehoben. Im zweiten Kapitel wird konkreter auf die narrative Praxis von wissenschaftlichen und politischen Erkenntnisgemeinschaften eingegangen. Im abschließenden Kapitel werden die Konsequenzen solcher Prakti-ken diskutiert.

Exporting anti-Zionism: The delegitimization of Israel in the Iranian Press

by Rusi Jaspal

**FOR A PDF OF FULL PAPER, E-MAIL ME**

Jaspal, R. (under review). Exporting anti-Zionism: The delegitimization of Israel in the Iranian Press. Submitted to Israel Studies.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Anti-Zionism has remained an important ideological building-block of the Islamic... more Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Anti-Zionism has remained an important ideological building-block of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This paper examines the manifestation of anti-Zionism in the English-language Iranian Press in order to elucidate how this ideology is ‘exported’ to an international readership. The paper presents the results of an empirical study of two leading English-language Iranian newspapers: The Tehran Times and Press TV. The study uses critical discourse analysis and draws upon tenets of Social Representations Theory and the notion of Delegitimization from social psychology. The following themes are outlined: (i) “Problematizing Israel’s right to exist”; (ii) “Unveiling the global Zionist conspiracy”; and (iii) “Leading the global anti-Zionism – the declining ‘Zionist regime’”. Both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic representations are observable in the corpus. The paper identifies three key components of the delegitimization process in textual representations of Israel, and discusses possible implications of outgroup delegitimization for identity, emotion and action.

Keywords: media representations; Iran; Israel; anti-Zionism; prejudice; social representations theory; critical discourse analysis; qualitative; social psychology

Critical Language Study and Translation: the Case of Academic Discourse

by Karen Bennett

In Translation Studies at the Interface of Disciplines, J.F. Duarte, A.A. Rosa & T. Seruya (Eds), Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006. 111-127

This chapter uses Critical Discourse Analysis to show the very different ideologies encoded into Portuguese and... more This chapter uses Critical Discourse Analysis to show the very different ideologies encoded into Portuguese and English academic discourse, arguing that translation from one to the other is virtually impossible within the genre of the academic article.

‘We don't do anything’: analysing legitimate knowledge construction in multilingual schools

by Miguel Pérez Milans

In co-authorship with Patiño, A. & Relaño, A.M. (in press). To be published in Journal of Language and Education

This paper focuses on the production of legitimate knowledge in the multicultural and multilingual classrooms of two... more This paper focuses on the production of legitimate knowledge in the multicultural and multilingual classrooms of two different programs intended to “attend diversity” in the Madrid region. Following a critical sociolinguistic approach, we discuss the links between local discursive practices, institutional and wider social and ideological order. Our data analysis reveals the social order (re)produced in what counts as legitimate knowledge and its conditions of production and distribution in the context of two middle schools (i.e. how it is taught, who is considered a legitimate agent in the transmission of knowledge, who decides what the legitimate sources of knowledge are, who bears valid knowledge in the classroom, who knows and who does not, etc.). We also document some of the consequences of this process for a group of students of different immigrant backgrounds recently arrived in the Madrid classrooms, in terms of their academic success and social mobility. 

KEY WORDS: Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography, legitimate knowledge, multilingual schools, de-capitalization.

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

The dynamics of sense making: a diatextual approach to the intersubjectivity of discourse

by Rosa Traversa

Manuti, A., Traversa, R., Mininni, G., (2012). The dynamics of sense making: a diatextual approach to the intersubjectivity of discourse. Text and Talk. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies, 32–1: 39 – 61, De Gruyter.

Psycho-semiotics is a qualitative research perspective aiming at developing
the seminal intuition by Peirce... more Psycho-semiotics is a qualitative research perspective aiming at developing
the seminal intuition by Peirce (1931–1958) according to whom man is a
complex
network of signs. Hence, text and talk-in-interaction are the basic
“psycho-discursive practices” ( Wetherell 2008) where the intersubjective nature
of sense making is revealed. Peirce is an inspiring point of reference for
psycho-semiotics also at a methodological level, since he considered not only
deduction and induction as research practices able to characterize the process
of scientific knowledge production, but he emphasized an inferential modality
labeled “abduction.” Moving from such assumptions, the aim of the present
paper is to introduce the notion of diatext as a reflexive way to enhance the
value of this abducing procedure. Diatextual approach is a specific methodological
orientation within critical discourse analysis specifically aimed at
capturing the dynamics between interlocutors, text, and context which characterize
any kind of human interaction. A corpus of empirical data, collected
within different social contexts, will allow us to discuss and to understand how
diatexts actually work as yeast for human discourses.

Contextual frames and their argumentative implications: A case study in media argumentation

by Sara Greco Morasso

Discourse Studies April 2012 vol. 14 no. 2 197-216

By presenting a case study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this article introduces and... more By presenting a case study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this article introduces and discusses strategic manoeuvring with contextual frames. Drawing on the linguistic notion of frame, I introduce the concept of contextual frame to refer to the news context, that is, the background against which a certain event is presented as a piece of news. I argue that newspapers and journalists make use of contextual frames in the apparently neutral genre of news reporting to propose specific interpretations of the facts at issue, which become the basis for explicit comments and editorials. To show how this works, I investigate in detail a case of newspaper coverage of a complex episode using the pragma-dialectical notion of strategic manoeuvring and the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) to analyse argument schemes. I show that, in the use of contextual frames, there is a prominent relation between presentational devices (the lexical choices that build up the frame) and topical potential; contextual frames provide the implicit material premises (endoxa) which are at the basis of argumentations through which newspapers interpret and comment on the news.

Suppression of the Nazi Past, Coded Languages, and Discourses of Silence

by Ruth Wodak

Complex Texts: Analyzing, understanding, explaining and interpreting meanings

by Ruth Wodak

Comment to a paper by Adam Bell on Hermeneutics

Complex Texts: Analyzing, understanding, explaining and interpreting meanings

by Ruth Wodak

Comment to a paper by Adam Bell on Hermeneutics

Discursive enactment of power in Iranian high school EFL classrooms

by Faiz Sathi Abdullah

Co-authored with Kobra Hosseini; published in GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, Volume 12(2), Special Section, May 2012, pp. 375-392.

Teachers’ dominance in teaching environments has been criticized as an oppressive educational practice by critical... more Teachers’ dominance in teaching environments has been criticized as an oppressive educational practice by critical theories of education. While critical pedagogy that espouses a problem-posing model of education has sought to promote a more equitable and dialogical teacher-student partnership and to transform the oppressive conditions of the ESL/EFL classroom, the claimed potential of the approach has had only limited success in practice. Drawing upon Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis to make for a principled analysis of EFL classroom practice, this study investigated the discoursal features of unequal power relations in Iranian high school EFL classes. The data was collected via observation of two classrooms, one located in an urban area and the other in a semi-urban area of Iran. The analysis of the observation data, which included transcripts of classroom lessons as well as field notes, indicated that teachers played a disproportionately dominant role to the extent that the students were kept
apparently passive and powerless via a range of discursive strategies including maximizing teacher-controlled talking time, turn-taking, topic control, modes of meaning-construction, and elicitation strategies. The findings of this study are expected
to provide critical and emancipatory insights into ESL/EFL classroom practice and contribute to the transformation of its status quo.

Representing the 'Zionist Regime': Mass Communication of anti-Zionism in the English-language Iranian Press

by Rusi Jaspal

**FOR A PDF OF FULL PAPER, E-MAIL ME**

Jaspal, R. (under review). Representing the 'Zionist Regime': Mass Communication of anti-Zionism in the English-language Iranian Press. Submitted to Mass Communication and Society.

Anti-Zionism constitutes an important ideological building-block of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This paper... more Anti-Zionism constitutes an important ideological building-block of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This paper provides insight into the mass communication of anti-Zionism in the English-language Iranian Press in order to examine how this ideology is ‘exported’ to an international readership. The paper presents the results of an empirical study of two leading English-language Iranian newspapers: The Tehran Times and Press TV. The study uses critical discourse analysis and draws upon tenets of Social Representations Theory from social psychology. The following discourses are discussed: (i) Resisting social representations of Israeli statehood; (ii) Constructing threat: The Zionist regime as a terrorist entity; and (iii) Responding to threat: Anti-Zionism as a religious duty for the Muslim Ummah. As a ‘mouth-piece’ of the IRI, these outlets adopt and encourage a fervently anti-Zionist stance by refusing to recognise the statehood and civilian population of Israel and by constructing the ‘Zionist regime’ as a terrorist threat which should be mitigated collectively by the Islamic Ummah. Implications are discussed.

Keywords: media representations; Iran; Israel; anti-Zionism; prejudice; social representations theory; critical discourse analysis; qualitative; social psychology

Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies... more Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

Political cartoons as a vehicle for setting social agenda: The newspaper example

by Faiz Sathi Abdullah

Co-published with Iro Sani, Mardziah Hayati Abdullah and Afida Mohd Ali.

In recent years, the cartoons genre has gained considerable research interest across disciplines; for example,... more In recent years, the cartoons genre has gained considerable research interest across disciplines; for example, communication, media studies and health sciences. More so, cartoons serve as potent source of data used to study social phenomena. This paper aims at illustrating how political cartoons are used as a vehicle of setting social agenda in Nigerian newspapers to reorient and shape the public opinion through recurrent depictions mirroring current socio-political issues at a given period. The cartoons texts were excerpted from two major Nigerian newspapers, Daily Trust and Vanguard during the period 2007-2010. One-hundred cartoons were selected using purposive sampling technique. Fifty cartoons were taken from each newspaper magazine. Specifically, content analysis was used to identify the themes contained in the cartoons depictions. Qualitative method was used to analyze the cartoons through semiotic analysis. The analysis is mainly concerned with the interpretation of the sign system based on the connotation and denotation elements in the cartoons. The results indicated that 80% of the themes focused on substantive issues through which social agenda is set to reflect social practices in the Nigerian social political contexts. Also, the results showed that Nigerian political cartoons set social agenda by mainly encapsulating current and sensitive issues that people are much concerned about. Finally, the study has identified the lack of supportive and clearly defined theoretical background in analyzing political cartoons as a major problem in previous cartoons research. Thus, this paper contributes to the cartoon research by offering theoretical insight to the cartoon genre through agenda setting theory of media effect.

The discursive constitution of the UK alcohol problem in Safe, Sensible, Social: A discussion of policy implications

by Chris Hackley

To cite this Article Hackley, Chris, Bengry-Howell, Andrew, Griffin, Christine, Mistral, Willm and Szmigin, Isabelle(2008)'The discursive constitution of the UK alcohol problem in Safe, Sensible, Social: A discussion of policy implications',Drugs: education, prevention and policy,15:1,61 — 74
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09687630802511456
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687630802511456

Abstract
In this article, we critically reflect on the constitution of the UK’s alcohol problem in the... more Abstract
In this article, we critically reflect on the constitution of the UK’s alcohol problem in the government’s ‘Safe, Social, Sensible’ policy document, referring to findings from a 3-year ESRC funded study on young people, alcohol and identity. We suggest that discursive themes running throughout ‘Safe, Sensible, Social’ include ‘shared responsibility’ for implementing a ‘cultural change’, ‘youth and binge drinking’ and the need to promote
‘sensible’ levels of alcohol consumption to individual drinkers. We argue that, in constituting the problem around these themes, the policy document risks diluting responsibility and obscuring the role of government, media and alcohol manufacturers.
In addition, the way young drinkers are constituted carries a risk of isolating this group as both cause and effect of the alcohol problem, placing an unrealistic burden of responsibility on local communities and agencies and exacerbating the gap between
policy assumptions and the lived reality of young drinkers within their cultural context.
We conclude that alcohol policy requires a more substantive, clearly specified and evidence-based approach which acknowledges the complexities of drinking contexts and
drinker motivations in the allocation of responsibility and formulation of policy. In particular, policy needs to address the role of legislation and licensing laws, and the branding and marketing activities of the drinks industry in the structure of UK alcohol consumption


ISSN 0968–7637 print/ISSN 1465–3370 online  2008 Informa UK

Young Peoples’ Binge Drinking Constituted as a Deficit of Individual Self-control in UK Government Alcohol Policy

by Chris Hackley

Hackley, C., Bengry-Howell, A., Griffin, C., Mistral, W. and Szmigin, I. (2011) “Young Peoples’ Binge Drinking Constituted as a Deficit of Individual Self-Control in UK Government Alcohol Policy” Chapter 15 in Christopher N. Candlin and Jonathan Crichton (Eds) Discourses of Deficit, Palgrave, Macmillan, Hampshire, Palgrave Studies in Professional and Organizational Discourse, pp. 293-310.

Dismantling the antiracist “hate speech” agenda in Hungary: An ethno-rhetorical analysis

by David Boromisza-Habashi

Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2011). Dismantling the antiracist “hate speech” agenda in Hungary: An ethno-rhetorical analysis. Text & Talk, 31, 1-19. doi:10.1515/TEXT.2011.001

In the context of Hungarian political discourse, critics of contemporary antiracist advocacy argue that the antiracist... more In the context of Hungarian political discourse, critics of contemporary antiracist advocacy argue that the antiracist “hate speech” agenda is motivated by carefully concealed political interests that pose a danger to the integrity of Hungarian society. The aim of the present article is twofold: to capture the themes and rhetorical strategies emerging from discursive challenges to the “hate speech” agenda, and to identify the cultural foundations of that rhetoric. The article identifies four themes in critical responses to the “hate speech” agenda: (i) the “hate speech” agenda is founded on the deliberate corruption of the Hungarian language; (ii) the “hate speech” agenda reveals that antiracists are pursuing an alien political utopia; (iii) the “hate speech” agenda is fraught with ideological inconsistency; and (iv) antiracist proponents of the “hate speech” agenda are themselves filled with hatred. Discursive manifestations of the four themes are analyzed for a shared cultural model of sociation and argumentative strategies. The article ends with a discussion of how findings may inform antiracist activism.

Mark of Cain(ada): Racialized Security Discourse in Canada's National Newspapers

by Naava Smolash

This essay compares coverage in two of Canada's national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, of two... more This essay compares coverage in two of Canada's national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, of two high-profile anti-terrorism cases: Project Thread (2003) and the Toronto 18 (2006). I read these media stories as narratives, open to literary analysis, that allow us to pry open and critique Canada's dominant national security discourse. These national newspaper narratives, I argue, mobilize racialized signs of otherness that legitimate and naturalize national security discourses, even when accusations are withdrawn by officials. This raises urgent questions about the ways in which media may naturalize state violence against Muslim, Arab, and South Asian citizens and non-citizens within Canada's borders.

Goodness Is Elsewhere: The Rule of European Difference

by József Böröcz

published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2006, January (48,1:110-38)

Reflecting on European colonialism in 1950 - at a time when discussions about what we now know as the European Union... more Reflecting on European colonialism in 1950 - at a time when discussions about what we now know as the European Union emerged in western Europe, Aimé Césaire wrote, . . . Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible. This idea is fairly commonplace in much of the post-colonial world and it has some purchase within certain academic and intellectual circles elsewhere. And yet, in the process of denouncing the widely noted presence of racism in Hungary, thirty-six leading Hungarian intellectuals have, in a recent public document, felt compelled to thank France, and through France, a generic, trans-historical notion of Europe, for what they saw as the latter's profound, longue-durée goodness. It is partly my concern for the economic hardship, political marginality, cultural discrimination, and social exclusion faced by the Romanies of eastern Europe and partly the precision with which the Letter articulates the topos of west European moral superiority - a central pattern of European identity discourse - that prompts me to raise the following initial questions: How is it possible to denounce racism by referring to Europe, especially western Europe, the main historic source and promoter of racism as we know it today? What purpose does the genre of the open letter serve and how does it function? How does the signatories' implicit project of geopolitical self-positioning relate to the theme of the West as an object to be emulated, long dominant in the modern history of east-central European ideas of emancipation?