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SCOPUS_ID:85028572589
|
‘As parents congregated at parties’: Responsibility and blame in media representations of violence and school closure in an Indigenous community
|
This article considers the discourses of responsibility and blame emerging from newspaper reportage of a crisis in the remote Indigenous community of Aurukun in Northern Queensland, Australia. In doing so, it aims to contribute to the sociology of racism and add to the existing body of scholarship on the ways in which deracialised media discourse can nevertheless be racist. The month of May 2016 saw violence perpetrated by young people against the teachers and principal of the community’s only school. Teachers were evacuated to the regional city of Cairns on 10 May due to violence in the community and fears for their safety. They returned on 18 May, only to be evacuated again on 25 May. These events form the focus of the reportage analysed in this article. The way in which three primary groups of players – parents, teachers and police – are portrayed in mainstream print media is analysed in order to ascertain how responsibility and blame are apportioned in relation to these events.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Representation Learning",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
12,
72,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85019729835
|
‘Asking for another’ online: Membership categorization and identity construction on a food and nutrition discussion board
|
This discourse analytic study integrates theories of stance and membership categorization to investigate one online discussion thread initiated by a woman who asks for diet and health advice on behalf of her boyfriend, an interactive move we term ‘asking for another’. Posters to the thread, in relatively explicit ways, construe the original poster as a ‘nag’ and ‘mother-figure’ and her boyfriend as a ‘victim of nagging’ and ‘childish’. Our analysis illuminates how two features of the asking-for-another post (inadvertently) evoke these identities: (1) extreme case formulations, created via adjectives and adverbs, lead others to view the woman as inappropriately involved and controlling and her boyfriend as immature, and (2) details about the boyfriend’s diet, provided via nouns and adjectives, index cultural ideologies of food and identity. This study illuminates the ambiguity and polysemy of the move of asking for another, contributing to research on identity construction and health-related advice-seeking online.
|
[
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Text Classification",
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Information Retrieval",
"Information Extraction & Text Mining"
] |
[
72,
36,
71,
24,
3
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84933671274
|
‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines
|
The social policy climate, labour market trends and gendered arrangements for paid and family work mean that ‘work-life balance’ remains a key social issue in the UK. Media representations of ‘work-life balance’ are a key source for the construction of gender and working motherhood. Despite evidence of gendered representations in media coverage of other social issues, little attention has been paid to the construction of work-life balance in UK women's magazines. Articles from the highest circulating UK women's magazines are analysed using a discursive approach to explicate constructions of work-life balance and working motherhood. The analysis reveals that multiple roles are constructed as a problematic choice leading to stress and guilt. Problems associated with multiple roles are constructed as individual problems, in a way that decontextualises and depoliticises them and normalises gendered assumptions and a gendered division of labour. Parallels can be drawn between this and wider discourses about women's daily lives and to the UK social policy context.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Representation Learning"
] |
[
71,
72,
12
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85053162002
|
‘Being human’ and the ‘moral sidestep’ in drug policy: Explaining government inaction on opioid-related deaths in the UK
|
Background: With drug-related deaths at record levels in the UK, the government faces two potential sources of pressure to implement more effective policies. One source is the individuals and families who are most likely to suffer from such deaths; i.e. working class people living in de-industrialised areas. The other source is experts who argue for different policy on the basis of research evidences. Aim: This article aims to explain why, in the face of these two potential sources of pressure, the UK government has not implemented effective measures to reduce deaths. Method: The article uses critical realist discourse analysis of official documents and ministerial speeches on recent British drug policy (2016–2018). It explore this discourse through the theoretical lens of Archer's (2000) ideas on ‘being human’ and by drawing on Sayer's (2005) work on the ‘moral significance of class’. Results: Members of economically ‘residual’ groups (including working class people who use heroin) are excluded from articulating their interests in ‘late welfare capitalism’ in a project of depersonalising ‘class contempt’ through which politicians cast the people most likely to die as passive, ‘vulnerable’ ‘abjects’. Conservative politicians dismiss ‘evidence-based’ ideas on the reduction of drug-related death through a ‘moral sidestep’. They defend policy on the basis of its relevance to conservative moral principles, not effectiveness. This is consistent with the broader moral and political pursuit of partial state shrinkage which Conservative politicians and the social groups they represent have pursued since the 1970s.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Explainability & Interpretability in NLP",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
81,
72,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85139904368
|
‘Biodeutsch’ and ‘Ausländer’– shifting notions of otherness in narratives of discrimination: a case study of German Turkish<sup>1</sup> descendants in Germany
|
Characterised by discourses about ethnic tension and integration in relation to Turkish Germans, the German media has created a negative public image of this very group, portraying them as ‘the Other’. Such a portrayal has detrimental effects on this group, exposing them to discrimination and racism, and ultimately impacting their social integration. Using a discourse–analytical approach, this paper examines narratives from focus groups to explore the discursive and pragmatic processes through which Turkish Germans construct their identities by Othering either ‘the Germans’ or ‘the Turks’, while embracing and/or rejecting membership in these larger groups. Findings reveal that the highly dynamic nature of otherness/othering is closely intertwined with issues of social integration. Findings further illustrate how mainstream discourses about Turkish Germans enter and manifest themselves in both public perception of the constructed ‘Other’ and self-perceptions of this stigmatised group, and provide empirical evidence about the (discursive) processes through which social integration takes place.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85059917938
|
‘Bisexual oysters’: A diachronic corpus-based critical discourse analysis of bisexual representation in The Times between 1957 and 2017
|
Recent decades have witnessed an increase in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) visibility in the British media. Increased representation has not been equally distributed, however, as bisexuality remains an obscured sexual identity in discourses of sexuality. Through the use of diachronic corpus-based critical discourse analysis, this study seeks to uncover how bisexual people have been represented in the British press between 1957 and 2017. By specifically focusing on the discursive construction of bisexuality in The Times, the results reveal how bisexual people are represented as existing primarily in discourses of the past or in fiction. The Times corpus also reveals significant variation in the lexical meaning of bisexual throughout the 60 years in question. These findings contribute to contemporary theories of bisexual erasure which posit that bisexual people are denied the same ontological status as monosexual identities, that is, homosexuality and heterosexuality.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Representation Learning"
] |
[
71,
72,
12
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85116794713
|
‘Boys don’t cry’ – An ambiguous statement?
|
As has often been observed in the literature, an utterance of a generic such as ‘Boys don’t cry’ can convey a normative behavioural rule that applies to boys, roughly: that boys shouldn’t cry. This observation has led many authors to the claim that generics are ambiguous: they allow both for a descriptive as well as a normative reading. The present paper argues against this common assumption: it argues that the observation in question should be addressed at the level of pragmatics, rather than at the level of semantics. In particular, the paper argues that the normative force of utterances of generics results from the presence of a conversational implicature. This result should somewhat alleviate the task of finding a proper semantic analysis of generics since it shows that at least one of their intriguing features need not be reflected in their truth-conditions.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85130479134
|
‘COVID Casablanca’: A case of Dubai’s British social media influencers and postdigital intermedia geographies
|
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, British social media influencers posted pictures and stories from Dubai. As a result, the emirate faced an intense backlash from the British media. This study considers the British media’s motivations for constituting Dubai as Orientalist ‘other’ while uncovering earlier imagined geographies of the Orient. The study develops the novel concept of ‘intermedia geographies’ to trace intertextual links, tales, texts, content, audiences and discourses, as dynamic constellations of the postdigital condition. Unique methods of postdigital critical discourse analysis are developed to map a corpus of 20 British magazine, tabloid and broadsheet newspaper articles, which are the jumping-off point to intertextual references to television, film and earlier Oriental narratives. Theorizing levels up from description to nuanced analysis to illustrate that the themes of content, stance and social actors’ positioning within the corpus are indicative of Britain’s siloed mainstream audiences and postdigital reinforcements of colonial discourse.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85065698312
|
‘Cheap Talk’? Second screening and the irrelevance of TV political debates
|
This article analyzes 3 months of online debate during the electoral campaign for the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum. Through supervised sentiment analysis, we assess the extent of support for the referendum within the general public of Twitter users (Twittersphere) by analyzing the voting intentions expressed online in 2,369,333 tweets. Similarly, we exploit the practice of social TV and investigate the support for the referendum expressed by the 160,465 tweets posted by second screeners, that is, the subsample of Twitter users who watched and actively commented on nine political talk shows during the campaign. We compare the mentions and the attitudes of the Twittersphere and the second screeners by means of a lead–lag analysis to test whether the second screeners can act as influencers and trendsetters able to shape or anticipate attention and opinions toward an issue within larger audiences. The results reveal an inverse relationship between the Twittersphere and the second screeners whereby the reactions of the latter diverge from those of the general Twitter public. This finding has implications for the literature on echo chambers and the polarization of social media.
|
[
"Sentiment Analysis"
] |
[
78
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85087310602
|
‘Close the Ports to African Migrants and Asian Rice!’: The Politics of Agriculture and Migration and the Rise of a ‘New’ Right-Wing Populism in Italy
|
This article contributes to the debate on the rural dimensions of the current global surge of right-wing populism through an analysis and genealogy of the political discourse of Matteo Salvini’s Lega on agriculture and migrant farm labour. In 2018–2019, this party emerged as one of the most successful radical right populist parties in Italy and Western Europe. After a description of the Italian political debate in the fields of agriculture and migration over the last two decades, we analyse how the issues of agriculture, food and migrant farm labour are articulated in the Lega’s discourse in relation to the ideological features of nativism, authoritarianism, populism as well as neomercantilism and corporatism. We argue that agriculture and food are central in the representation of the ‘Italian’ cultural identity as proposed by the Lega. Moreover, we contend that the Lega has disarticulated and rearticulated ‘old’ ideas – such as the protection of ‘Made in Italy’ food – in a ‘new’ nativist discourse. The article is based upon a discourse analysis of speeches and documents produced by this party since 2013.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85031678626
|
‘Comments in Tags, Please!’: Tagging practices on Tumblr
|
Tumblr is one of the most popular content sharing websites, where the use of keyword tags that enhance the searchability and visibility of posts is prominent. However, this resource has been creatively exploited by some users beyond its folksonomic use: Since Tumblr does not have a separate comment section for posts, the tag section may also be used for tags with discourse functions such as expressing an opinion, a reaction, or including asides. This article explores the practice of including comments in tags, taking into account the specific technological features of Tumblr's tagging system, as well as the role of the communities within the website. The corpus analyzed in the study comprises two datasets collected from the general ‘Trending’ page of Tumblr and 60 fan communities (‘fandoms’). Comment tags and their identified discourse functions (opinion, reaction, aside) are analyzed quantitatively for differences regarding use, structure, and sentiment. The analysis shows significant differences between the comment tags and traditional keyword tags, as well as among comment tags with the three different discourse functions. The results suggest that social tagging practices on Tumblr are influenced both by the technological specifications of the platform and the social structure of the website.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Tagging",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Syntactic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
63,
72,
15
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84957838118
|
‘Confused by multiple deities, ancient Egyptians embraced monotheism’: analysing historical thinking and inclusion in Egyptian history textbooks
|
Egyptian history textbooks are examined through the prism of historical thinking dimensions and skills, utilizing a critical discourse analysis. The analysis focuses on how the textbooks portray two historically significant events: the advent of Christianity (ca. 33 CE) and Islam (ca. 641 CE) to Egypt. It reveals that the historical narrative presented in the textbooks does two things: first, it essentializes a dominant identity—mainly an Arab Muslim one—eclipsing the multilayered identity informed by the country’s long history. Secondly, the textbooks miss several opportunities to promote historical thinking skills such as ‘cause and consequence’ and ‘change and continuity’. As an entry point to revising the textbooks to include currently missing indigenous minority narratives, a narrative approach that focuses on cultural continuity and change is proposed. The article also calls for further investigation of how these textbooks influence students’ sense of citizenship and historical consciousness, especially that they are increasingly exposed to alternative and competing historical narratives outside the history classroom.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85083670343
|
‘Context, gestures, and smiles’: investigating linguistic and cultural attitudes in Rick Steves’s European phrasebooks
|
This paper investigates linguistic and cultural attitudes found in tourist phrasebooks written by US travel writer and television host Rick Steves. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Steves’s European phrasebook series, it is argued that Steves portrays English speaking tourists as the dominant party in tourist-local interactions and reassures his readers that their lack of foreign language ability will not be an impediment to their travels abroad. Through the use of stereotypical descriptive adjectives and the-plurals (e.g. The French), Steves positions European languages and their speakers as monolithic, homogeneous entities. Furthermore, Steves portrays multilingualism as an expected convenience to travelers rather than as an intellectual accomplishment. This research extends on previous studies which have explored the role tourist phrasebooks play as cultural mediators [Hallett, R. W. (2017). A taste of this lively language: attitudes towards languages other than English in Lonely Planet phrasebooks. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 12(3), 214–230; Koch, E. (2015). Mediation as Worldmaking in Tourist Phrasebooks. Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, 62(2), 63–76]. The findings in this research will help future phrasebook authors avoid certain types of misleading or even offensive language which may deter travelers who are interested in more authentic travel experiences.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85074995551
|
‘Cooking the Meal of Terror’ Manipulative Strategies in Terrorist Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of ISIS Statements
|
This paper linguistically investigates terrorist discursive strategies designed to manipulate recipients’ minds into accepting, even embracing, certain ideologies. Though extensive research has been done on manipulative discourse used by journalists and politicians, examining the same discourse used by terrorists received comparatively scant attention. Under Critical Discourse Analysis, we employ a framework of analysis of ISIS discursive tools of manipulation, drawing on Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009) and Wodak’s (2011) discursive strategies, qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing (17) ISIS statements released between 2014 and 2016. We explore the discursive tools ISIS has characteristically used to manipulate its audience and legitimate and defend its actions. The aim is that once terrorist narrative is dissected from a different approach, such effort will be helpful in creating counter-narratives meant to reduce terrorism and vitiate its arguments. Emphasis will be laid on covert vs. overt manipulation, metaphorical dehumanization and metonymic depersonalization. We find that the data contained manipulative tools such as Captatio benevolentiae and volitive modality that are employed to project a positive image about ISIS.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84976510265
|
‘Crimea is ours’: A discursive history
|
Russia could have annexed Crimea anytime in the last 25 years. The fact that it did so only in March 2014 is a puzzle. I argue that the predominant discourse of Russian national identity by 2014 made the annexation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine both thinkable and natural to Moscow. A history of the discursive terrain of Russia from 1992 to 2014 shows how Russia’s national identity has evolved over the years, both in response to Western inactions or actions and domestic developments. But Russian identity is not a sufficient explanation for Russian behavior in Ukraine. For that, we must pay attention to the event itself: Western support for the Maidan protestors, Western failure to adhere to the February 2014 agreements reached with Moscow on a transitional government in Ukraine with Yanukovych at its head and new elections in November, the presence of disgruntled Russians in Ukraine, and perhaps most important, over a decade of US unilateralism in foreign affairs.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84964016591
|
‘Critical friends’: exploring arm’s length actor relationships to local government in education
|
Discussions charting the changing role of local government in education have often focused extensively on ‘concrete’ policy changes over time, but have provided less detail on the contribution to changing power relations of less tangible shifts. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse and governmentality, in this paper, detailed rationalities of local third-sector and other ‘arm’s length’ actors in English education are explored, with a focus on their relationship to local authority (LA) school admissions teams. The paper aims to provide deeper understanding of tactical struggles for authority which happen within competitive local sociopolitical spaces. Data is utilised from a study of ‘Choice Advice’ (CA) in 10 LAs, within a background context where arm’s length agents deployed to deliver CA have been co-opted into central government marketisation regimes, but local state planning of schooling is arguably more equitable for vulnerable families than are logics advancing a marketisation of education. The research reveals: (1) discourses valourising ‘independence’ and ‘distance’ from local state ‘agendas’; (2) discourses separating the interests of ‘parents’ and ‘schools’, with LAs positioned as representing the latter; (3) dehumanising representations of LA officers as ‘faceless’, obstructive and requiring regulation from ‘critical friends’.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85124726739
|
‘Crowds are mad and criminal’: the notion of public order in Italian manuals for police mobile units, 2000–2008
|
The article, moving from a sociological perspective, aims at stressing the ambiguity of the process of democratization of the Italian Republican police by focusing on the notion of public order in Republican Italy and within a Republican model of policing. Towards this end, it focuses not on police practices but on police knowledge in its relationship with concrete police work on the field. In particular, this article analyses the manuals designed for and, between 2000 and 2008, employed in the training of Italian police officers and operators, especially of the mobile units that operate in policing activities dedicated to keeping the public order. By resorting to the tools provided by the critical discourse analysis, special attention is paid to how these texts describe and depict crowds, and how such representations become a device for legitimizing preventive yet repressive interventions. Such interventions take place before potential violent behaviours from demonstrators occur and therefore are not reactive. However, they are not based on mediation and dialogue but rather are coercive, and hinge on a strong use of force.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85038362069
|
‘Cyber hate’ vs. ‘cyber deliberation’: The case of an Austrian newspaper’s discussion board from a critical online-discourse analytical perspective
|
Our contribution deals with an Austrian case study on racist discourse strategies in the forums of the Austrian online newspaper derStandard.at. First, we will consider forums as a communicative form characterised by specific linguistic features as well as its technical and functional design. Furthermore, we will present an analysis of the reader’s postings from a critical-discursive perspective following the discourse-historical approach, where the readers’ comments on articles on migration and language are investigated against the background of online-specific communication. Another subject of discussion will be areas of conflict between freedom of expression, deliberation and the ‘censorship’ of the forums by the editorial staff with the help of semi-automated tools for filtering out explicit racist postings. Finally, we discuss chances and risks of the investigated forums regarding discursive and social practices within democratically constituted societies and address the question which actions can be taken to improve the quality of such forums.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85064545651
|
‘Demand sharing’ and more subtle language choice etiquettes for resource sharing in Northern Australia
|
Alfred Howitt, a leading nineteenth-century original anthropologist of Australian Aboriginal people, contributed a detailed account of the sharing of cuts of game according to kinship categories among the Kurnai of Victoria. other accounts followed in the late twentieth century, some attending to the verbal negotiation involved. A characterisation of these events became dominant: demand sharing in which a person demands a share with a justification in terms of a kinship link. this paper shows that such negotiation over meat sharing among the Gurindji is more indirect, with choice of language varieties sending a pragmatic message that bonds between local groups of people imply responsibilities to give and rights to receive. In so doing, the paper defends the approach to code-switching that emphasises group identity and rights and responsibilities.
|
[
"Code-Switching",
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
7,
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85058032430
|
‘Development’ as Both Idea and Action Represents a Contemporary Version of Western Economic, Political, Cultural and Ideological Imperialism
|
The discourse surrounding development has for some time created a well circumscribed paradigm for states to work within in order to be seen to progress. Moreover, the increasing demand to keep up with globalization has further given weight to this discourse. However, the notion of development itself is arguably inextricably linked to western ideas of ‘progress’. As a result, the development discourse is deployed as a strategic means of propagating imperialistic endeavors. Thus, to begin to consider if we can think beyond the paradigm of development, this article will deconstruct the contemporary version of imperialism whereby western states are able to grow influence in economic, political and cultural terms.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85087498750
|
‘Different than us’? Reciprocal perceptions of the societies in Turkey and North Cyprus
|
This study explores the reciprocal perceptions, main tendencies, prejudices and expectations of the societies in Turkey and North Cyprus. To this end, 160 participants from both societies were interviewed. The specific social processes that result in various judgements, thoughts and tendencies observed in the semi-structured interviews were evaluated by the discourse analysis method. Although the research findings and analyses are not representative of the whole populations, they still shed light on common perceptions. In fact, the results counterintuitively revealed that people from both societies exhibit increasing suspicion, if not negativity, about each other despite the widely accepted nationalist narrative of ‘motherland-babyland’, which is believed to be the main dynamic of the relations.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85088553102
|
‘Different’ and ‘distinct’ as markers of otherness: A corpus-driven study of the (re)creation of privilege in high standard hotels
|
The present study seeks to offer an understanding of how high-end hotel websites produce privilege, creating a sense of belonging and entitlement for their 4/5-star guests. The experience of tourism is intrinsically linked to embracing otherness, and as a reflection of this, hotel websites offer a characterization of cultural otherness in an attempt to make it resonate with the potential expectations of a socioeconomically privileged client. The study considers the question of what elements of experience of otherness the website will address, relying on a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as related to lifestyle, difference and distinction. Specifically, the words different and distinct are addressed in this study as markers of otherness and privilege. Based on Fairclough’s sociocultural approach, and specifically on Halliday’s transitivity system, the use of these words in clause construction patterns yields an understanding of how specific representations of reality revolving around the idea of otherness are built up. The research is corpus-driven and qualitative, its conclusions also offering some insight as to how hotel websites recreate forms of in-group similarity.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85127540330
|
‘Discourse reading’ predication and gender: putting together and discourse analysis
|
This paper proposes a methodological synergy between corpus linguistics and discourse studies. We use a literary corpus composed of more than 200 books of Brazilian literature (about 5 million words) and present a quantitative and qualitative analysis that takes the gender element as an analytical operator, selecting one of its dimensions: characterizations attributed to female and male characters. Searching for linguistic structures indicative of predication, we distinguished four axes of analysis (appearance, emotion, character e social role), expanding a type of research that is normally restricted to case studies. Using computational tools, we switch the glasses that bring the text to a close or a distant reading, making the best of each of these perspectives. The results reinforce the idea of female characterization centered on appearance (specifically on beauty), but also signal the importance of taking into account not only the high frequency elements of the corpus.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85071238994
|
‘Do I Really Need It?’ Professional Development in Pragmatics in Asian EFL
|
One of the foremost tasks in conducting any research in the field of social sciences involves ascertaining a need for such research to be carried out. Needs Analysis (NA) is the primary tool used in recording the perceptions of stakeholders in educational research. The present study employed a sequential exploratory strategy to gather the views of 15 Non-Native English Speaking Teachers (NNEST) from the North of Thailand. The first aim of the study was to determine the extent to which a need for L2 pragmatics instruction existed in Thailand, an Asian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Secondly, the study aimed to collect the suggestions of the participants regarding tasks, methods of instruction, and other activities that would enable the delivery of such instruction using in-service professional development workshops in Thailand. The data to reach the objectives were collected by employing a semi-structured interview and an online questionnaire. The present paper discusses the qualitative findings, which were determined using content analysis followed by thematic analysis of the data. The findings reveal a definite need for L2 pragmatics instruction for Asian NNESTs in Thailand. Furthermore, the participants indicated a preference for explicit L2 pragmatic instruction. In addition, the participants favored an enhancement of L2 pragmatic strategies in speech acts that would be relevant in academic, and pedagogical contexts in Thailand.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85086840128
|
‘Do you care about the river?' A critical discourse analysis and lessons for management of social conflict over Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) conservation in the case of voluntary stocking in Wales
|
Stakeholders with shared interests in fish conservation often disagree about which specific conservation measures are appropriate, leading to conflicts with sometimes long-lasting and disruptive social and political effects. Managers are challenged to balance opposing stakeholder preferences with their own mandates in a charged environment. Using the 2014 termination of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) stocking in Wales as a case, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of interview data, online print media, social media and policy documents to examine conflict and its mechanisms over time. The data sources represented four discourse planes: the social, media, social media and policy planes. We report five key findings: The conflict around salmon stocking took place in three stages, beginning with a negotiated, manifest conflict that escalated during the 2014 policy process that terminated stocking, creating a persistent spin-off conflict. The stocking debate was shaped by two discourse coalitions promoting either pro- or anti-hatchery arguments, and an emerging third coalition advocating for compromise. The coalitions disagreed on the effectiveness of stocking, the status of the salmon stock and had different management goals, revealing that the pro- or anti-stocking debate was caused by complex, intertwined and partly opposing beliefs and values. Different elements of the discourses emerged on different planes and arguments were mobile across the planes over time, explaining how selected key arguments were able to persist, gain dominance, re-appear over time, thus dynamically fuelling and (re)shaping the conflict. The policy change decision to terminate stocking in Wales institutionalized anti-stocking discourses. It forced all stakeholder groups to acquiesce to one perspective of stocking, creating a win-lose situation for some stakeholders. The handling and result of the policy change led to the alienation of some stakeholder groups. Ecological management goals were achieved in the short term, but the acrimonious and yet-unsettled social side effects affected the long-term relationships and may negatively impact future conservation issues in the area. We conclude that transdisciplinary active management designed for joint learning about stocking trade-offs may be a suitable alternative to the ‘either-or' outcomes observed in Wales that fostered sustained stakeholder conflicts instead of joint production of knowledge and understanding. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. An abridged and annotated audio version of this article can be found here.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85118118439
|
‘Don’t Worry, Honey: It’s Cooked’: Addressing Food Risk during Pregnancy on Facebook Italian Posts
|
During pregnancy, women exposed to microbiological risks are more susceptible to contracting specific pathogens, which can lead to serious diseases both in the mother and the foetus. Food-borne diseases can be avoided to a large extent by following good practices of food manipulation and cooking. Safe eating behaviours are influenced by knowledge and perception of food risks and are constructed, among others, online. Pregnant women often use Web 2.0 to obtain and share pregnancy-related information as a strategy of collective coping with emotions through conversations. This paper explores how knowledge and perceptions of food risks during pregnancy are shared among users on Italian Facebook pages and groups. The corpus, including 648,399 items (i.e., posts), was analysed: (a) first, by means of the Reinert method, to verify to what extent issues concerning food risks are debated; and (b) second, through a manual content analysis, to observe how food risks are addressed in terms of contents and social sharing of emotions. The main results show that food risk is not among the most discussed topics, and the least known and debated food risks are the most widespread (e.g., campylobacteriosis). Sometimes, food risks, when addressed, were minimised or denied, and the belief to be ‘less at risk’ than peers for such risk (i.e., optimistic bias) was observed. The results underline the importance, for health institutions, of building a tailored communication strategy on food risks during pregnancy to promote correct food behaviours by exploiting social networks.
|
[
"Emotion Analysis",
"Sentiment Analysis"
] |
[
61,
78
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85075604145
|
‘Double-taxing’ Indigenous business: exploring the effects of political discourse on the transfer of public procurement policy
|
This article details how shifts in political discourse can reconfigure the intent, and effect the outcomes, of public procurement policy. Through critical discourse analysis of public procurement policies focused on supplier diversity in Australia, we explore how discursive struggles over policy meaning and intent can have real effects. Our findings show how the intent of public procurement policy shifted from stimulating Indigenous entrepreneurial activity to affirmative action in employment. We highlight how this policy mutation shifted responsibility for solving the intractable problem of Indigenous unemployment away from the government and corporate Australia and on to Indigenous business.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85131651988
|
‘Du er verdens beste pappa’: affect in parent–child multilingual interactions
|
This article examines the affective dimension of the linguistic repertoire of multilingual families. Specifically, resulting from a three-year ethnographic project in Norway, this study sets out to better understand the role of affect in parent–child interactions as members of two Brazilian-Norwegian families draw on their multilingual linguistic repertoires in the ongoing construction of their familial ties. A discursive analytical approach was employed to examine audio-recordings made by one of the parents of each family (i.e. around 15 h of recordings in total). The analysis demonstrates how certain linguistic features (i.e. terms of endearment and the ‘you are … ’-format), combined with the use of the participants’ multilingual repertoire, accomplish three interrelated social actions; they: (i) convey parental value-laden aspirations of child-rearing, (ii) position children according to expected social roles, and (iii) forge parent–child ties. These findings are supplemented with interview data, which serve to illustrate the role of home-external contexts in encouraging the parents to use Portuguese with their children in the home. Focusing on the affective dimension of parent–child interactions as they draw on their multilingual repertoires to construct familial bonds contributes to an underexplored area in family multilingualism studies.
|
[
"Emotion Analysis",
"Sentiment Analysis",
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
61,
78,
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85047304048
|
‘Earrings and shields’: Metaphor and gendered discourses in female genital mutilation songs in Kuria, Kenya
|
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a global issue affecting women and girls in different parts of the world.1 Over 140 million girls and women have undergone FGM worldwide. In the UK, 130,000 girls and women live with the consequences of FGM. In the Kuria region of Kenya, 96 per cent of women and girls have undergone FGM despite its illegal status. FGM has been approached from the religious, medical and human rights perspectives, but the linguistic perspective has not yet been considered. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper seeks to address the FGM issue from a linguistic perspective by analysing metaphors that construct gendered discourses in female circumcision songs in Kuria Kenya. The focus is on how through discourse, gender inequalities are normalised and advanced within a sociocultural system, and how this in turn contributes to legitimation of FGM. Findings show that metaphors function as discursive strategies for constructing and maintaining dominant patriarchal hegemonies and maintaining the status quo while reinforcing the perpetuation of FGM. I suggest that an understanding of the role of gender and discourse in FGM could influence efforts to end the practice and lead to positive change.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85099390354
|
‘Eligible to be heard’ in transportation planning
|
Planners often use the phrase ‘hard-to-reach’ to describe youth, people of color, and people with low incomes, people from whom they need information but are unsuccessful in reaching. Consideration of cultural premises for communicating can help explain why some people are ‘under-heard’ rather than ‘hard-to-reach.’ This study uses cultural discourse analysis to study under-represented community group deliberations about transportation, convened through a model of public engagement for environmental justice. Data include transcripts of 29 group deliberations and fieldnotes. Analysis and interpretation of cultural discourses about public participation processes focuses on three radiants of meaning: (1) respect for users and sociability, (2) being involved and efficacy, and (3) having a voice and feeling worthwhile. The model of engagement in deliberative processes allows for a reconfiguration of notions of being, acting, relating, and feeling in which participants give themselves amplified voice and agency. It contributes to literature on public engagement and how culture is conceived.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Speech & Audio in NLP",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
71,
72,
70,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85073948732
|
‘English has 100+ phonemes’: some errors and confusions in contemporary commercial phonics schemes
|
From 2006 the British government strongly favoured synthetic phonics as the principal approach for the teaching of initial literacy in state-funded primary schools in England, and since 2010 has made it mandatory. In 2007–2013 just over 100 commercially published phonics schemes were available, and in that same period the government maintained a system of quality assurance, in the form of two (successive and non-overlapping) panels of independent evaluators. Their task was to judge whether commercial publishers’ self-evaluations of their phonics schemes and materials were correct, in the sense of justifying statements that they met the government’s criteria for such schemes, etc. Of the schemes that were judged, just over half (54) were found to contain linguistic errors. In this article the errors are analysed in detail, and classified into three main categories: phonetic inaccuracies, phonic inaccuracies, and misguided pedagogies. The criteria for that classification are stated, and conclusions and recommendations drawn–the main recommendation being that existing schemes need to be scrutinised in detail to ensure that they are fit for purpose. And this would apply to all phonics schemes used anywhere in the English-speaking world, not just in England, even though the criteria for phonetic and phonic accuracy would necessarily differ across accents.
|
[
"Phonetics",
"Syntactic Text Processing"
] |
[
64,
15
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85040722468
|
‘Everyone wants a vagina that looks less like a vagina’: Australian women’s views on dissatisfaction with genital appearance
|
We present a thematic discourse analysis of 94 Australian women’s written comments about women’s presumed dissatisfaction with their genital appearance. Two themes emerged: ‘from natural to normal’ and ‘the difficulty of resistance’. In the first theme, participants discuss genital dissatisfaction with reference to hegemonic constructions of femininity and to postfeminist, neoliberal discourses that position the natural female body as inadequate, with beauty practices necessary to achieve acceptability. The second theme addresses the difficulty of challenging this positioning, referencing discourses that position the vagina as unpleasant and discussion of it as taboo. We consider implications of these constructions for women’s well-being.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84981335354
|
‘Exceptional’, ‘normal’ or a ‘myth’? The discursive construction of the ‘crisis’ by Greek employees
|
This article aims to explore the construction of the concept of the ‘crisis’ by Greek employees, when they talk about paid work. In order to do so, 22 interviews with employees aged 23–43 were analysed, deploying the analytic tool of ‘positioning’, informed by poststructuralist assumptions about discourse and the subject. This perspective seeks to illuminate how the hegemonic discourses both on the ‘crisis’ and waged labour persist and are being legitimated through peoples’ mundane practices and speech, aspiring to trace alternative narratives that challenge them. According to our analysis, the ‘crisis’ was discursively formulated in three different, and at a first glance even contradictory, ways: as a ‘state of exception’, as a ‘normal condition’ and as a ‘myth’, serving each time a different function regarding the constitution of the self and the social.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85071371946
|
‘Family-culture’ and Chinese politeness: An emancipatory pragmatic account
|
While researchers have questioned the suitability of classic Western models for accommodating Chinese linguistic politeness phenomena, inadequate attention has been devoted to the role of ideologies in understanding Chinese language use. This study examines the key ideological notion of jia wenhua 家文化 ‘family culture’, and uses it to model some typical discursive practices of (im)politeness in contemporary China. As an ideology, ‘family culture’ has its roots in ancient Chinese philosophy, and it continues to prevail to the present day. Adopting this ideological notion as an analytic construct, this study seeks to formulate a set of new maxims to account for some discursive practices of Chinese politeness, which neither previous Western nor Chinese models have captured. In so doing, it contributes to emancipatory pragmatics by demonstrating the necessity of deploying culturally-grounded ideologies as analytic constructs, such as ‘family culture’ in this study, to rationalize some types of Chinese sociopragmatic behaviour.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85138741911
|
‘Feel like going crazy’: Mental health discourses in an online support group for mothers during COVID-19
|
COVID-19 has become a mental health pandemic. The impact on vulnerable demographic groups has been particularly severe. This paper focuses on women in employment in Hong Kong who have had to balance remote work and online schooling for over 2 years. Using semi-ethnography and theme-oriented discourse analysis, we examine 200 threads that concern members’ mental health on a popular Facebook support group for mothers. We demonstrate that mental health messages are typically framed as ‘troubles talk’. Other support group members actively align with a trouble-teller through ‘caring responses’, namely expressions of empathy and sympathy. These are realized through assessments of the trouble-teller’s experience, reports of similar experiences; expressions of compassion and advice-giving. Mental health talk online is heavily mitigated, nevertheless the medium provides a space for expressing mental health troubles and providing informal psychosocial support. We advocate the importance of microanalytic discourse studies for mental health research to get insights into people’s lived experiences during the pandemic.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Ethical NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
72,
17,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85046648035
|
‘Fitting in’ or ‘being different’? Integration, separation, and identity construction during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong
|
This paper reports the results of a qualitative study that examined the perspectives of one group of teacher educators and pre-service teachers about a teaching internship in Hong Kong. Reflecting recent interest in both a practice turn in pre-service teacher education as well as teacher identity construction, the study uses in-depth interviews to reveal how both teacher educators and pre-service teachers construct the meaning of a teaching internship. The results suggest that two discourses dominate such meanings: the discourse of integration and the discourse of separation. The study not only reveals the presence of these discourses but, moreover, considers how their interplay provides affordances for and constraints upon the capacity of pre-service teachers to construct their professional identities during the teaching internship. This exploration suggests that this interplay can lead to identity conflict for pre-service teachers. Implications for overcoming such conflict in ways that support the construction of pre-service teachers’ professional identities are considered and suggestions for future comparative research discussed.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85130227763
|
‘Fowl’ play: reverse place-branding of Toxteth, liverpool through the celebrity discourse of Robbie Fowler
|
This paper interrogates the concept of place-branding and celebrity. It uses Liverpool Football Club striker Robbie Fowler and his roots in Toxteth as a way to contest the unidirectional relationship between celebrity and place. Where ‘traditional’ place-branding sees a celebrity’s positive symbolic capital transferred to place, this paper shows how the direction of transfer may be reversed with the symbolic capital of a place flowing towards the celebrity. It takes the stigmatized area of Toxteth and shows what happens when the negative symbolic capital of place is entered into the discourse of celebrity. In the case of Fowler, this paper highlights how a territorially stigmatised Toxteth is used as both a symbolic millstone that drags him down and an illustration of his achievements ‘against the odds’. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis and drawing on a Chomskyian framing of the political economy of the media, this paper suggests that the linking of Fowler and Toxteth is illustrative of a broader neoliberal ideology that sees symbolic violence as the means of ensuring a distinct social stratification.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Ethical NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
72,
17,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85119040257
|
‘Free men we stand under the flag of our land’: a transitivity analysis of African anthems as discourses of resistance against colonialism
|
Recent studies on colonial discourse have demonstrated that the speeches of freedom activists in colonial Africa served as sites of resistance. One key text type that has, however, been neglected in the critical literature on the discourse of emancipation is the national anthem of colonised states. To fill this gap, the present study examines the discursive enactment of resistance in the anthems of former British colonies in Africa, focusing on the transitivity framework in systemic functional linguistics. Semantic and structural parallelisms across the anthems are identified as evidence of a collective memory, a cultural trauma reconfigured and reconstituted to reclaim a positive identity and project a desirable postcolonial future. They also foreground the motif of freedom and legitimise the African as the owner of the reclaimed territory. These procedures articulate an anti-imperialist and anti-establishment stance that provides hope, strength and encouragement to an oppressed group. This paper extends the scholarship on the discursive enactment of resistance by focusing attention on a context underexplored in the literature. It also illustrates the (re)construction of relevant ideologies in national anthems to stimulate desirable, progressive attitudes among citizenry in African states. The paper is furthermore significant to decolonial research and highlights the role of language in political decolonisation processes.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84928401936
|
‘From mosh pit to posh pit’: Festival imagery in the context of the boutique festival
|
This paper addresses market-based cultural production in the context of the UK festival field, with a focus on the framing of the festival experience through anticipation. In particular, boutique festivals are discussed as examples of a contemporary cultural ‘product category’ which has emerged and proliferated in the last decade. Through discourse analysis of media representations of boutique festivals, we situate the boutique festival in a broader sociocultural discourse of agency and choice, which makes it meaningful and desirable, and outline the type of consumer it is meant to attract. For the contemporary consumer, the boutique festival is presented as an anticipated experience based on countercultural festival imagery, while simultaneously framing cultural participation through consumption. The paper contributes to a wider debate on the construction of the consumer in the cultural economy.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Visual Data in NLP",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
71,
20,
72,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85141770485
|
‘Fuzzy and context dependent’: a critical discourse analysis of manipulation in online vaccine information
|
In health decision-making, the distinctions between manipulation, persuasion and coercion are easily blurred. Manipulation, viewed through a bioethics lens is problematic only when it affects a person’s ability to make autonomous decisions. In contrast, in critical discourse analysis (CDA), manipulation usually has negative connotations. This article uses childhood MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine information as a case study in manipulative discourse. Online vaccine information across three organisations was analysed using CDA methodology. Each organisation used manipulative discourse in their vaccine information but with varying degrees of transparency. The less transparent an organisation’s motivations are, the less compatible it is with autonomous decision-making. This paper argues for adding further nuance to how discursive manipulation is defined within CDA, particularly in the field of public health. In this setting, manipulation is not necessarily immoral or unfair, but it may be, depending on whether it controls a person’s ability to make an autonomous, informed decision.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84960435966
|
‘Garbage let’s take away’: Producing understandable and translatable government documents: A case study from japan
|
Government departments increasingly communicate information to citizens digitally via web sites, and, in many societies, the linguistic diversity of these citizens is also growing. In Japan, a largely monolingual society, municipal governments now routinely address the necessity of providing practical and legal information to residents with limited Japanese by machine-translating their public service web sites into selected languages. Cost constraints often mean the translation is left un-edited and, as a result, may be unclear, misleading or even incomprehensible. While machine translation from Japanese is particularly challenging because of its structural uniqueness, the state of the art in the field generally is such that poor output is a universal problem. The solution we propose draws on recent advances in controlled authoring, document structuring and machine translation evaluation. It is realised as a prototype tool that enables non-professional writers to create documents where individual sentences and overall flow are both clear. The tool is designed to enhance machine-translatability into English without compromising the readability of the Japanese original. The originality of the tool is to provide an interactive sentence checker that is context-sensitive to the individual functional elements of a document template specialised for the public administration domain. Where natural Japanese sentences give bad translation results, we pre-process them internally into a form which yields acceptable machine translation output. Evaluation of the tool will target three concerns: its usability by non-professional authors; the acceptability of the Japanese document; and the comprehensibility of the English translation. We suggest that such an authoring framework could facilitate government communication with citizens in many societies beyond Japan.
|
[
"Machine Translation",
"Text Generation",
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
51,
47,
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85060865291
|
‘Gimme diplomacy’: a critical discourse analysis on golf diplomacy between Singapore and the United States
|
In 1997 and 2000, a series of golf games between Singapore’s Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and United States’ President Bill Clinton created opportunities that amended strained relations between both states and led to the initiation of US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. It created an environment that allowed the political leaders to relax and discuss issues in private. Hence, it strengthened diplomatic relations and created opportunities for both countries to amend their relations after falling out over Singapore’s insistence to cane an American teenager named Michael Fay for committing vandalism and mischief in 1993.This article explores the effectiveness of golf as a form of diplomatic tool through the Singapore-US case study, specifically serving as a diplomatic lubricant. Despite this success, the future of golf as a diplomatic tool in Asia is not certain as younger leaders appear to avoid using it for ethical reasons, but an alternative sport is not apparent either.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84938678488
|
‘Go Be a Writer’: Intra-activity with materials, time and space in literacy learning
|
This article is based on research in a United States second-grade classroom during a multimodal literacy workshop. Observing students working with tissue paper, foam board, string, pipe cleaners and other materials, we asked how is intra-activity with materials, time and space influencing literacy learning in Room 203? While the research partnership of the authors spanned four years, video and audio recordings, artefacts and interviews with children for this article focus on year two of the research. Poststructural enquiry methods of pedagogical documentation and thinking with theory were used for data production and analysis. Pedagogical documentation focuses not only on the expected ways of being and learning (in this case, the norms of writing in an early childhood classroom) but also on unexpected occurrences (departures from what is typical or developmental) when students write. Thinking with poststructural and posthumanist theories allowed us to explore time, space and materials with three ideas: departures from the expected, the notion of becoming and intra-activity with materials. We illustrate how intra-activity with materials, time and space manifested in two projects: a 3D birdhouse and a 19-foot giraffe mural. We encourage educators to consider how expanded definitions of writing that include intra-actions with a range of materials create learning opportunities for children to live out literacy desiring with multimodal artefacts.
|
[
"Multimodality"
] |
[
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85148036069
|
‘Google Speak': The discursive practices of search in home-education
|
Learning with technology is increasingly understood to be a social process involving unique and telling discourses. An emerging research agenda has resulted, investigating the links between ‘talk’ and student technological practices but is yet to include home-education. Preliminary evidence exists of a relationship between particular types of ‘talk’ and success with particular online activities, namely online search. This may prove especially pertinent to home-educators who report that their most prolific online activities are those reliant upon search engines like Google. This paper presents select findings from a study into online search and the associated discursive practices among early primary students and their parent-educators in Australia. Data from observations, tests and interviews with five home-educating families were analysed recursively using a system guided by Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis. Specifically, this paper seeks to investigate: which discursive practices are privileged in these sites during online search; the extent to which these practices contribute to relations of power and the extent to which these practices are found alongside effective online search. Findings revealed a prevalence of inequitable discursive practices, those that either inhibited the equal conversational power of speakers or which naturalised inequitable power relations more generally. These discursive practices were found alongside ineffective online searches. Notwithstanding, participants continued to speak positively about search engines and their educational power. This rhetoric-reality gap is theorized in the paper as the work of dominant ideologies surrounding technology in education. Findings can assist the growing number of home-educators and their students to use online search more effectively. Insights regarding links between discursive practice and search practice may also help ensure that discourse helps to maximise the educational benefits associated with online search.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Information Retrieval"
] |
[
71,
72,
24
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85078412358
|
‘HARD WORKERS’: SUBJECTIVITIES AND SOCIAL CLASS IN COLLEGIATE CROSS COUNTRY
|
In this paper, I use interview data drawn from ethnographic work on a Division 1 collegiate cross country team at a large midwestern university in the United States to demonstrate the ways that possessive individualistic discourses around hard work are embodied in classed subjectivities. I find that middle class women, the products of concerted cultivation, tend to focus on the display of hard work, and have anxiety around the value of their production of a hard-working identity. Working class women tend to treat the experience of being disciplined as an athlete as a fortunate opportunity to build physical capital, using the hard work to benefit them as athletes rather than to build their identities. These different attitudes, affected by social class, interact with a dominant discourse around hard work demonstrating the interaction between agency and structure when it comes to forming identities.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85081574149
|
‘Had a lovely week at #conference2018 ’: An Analysis of Interaction through Conference Tweets
|
Twitter has become a common feature of academic conferences, used by organizers to provide information about the conference and by attendees to engage in discussion about the conference topics, share information, and create social links and networks within the community. This study examines the tweets from two conferences in Applied Linguistics in order to analyse the networked language practices of scholars using Twitter during conferences. More specifically, in this study we address the following questions: (i) what are the purposes for which scholars in this disciplinary community use Twitter during conferences? (ii) how are different semiotic resources (e.g. linguistic forms, pictures, videos, embedded slides) combined to orchestrate meaning and achieve these various rhetorical purposes? We also look at how Twitter features (hashtags, replies, retweets, mentions) contribute to these rhetorical purposes. The analysis reveals that tweets are mostly intended to create and maintain cohesive links or to encourage peers to perform specific actions. In order to achieve these functions scholars compose their tweets by using a variety of (linguistic and non-linguistic) expressions of stance and engagement (Hyland, 2005). We suggest that, given the increasingly important role of social media for scholarly communication, a central concern of EAP courses should be to help students develop the competence of composing multimodal texts. Scholars need to understand the ways in which the multiple semiotic resources available to them in social media can be used effectively to engage other members of the community in these new digital contexts.
|
[
"Multimodality"
] |
[
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85049910506
|
‘Have a Quiet, Orderly, Polite Revolution’: Framing Political Protest and Protecting the Status Quo
|
This paper demonstrates how print media sources frame the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street in ways that, consciously or not, support the prevailing status quo – social, economic, and political elites. The study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytic framework, investigating how print media (sometimes referred to as ‘print capitalism’) utilized framing techniques that disparaged the two political organizations but in very different ways. The analysis incorporates articles appearing in the New York Post and the New York Times from the inception of each organization, through six weeks after the 2012 Presidential Inauguration; articles were coded to uncover themes that defined both organizations as ‘outsiders.’ Tea Partiers are characterized as irrational demagogues, while Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activities are criminalized; both are dismissed as irrelevant, leaving the predominant ‘mainstream’ political rule intact. Findings identify tools of discourse used by media to limit the influence of competing movements while essentially protecting the status quo. Revealing these tools provides clues to unreliable discourse in media coverage of presidential candidates, which tends to quash open debate and threaten principles of participatory government.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85105343188
|
‘He doesn’t deserve to be in the higher track’: teachers’ justifications in student tracking discussions
|
This study examines teachers’ justifications for their student sorting decisions in two Israeli secondary schools. Combining descriptive statistics and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis of 281 audio-recorded discussions, the study offers a new perspective on tracking’s multiple social and organizational functions: providing students’ needs, rewarding and punishing students, satisfying teachers’ emotional needs, and efficiently using school resources. Most of the justifications were related to students’ needs (43%) and reciprocity issues (37%), with productivity justifications (20%) appearing less frequently. The study points in particular to teacher emotions as a key factor in the tension between formal sorting requirements and teachers’ sorting practices.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84992485954
|
‘He shall signify from time to time’. Romeo and Juliet in modern English
|
Building on the growing interest among Translation Studies scholars in ‘intralingual translation’ and hoping to contribute to it by some data-driven descriptive work, this paper sets out to investigate the specific case of rewritings of Shakespeare in modern English. Examples will be taken from Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595), a play for which more than a dozen such versions have been found. These are born from a perceived need to bridge the comprehension gap between Shakespeare’s play and later audiences. The paper will look into the nature of this comprehension gap and the various (other) ways of dealing with it, before comparing the corpus of modernized versions of Romeo and Juliet. A great variety of translational approaches emerges from the study, and there is no less variety as to how these rewritings appear to be labelled or classified, suggesting that they belong in a generic no-man’s land. The idea of translating Shakespeare into modern English generally invites negative reactions; the main arguments used in these controversies and their underlying political and cultural assumptions are also briefly examined.
|
[
"Paraphrasing",
"Machine Translation",
"Text Generation",
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
32,
51,
47,
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85040746030
|
‘Her choice of course’: Negotiating legitimacy of ‘choice’ in abortion rights deliberations during the ‘Repeal the Eighth’ movement in Ireland
|
Discourses of ‘choice’ are routinely involved in sexual and reproductive rights’ advocacy. In this article, we offer a discursive psychological examination of how ‘choice’ is oriented to, in online deliberations on the ongoing movement for abortion rights in Ireland. Comment posters treated ‘choice’ as involving outcomes of and motives for choosing, in negotiating legitimacy of women’s rights to choose. These accompanied alternative versions of women, either as independent or as intimately bound up with pregnancy/motherhood, which were flexibly used in negotiation legitimacy of women’s rights to ‘choice’ in abortion practices. Choice advocacy is then situated in particular discursive practices.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85059910233
|
‘Hitlahamut’: A term for unreasonable populist public talk in Israel
|
This research follows the tradition of Ethnography of Communication to discuss hitlahamut, an Israeli term for a distinctive type of public talk. After presenting the denotive meaning, I define the act and style hitlahamut encodes, using analysis of the type of talk it describes. The data are taken from phone-in interactions and online op-eds and news. Hitlahamut defines a self-centered emotive, exaggerated style of the confrontational and divisive message, and it encodes hostile relations between the participants. I then connect this term with other Israeli terms for talk and with terms for public talk elsewhere, suggesting that hitlahamut describes unreasonable criticism, enabling participants not to engage with the content of the criticism due to its (perceived) style. In addition, hitlahamut describes populist discourse (from both left and right) due to its combination of aggression and emotive style with divisive language and problematic argumentative content.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85062600014
|
‘Honey, shall I change the baby? – Well done, choose another one’: ERP and time-frequency correlates of humor processing
|
We studied the electrophysiological correlates of verbal humor comprehension by comparing Event Related Potentials (ERPs) and time-frequency representations recorded while 50 participants read humorous and non-humorous passages. Using linear mixed models on single trials we showed that humorous target words elicited a larger Left Anterior Negativity (LAN), sustained in time and followed by a positive shift involving P600 and Late Positive Complex (LPC) components. In the time-frequency domain, humor was associated with a power decrease in the beta-band of the EEG. Furthermore, participants’ Autism-spectrum Quotient correlated with the size of the LAN, suggesting that social skills may affect humor comprehension during the early processing phase. Our results describe a sequence of events where incongruity detection (associated with the LAN) precedes a composite set of mechanisms serving resolution and acting in parallel: the sustained LAN might reflect the search for an alternative script, while the P600 might index inferential processes arriving at the resolution and the updating of the discourse model. The processing differences associated with the LPC and the changes in beta power may reflect a later stage of more elaborative and reflective processing (where the receiver reflects upon the joke's solution) and the abandonment of the current discourse model.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Reasoning",
"Commonsense Reasoning",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
8,
62,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85054738304
|
‘How can you be strong all the time?’ Discourses of stoicism in the first counselling session of young male clients
|
Background: Being ‘strong and silent’ has long been a definitive masculine stereotype. However, research shows that stoicism and the strict control of feelings can contribute to grave consequences for young men who suffer with depression. Aim: This study aims to explore stoicism in the talk of young male clients in their first counselling session. Method: Recordings of the first counselling sessions of six male university students attending a university counselling and psychotherapy research clinic, were listened to, transcribed and analysed using a Foucauldian method of discourse analysis. Results/Findings: Discourses of stoicism presented a number of different, often opposing, constructions. The male clients were aware of a ‘strong and silent’ masculinity and talked about a number of conflicts when coming to counselling. They were seen to negotiate with the counsellor the struggle to share and express feelings while maintaining a masculine identity. Stoicism was constructed as a useful emotional resilience but also as a dysfunctional barrier to showing caring feelings. Conclusions: This research enhances understanding of conflicts of stoicism in counselling for practitioners working with young male clients. The findings can contribute to professional practice by helping practitioners recognise the tension for male clients opening up and expressing their feelings to a counsellor, as well as encouraging practitioners to respond in a way that opens up a dialogue about constricting masculine stereotypes.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85129288117
|
‘How can you feel guilty for colonialism? it is a folly’: colonial memory in the Italian populist radical right
|
This paper draws attention to the role of colonial memory in the Italian populist radical right. Italy’s colonial past has been long confined on the fringes of memory in Italian politics and in the Italian public debate. While recent academic attention has been devoted to the selective colonial memory transpiring from Italian cultural products, scarce attention has been paid to colonial memory in contemporary Italian political parties’ discourse. Therefore, by applying Critical Discourse Analysis to semi-structured interviews with Italian populist radical right representatives from the Lega and Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), this paper aims at investigating which role colonial memory plays in these parties’ discourse. This paper argues that the Lega and FdI reproduce colonial discourse in constructing the image of the contemporary immigrant Other. At the same time, they forge a selective memory of Italy’s colonial past, cleansed from its most controversial aspects.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85079366386
|
‘How do you get the courage to stand up?’ Teachers’ constructions of activism in response to education policy reform
|
This study explores how six teachers worked up becoming and being activists in response to education reforms in the southeastern US. The reforms, which involved increasing student testing and implementing high-stakes teacher evaluations, were enacted following the authorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act, federal legislation governing elementary and secondary education. Discourse analysis of interview data demonstrates how engaging in activism was constructed and positioned by teachers in response to these policy changes. We describe two interrelated patterns: (1) characterizing activism as requiring ‘professionalism’ on the part of the teacher-activist; and (2) justifying their actions by contrasting versions of activism in the media with their own activism, which they aligned with commonly accepted category-bound activities tied to ‘doing’ being a teacher. Findings shed light on the nuanced negotiation of educators’ roles as teacher-activists within the current policy context and the complicated nature of framing professionalism and activism for public audiences.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85141650964
|
‘How do you reflect linguistic diversity in the classroom?’: A quanticised analysis. The pedagogic repertoires of pre-service teachers in England training in predominantly monolingual classrooms
|
This study, undertaken in a predominantly monolingual area of England, examines pre-service teachers’ (N = 293) suggestions of how they could reflect linguistic diversity in primary classrooms (ages 4-11). Trialling a mixed method approach where open-text data are quanticised, a combination of content analysis and statistical analysis are used to ask a) what methodsare identified as ways of reflecting linguistic and cultural diversity? And b) is there a difference in the methods suggested by the pre-service teachers according to their own experience of learning languages and the institution they train at? The methods most commonly suggsted were likely to be isolated events and fit with existing structures (e.g. ”show and tell” time, multicultural days and guest speakers). Overall, substantial differences in pre-service teachers' pedagogic repertoires were found, highlighting the need to ensure practice, research and rhetoric supporting multilingualism reaches all.
|
[
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85041113534
|
‘How does it look and feel to be plurilingual?’: analysing children's representations of plurilingualism through collage
|
Linguistic diversity has become a defining feature of schools in the twenty-first century. How do children make sense of such diversity and their own linguistic identities? This article draws on data generated through a multi-site inquiry with five English and French schools in Canada and France to investigate children's plurilingualism. According to educational policy and curriculum in each context, all of the children involved in this study were receiving instruction at school in English and French. In addition, many children spoke other languages outside of school, at home and in their communities. At the conclusion of each 4–6 month research collaboration in each school, children engaged in making collages that responded to the question, ‘How does it look and feel to be plurilingual’? Drawing on social theories of language representation and plurilingualism, the focus herein is on analyzing how children's representations of plurilingualism made visible through the medium of collage. This article argues for the usefulness of creative multimodal arts-based methods in applied linguistics research and in particular for engaging plurilingual children as co- investigators.
|
[
"Linguistic Theories",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Linguistics & Cognitive NLP",
"Representation Learning"
] |
[
57,
72,
48,
12
] |
https://aclanthology.org//W10-4353/
|
‘How was your day?’ An affective companion ECA prototype
|
[
"Emotion Analysis",
"Natural Language Interfaces",
"Sentiment Analysis",
"Dialogue Systems & Conversational Agents"
] |
[
61,
11,
78,
38
] |
|
https://aclanthology.org//W10-4307/
|
‘How was your day?’ An architecture for multimodal ECA systems
|
[
"Natural Language Interfaces",
"Dialogue Systems & Conversational Agents",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
11,
38,
74
] |
|
SCOPUS_ID:85065573369
|
‘I Believe that a Sofa can be of Great Help’: Materiality in a Kindergarten Room and the Impact on Social Practices
|
This research explores how the material environment in kindergarten frames social practices and everyday life and how change may affect pedagogy. Data were drawn from an ethnographic study conducted in a large, newly established kindergarten in Norway. The analyses focus on one conversation between two educators and the head of the kindergarten. Critical discourse theory informed data analyses through examination of dimensions of the text, discursive practice, and social practice. The conversation illustrated how the lack of a sofa in a room touched on educators’ central values about practice about caring and children’s wellbeing. The findings illustrate how a change in the material environment forced educators to articulate their beliefs about a taken-for-granted, social practice when traditional expectations were not met. The analyses illustrate how change in materiality in new physical environments may have affective consequences to impact on social practices in kindergarten.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85060432724
|
‘I Understand What You Asked’: Question Interpreter for an AI-Based Business Analyst
|
We propose the demonstration of a key component of our AI-based business analyst: a question interpreter that takes as input a question and displays its meaning in terms of a semantic interpretation. The semantic interpretation captures linguistic properties, entities and metrics in the question. The question interpreter is an application of well-studied Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques such as syntactic parsing, Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging, etc. The question interpreter is the first step of an AI-based business analyst that allows users to ask natural language questions on enterprise data.
|
[
"Explainability & Interpretability in NLP",
"Natural Language Interfaces",
"Question Answering",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
81,
11,
27,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85110883914
|
‘I am sorry, but I have to speak Korean’: stancetaking through apology in public speech at an ‘English only’ Korean university
|
This paper explores the ways in which apology functions as a stance act at public speech events. Rather than focusing on speakers’ intentions, in this study I pay attention to indexical meanings associated with apologies in a specific context. The study primarily analyses apology sequences that involve code-switching, which were drawn from ethnographic data gathered in a Korean university where English has been adopted as its official language (EOL). Data analysis shows that the use of apology allows speakers to take a stance towards their language choice and the institutional language policy. Both apology and speakers’ metalinguistic articulations prior to code-switching reflect and reinforce the two language ideologies: (1) the language policy is intended to serve for international members of the university, and (2), Korean can be used when needed. A closer look at the way in which apology is used in specific contexts suggests that speakers’ main purpose of apology is self-presentation in a public event. Apology functions to index speaker’s defiance of an institution’s language policy while avoiding their responsibility for the action. The sociolinguistic concept of stance allows us to better understand speakers’ positioning with respect to norms and expectations informed by institutional language policy.
|
[
"Code-Switching",
"Multimodality",
"Speech & Audio in NLP",
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
7,
74,
70,
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85018192971
|
‘I believe they felt attacked’. Discursive representation and construction of interculturality in Spanish news television
|
This article discusses the representation of interculturality in the media. Interculturality, the interaction between two different cultures, has taken on greater importance in the social and human sciences. However, in the field of media communications the representation of interculturality has not received much attention. Thus, we are interested in analysing the media representation of interculturality in Spanish television news. We analyse the discursive construction of interculturality in news programs, and we go into depth as to how the conflictual kind of interculturality is represented. To achieve this, critical discourse analysis is used, applying the concepts of lexicalisation, propositional structures, topics, polarisation and focus. Results indicate that in public and private stations alike, interculturality is shown as a polarised interaction between a dominant in-group and a minority out-group, and it is defined by the status quo. However, Spanish television portrays a conflictual interculturality that is not limited to disagreement.
|
[
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Robustness in NLP",
"Representation Learning",
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
72,
58,
12,
71,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85084846217
|
‘I can’t use this word feminism because I think it is too strong’: discourse and evaluative language on feminism in narratives of gender produced by Cape Verdean academics
|
This article presents an investigation of the narratives of gender produced by a group of Cape Verdean female academics, focusing on their perspectives on current discourses on feminism. We analyzed the narrators’ lexical choices with the support of the Appraisal System, and the narratves representations were interpreted with Fairclough’s framework, in alignment with concepts from African Feminist Studies. The results show that the term ‘gender’ was used as a synonym for a balance between the sexes. This perspective allowed them to approach the discussion that unequal relations can disfavor both genders, despite acknowledging that women’s conditions were historically built in disadvantage in relation to men. The few usages of the words ‘feminist/feminism’ were related to attributive and evaluative meanings, implying that these terms carry a too strong meaning. ‘Feminism’ appears to refer to an agenda that is only concerned with women’s needs. To conclude, the participants’ evaluations in relation to the categories gender and feminism express the complexity of their local experiences, which sometimes are represented as contradictory.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85130924566
|
‘I do not think I actually do it well’: a discourse analysis of Australian senior secondary teachers’ self-efficacy and attitudes towards implementation of differentiated instruction
|
Differentiated instruction is a proactive teaching model and philosophy with demonstrated potential to cater for diverse learners and create inclusive classrooms. There is little research, however, into the implementation of this approach in the senior secondary classroom. Teachers’ implementation of differentiated instruction has been shown to be linked to teacher attitudes and self-efficacy in other settings. This study investigated the impact of teachers’ self-efficacy and attitudes towards the implementation of differentiated instruction in the senior secondary context across two Australian states with a total of five participating teachers. The A (Affective) B (Behaviour) C (Cognitive) model was employed to define teacher attitudes from interviews concerning differentiated instruction. Findings indicated that teacher knowledge was a major factor influencing differentiation, in addition to attitude and self-efficacy. The discourse analysis demonstrated that teachers held a greater knowledge of differentiation strategies than the concepts that underpin the differentiated instruction framework. Additionally, time constraints and feelings of failure in implementing differentiation strategies impacted teacher attitudes. Teacher knowledge, attitude and self-efficacy were interrelated and impacted on teachers’ implementation of differentiated instruction in the senior secondary classroom. Implications for professional development to address student needs through differentiated instruction in the inclusive senior secondary classroom teacher are discussed.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85055150428
|
‘I don’t think this woman had anyone in her life’: Loneliness and singlehood in Six Feet Under
|
This article offers a critical analysis of representations of loneliness and singlehood, embodied in the narrative of the ‘old maid’s’ lonely death. The study contributes to a complex understanding of single women and the resignification of emotions conventionally ascribed to this category. By bridging the gap between two rarely linked bodies of knowledge – singlehood and the sociology of emotions – the authors do not ask what loneliness is, but, following Sara Ahmed’s work, rather what loneliness does. To this end, this article employs a content analysis of versatile media texts, focusing on the acclaimed television series Six Feet Under, a polysemic text which juxtaposes both conservative and subversive meanings. The study contributes both to the vibrant discussion of social emotions as well as to the existing critical scholarship about singlehood, and seeks to challenge the limited set of representations attached to single women, and hegemonic ideals of family and solitary life.
|
[
"Emotion Analysis",
"Sentiment Analysis"
] |
[
61,
78
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85104809595
|
‘I feel proud because I made them stop fighting’: boys’ affective-discursive practices of discouraging physical aggression
|
Amidst essentialising discourses that circulate through educational spaces (e.g. that ‘boys will be boys’ or that boys are inherently aggressive), there is a need for more research that explores adolescent identities as complex and relational. This study considers the affective-discursive practices that both constrain and enable teenage boys to discourage physical fights. Critical discourse analysis techniques, informed by critical affect studies and feminist poststructuralism, were applied to interviews with four young men to illuminate how dynamic ways of ‘doing boy’ are always under creation. The discussion calls for moving beyond an individualistic discourse of ‘good choices’ in response to peer aggression, instead working more collaboratively with youth to examine the affect-laden discourses and relationships that shape themselves and their societies.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Emotion Analysis",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Sentiment Analysis"
] |
[
71,
61,
72,
78
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85119337340
|
‘I had to work through what people would think of me’: negotiating ‘problematic single motherhood’ as a solo or single adoptive mum
|
This article considers how five single mothers, who used adoption or donor conception to bring children into their lives, negotiate a persistent and pervasive discourse of ‘problematic single motherhood’ in their interview talk. Tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall [2005]. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614.), especially the overlapping strategies of distinction, authorisation and illegitimation, are shown to be particularly salient for these parents, as they work to legitimise their routes to motherhood by distancing themselves from widely stigmatised positions such as young motherhood, working-class motherhood and unplanned motherhood. I argue that these single women’s intersubjective positioning serves to protect them against stigma and discrimination, but often relies on the reproduction of other polarising and discriminatory discourses, which feed into idealised constructions of mothers as responsible, middle-class, and appropriately aged citizens. Overall, the analysis suggests that it is difficult for these single mothers to challenge the multiple and intersecting discriminatory discourses, ideals and stereotypes that converge in exclusionary and limiting constructions of single motherhood, whilst maintaining a recognisably legitimate social position for themselves.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Ethical NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
72,
17,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84943259799
|
‘I need to confess something’: Coming out on national television
|
This article takes a (discourse) critical look at the television show ‘Uit de Kast’ (‘Out of the closet’) that has been broadcast on Dutch public television for the past three years. In this program, young male and female lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) participants, who have not come out yet for various reasons, reveal their homosexuality to their family, peers, and colleagues while being documented on camera. We problematize the compatibility of the genre ‘reality television’, which by definition focuses on personal emotions and conflict, with subjects that have emancipatory goals, such as the creation of more awareness for and acceptance of homosexuality. The data reveal that in the show LGB emancipation is framed as a personal problem and not as a socio-political issue with moral and ideological dimensions. In the end, we argue, the effect could very well be that the show does not promote but rather – ironically – hinders LGB emancipation.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85027920997
|
‘I think he is immune to all the smoke I gave him’: how women account for the harm of smoking during pregnancy
|
Despite women’s awareness of the risks of smoking in pregnancy to the developing foetus, a significant minority continue to smoke during pregnancy. In this article, we use a discourse analytic approach to analyse interviews with 12 Australian women who smoked during a recent pregnancy. We used these data to examine how women accounted for their smoking and identities in the light of the implicit but ever-present discourse that smoking in pregnancy harms babies. We found that the women in our study deployed two rhetorical devices in their talk, ‘stacking the facts’ and ‘smoking for health’, allowing them to situate their smoking within a discourse of risk or as a potential benefit to their health. Women ‘stacked the facts’ by citing personal observable evidence (such as birthweight) to draw conclusions about the risks of smoking in pregnancy to the baby. ‘Stacking the facts’ allowed women to show how they had evaded the risks and their babies were healthy. This device also allowed women to deny or cast doubt over the risks of smoking in pregnancy. Women’s accounts of ‘smoking for health’ involved positioning quitting as stressful and, as a result, more harmful than continuing to smoke a reduced amount. We found complex and counter-intuitive ways in which women dealt with the discourse that smoking in pregnancy harms babies and how these ways of accounting served to protect their identities. We argue that health promotion messages conveying the risks of smoking in pregnancy would benefit from contextualising these messages within women’s personal accounts (e.g. by ‘stacking the facts’ or ‘smoking for health’) and hence providing more ‘realistic’ health risk messages.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84940912349
|
‘I think it's absolutely exorbitant!’: how UK television news reported the shareholder vote on executive remuneration at Barclays in 2012
|
The most publicised rebellion during the so-called ‘Shareholder Spring’ of 2012 was at Barclays PLC. Using multi-modal and critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how three UK television channels with different public service obligations covered this story on 27 April 2012. It finds that broadcasters’ regulatory obligations do not obviously impact content and that, for example, simple reporting routines contain judgemental phrases. Generally, the multi-dimensional nature of executive pay is simplified and the real balance between private and individual shareholders is obscured. Analysis also reveals that editing and the use of images can subtly construct discourses that may not reflect the reality of the dissent. The paper concludes that established criticisms that business journalism is indolent and that corporate discourses are privileged are not supported, but also that the coverage contributes little to promote wider understanding of executive pay debates.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85132007822
|
‘I think that's what I heard? I'm not sure’: Speech and language therapists’ views of, and practices in, phonetic transcription
|
Background: Phonetic transcription is recognized in regulatory standards as an essential skill for Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) in the assessment, diagnosis and management of clients with speech difficulties. Previous research has identified that approaches to phonetic transcription vary, and that SLTs often lack confidence in transcribing. However, SLTs’ views and working practices have not been investigated in detail, particularly in terms of whole service approaches and following the recent increase in telehealth. Aims: To investigate SLTs’ views about phonetic transcription, their working practices at both individual and service levels, and the factors that influence these. Methods & Procedures: A total of 19 SLTs from the UK were recruited to online focus groups via social media and local networks. Participants discussed their views of, and practices in, phonetic transcription. Themes were identified using reflexive thematic analysis. Outcomes & Results: Three broad themes were generated division and unity; one small part of a big job; and fit for purpose. SLTs were uniformly proud of their ability to phonetically transcribe and viewed this as a unique skill, but clear differences existed between different groups of SLTs in their views and practices. Investing in phonetic transcription was not always a priority for SLTs or services, and although many felt under-confident in their skills they considered these to be adequate for the populations they usually encounter. SLTs make an early judgement about possible therapy targets, which influences the level of detail used in their phonetic transcription. Practical barriers are often not addressed at service level, and assessment via telehealth poses some specific challenges. Conclusions & Implications: SLTs and services would benefit from increased investment in phonetic transcription in terms of time, opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) and initiatives such as electronic patient records (EPRs) which support the use of phonetic symbols. Identifying target sounds at an early stage raises questions about the implications of disregarding other features of speech, and the selection of appropriate intervention approaches. Further research is needed to analyse actual rather than reported practices, and to consider the relationship between phonetic transcription and intervention approaches. Future studies could also identify precise CPD requirements and evaluate the effectiveness of CPD. What this paper adds: What is already known on the subject Previous research has demonstrated that SLTs often lack confidence in phonetic transcription and that practices are varied, with relatively little use of narrow transcription. SLTs are interested in opportunities to maintain and develop transcription skills but do not often undertake CPD for transcription. What this paper adds to existing knowledge By using focus groups as a forum for discussions, this study provides a rich and detailed insight into SLTs’ views about clinical transcription and their working practices, with previously unreported details about the reasons for these practices in a clinical context and at a service-wide level. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Transcription is often de-prioritized in non-specialist contexts, with practical barriers and a lack of clear and consistent protocols at a whole-service level. There is an opportunity for service managers to address the systemic difficulties in using transcription effectively by raising the profile and value of transcription amongst clinicians, and promoting CPD opportunities, using the findings of this study as a rationale for funding this. Together, these recommendations have the potential to improve client outcomes through more accurate assessment and diagnosis, and hence more appropriate intervention.
|
[
"Phonetics",
"Speech & Audio in NLP",
"Syntactic Text Processing",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
64,
70,
15,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85075171837
|
‘I thought I could get away from gender discrimination’: linguistic instrumentalism and self-actualisation of female interpreters in temporary employment in Japan
|
This article explores the narratives of a group of Japanese women who, to escape gender discrimination in regular employment, deploy their linguistic expertise in temporary employment as interpreters. Building on research that highlights women’s investment dynamics into languages as an organising construct for their professional growth, this article argues that a category of Japanese women are increasingly turning to the ‘foreign option’ to mark their presence in the labour market for linguistic services as temporary workers, in a feminised industry where they feel gender equity is secured. Drawing upon in-depth interviews, this article uses the profession of interpreting as a key case for a micro-level ethnographic understanding of a temporary form of skilled linguistic work and women’s aspirations. Adopting a critical approach to linguistic instrumentalism, it contributes to research by examining a small but ambitious segment of the Japanese female labour force, who–by mobilising rare communication skills–constructs an emancipatory turn from gender-stratified corporate structures. The study finds that interpreting, and the ethos of linguistic instrumentalism it carries, promises to informants a work–life balance and career growth. However, findings also show that informants’ engagement with interpreting is not immune from gender stereotypes and occupational segregation, and thus remains a ‘professional chimera’.
|
[
"Explainability & Interpretability in NLP",
"Ethical NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
81,
17,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85137738213
|
‘I want to die on my own terms’: Dominant interpretative repertoires of ‘a good death’ in old age in Dutch newspapers
|
Rationale: There is a paucity of empirical studies exploring how death and dying in old age are actually represented and debated within the Dutch society. Objective: This study examines the discourse used in Dutch newspapers on the good death and dignified dying. It analyses how different types of social actions and positions are construed, thereby describing how death and dying in old age are portrayed in newspaper media. Methods: 173 newspaper articles between 2010 and 2020 were selected from five Dutch national newspapers. Data were thematically coded and scrutinised for discursive patterns in order to identify interpretative repertoires and their functions. Results: Four interpretative repertoires of good death and dying in old age were identified, all drawing on the assisted dying debate: Choice, Risk, Care, and Complexity. Each repertoire constructs a particular image of death and dying, varying from it being a personal choice; a last resort; a joint journey; to a contingent quest. The different repertoires imply distinct identities and actions. The Choice-repertoire construes older people as active subjects who autonomously determine their own death. The Risk- and Care-repertoires both construe older people primarily as passive and acted upon: either threatened by illness, decline and death; or protected and cared for by others and society. The Complexity-repertoire construes older people's situation as an object of reflection. Discussion and conclusion: The strong prevalence of the Choice-repertoire in Dutch newspapers construes good death and dignified dying in old age in a salient way, unrepresentatively highlighting assisted dying as the preferred imagined practice. It is hypothesised that reimaging the Care- and Complexity-repertoires in such a way that they construe older persons in a more active subject role could help depolarise the debate on death and dying in old age.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Explainability & Interpretability in NLP",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
81,
72,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85018751817
|
‘I will not share my partner: The ‘care of the self’ in an HIV prevention campaign
|
This article presents a textual examination and reception analysis of a HIV/AIDS poster used by the University of KwaZulu-Natal students during 2006–09. It examines how discourses construct self-responsibility for sexual health among female students. Discourse analysis, language and visual strategies are applied to reveal gender stereotypes. The article argues that an alternative discourse of femininity is used centring on female power bordering on active participation through the use of the discursive self ‘I’ in order to promote self-surveillance and individual agency.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85077376581
|
‘I've got a gut feeling that I'd regret not choosing Spanish’. A critical discourse analysis of language option choice discussions on Mumsnet and Studentroom
|
Like other anglophone countries, the UK is experiencing a language ‘crisis’, in that fewer and fewer students opt to study a foreign language (FL) beyond the compulsory phase, and that the UK’s language skills do not match its economic needs. Despite strong statements of commitments to increase FL uptake, decline in FL uptake in the UK’s four nations persists. In a novel approach, this study investigates how key stakeholders (parents, students) discuss whether to continue with FL study beyond the compulsory phase on the internet platforms Mumsnet and Studentroom. The researchers undertook a thematic analysis of threads relevant to this topic on these platforms, in two equal-sized corpora from Mumsnet and Studentroom respectively. The analysis of stakeholders’ stances towards both current, and wished for, FL policies and practices is then utilised to formulate five FL policy suggestions that respect stakeholders’ preferences and concerns, and could lead to facilitating the choice for a FL beyond the compulsory phase.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85021809159
|
‘If I was a different ethnicity, would she treat me the same?’: Latino parents’ experiences obtaining autism services
|
This article reports on an ethnographic study with 12 Latino families of children on the autism spectrum related to obtaining autism services in Los Angeles County. Using critical discourse analysis of interviews, observations, and records, we consider the experiences of the Latino families in relation to: a discursively constructed ‘autism parent’ subject position that mandates ‘fighting’ service systems to ‘win’ autism services for children, originating from White middle-class parents’ socioeconomic resources and social capital; a neoliberal social services climate that assumes scarcity of available resources and prioritizes austerity in their authorization; and a media and institutional ‘cultural deficit’ discourse that attributes disparities in autism services for Latino children to their parents’ presumed culturally-based ‘passivity.’ We argue that parental discourse about fighting, or not fighting, for autism services is engendered by a tension between a parental logic of care, and the logic of competition of the economic market.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85040743477
|
‘If they have a girlfriend, they have five girlfriends’: Accountability and sexism in volunteer workers’ talk about HIV/AIDS in a South African health setting
|
Significant challenges remain in tackling the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Effective action requires both appropriate policy at a global level and informed practice on the local level. Here, we report how workers in a project in Johannesburg, South Africa, make sense of HIV transmission. Discourse analysis of data from interviews with 63 participants shows that project workers routinely attribute transmission to men’s sexual relationships with multiple female partners. This explanation is so pervasive that it renders invisible other routes to transmission. Absence of consideration of other routes to infection potentially restricts front-line practice, so hindering local attempts to tackle HIV/AIDS.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Ethical NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
71,
72,
17,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85081751769
|
‘If we don’t study the language, the history will be lost’: motivation to learn Welsh in Argentine Patagonia
|
This study examines the motivations of learners studying Welsh in the city of Esquel, Argentine Patagonia. Welsh is considered a heritage immigrant language in this region, given the fact that a group of Welsh settlers arrived in 1865 and established successful settlements. After a flourishing period, the process of acculturation reduced the number of Welsh speakers. However, through different projects, Welsh has started to grow in the community by attracting Argentines with and without Welsh roots to learn the language. Framed as a qualitative study, this article presents the findings that emerged from in-depth interviews with ten adult and young learners at a local Welsh learning centre in Esquel. Based on the qualitative data collected and on complementary theories of language learning motivation, it may be concluded that for the participants motivation is driven by family and community-driven interests in language maintenance and revitalisation. Also, integrative orientation, influenced by the official narrative of overrepresenting the Welsh in Patagonia (Berg, K. 2018. “Chubut, Argentina: A Contested Welsh ‘First-Place’.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 24: 154–166. doi:10.1080/13527258.2016.1274667), was identified as influential.
|
[
"Linguistics & Cognitive NLP",
"Linguistic Theories"
] |
[
48,
57
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85031495961
|
‘If you look at me like at a piece of meat, then that’s a problem’–women in the center of the male gaze. Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis as a tool of critique
|
This article proposes a discursive approach to beauty, which it illustrates with a close data analysis of women's relationship with the ‘male gaze’. In gender and feminist studies, the male gaze is invoked with reference to the patriarchal surveillance of women's bodies. The article complements studies that approach the surveillance as a socio-cultural phenomenon by investigating it as a discursive accomplishment of a social relation and identification. Taking a Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis approach to the matter (and combining it with a discursive psychological perspective), this article focuses on the complexities and ambiguities underwriting individuals’ personalized ways of dealing with being looked at. Women's positioning to the male gaze by means of culturally available discourses is found to reveal ambiguous sites of agency and submission within its scope. Examining them, the article addresses the importance of combining a feminist poststructuralist perspective on the relations of gender with women's lived understandings of being implicated in them. (How) can lived and academic sensibilities be set side by side in gender research? Is there a methodology of discourse analysis that facilitates this?.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85141741467
|
‘If you’re going to do something that’s new and different in an area that hasn’t been looked at much before, you probably need to start with something not too complex’: An interview with Mick Short
|
Mick Short is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at Lancaster University, UK. He studied English at the University of Lancaster from 1965, just one year after the university first opened, to 1968. He returned to teach at Lancaster in 1972, retiring in 2012. As an undergraduate he was taught by the early stylistician and poet Anne Cluysenaar, 1 who was instrumental in setting him on track for an academic career in stylistics. In 1979 he, Katie Wales, Ron Carter and others founded the Poetics and Linguistics Association. Then, in 1992 he became the first editor of Language and Literature. In this interview, he explains how he came to be interested in stylistics, as well as how his academic career began. He discusses what it was like to teach and research stylistics in its early days, the influence of structuralism on stylistics, the beginnings of discourse and pragmatic stylistics and the importance of corpus tools for moving stylistics forwards. He also sets out some concerns about current stylistics and how these concerns might be met in future.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
https://aclanthology.org//W10-4220/
|
‘If you’ve heard it, you can say it’ - Towards an Account of Expressibility
|
[
"Text Generation"
] |
[
47
] |
|
SCOPUS_ID:84922554170
|
‘Ilm al-Tafsir and critical discourse analysis: A methodological comparison
|
The methodology of ‘Ilm al-Tafsir and the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) highlight the similarities and differences in leveraging the text as research data beyond the level of the text’s structure. Questions on similarities and differences between methodologies are addressed in the present study. This study, therefore, compares the similarities and the differences between the methodology of ‘Ilm al-Tafsir and the methodology of CDA. Based on the comparison, the present study also constructs a religious discourse analysis model. The selected methodology of ‘Ilm al-Tafsir is al-Sabuniy’s in Safwat al-Tafasir (1979), while the chosen methodology of CDA is Fairclough’s 3D (1992; 1995). The universal principle of discourse and the linguistic goals in the philosophy of language is applied in the analysis. Similarities and differences were identified in the production, meaning and interpretation. The findings strongly suggest that the two methodologies have circumstances which lead to the use of language, the production of language, the features of texts, the nature of meaning and the means of interpretation. One of the main focuses of the comparison is on the differences that constitute barriers to the adoption of CDA for religious discourse analysis, specifically the critical approach towards the sickle and the fixed elements. The obstacles to this alternative are presented in order to prove that there is a linguistic approach that is capable of linking language with social elements. The findings thus have implications for the relatively new methodology of religious discourse in linguistic studies.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85126757844
|
‘Immigrants, hell on board’: Stereotypes and prejudice emerging from racial hoaxes through a psycho-linguistic analysis
|
Social media platforms provide direct access to an unprecedented amount of content and can amplify rumours and questionable information. Moreover, when polarisation is high, misinformation can easily spread. Some studies have indicated that fake news and false information can spread faster and further than fact-based news, as it may be based on more stereotypical and less complex content. This research aims to examine racial misinformation. ‘Racial hoaxes are becoming a popular discursive strategy to disguise racism’. The main charac-teristic of racial hoaxes is that they are born out of the ideology of ethnic preju-dice. Therefore, it is essential to shed light on these hoaxes’ socio-psychological characteristics to understand how to recognise, analyse and resist them. Based on these theoretical considerations, this research aims to analyse one hundred Italian news articles containing racial hoaxes collected in 2020 and 2021. For this purpose, a content analysis was conducted to code the psycho-linguistic features of subject description and mode, including stereotypes and components of journalistic attitude such as discrediting forms and affective lexicon. The analysis indicates that racial hoaxes have socio-cognitive features, stereotypes and evaluative forms of prejudice that can potentially lead to greater media rein-forcement of false stereotypes because they are strictly associated with familiar and concrete linguistic forms.
|
[
"Ethical NLP",
"Psycholinguistics",
"Linguistics & Cognitive NLP",
"Reasoning",
"Fact & Claim Verification",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
17,
77,
48,
8,
46,
4
] |
https://aclanthology.org//W18-5417/
|
‘Indicatements’ that character language models learn English morpho-syntactic units and regularities
|
Character language models have access to surface morphological patterns, but it is not clear whether or how they learn abstract morphological regularities. We instrument a character language model with several probes, finding that it can develop a specific unit to identify word boundaries and, by extension, morpheme boundaries, which allows it to capture linguistic properties and regularities of these units. Our language model proves surprisingly good at identifying the selectional restrictions of English derivational morphemes, a task that requires both morphological and syntactic awareness. Thus we conclude that, when morphemes overlap extensively with the words of a language, a character language model can perform morphological abstraction.
|
[
"Language Models",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Morphology",
"Syntactic Text Processing",
"Explainability & Interpretability in NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP"
] |
[
52,
72,
73,
15,
81,
4
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85070333723
|
‘Inevitable distinctions’: The discursive construction of unaccompanied minors’ agency in Italian residential care
|
Professionals working in residential care for children everyday perform the institutional relevant activity of constructing their cases. This article analyzes the ways in which they construct the case of ‘unaccompanied minors’ (UAM) and how, in doing so, they talk into being their everyday practices of work. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Italian residential care professionals, this study adopts a Discourse Analysis approach. Findings illustrate how the discursive assemblage of UAM relies on participants’ multiple distinctions and on a contrastive rhetoric that is widely used in social work. Differences in the case-construction of UAM mirror participants’ institutional settings and overall socio-cultural debate, paving the way for future investigation.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84989395530
|
‘Innere sprachform’ Humboldts Grenzbegriff, Steinthals begriffsgrenze
|
This paper investigates the nature of Heymann Steinthal‘s (1823-1899) contribution to the interpretation of Wilhelm von Humboldt‘s (1767-1835) linguistic theory. It advances the argument that in his almost life-long attempts to grasp the ‘true’ Humboldt behind the idealist, genial, and ‘mystical’ one Steinthal tries to overcome Humboldt‘s distinction between the empirical and the theoretical. Following his acquaintance with Moritz Lazarus (1824-1903), Steinthal takes a psycholinguistic approach. Humboldt‘s ‘mystical dualism’, a remnant of Kantian philosophy in Steinthal‘s opinion, was replaced by a Hegelian-Herbartian-type psychologism. In his attempt to complete Humboldt and to dissolve his alleged dualism by having his theoretical stance overcome by his empiricism, Steinthal thought to advance Humboldt‘s approach significantly whereas in the final analysis it meant a metaphysical step backward, as he split what Humboldt kept together: ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ aspects of language instead appear in Steinthal‘s reinterpretation in a dualism whereby the ‘inner’, intellectual, part gains the upper hand over the ‘outer’, physical, one. The key concept of ‘inner language form’ divides Humboldt and Steinthal: whereas it is a delimiting concept in the former, it constitutes a limiting one in the latter, the limit imposed by his very psychologism with which Steinthal sought to get beyond Humboldt. © 1996 John Benjamins Publishing Company.
|
[
"Linguistics & Cognitive NLP",
"Linguistic Theories"
] |
[
48,
57
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85104814749
|
‘It all begins with a teacher’: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of Singapore’s teacher recruitment videos
|
This study focuses on a series of videos aimed at teacher recruitment in Singapore and how they are used as an ideological tool for persuasion. By adopting a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach to focus on affect, it examines how these videos create and promulgate the ideology of an ideal teacher as one who is caring, encouraging and supportive of students. The analysis shows how affect is not only embodied in and performed by the primary protagonists in the video narratives through their action, facial expression, posture and speech. It is also evoked through various secondary meaning-making modes, such as focus, angle, lighting, background music and setting, through which the narratives unfold. More importantly, it demonstrates how affect is used not only as a means to arouse and engage viewers’ sensibilities but also as a persuasive strategy to manufacture and manage particular social and economic realities in contemporary society.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Visual Data in NLP",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
71,
20,
72,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85042287561
|
‘It crosses all the boundaries’: Hybrid language use as empowering resource
|
This study contributes to language-sensitive International Business research by examining forms of language use other than monolingual conversations in national languages. It focuses on hybrid languages that are derived from heterogeneous language sources. Based on modern linguistic research, the study conceptualises multilingualism as joint mobilisation of linguistic resources. Adopting a discursive approach, it empirically investigates the positive and negative effects of hybrid language use for individuals and teams in two companies in Switzerland. The findings show that users of hybrid language are positioned as being able to exchange information more effectively, feeling more comfortable in interactions as well as having more possibilities to express voice and participate. At the same time, hybrid language use is described as having limiting effects in certain contexts. The study therefore suggests to integrate hybrid languages in definitions of individual and organisational language capital, and to strategically address it on the top management and human resources management level.
|
[
"Multilinguality"
] |
[
0
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85118442465
|
‘It depends entirely on the person’: freedom and inequality in Spanish youth gender discourses
|
The study of contemporary youth gender cultures within an educational context illustrates the emergence of new possibilities of self-expression as well as more favourable attitudes towards diversity, at a time when stereotypical gender mandates still persist. This study aimed to deepen understanding of gender identity construction by analysing conversations with 14 students in a secondary school on the southern outskirts of the Community of Madrid. The selected students stood out among the rest due to a combination of high social status and an understanding of gender categories as less stereotyped and rigid. Analysis showed how monoglossic meanings may be confronted by experience within one’s close environment–that contradicts or reaffirms the norm, as well as by personal beliefs and desires. The result is a complex process of adjustment, which swings between believing in individual choice, personal experiences of inequality, and the need to feel part of the group.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84961210044
|
‘It doesn't matter how they move really, as long as they move.’ Physical education teachers on developing their students’ movement capabilities
|
Background: Movement is key in physical education, but the educational value of moving is sometimes obscure. In Sweden, recent school reforms have endeavoured to introduce social constructionist concepts of knowledge and learning into physical education, where the movement capabilities of students are in focus. However, this means introducing a host of new and untested concepts to the physical education teacher community. Purpose. The purpose of this article is to explore how Swedish physical education teachers reason about helping their students develop movement capability. Participants, setting and research design. The data are taken from a research project conducted in eight Swedish secondary schools called ‘Physical education and health–a subject for learning?’ in which students and teachers were interviewed and physical education lessons were video-recorded. This article draws on data from interviews with the eight participating teachers, five men and three women. The teachers were interviewed partly using a stimulated recall technique where the teachers were asked to comment on video clips from physical education lessons where they themselves act as teachers. Data analysis. A discourse analysis was conducted with a particular focus on the ensemble of more or less regulated, deliberate and finalised ways of doing things that characterise the eight teachers’ approach to helping the students develop their movement capabilities. Findings. The interviews indicate that an activation discourse (‘trying out’ and ‘being active’) dominates the teachers’ ways of reasoning about their task (a focal discourse). When the teachers were specifically asked about how they can help the students improve their movement capacities, a sport discourse (a referential discourse) was expressed. This discourse, which is based on the standards of excellence of different sports, conditions what the teachers see as (im)possible to do due to time limitations and a wish not to criticise the students publicly. The mandated holistic social constructionist discourse about knowledge and learning becomes obscure (an intruder discourse) in the sense that the teachers interpret it from the point of view of a dualist discourse, where ‘knowledge’ (theory) and ‘skill’ (practice) are divided. Conclusions. Physical education teachers recoil from the task of developing the students’ movement capabilities due to certain conditions of impossibility related to the discursive terrain they are moving in. The teachers see as their primary objective the promotion of physical activity–now and in the future; they conceptualise movement capability in such a way that emphasising the latter would jeopardise their possibilities of realising the primary objective. Should the aim be to reinforce the social constructionist national curriculum, where capability to move is suggested to be an attempt at formulating a concept of knowledge that includes both propositional and procedural aspects and which is not based on the standards of excellence of either sport techniques or motor ability, then teachers will need support to interpret the national curriculum from a social constructionist perspective. Further, alternative standards of excellence as well as a vocabulary for articulating these will have to be developed.
|
[
"Visual Data in NLP",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Explainability & Interpretability in NLP",
"Responsible & Trustworthy NLP",
"Reasoning",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
20,
72,
71,
81,
4,
8,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:84929154196
|
‘It is safe to use if you are healthy’: A discursive analysis of men’s online accounts of ephedrine use
|
Ephedrine use in sport is a common practice among men. Less well understood is men’s use of ephedrine as a slimming aid. Arguably fuelled by the ‘war on obesity’ and the drive for muscularity, the Internet has become awash with claims presenting ephedrine as safe. The use of this psychoactive substance can have acute health implications such as tachycardia, arrhythmias and cardiovascular disease. Given the tension between health risk and ephedrine-induced weight loss, how men justify their use of ephedrine becomes an important question. In particular, we wished to analyse how male users talked to others about ephedrine in discussions linked to an online version of a popular men’s magazine. Because we were particularly interested in how men accounted for their ephedrine use, we used discourse analysis to examine their posts. In analysing the data, we noted that a ‘community of practice’ was constructed online categorising legitimate (and barred) users, emphasising the benefits of ephedrine and downplaying health-defeating side effects. Our analysis has clear implications for engaging men who use ephedrine in health promotion interventions.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85045122358
|
‘It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’: Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work
|
This article explores how refugee advocates, and refugees themselves, manage social hostility towards refugees and migrants through their talk, specifically how this hostility is managed through orientation to the category ‘victim’. Case studies from the publicity materials of four advocacy organisations, as well as the ‘internal’ talk of their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries collected via Narrative Biographical Interviews, are analysed using discourse analytic methods, specifically Membership Categorisation Analysis. This allows insight into the differing aspects of the organisation’s talk and allows analysis of how orientation to the victim category is distributed and managed across the ‘dialogical network’. This discourse analytic approach, sensitive to how members of the ‘dialogical network’ make hostile and sympathetic voices relevant features of their local talk and manage categorisations of refugees in often tacit ways, highlights a pattern of category change, where a reworking of the dominant modes of refugee representation performed by the organisations in their publicity materials is achieved by their members and beneficiaries. The category work negotiated by advocate and refugee informants rearranges the components of the helping relationship, centring the experience, voice and strength of asylum seekers/refugees, and de-centres the objectives of the helping organisations – offering insights into new ways forward for refugee advocacy as a practice of solidarity beyond charity.
|
[
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Speech & Audio in NLP",
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Natural Language Interfaces",
"Dialogue Systems & Conversational Agents",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
72,
70,
71,
11,
38,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85114874083
|
‘It reminds me that I should stop for the little moments’: Exploring emotions in experiences of UK Covid-19 lockdown
|
In this study, we explore how participants articulate experiences of emotions during Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. We posit that emotions fulfil experiential and interpersonal functions, which are construed and conveyed through language choices. An online narrative survey was carried out. About 88 responses were analysed. Participants were from England and Wales. The mean age was 48.9 years old (SD = 62). A mixed-method approach was used. This combined quantitative Corpus Linguistics analysis and qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with linguistic analysis. The findings show similarities to the public health and medical literature that highlight negative emotions, such as fear, distrust and anger in participants. However, we also found positive emotions not considered elsewhere, including happiness, relaxation, safety, optimism for the future and connectedness arising from the thematic IPA analysis. Emotions were construed using language explicitly labelling emotions and language implicitly signalling emotions. Our study highlights implications for managing risk behaviours associated with transmission in public health practices such as social distancing, as indicated by negative emotions. We also bring to light implications with perceived benefits of engaging in protective behaviours and social support central to public health measures, as suggested by the communication of positive emotions.
|
[
"Emotion Analysis",
"Sentiment Analysis"
] |
[
61,
78
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85105390569
|
‘It's OK to be white’: the discursive construction of victimhood, ‘anti-white racism’ and calculated ambivalence in Australia
|
This paper critically examines the ‘It's OK to be White’ Senate motion made by Australian far-right politician Pauline Hanson in 2018. Deliberately innocuous, the ‘It's OK to be white’ slogan was designed by online white supremacist groups with the intention of ‘triggering liberals’ and provoking outrage. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate that Hanson's ‘It's OK to be white’ motion was an act of calculated ambivalence, which served to address multiple audiences simultaneously. I argue that the motion provided Hanson with a novel way to discuss so-called ‘anti-white’ or ‘reverse’ racism which succeeded in generating the desired controversy and media attention. I further argue that the success of the motion exposed the Australian media's illiteracy on contemporary alt-right/white supremacist tactics and discourses. I also critically examine the implications of the motion and Hanson's promotion of white victimhood narratives. Despite its innocuous framing, the ‘It's OK to be white’ motion represented the successful co-optation of a racist white supremacist political project, the implications of which should not be understated. This research furthers our understanding of the strategies and tactics employed by the far-right, as well as the interrelationship between the populist radical right and online white supremacist groups.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85037608691
|
‘It's not the fact they claim benefits but their useless, lazy, drug taking lifestyles we despise’: Analysing audience responses to Benefits Street using live tweets
|
This paper capitalises on the instantaneity of Twitter as a communicative medium by analysing live audience responses to the second series of the controversial television programme Benefits Street. We examine the discourses and representation of social class drawn upon in public reactions to the program. We compiled a corpus of live tweets that were sent during the first airing of each episode of Benefits Street II, which included the hashtags #BenefitsStreet and/or #BenefitStreet. Our corpus comprises 11,623 tweets sourced from over four thousand Twitter accounts. Drawing on techniques from corpus-based discourse analysis, and contrasting our findings to an earlier study on Benefits Street by Baker and McEnery (2015a), we offer an insight into viewers’ discursive constructions of benefit claimants not just as scroungers, but as a more generally morally inadequate and flawed underclass. We argue that poverty porn programmes such as Benefits Street encourage viewers to see any positive representations of benefits claimants as exceptions to the rule.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Programming Languages in NLP",
"Semantic Text Processing",
"Multimodality"
] |
[
71,
55,
72,
74
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85030557025
|
‘It’s one of those “It’ll never happen to me” things’: young women’s constructions of smoking and risk
|
In this article, we examine how young women make sense of the risks associated with smoking cigarettes. We recruited young women smokers and ex-smokers living in Australia in 2014 and 2015 to participate in semi-structured interviews and a participant-produced photography activity on young women’s experiences of smoking and smoking-related risk. We analysed the data using discourse analysis to examine how young women positioned themselves in relation to smoking-related risk, and how this was shaped by discourses of health, risk and femininity. We identified four dominant interpretative repertoires: ‘the risks of smoking are self-evident’, ‘it’s not going to happen to me’, ‘smoking as a lesser evil’ and ‘smoking to cope with stress and emotion’. Through our analysis, we found that by drawing on these repertoires, participants were able to position the risks of smoking as both acceptable and unacceptable. Participants also made use of several of these repertoires to position anti-smoking messages as ineffective. We place these findings in the context of broader health and risk discourses surrounding young women’s use of smoking to reinforce and subvert representations of ‘respectable’ femininity. We identify ways in which public health approaches could and should be developed to recognise the complexity and contradiction inherent in young women’s lay accounts of smoking-related risk and situate smoking risks in the context of young women’s everyday lives.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85145822858
|
‘It’s probably still written by a white person’: challenging assumptions about racial identity in a critical professional development course
|
In this article, we present a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the online discussion board posts of a group of elementary educators as they discussed their interpretations of four historical timelines that presented different–sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory–information about the goals of the Lewis & Clark expedition and its effects on Native populations. This activity was one part of a virtual professional development course on anti-racist critical literacy pedagogy for K-8 teachers, which was structured around three key concepts: 1) considering multiple perspectives can disrupt common understandings of texts; 2) issues of power determine what is present and absent in the stories authors tell; and 3) texts are social constructions that can be deconstructed and reconstructed. The teachers featured in this article worked in the same urban district and throughout their discussion, we found that they perpetuated discourses of Whiteness while simultaneously attempting to disrupt them. However, we also found discursive reconstructive potential in the ways one teacher responded to her assumptions being interrupted by a course facilitator, as well as the value of using CDA to examine teacher language. Our findings point to further directions for teacher educators working to foster racial and critical literacy.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85114852935
|
‘It’s still them’: concealed racism against Roma in Romanian television news
|
Research shows that news media around the world carry negative representations of ethnic minorities which incite violence, hatred or lead to more marginalisation and social exclusion [Bhatia, M., Poynting, S., & Tufail, W. (2018). Media, crime and racism. Springer; Elias, A., Mansouri, F., & Paradies, Y. (2021). Media, public discourse and racism. In A. Elias, F. Mansouri, & Y. Paradies (Eds.), Racism in Australia today (pp. 211–240). Palgrave Macmillan]. It is also the case that overt racism has become less tolerated in society and, therefore, racist discourses now tend to take more subtle forms, often disguised as reasonable concerns about threats to national culture, economic burdens or disruptions of social order [Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield]. This is very much the case regarding the Roma. Yet, less research has been carried out on the way that the affordances of television–juxtaposition of images, captions, sound and voice-overs, editing, and resequencing–may have very specific ways to conceal racism. In this paper, using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we examine the representation of the Roma in a Romanian television news report, in the case of a highly mundane story–a failure to pay electricity bills. We show how television news with its affordances can camouflage racism, and distract from the extreme poverty and social exclusion that Romani people experience in contemporary Europe.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
SCOPUS_ID:85125367176
|
‘It’s the EU’s fault!’ strategies of blame avoidance in Andrej Babiš’s discourse on the conflict-of-interest case
|
The article investigates strategies of blame avoidance in the discourse of the Czech Prime Minister (PM), Andrej Babiš, on the conflict-of-interest case over the misuse of European Union (EU) funds. Taking a critical discursive perspective and working with a dataset of Babiš’s public pronouncements on his conflict of interest during the period of 2019–2021, the study uncovers the particular ways of arguing, framing, denying, characterising social actors, legitimising and manipulating that Babiš exploited when trying to avoid blame in the conflict of interest case. It reveals that the conflict of interest case has provided opportunities for the Czech PM to play a multi-dimensional blame game against the EU, orchestrate a discursive battle with the EU and invoke nationalist feelings. We argue that this discursive patterning signals a departure from his hitherto pragmatic approach to the EU, with Babiš increasingly radicalizing his explicitly exclusionary construction of the EU, promulgating anti-EU sentiment and countenancing the polarization between the EU on the one hand and the Czech Republic on the other.
|
[
"Discourse & Pragmatics",
"Semantic Text Processing"
] |
[
71,
72
] |
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