This study offers a pragmatic dimension to World Englishes research. It is particularly timely because pragmatics has generally been understudied in past research on World Englishes, especially ...postcolonial Englishes. Apart from drawing attention to the paucity of research, the book also contributes to theory formation on the emerging theoretical framework, postcolonial pragmatics, which is then applied to data from two World (postcolonial) Englishes, Ghanaian and Cameroon Englishes. The copious examples used clearly illustrate how postcolonial societies realise various pragmatic phenomena, in this case offers and offer refusals, and how these could be fruitfully explained using an analytical framework designed on the complex internal set ups of these societies. For research on social interaction in these societies to be representative, it has to take into account the complex history of their evolution, contact with other systems during colonialism, and the heritages thereof. This book does just that.
Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-driven Critical Analysis presents a new and practical approach in Critical Discourse Studies. Providing a data-driven and ...ethically-based method for the examination of arguments in the public sphere, this ground-breaking book: Highlights how the reader can evaluate arguments from points of view other than their own; Demonstrates how digital tools can be used to generate ‘ethical subjectivities’ from large numbers of dissenting voices on the world-wide-web; Draws on ideas from posthumanist philosophy as well as from Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for theorising these subjectivities; Showcases a critical deconstructive approach, using different corpus linguistic programs such as AntConc, WMatrix and Sketchengine. Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments is essential reading for lecturers and researchers with an interest in critical discourse studies, critical thinking, corpus linguistics and digital humanities.
How do we construct national identities in discourse? Which topics, which discursive strategies and which linguistic devices are employed to construct national sameness and uniqueness on the one ...hand, and differences to other national collectives on the o
The socially minded linguistic study of storytelling in everyday life has been rapidly expanding. This book provides a critical engagement with this dynamic field of narrative studies, addressing ...long-standing questions such as definitions of narrative and views of narrative structure but also more recent preoccupations such as narrative discourse and identities, narrative language, power and ideologies. It also offers an overview of a wide range of methodologies, analytical modes and perspectives on narrative from conversation analysis to critical discourse analysis, to linguistic anthropology and ethnography of communication. The discussion engages with studies of narrative in multiple situational and cultural settings, from informal-intimate to institutional. It also demonstrates how recent trends in narrative analysis, such as small stories research, positioning analysis and sociocultural orientations, have contributed to a new paradigm that approaches narratives not simply as texts, but rather as complex communicative practices intimately linked with the production of social life.
This book explores the cognitively-oriented approach tometaphor studies, comparing it critically to other contemporary paradigms ofmetaphor in meaning. It incorporates cutting edge empirical data.In ...both semantics and cognitive linguistics, metaphor has gained central statusover the past decades, chiefly on account of Lakoff and Johnson's 1980 book Metaphors We Live By, which has become astandard point of reference.Rather than advocating a 'pick and mix' combination of cognitive attitudes withtheory and data from other paradigms, the book argues for the methodologicallyreflective comparison of theory traditions and acknowledgement of theirstrengths and weaknesses. This criticalreflection on metaphor is an essential read for students of metaphor at anadvanced undergraduate or postgraduate level. Each chapter outlines areas for further reading and research, and thebook is built around data drawn from a multilingual research corpus ofmetaphors compiled from existing research, other corpora and internet data.
Thematic analysis methods, including the reflexive approach we have developed, are widely used in counselling and psychotherapy research, as are other approaches that seek to develop ‘patterns’ ...(themes, categories) across cases. Without a thorough grounding in the conceptual foundations of a wide variety of across‐case analytic approaches, and qualitative research more broadly—something rarely offered in counselling training—it can be difficult to understand how these differ, where they overlap, and which might be appropriate for a particular research project. Our aim in this paper is to support researchers in counselling and psychotherapy to select an appropriate across‐case approach for their research, and to justify their choice, by discussing conceptual and procedural differences and similarities between reflexive thematic analysis (TA) and four other across‐case approaches. Three of these are also widely used in counselling and psychotherapy research—qualitative content analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis and grounded theory. The fourth—discourse analysis—is less widely used but importantly exemplifies the critical qualitative research tradition. We contextualise our comparative approach by highlighting the diversity within TA. TA is best thought of as a spectrum of methods—from types that prioritise coding accuracy and reliability to reflexive approaches like ours that emphasise the inescapable subjectivity of data interpretation. Although reflexive TA provides the point of comparison for our discussion of other across‐case approaches, our aim is not to promote reflexive TA as ‘best’. Rather, we encourage the knowing selection and use of analytic methods and methodologies in counselling and psychotherapy research.
Discourse and Identity Benwell, Bethan; Stokoe, Elizabeth
03/2006, Volume:
v.Series Number 23
eBook
'Identity' is a central organizing feature of our social world. Across the social sciences and humanities, it is increasingly treated as something that is actively and publicly accomplished in ...discourse. This book defines identity in its broadest sense, in terms of how people display who they are to each other. Each chapter examines a different discursive environment in which people do 'identity work': everyday conversation, institutional settings, narrative and stories, commodified contexts, spatial locations, and virtual environments. The authors describe and demonstrate a range of discourse and interaction analytic methods as they are put to use in the study of identity, including 'performative' analyses, conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, critical discourse analysis, narrative analysis, positioning theory, discursive psychology and politeness theory. The book aims to give readers a clear sense of the coherence (or otherwise) of these different approaches, the practical steps taken in analysis, and their situation within broader critical debates. Through the use of detailed and original 'identity' case studies in a variety of spoken and written texts in order, the book offers a practical and accessible insight into what the discursive accomplishment of identity actually looks like, and how to go about analyzing it.
Features:
*Accessible introduction to the study of discourse and identity across a variety of contexts.
*Interdisciplinary in scope, the book is relevant to a wide range of courses such as English language and linguistics, psychology, media, cultural studies, gender studies and sociology.
*Each chapter includes a critical overview of work in the area, original case studies, practical instruction for analyses, points for further discussion and suggested reading.
Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) is a multimodal analytic technique for the investigation of Internet and digital phenomena, artifacts, and culture. It integrates an analysis of the ...technological artifact and user discourse, framed by cultural theory, to unpack semiotic and material connections between form, function, belief, and meaning of information and communication technologies (ICTs). CTDA requires the incorporation of critical theory—critical race, feminism, queer theory, and so on—to incorporate the epistemological standpoint of underserved ICT users so as to avoid deficit-based models of underrepresented populations’ technology use. This article describes in detail the formulation and execution of the technique, using the author’s research on Black Twitter as an exemplar. Utilizing CTDA, the author found that Black discursive identity interpellated Twitter’s mechanics to produce explicit cultural technocultural digital practices—defined by one investor as “the use case for Twitter.” Researchers interested in using this technique will find it an intervention into normative and analytic technology analyses, as CTDA formulates technology as cultural representations and social structures in order to simultaneously interrogate culture and technology as intertwined concepts.
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