Deindustrialized cities in the United States are at a particular crossroads when it comes to the contest over refugees. Do refugees represent opportunity or danger? These cities are in desperate need ...to stem population and resource loss, problems that an influx of refugees could seemingly help address. However, the cities are simultaneously dealing with local communities that are already feeling internally displaced by economic and technological flux. For these existing citizens, the prospect of incoming refugee populations can be perceived as a threat to financial, cultural, and personal security. Few U.S. locations provide a more vivid case study of this fight than Metro Detroit, where competing interest groups are waging war over the meaning of the figure of the refugee. This book dives deeply into the discourse on refugees occurring among various institutions in Metro Detroit. The way in which local institutions talk about refugees gives us vital clues as to how they are negotiating competing pressures and how the city overall is negotiating competing imperatives. Indeed, this local discourse gives us a crucial glimpse into how U.S. cities are defining and redefining themselves today. The figure of the refugee becomes a slate on which groups with varied interests write their stories, aspirations, and fears. Consequently, we can figure out from local refugee discourses the ongoing question of what it means to be a Metro Detroiter—and by extension, what it means to be a revitalizing U.S. city in this age.
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.
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
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.
Discourse Goddard, Angela; Carey, Neil
2017, 20170518, 2017-05-18
eBook
Humans are social animals and are constantly interacting with each other through conversation, written communication, symbols and other expressions. Discourse: The Basics is an accessible and ...engaging introduction to the analysis of those interactions and the many forms and meanings they can take. The book draws on a range of international case studies and examples from literature, political speech, advertising and newspaper articles to address key questions such as:
What is discourse?
Why are there different approaches to understanding discourse?
How are individual interactions connected with the larger discourses that frame our ways of thinking and behaving?
How can discourse be analysed and researched?
Discourse: The Basics includes subject summaries, a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading. It will be of particular relevance to students of language and the social sciences but also useful to all students who are interested in how meanings are made.
The aim of this volume is to identify, explore and compare expressions of populism in the Romance-speaking part of the world. The volume includes studies from different academic disciplines such as ...discourse analysis, cultural and media studies. Populist discourses are generally characterized by a deep polarization of positions and a disproportionate reliance on accusations. Populist discourses frequently reinforce existing antagonisms and undermine the traditional political argumentative style, based on the factual confrontation of opinions in the public space. Populist leaders often present themselves as the unfettered spokespersons of the people with whom they form a community of “us” in the struggle against “them”. This accords with the strong polarization mentioned earlier. The rise of populist discourses in many countries over the past decades could be due to changes in political communication. The constant and overwhelming dissemination of information in all types of media, the consequent relativization of truth, as well as a less clear political division on a left-right scale, could favor political alternatives based on personality and the highly polarized messages we see today. The question of how to reach voters in today's media buzz is a much bigger question today than it was a few decades ago, and the exposure of faces and comments has increased exponentially, which in itself can promote a certain kind of politicians. In fact, there is a strong emphasis on the leadership of populist movements, which is also a recurring theme in this book, alongside the impact of the new media landscape on political discourses. In this light, some of the recurring themes in the thirteen studies included in the volume are the denunciation – by populist voices – of the corruption of the so-called elites as well as their inability to solve concrete political and economic problems. It is also about the escalation and reinforcement of populist discourses as an expression – an act – of extreme criticism, even hatred, against traditional political leaders. These populist voices are looking for scapegoats and claiming proximity to the people, represented in the discourse as an authentic and uniform group. Other recurring themes are the emphasis on traditional values, national symbols, ethnicity, and nostalgia for a bygone era, which are effective subjects for eliciting feelings and fostering a sense of togetherness. The interplay between some of these issues is explored in more detail in the book. The chapters of the book indeed show to what extent populist discourses introduce a system based on characteristics such as unilaterality, through the designation of a threat and/or a common enemy, and on the strong focus on the rejection of the legitimacy of the adversary.
There is a long tradition of linguistic research on political discourse, but little attention has been paid to what the concept of political discourse itself encompasses. With this in mind, this ...article aims to understand what types of discourse are categorized as ‘political’ in linguistic research and what their characteristics are (form, type of actors, policy domains, geographical coverage). To this end, we conducted a systematic literature review of 164 scientific articles from the Scopus database. Overall, the findings show that political discourse is generally limited to the discourses of (institutionalized) political elites and most specifically to oral monological speeches. The review also highlights discrepancies regarding the geographical scope and the policy domains covered by the empirical analyses, more specifically a bias toward the Western world and issues related to external defense policies, justice and home affairs.
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.
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