The aim of this study was to explore the role of social justice in multicultural education taught in teacher education. The study investigated discourses on multicultural education among Finnish ...teacher educators, and the subject positions constructed in them. Discourse theory analysis revealed six discourses on multicultural education, ranging from conservative to liberal and critical, with liberal discourses having the most articulations. Although Finnish teacher education has taken steps towards social justice, the results also highlight racialisation and the subject position of the immigrant Other as themes that need to be challenged to prevent the reproduction of inequalities in teacher education.
•Six multicultural education discourses, ranging from conservative to critical, were found among Finnish teacher educators.•The liberal discourses articulate diversity as valuable, and communication across differences, and self-reflection as central.•The immigrant Other and the Finn are constructed as opposite subject positions in the conservative discourse.•The critical discourses articulate examining inequalities and acting for equality as the central aims.•To promote social justice all teacher educators and students need to engage in adapting a critical multicultural education.
This article contributes to the growing debates about the criticality of global education (GE). Our study responds to the critical post/decolonial debates that point out that GE remains complicit in ...the perpetuation of social inequalities in the world. Contrary to the macro discursive character of those studies that show that GE is complicit in the reproduction of hierarchisation and depoliticisation, our aim is to map the concrete micro discursive processes in order to find out how exactly are these processes enacted on the level of language, an academic avenue that has remained underresearched so far. By applying Critical Discourse Analysis to the Slovak textbooks on GE, our study shows how particular socio-semantic uses of language reinforce hierarchisation of social actors and depoliticisation of structural complexities and complicities. We also attempt to set our study into a broader context of debates on the self-positioning of post-socialist Central and Eastern European states. We argue that in the context of Slovakia, GE discourse re-confirms the colonial matrix of power-knowledge-being. As we point out, GE becomes a tool through which Slovakia is able to get rid of the label of the Other and position itself as the superior (Western) Europe.
We present findings from a critical discourse analysis of commentary from World Wrestling Entertainment’s pay-per-view Evolution, an all-female wrestling competition. Approximately 10 minutes of ...match commentary were analysed, attending to the discourses operating within the text; the subject positions offered by them; and the implications these may have for subjectivity, action, and practice. Two discourses are presented: female wrestlers as “real athletes in a real combat sport” and “female wrestlers as conventionally feminine.” The operation of these discourses through the text was interpreted as offering opportunities for women wrestlers to construct identities as serious sportspeople while at the same time limiting those opportunities through the requirement that they also demonstrate heteronormative femininity. We discuss these findings within the framework of neoliberal feminism and a postfeminist sensibility. We conclude that, contrary to its superficially feminist agenda, Evolution offers a narrow and contradictory space for women to construct legitimate identities as professional wrestlers, where discursive positions may be simultaneously offered and undermined by commentators.
Abstract
The article explores recent approaches to historical analysis of discourse that have been developed in disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and historical epistemology. These ...approaches have only sporadically been taken seriously in the academic study of religion, although they have a great potential to establish a study of religion that is both academically rigorous and aware of its societal and historical contexts and limitations. The article defines the necessary concepts for a discursive study of religion as an hermeneutical discipline that scrutinizes and historicizes the societal organization of knowledge about religion. This discourse on religion-defined here as religion-generates, legitimizes, and maintains meaning structures and societal realities. The discourse-historical analysis of religion is not itself a method but a research perspective. Nevertheless, this perspective implies several steps in designing a research project that the article describes with concrete examples.
"Language users are creatures of habit with a tendency to re-use morphosyntactic material that they have produced or heard before. In other words, linguistic patterns and tokens, once used, persist ...in discourse. The present book is the first large-scale corpus analysis to explore the determinants of this persistence, drawing on regression analyses of a variety of functional, discourse-functional, cognitive, psycholinguistic, and external factors. The case studies investigated include the alternation between synthetic and analytic comparatives, between the s-genitive and the of-genitive, between gerundial and infinitival complementation, particle placement, and future marker choice in a number of corpora sampling different spoken registers and geographical varieties of English. Providing a probabilistic framework for examining the ways in which persistence - among several other internal and external factors - influences speakers' linguistic choices, the book departs from most writings in the field in that it seeks to bridge several research traditions. While it is concerned, in a classically variationist spirit, with internal and external determinants of grammatical variation in English, it also draws heavily on ideas and evidence developed by psycholinguists and discourse analysts. In seeking to construct a comprehensive model of how speakers make linguistic choices, the study ultimately contributes to a theory of how spoken language works. The book is of interest to graduate students and researchers in variationist sociolinguistics, probabilistic linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics."
Although the emergence of soft masculinity has incited much controversy in China, little research attention has been given to the discussion about the effeminate Chinese masculinity in the news media ...featuring public opinions at the national level. To fill this gap, this study employed critical discourse analysis to investigate the dominant discourses surrounding the "Prevention of Feminisation of Male Teenagers" debate and its ideological implications in the Chinese-language news media. The findings show that the media constructed anti-feminine discourse, nationalistic discourse, and anti-gender stereotype discourse with ideological implications for patriarchy, nationalism, and egalitarianism via various discursive strategies, specifically abstraction, authorisation, categorisation, morality, and rationalisation. This study sheds light on the diverse voices and concerns of the emergence of soft masculinity that have not been given much attention in the literature.
Research has illustrated that metaphors and metonyms are concepts that govern thought and action, playing a central role in constructing realities. While previous studies have demonstrated that ...metaphors and metonyms are utilized as tools for conceptualizing nations, this study examines how metaphoric and metonymic representations of specific locations within the nation-state can serve as polarizing constructs within the nation-state. The State of Israel presents an interesting case study regarding how metaphors and metonyms construct polarizing identities, following increasingly polarized cross-cutting cleavages. Utilizing the Sketch Engine ELEXIS Hebrew Web corpora, this study utilizes discourse analysis tools to characterize the reproduction of metaphorical and metonymic meanings of geographical locations, tapping into specific cultural codes of the Israeli speech community.
•Metaphoric and metonymic representations of specific locations within the nation-state serve as polarizing constructs.•Geographical terminology, interfaces with national, ethnic, and socio-economic divides.•Applied linguistics approaches can contribute to our understanding of relations between social groups.
•Accounting regulatory texts exhibit subconscious rhetoric.•All deliberate persuasion is built on the foundations of our rhetorical subconscious.•Regulators operationalize taken-for-granted ...discursive rationalizations and styles.•Pre-reflexive discursive legitimation strategies enact regulators’ habitus.•Habitual strategizing could inhibit innovation within the regulatory space.
Adopting critical discourse analysis and Bourdieu’s theorization of dispositional use of language, the present study challenges a common assumption in the accounting standard-setting literature, namely, that regulators’ discourse is purposely and deliberately deployed. I draw on cognitive sociolinguistics to empirically explore the specific manifestations of habitual, that is, pre-reflexive legitimation rhetoric in IASB regulatory texts. My analysis shows how taken-for-granted discursive rationalizations and linguistic forms are operationalized. I then argue that the language observed in regulatory texts, which can be considered as examples of ‘collective thinking artefacts’, enacts standard setters’ institutionalized patterns of reasoning associated with their social position. This critical perspective on the subconscious use of rhetoric generates a series of further questions regarding the lack of reflexivity in accounting regulatory processes.
This study investigates the inaugural speeches delivered by Trump and Biden in terms of Fairclough’s (1995) three-dimensional method of CDA. It highlights the link between micro and macro analysis of ...discourse by considering repetition, creativity, and intertextuality as the main persuasive strategies employed by both political leaders to make their audience believe in their ideas. The study also clarifies to what extent Trump and Biden vary in the use of these persuasive strategies in association with power distribution and ideological stands. The results show that Trump constructs a particular type of unity characterized by loyalty and allegiance through his use of pronouns and his thematization of ‘’people’’. By employing metaphors and negative expressions, Trump succeeds in painting a bleak, dark, and scary image of the United States as a country plagued by a rise in crime and a decay in the economy. Moreover, Trump does not venerate the past; rather he positions himself as only being limited by God by only borrowing texts associated with the bible. In contrast, Biden’s liberal ideology stands clear in offering a conception of unity that bands all people together as citizens of the nation by his frequent use of pronouns. He is very skilled at portraying an optimistic view of America’s future through his use of light metaphor and his positive rhetoric. Biden accentuates the idea that disagreement is part of democracy. However, disagreements should not lead to disunion. In addition, Biden tends to use more intertextuality in his speech than Trump. Biden’s ideology depends on accepting the other regardless of his political stands.
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