Après la diffusion en intégralité, le samedi 28 septembre 2019, du discours d’Eric Zemmour à la « Convention de la droite », une large polémique est relayée, dans les médias et sur les réseaux sociaux, sur l’opportunité d’une telle diffusion. Le premier ministre Edouard Philippe a qualifié ces propos de « nauséabonds et profondément contraires à l’idée que nous nous faisons de la France et de la République ». Entre accusations et justifications, beaucoup reconnaissent que ce discours a posé des (...) problèmes. Les thèmes habituels du polémiste y sont abordés, avec de nombreux cas de propos pouvant relever de la discrimination, notamment envers les femmes. Pour mener cette étude, cet article présente une analyse textométrique de ce discours, dont les conclusions questionnent plus particulièrement les propos tenus vis-à-vis des femmes, notamment dans trois chapitres spécifiques de son ouvrage, Le suicide français. Au-delà, l’article interroge la légitimité d’Eric Zemmour, en mettant en valeur le « savoir » et l’« érudition » qu’il matérialise dans ses prises de parole, et la manière dont il parvient à auto-légitimer ses propos – ce qui lui confère une certaine "autorité" dans les médias. (shrink)

This paper argues that the proliferation of the new term ‘baby man’ has an impact on reconstructing established gender relationships and resisting China's authoritarian political power in a highly-censored online environment. This study employs feminist critical discourse analysis to investigate how Chinese feminism adopts the discursive construction of ‘baby man’ and how they echo the complex historical and sociocultural backgrounds through a case study of 43 posts containing ‘baby man’ on Chinese social media. The finding suggests that (...) the term ‘baby man’ is employed in discursive strategies, namely, double irony, the blunt resistance against both gender and power relationships that deconstruct the heteropatriarchal gender norm through the mother – son female gaze and contempt for the nation's past and current population policy. It argues that despite perennial censorship, these three discursive strategies help reconstruct the extant gender hierarchy backed by conservative Confucianist ethics and represent a grassroots challenge to the political authoritarianism indoctrinated by the state. (shrink)

The aim of this research study was to uncover women ministers’ experiences of gender discrimination in the Lutheran Church by using a discourse analysis. Three female participants, who are involved in ministry in the Lutheran Church in South Africa, were interviewed about their experiences and perceptions of gender discrimination. The resultant texts were analysed using Parker’s steps to discourse analytic reading. The discourses that were discovered indicate that power struggles are prevalent in (...) the context of gender discrimination. The extent to which an individual opposes gender discrimination is informed by contextual, educational and historical factors. In addition to this, gender discrimination within the church is easily legitimized – to a large extent by women – through discourses, such as biblical texts. (shrink)

This paper addresses the implementation of semantic markedness as a subtle tool of ideology in U.S. mainstream newspapers The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal in the context of the Israeli raids on Nablus between 2022–2023. Existing research on this topic suggests that international media associate lexemes connoting negative images with Palestinians as a part of its control over the worldview of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Previous research also touches upon semantic markedness as a tool (...) that indicates gender-based discrimination against women. However, there is no critical scholarship directed towards the use of semantic markedness in media discourse and critical discourse analysis (CDA). This paper adheres to Jakobson and Lyon’s (1971; 1997) definitions of markedness and builds on discussion of semantic discourse and political ideology, respectively, as its framework. Using Halliday’s transitivity and semantic markedness as a tool of analysis, the findings of the paper reveal that the selected newspapers employ semantically marked lexemes to portray Palestinian resistance as disorganised militant units and hence justify the mass murder of Palestinians. (shrink)

Due to the increasing concern about gender equity in the U.S., song lyrics with political activism are receiving more attention. As reflected through lyrics and the artist’s tumultuous life events, ‘thank u, next,’ Ariana Grande’s fifth album, has been reviewed by media outlets, such as Billboard as mirroring Grande’s public persona of self-empowerment. iTunes (2019) describes the album as Grande’s embraced position of – ‘complex, independent, tenacious and flawed.’ This study investigates how these claims came about by adopting Fairclough’s (...) Critical Discourse Analysis three-dimensional framework. It examines how the discourse of self-empowerment is portrayed in her lyrics, and what linguistic strategies are deployed to portray the discourse. This study hopes to add texture to existing literature by examining the production of young women’s empowerment ideology and the meanings of neoliberal feminism in relations to the use of language in song lyrics. Linguistic strategies such as the use of metaphors, overstatements and presupposition manipulation have been investigated through textual, and social analyses of the songs to demonstrate the ideological concepts of a ‘self-empowered woman’. The concepts found include independence, self-love/growth, owning of sexuality, and being needy. The concepts also revealed that Grande’s lyrics mostly support ideals of gender equity and female empowerment. (shrink)

Purpose Voice assistant technology is one of the fastest-growing artificial intelligence applications at present. However, the burgeoning scholarship argues that there are ethical challenges relating to this new technology, not the least related to privacy, which affects the technology’s acceptance. Given that the media impacts public opinion and acceptance of VA and that there are no studies on media coverage of VA, the study focuses on media coverage. In addition, this study aims to focus on media coverage in Indonesia, a (...) country that has been underrepresented in earlier research. Design/methodology/approach The authors used critical discourse analysis of media texts, focusing on three levels to study how VA technology was discussed in the Indonesian context and what power relations frame the representation. In total, 501 articles were collected from seven national media in Indonesia from 2010 to 2020 and the authors particularly focus on the 45 articles that concern ethics. Findings The ethical topics covered are gender issues, false marketing, ethical wrongdoing, ethically positive effects, misuse, privacy and security. More importantly, when they are discussed, they are presented as constituting no real critical problem. Regarding discursive practices, the media coverage is highly influenced by foreign media and most of the articles are directed to well-educated Indonesians. Finally, regarding social practices, the authors hold that the government ideology of technological advancement is related to this positive portrayal of VAs. Originality/value First, to provide the first media discourse study about ethical issues of VAs. Second, to provide insights from a non-Western context, namely, Indonesia, which is underrepresented in the research on ethics of VAs. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to foreground the importance of context in discourse analysis by drawing on a study of online gender talk on Facebook in India. Design/methodology/approach Using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), this study explored participants’ use of language to construct and perform various identities in online gender talk. This study discusses the methods used and challenges in analyzing digital spaces through FDA, focusing specifically on the importance of an ethnographic perspective (...) to contextualize online talk. Findings Engagement with the larger socio-cultural context of the subject of study through various data collection methods enhanced our understanding of the contexts behind text. It helped the authors to explore the data from multiple directions from a Foucauldian framework. This study found that people constructed a “progressive” identity when talking about gender on Facebook. Originality/value There are very few studies combining discourse analysis and digital ethnography and this paper seeks to do that. Digital ethnography helps to look beyond the text and locate text in the larger socio-cultural context. To emphasize the importance of context in discourse analysis, this study engages with both online and offline data as online talk is connected with offline contexts in many significant ways. In this paper, the authors provide a description on various methodological steps used to collect and analyze online data using FDA. (shrink)

In response to the rising obesity rate in China, the Chinese government has used the social media platform WeChat to encourage the public to lose weight. This article investigates the losing weight posts in 健康中国 [Healthy China], the official WeChat account of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. Taking a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, I identify the dominant discourses used to represent obesity and individuals related to obesity. One of the most prominent (...) features of the discourses is a trend of responsibilizing weight management by three sub-discourses surrounding obesity, i.e. medical discourse (obesity as a disease), moral discourse (obesity as a self-management issue) and gendered discourse (obesity as a female and mothering issue). I explore how the responsibilization discourse might be understood in the context of China’s efforts in facilitating the making of health-conscious citizens, which echo neoliberal ideas that normalize individual responsibility for obesity. A special note is paid to women. Apart from the neoliberalism-underpinned responsibility, the posts also position women under the Confucian expectation of ‘responsible mothers’ in terms of childhood obesity. This may lead to dual-responsibilities for women and heighten the weight stigma women experience in the society. (shrink)

This study examines the discursive structures and strategies used by Nigerian female blog users to legitimise gender inequality. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of 253 comments from five Nigerian-authored blogs, the study complicates celebratory approaches that conceptualise digital spaces as places for marginalised women to fight against sexism since they unravel ideological conceptions within female ‘counter-publics’ that rationalise un-equal gender relations. This refutes the belief that the struggle against gender discrimination only involves binary (...) categories such as ‘men versus women’ or ‘women versus patriarchy’, spotlighting the self-limiting role of women in gender activism. The study demonstrates that understudying intra-group discrimination helps to understand and define inequality within specific contexts. Specifically, othering, classifying and categorising are inherent meaning-making traits that define intra-group dynamics and must be embraced and studied as contextual peculiarities that aid the understanding of given socio-cultural practices. This research underscores the usefulness of CDA in unpacking the intersections of culture, ideology, identity and language within multi-layered counter-public discourse, highlighting implications in social justice campaigns and the attainment of gender parity. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing public discourse regarding the influence AI will have on the future of work. Simultaneously, considerable critical attention has been given to the implications of AI on gender equality. Far from making precise predictions about the future, this discourse demonstrates that new technologies are instances for renegotiating the relation of gender and work. This paper examines how gender is addressed in news media discourse on AI and the (...) future of work, focusing on Germany. We approach this question from a perspective of feminist technology studies and discourse analysis, exploring a corpus of 178 articles from 2015 to 2021 from German newspapers and newsmagazines. The findings indicate that critical AI and gender knowledge circulates in public discourse in the form of specific discursive frames, thematizing algorithmic bias, automatization and enhancement, and gender stereotypes. As a result, we show that, first, the discourse takes up feminist and scholarly discourse on gender and discusses AI in a way that is informed by social constructivism and standpoint theories. Second, gender appears as a—to some extent intersectional—diversity category which is critical to AI, while at the same time omitting important perspectives. Third, it can be shown that there is a renegotiating of the ideal worker norm taking place, and finally, we argue that the gendered frame of the powerful men developer responsible for AI’s risk is a concept to be challenged. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Republic Act 9710, or the Magna Carta of Women (MCW), is considered the Philippine version or national law translation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Using the concept of impact translation as a framework and the Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) approach, this article examines the MCW and the minutes of committee meetings, particularly the bicameral conference committee meeting where lawmakers agreed on the finalized version of the bill. (...) It applies the concept of gender relationality in examining how legislators negotiated the provisions of the MCW, particularly those on reproductive health and the definition of gender. The analysis shows that these provisions challenged Catholic doctrines specifically on gender, childbearing, and pre-marital sexual relations. It argues that the Catholic conception of gender norms and women’s role in society shaped the law’s final version, disregarding the CEDAW Committee recommendations on abortion. Findings suggest that the legislators’ fear that the law’s ratification would serve as an opening for the legalization of abortion led to a weakened version of the law, particularly the section on women’s reproductive health. (shrink)

This article examines resistance discourses created and disseminated by a religious minority in Indonesia called Gerakan Ahmadiyah Indonesia (GAI) to counter any negative portrayals and religious-based discriminations. Ahmadiyah is a self-defined sect of Islam that has been the target of physical attacks and discursive discrimination in Indonesia. This analysis focuses on identifying discourse topics raised and strategies employed by one of the Ahmadiyya groups in the country called GAI to reveal their resistance and defend their ‘Islamic’ (...) faith. Various texts produced in different genres namely statements and comments published in media, books, speeches and various articles published online in GAI’s official websites are used as the data which were collected during field research in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The analysis found that, in order to counter discriminatory discourses, the GAI Ahmadis present various resistance discourse themes such as distinguishing themselves from Jemaat Ahmadiyah Indonesia, justifying their Islamic understanding by highlighting religious freedom discourse, including themselves as Muslims and presenting themselves as peaceful movement. (shrink)

Drawing on gender-role theories and considering the potential new media environments brought to the dynamics of strategic political communication, this study explores the nature of US Midwestern congresswomen’s strategic online self-presentations in comparison to those of congressmen. The discourse analysis presented in this study shows that in their official online biographies, that is, as given on websites provided by the US government, congresswomen devoted more space to describing their own personal traits than did congressmen. In particular, women (...) tended to stress the masculine aspects of their personalities by using so-called masculine words such as tough and fighter much more than their male counterparts did. Such masculine terminology was scarcely evident in the biographies of male House members in the same states and committees as the female members. These findings imply that female politicians are more active in strategically presenting themselves as tough leaders in what appears to be a self-conscious effort to counteract detrimental gender stereotypes. (shrink)

This article provides a diachronic analysis of how Europhobic discourses (with particular reference to Brexit) have emerged, consolidated and normalised in the British public sphere (media, institutions and the networked public). Identifying a discursive chain of legitimacy articulated in three interrelated phases (pre-legitimation, institutionalisation and normalisation) this article suggests that the legacy of Brexit can be found in a normalisation of exclusionary discourses which could have also become the rational basis for legitimising further discrimination in a (...) self-reinforcing logic. By taking a diachronic approach, this article makes the case for analysing discriminatory discourses from ‘chained’ and diachronic perspectives to capture social dynamics beyond the normative aspect. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While populism is commonly considered antagonistic to democratic liberalism, recent research demonstrates how populist rhetoric may highjack traditional liberal discourses and opportunistically refashion them against the plight of minorities. Drawing on the concept of media populism, this research investigates how notions of ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ were contested in debates on racism in New Zealand regional newspaper, The Taranaki Daily News, and further deployed to promote a populist agenda, against the representation of the Indigenous minority, Māori, in the local (...) government. The analysis of letters to the Editor shows the prevalence of anti-Māori sentiment, articulated through such populist rhetoric as ‘majority’, ‘whole community’ and ‘togetherness’; while the appeal for Māori representation was framed as ‘special treatment’, ‘positive discrimination’, ‘separatism’ and ‘reverse racism’. Hence, by endorsing the populist discourse, media provide their audiences with the moral affinity to support racist and anti-minority policies; ultimately producing the political phenomenon of media populism. (shrink)

Previous research has established that the success of strikes, and social movements more broadly, depends on their ability to garner support from the public. However, there is scant published research investigating the response of the public to strike action by healthcare workers. In this study, we address this gap through a study of public responses to UK nursing strikes in 2022–2023, using a data set drawn from Twitter of more than 2300 publicly available tweets. We focus on negative tweets, investigating (...) which societal discourses social media users draw on to oppose strike action by nurses. Using a combination of corpus‐based approaches and discourse analysis, we identified five categories of opposition: (i) discourse discrediting nurses; (ii) discourse discrediting strikes by nurses; (iii) discourse on the National Health System; (iv) discourse about the fairness of strikers' demands and (v) discourse about potential harmful impact. Our findings show how social media users operationalise wider societal discourses about the nursing profession (e.g., associations with care, gender, vocation and sacrifice) as well as recent crises such as the Covid‐19 pandemic to justify their opposition. The results also provide valuable insights into misconceptions about nursing, strike action and patient harm, which can inform strategies for public communication. (shrink)

The present investigation is an endeavor to examine discourse from the CDA perspective. The following inquiries are the focus of the investigation: The extent to which the language employed in Trump's speech influenced individuals. Is the discourse beneficial or detrimental to the Egyptian populace? Additionally, which discursive strategies are implemented during their discourse? The study posits that speakers employ a variety of strategies, argumentation, and historical contexts to communicate their ideologies to their audience in order to secure (...) their support. This will address the aforementioned inquiries. Additionally, it is postulated that the manner in which English and Arabic speakers employ these resources differs. The data selected has been analyzed using Wodak's (1999) historical discourse approach (DHA). Consequently, the data for this study is derived from the speech of "the former president of the United States of America", Donald Trump, on October 23, 2020, regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The historic approach's components, such as the topos, the context, the historical framework, and the strategies, will be the primary focus. These components are employed to analyze each discourse. The research investigates how politicians wield social power and engage in through their speeches. The analysis highlights that many of the techniques employed are related to meaning and argumentation. Critical discourse analysis is a type of discourse analysis that is dedicated to the exploration of the discursive manifestations of ideology and authority. The study aims to investigate the manner in which politicians and exercise social authority in their addresses. The research indicates that the majority of the methodologies employed in critical discourse analysis are pertinent to political speeches. This research employs the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to dissect the language, rhetoric, and underlying ideologies within media coverage. (shrink)

The purposes of this study are twofold. First, it investigates how the digital media discursively react against the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids. Second, it examines how Thailand is portrayed as a venue for steroid holiday among recreational bodybuilders from the Western countries. Adhering to the principle of theoretical triangulation, the study employs two frameworks including Reisigl and Wodak’s discursive strategies and Van Dijk’s ideological structures. The methodology undertaken is a corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The corpus contains 100 articles published (...) on various websites between the period of 2014 and 2019 with the total number of 107,116 words. Main findings indicate that, regarding the first purpose, the media portray AAS as the ‘outgroup’ by employing various negative lexical items while attempting to dilute any claimed benefits. Concerning the second purpose, Thailand is represented as a venue in which AAS are easily available coupled with corrupt dealers and lax regulations. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the significance of incorporating decolonial methodologies in analyzing political discourse in a postcolonial world, particularly in Africa. The decolonial approach to political discourse focuses on the ways politics in postcolonial context is imbricated in the logic of coloniality. Decolonial approach is considered necessary rather than sufficient in interrogating the hegemonic structure of colonialism in Africa's political discourse. The paper uses critical discourse analysis situated within decolonial methodologies to analyze former President (...) of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan's declaration-of-intent speech to seek re-election. The paper specifically draws on [Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures decolonial options. Duke University Press.] and [Macgilchrist, F. (2014). Media discourse and de/coloniality: A post-foundational approach. In C. Hart & P. Cap (Eds.), Contemporary critical discourse studies (pp. 385–405). Bloomsbury Publishing] decolonial frameworks and [Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse. Routledge] legitimization model. Situating decolonial approaches together with Chilton's legitimization model is, on the one hand, a way of interrogating hegemonic structures in Goodluck Jonathan's speech and on the other hand works to show the limitation of Chilton's theory in analyzing discourses from Africa. This limitation of Chilton's model underscores the need to bring decolonial approaches in constructing a nuanced understanding of Africa and its epistemic diversity because it is impossible to think of overcoming the coloniality of power without approaching it from the perspective of the colonized. (shrink)

Digital peddling of fake news is influential to persuasive political participation, with veritable social media platforms. Social media, with their instantaneous and widespread usage, have been exploited by ‘anonymous’ political influencers who fabricate and inundate internet community with unverified and false information. Using van Leeuwen’s Discourse Legitimation approach and insights from Discourse Analysis, this study analyses 120 purposively sampled fake news posts on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, shared during the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. WhatsApp allows for (...) the easy and fast sharing of fake news as it pulled the largest occurrence of legitimation strategies, followed by Facebook. Authorisation is the highest occurring legitimation strategy at 46.6% frequency; this is followed by Moralisation which has 27% and Rationalisation at 26.4%; while Mythopoesis did not feature at all in the sampled data, leaving it at 0%. In particular, expert and role model authority are most often deployed to validate fake news such as the demise and cloning of President Buhari, ruling party’s plan to rig and destabilise the 2019 election, massive corruption in the current administration and imminent ethnic violence. The study argues that these strategies are viable persuasive tools owing to their use of discourse markers like make-believe images, emotive language, appeal to emotions, rational conclusions, hateful comments, verbal indictment and coercive verbs. (shrink)

A 21st-century growth in prevalence of extreme right-wing nationalism and social conservatism in Australia, Europe, and America, in certain respects belies the positive impacts of online, new, and alternative forms of global media. Cross-national forms of ‘far-right activism’ are unconfined to their host nations; individuals and organisations campaign on the basis of ethno-cultural separatism, while capitalising on internet-based affordances for communication and ideological cross-fertilisation. Right-wing revolutionary ideas disseminated in this media, to this end, embody politico-cultural aims that can only (...) be understood with attention to their philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on a dataset of articles from the pseudo-news websites, XYZ and The Unshackled, this paper investigates the representation of different rightist political philosophical traditions in contemporary Australia-based far-right media. A critical discourse and content analysis reveal XYZ and TU’s engagement with various traditions, from Nietzsche and the Conservative Revolution, to the European New Right and neo-Nazism. (shrink)

Analysis of the Slovak Discourses of Sex Education Inspired by Michel Foucault The aims, rules and topics of sex education exist on paper, but have yet to be implemented in Slovakia. Although the curriculum creates the illusion of openness in this field, the silence on sex education in schools provides space for the alternative, "more valuable" quiet discourses of religious education. Under these conditions, it is silence that is proving to be an advantageous strategy for the majority (...) of those who should be voicing their opinions. Instead, they listen and control. By contrast, those who do speak out, children and young people, do not in fact, speak to them, but mainly among themselves. Those who are silent and listen are not prepared for the younger generations confessions on sexuality, which are mostly taken from the liberal area of media, especially the internet. The silent frequently lack, at the very least, the basic ability to react and debate in this changed situation. Those who are involved in the discussion on sexuality in Slovakia are those who should listen and supervise. (shrink)

The activities of Fulani nomads in Ghana have gained considerable media attention and engendered continuing public debate. In this paper, we analyze the prejudiced portrayals of the nomads in the Ghanaian news media, and how these contribute to an exclusionist and a discriminatory discourse that puts the nomads at the margins of Ghanaian society. The study employs a critical discourse analysis framework and draws on a dataset of 160 articles, including news stories, editorials and op-ed pieces. The (...) analysis reveals that the nomads are discursively constructed as undesirables through an othering process that centers on three discourses: a discourse of dangerousness/criminalization, a discourse of alienization, and a discourse of stigmatization. This anti-nomad/fulani rhetoric is evident in the choice of sensational headlines, alarmist news content, organization of arguments, and use of quotations. The paper concludes with a call for more balanced and critical news reporting on the nomads, especially since issues surrounding them border on national cohesion and security. (shrink)

Despite the invaluable role that women play in the peacebuilding process, statistics still show this as a male-dominated field. Since media narratives have the power to frame reality providing the public with preferred lenses to understand it, this study asks, How do media narratives frame the role of Afghan women in conflict resolution? To address this question, we combine Frame Theory (Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58) and Critical Discourse (...) Analysis (van Dijk, T. A. (2015). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 466–485). Wiley Blackwell) to explore media narratives before and after the Taliban came into power in August 2021. The samples include 32 articles published between 2018 and 2022 on different sources ranging from traditional news outlets to magazines, newsrooms, intergovernmental organizations, and think tanks. Findings show that media narratives perpetuate unfair gendered expectations, failing to effectively render the irreplaceable role of women in peacebuilding. Frames confirm the double bind of hegemonic femininity (Schneiker, A. (2021). The UN and women's marginalization in peace negotiations. International Affairs, 97(4), 1165–1182) as women are subject to different expectations – the exception presents them as courageous, yet the norm frames them as being too vulnerable and without a voice. (shrink)

The myriad ways in which spatiality, or socially produced space, impinges on media texts is the overarching concern of this study. Responding to Edward Soja’s call for an assertive foregrounding of a critical spatial perspective, this article is an ontological reassertion of space in relation to news media discourse and argues that the socially constructed spatiality of a journalistic text is just as revealingly significant as its historicality and sociality. Introduced here is Critical Spatial Discourse Analysis (CSDA), (...) a methodological framework that employs the spatiocultural theory of Bill Richardson to enable a mapping of the various aspects of spatiality informing media texts. Edward Said’s imaginative geographies is also drawn upon to advance a geographical notation and mapping of the territorial imaginations underlying news media texts. The fundamental assumption of CSDA is that space is not only actively constituted in media texts but also constitutes and that it can, and indeed must be read and interpreted as any other text. A sample column from Turkey’s Sabah newspaper will be used to illustrate the application of CSDA to press coverage of democracy to see what might be revealed of those real-and-imagined spaces that are interposed and obscured in the text’s background. (shrink)

This paper explores the gendered discourses of the – seemingly favourable – media coverage that certain Heads of State received for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at media reports published in different English-speaking outlets in the US, the UK, India, Bangladesh, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland, and using multimodal feminist critical discourse analysis, we identify and describe strategies that on the surface appear to challenge hegemonic – and largely masculine – discourses of leadership. (...) Upon closer scrutiny, these superficially complimentary reports rather reinforce and naturalise discriminatory gender ideologies, and, as we demonstrate, they do so to different degrees along a continuum of essentialising, contextualising, and problematising. We critically discuss the discursive and visual processes involved and show that complimenting these leaders on their performance compares them against a masculine norm to construct their leadership as ‘alternative’, exceptional, and hence marked. This gendered portrayal of political leadership in times of crisis illustrates how the discursive construction of identities, responsibilities, and relationships during COVID-19 largely hinges on power relations and political ideologies that systematically disadvantage and undermine women. The purportedly positive form in which this occurs makes it particularly difficult to challenge and subvert these discriminatory discourses and their underlying gendered ideologies. (shrink)

This paper is meant to discuss two diverse but mutually entailed goals, underpinning the analysis of media business discourse. On the one hand, it promotes a critical understanding of how gender marks discourse and encodes power in business discursive communities, thus playing a key role in “shaping the expectations about people’s behaviours”. On the other, it promotes an interdisciplinary approach so as to disambiguate the discursive and argumentative strategies in the construction of media content by focusing (...) on the symbolic organization and interaction between citizens and the discursive communities, in terms of male/female representations, given the way they throw global challenges and/or replicate stereotypes and particular ways of perceiving the business discourse in terms of enunciation. The contrastive analysis of a corpus of magazine texts, covering news in April and May 2011, with a large readership in the global scenario, in Portuguese and in English, uncovers the power imbalance created when media texts pass on stereotypical patterns of behaviour in business and everyday discursive communities. (shrink)

Lack of diversity in the ranks as well as a failure to resonate with disadvantaged groups and other anti-oppression movements has been cited as one important barrier to the American Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s success. It is possible that social movements are actively inhibiting diversity in the ranks and audience by producing literature that reflects a narrow activist identity. This article creates a platform from which these larger issues can be explored by investigating the actual demographic representations present in a (...) small sample of popular media sources produced by the movement for other animals. A content analysis of 131 magazine covers produced by two highly visible movement actors, PETA and VegNews, was conducted to demonstrate that activist representations in at least some dominant American Nonhuman Animal rights media are mostly white, female, and thin. (shrink)

Over the past decade, Hungary has become a noteworthy example of democratic backsliding, marked by a pronounced shift towards conservative values and traditional gender roles within government policies. This trend, centred around Christian principles, has manifested in political campaigns actively opposing LGBTQ+ rights and the challenging of normative family structure. The resultant media campaigns and policy implementations have ignited extensive public discourse on gender and sexuality, prominently visible on social media platforms. This study conducts a qualitative (...) class='Hi'>analysis of the online discussion surrounding the LGBTQ+ children’s book, Fairyland Is for Everyone, to explore the contemporary gender discourse in Hungary. By examining social media comments under Hungarian online news articles, the research identifies three prevailing discursive lenses—heteronormative familism, neocolonialism, and diversity and inclusion—illustrating both the concurrent rise of anti-gender movements and the fortification of LGBTQ+ allyship in Hungary, while also considering broader transnational trends in LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. (shrink)

This study examines the complex dynamics of communication in the changing field of journalism influenced by the use of media. It specifically focuses on how thoughts and perceptions are expressed in this evolving landscape. Information and communication technologies significantly influence journalism by rapidly disseminating news, updates, and societal impacts. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, the study aims to reveal systematic language usages and uncover latent meanings beyond news texts. Focused on the 2023 Turkish Presidential Election, news texts from four (...) prominent international newslets Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and Euronews are analyzed. The comprehensive analysis of international media coverage investigates the interplay of linguistic and thematic choices in shaping narratives. With a dual focus on macro and micro levels of discourse, the study uncovers diverse approaches among foreign media outlets. Each outlet adopts a distinctive thematic approach at the macro level, emphasizing key figures and sociopolitical contexts. Al Jazeera spotlights competition, BBC underscores post-election polarization, CNN focuses on Erdogan's victory, and Euronews provides insights into national challenges. Visual elements, like photographs, contribute significantly to framing events, offering nuanced political messaging. Micro-level analysis explores linguistic choices, syntax, and rhetoric, emphasizing the active voice to underscore leaders' agency. Deliberate use of the passive voice in presenting election results maintains a neutral tone. The way sentences are structured and the cause-and-effect connections help readers understand political developments by providing context. The study underscores the importance of media literacy in decoding political event representations, emphasizing the multifaceted complexities of media discourse. (shrink)

Breastfeeding advocates and global health agencies have been sounding alarms about the dangers of digital marketing practices of the formula-feeding industry. This study comprised a feminist discourse analysis of materials produced (blog, social media posts, comments) in a paid partnership between baby formula brand Enfamil and an influencer, Marilou Bourdon from Trois fois par jour. Our analysis reveals a sophisticated marketing campaign that co-opts feminist critiques of breastfeeding promotion discourse while carefully avoiding explicitly violating the International (...) Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. Underlying this campaign is a rhetoric reliant on pathos to assuage maternal guilt and shame for feeding formula. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The use of social media by extreme right groups and the self-proclaimed formation of the ‘alt-right’ in recent years have been linked to the rise in US white nationalism. Against a backdrop of widespread concern regarding the growing nature of the ‘alt-right’ phenomenon, this article responds to the pressing need to understand its appeal. Specifically, we examine the discursive means by which a hitherto unexamined US ‘alt-right’ group, the Traditionalist Worker Party, constructs its group identity and ideology online. (...) Corpus assisted discourse analysis of this group’s blog reveals that the Traditionalist Worker Party regularly mobilises five discourses in order to assert subject positions of victimhood for its members, alongside recurrent use of explicit out-grouping strategies. The out-groups are blamed for a general malaise – an uncertain, chaotic reality that can and must be changed through affiliation with the Traditionalist Worker Party. The study also shows that the Traditionalist Worker Party constructs itself a highly entitative group as a means to enhancing its recruitment appeal. (shrink)

This is the first collection to bring together well-known scholars writing from feminist perspectives within critical discourse analysis. The theoretical structure of CDA is illustrated with empirical research in Eastern and Western Europe, New Zealand, Asia, South America and the US, demonstrating the complex workings of power and ideology in discourse in sustaining particular gender(ed) orders. These studies deal with texts and talk in domains ranging from parliamentary settings, news and advertising media, the classroom, community literacy (...) programs and the workplace. (shrink)

Although content related to parenting Autistic children is common in online media, little attention is paid to the experiences of Autistic parents. There is a growing trend of parents receiving autism diagnoses after their children are diagnosed, yet a basic Google search on “parents” and “autism” reveals myriad data on the experiences of parents of Autistic children and little on experiences of Autistic parents. A systematic online search, augmented with a “crowd-sourcing” request to online parent support groups, identified only 15 (...) articles and blogs that discuss Autistic parenting in advocacy, lifestyle, and parenting websites. This article explores the scope and content of Autistic parenting discourse in these online media to consider how the experiences of Autistic parents are conceptualized and situated within broader narratives of neurodiversity, autism and parenting. Media discourse focused on women who had received their autism diagnosis in adulthood, their experiences navigating their diagnoses, minimizing parenting challenges, and pushing back against autism stereotypes, with the majority of content intended for Allistic audiences. Recent increased recognition of autism in women has coincided with a new interest in Autistic parenthood, raising questions about gendered assumptions and disabled mothering. The media narrative includes “defying stereotypes” and “proving” autism is compatible with parenthood, echoing mainstream beliefs. Social justice issues reinscribed in the narrative illustrate how centring the voices of Autistic parents can reconceptualize public perception of autism and bridge the disconnect between parenting Autistic children, and Autistic parenting of children. (shrink)

This article presents a critical qualitative study of two opinion articles, written by two eminent scholars (Jürgen Habermas and Timothy Snyder), on the German government’s hesitant arms supply for Ukraine during the first phase of the Russian war of aggression in 2022. The main aim of the article is the uncovering of the discursive practices of critique performed by two major public intellectuals. This case study thus allows insights into the simplistic representation of the Russo-Ukrainian war in German elite media (...) discourse. The analysis focuses on actor representations and topic limitations and manipulations in the two op-eds. It is shown that both Habermas and Snyder use characteristic ways of social actor representations in their texts which exhibit their allegiances. Furthermore, both of them limit and change topics at the meso- and macro-levels of their texts in order to make their arguments sound. In closing, the critical potential of linguistic discourse analysis is shortly addressed by arguing that the context sensitive application of the categories for analyzing discourse can uncover the internal norms to which authors orient which makes them open for a critical analysis. (shrink)

This paper examines how gender is represented within conspiracy theories by drawing on data from a corpus composed of conspiracy theory documents. It presents an analysis of the collocates of gendered nouns, highlighting the ways that conspiracy theorists use language to reinforce connections between religiosity and masculinity and understandings of femininity that rely on biological gender essentialism. Further, this paper highlights the overlap in values between religious masculinity and hegemonic masculinity that occur within this discourse. It (...) also argues that the ways in which gender is represented in conspiracy theory discourse shares links to far-right ideology, even when the conspiracies in question do not have direct or overt connections to the far-right. (shrink)

Delivering news on social media platforms is an increasingly important consideration in journalism practice. However, little attention has been paid to audience engagement with news on social media, especially the discursive presentation of news on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. Based on 36 news reports collected from the People’s Daily official account, this study analyses how news discourse is constructed and presented to engage audiences. The results suggest that highlighting proximity, personalisation, positivity and human interest in news values (...) are the strategies adopted by journalists to engage audiences. The headline tends to use forward-referring terms and performs the speech acts of assertives and expressives to construct news values of proximity and positivity. The news story makes use of particular addressing terms, reported speeches and evaluative markers to construct news values of personalisation, positivity and human interest. The study enriches the analysis of journalistic practice of news on social media in the Chinese context. (shrink)

Prisoners signify: a political discourse analysis of mental illness in a prison control unitIncreasingly, US prisoners diagnosed with mental illness are housed in control units, the most restrictive form of confinement in the US prison system. This situation has led to intense debate over the legal, ethical and clinical status of mental illness. This is a semiotic struggle with profound effects, yet most related work treats mental illness as a neutral, individual variable. Few analyses locate mental illness within (...) a larger sociopolitical context. Fewer still focus on discursive practice. None critically analyze the accounts of control unit prisoners, who talk about extreme marginality and risk for victimization. This paper has two aims: (i) to develop a systematic method of analysis that accounts for signification as discourse‐in‐action; and (ii) to show how prisoners’ signification of mental illness articulates agency through and against marginalizing discourse. Political discourse analysis demonstrates how control unit prisoners with psychiatric diagnoses signify mental illness, and articulate safer identifications in the process. (shrink)

GILLETT K. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 297–307 A critical discourse analysis of British national newspaper representations of the academic level of nurse education: too clever for our own good?This critical discourse analysis examines articles about the academic level of nurse education that appeared in British national newspapers between 1999 and 2009. British newspaper journalists regularly attribute problems with recruitment into nursing and nursing care to the increasing academic nature of nurse education. It is impossible to separate (...) discourse about nurse education from the wider nursing discourse. Many journalists laud a traditional and stereotypical construct of nurse identity and suggest that increasing nurse education produces nurses who are ‘too clever to care’. This article argues that whilst nurses lack a voice in the National press, they have little input into the construction of newspaper discourse about nurse education and subsequently, limited influence on resulting public opinion, government policy and the morale of nurses. (shrink)

In this article, we frame men’s club football as an “extremely gendered” organization to explain the underrepresentation of women leaders within the industry. By analyzing women’s leadership work over a 30-year period, we find that women’s inclusion has been confined to a limited number of occupational areas. These areas are removed, in terms of influence and proximity, from the male players and the playing of football. These findings reveal a gendered substructure within club football that maintains masculine dominance in core (...) football leadership roles and relegates women to a position of peripheral inclusion in leadership roles. Through a discourse analysis of gender pay gap reports, we show that men’s football clubs legitimize women’s peripheral inclusion by naturalizing male dominance at the organizational core. These findings are significant because they demonstrate that men’s football clubs, as masculinity-conferring organizations, have excluded women from core roles to maintain their masculine character while superficially accepting women into roles that do not challenge the association of football with hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, organizational change may be possible only if women are granted greater access to core organizational roles. Here, we offer a new theoretical framework for “extremely gendered” organizations that can be applied to other sporting and male-dominated contexts to analyze women’s access to core leadership roles. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the ideological, social, economic, and political aspects of life on planet Earth. This study examines the visuals associated with COVID-19 published in Pakistani English newspapers. Visual data were collected through purposive sampling, analyzed using social semiotic theory, and discussed through a post-colonial lens. The visual data were grouped as Global South and North owing to socioeconomic and political categorization among countries. The results show that the Pakistani media portrayed the Global South as rebellious, miserable, and (...) noisy against the government. However, the Global North is depicted as civilized, stress-free, and abiding by all the instructions of the authority. Analysis shows that the two realms are visually represented as remarkably divergent from each other, and media portrayal has attached stereotypes identities to the nations. Pakistani media follows a basic restricted code of conduct, which should be extended to avoid labelling and politicizing groups and nations. (shrink)

Cet article traite des enjeux réels et pragmatiques des modes d’adresse et de désignation des femmes dans le processus de légitimation à être des personnes comme les autres. L’article s’intéresse ici aux modalités performatives du traitement de ces questions en milieu institutionnel, administratif, juridique qui passent parfois par des sanctions financières, comme cela est par exemple le cas, à un niveau global et reconnu, pour le non-respect de la loi sur la parité par les partis politiques. La discrimination langagière, (...) linguistique, des femmes est un phénomène acculturé et donc rendu invisible, qui ne peut être brisé dans sa circularité que par le fait de le rendre visible à travers des relevés et analyses de certains de ces phénomènes qui font leur quotidien. Diverses analyses de faits administratifs discriminants envers les femmes illustrent la nécessité et les difficultés d’un changement de paradigme – à savoir, en effet, les femmes sont des Humains comme les autres. (shrink)

In a period given to emphasizing diversity among humans, we would do well to explore diversity among forms of discourse and among forms of talk-in-interaction in particular. Among the speech-exchange systems, ordinary conversation has been claimed to be distinctive and fundamental, but questions have been raised about both claims. The resources for discriminating among speech-exchange systems are located in such generic organizations of practice as turn-taking, sequence organization, the organization of repair and the overall structural organization of episodes of (...) interaction. I try to show that `conversation' as a distinctive speech-exchange system is real and is not only a residual category, and that it is to be understood as the `basic' speech-exchange system, in part by reference to the distinctive turn-taking organization through which it is implemented. The `motivation' for having developed a formal account of this turn-taking organization is recounted, and that formal account is defended for its usability in the analytic explication of singular, contexted episodes of talk. The remainder of the article is given over to such an exemplary account - an examination of an episode of interaction during a testing session between a man whose brain hemispheres had been surgically separated and a researcher. (shrink)

This study analyzes the journalistic discourses on social media in order to find out the position of Venezuelan and international press in the coverage of 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. Drawing on Borrat’s and Enguix Oliver’s theoretical approaches regarding newspapers and social networks, and through CDA models of Fairclough and Richardson, this research aims to understand to what extent the national quality newspapers such as El Nacional, El Universal, and Últimas Noticias, and the international ones as The New York Times, (...) The Guardian, El País, and Le Monde participated in the Venezuelan political conflict and constructed the respective political narratives through Instagram. The findings show that both national and international press participated as external narrators in the political conflict and highlight the role of newspapers as political actors and social media as a tool in their hands. (shrink)

This paper explores the evolution of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies (SM-CDS) and, in this context, outlines four essential approaches for critical research on social media and the underlying communicative paradigm. Thus, the paper adds to existing research in two ways. First, it provides a conceptualisation and visualisation that integrates Digital Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Studies, and the critical discourse-analytical study of social media. Second, taking this as a springboard, the paper proposes a classification scheme (...) for past and future critical research on social media. The paper argues that critical discourse-analytical work should encompass at least four approaches: (1) using social media as repositories of data, (2) contextualising and theorising social media, focusing on (3) discourse produced by social media providers and (4) discourse about social media. In addition to discussing the scope of each approach, the paper elucidates their epistemological value. Overall, the article finds that critical engagement with social media has predominantly focused only on two of these approaches, highlighting the importance of expanding existing social media research with an eye to the additional key approaches identified. (shrink)

John Swales’ 1986 article ‘Citation analysis and discourse analysis’ was the first to apply citation analysis to describe in-text citations in the field of discourse analysis. Howard White’s 2004 article ‘Citation analysis and discourse analysis revisited’ was written by an information scientist and primarily focused on citation analysis and discourse analysis. Here, we cast a wider net by conducting a bibliometric analysis of discourse analysis to (...) sketch its scientific landscape between 1978 and 2018. Our findings show that discourse analysis has emerged as a major, and increasingly distinctively sociological, contribution to the analysis of language in social life. It is evident that discourse analysts are increasingly interested in such topics as corpus linguistics, digital conversation analysis, discursive news values approach, membership categorization analysis, multimodal analysis and social media. It is a general trend that the United States is no longer the only dominating publication powerhouse in the field. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and China are wielding a growing share of research output. (shrink)

This case study examines whether an academic listserv functions primarily as a medium for progressive discourse in which enacted power relations are collaborative or primarily as a medium for discourse in which norms are unilaterally established and off‐line hierarchical power relations are re‐enacted. A few instances of progressive norm setting and other indicators of collaborative power relations were found. However, findings overall suggest that the hierarchical power relations of the college context were re‐enacted in the listserv as revealed (...) by the manner in which the discourse was patterned by gender, rank, and role. (shrink)

The paradox of the Aged Care Act 1997: the marginalisation of nursing discourse This paper examines the marginalisation of nursing discourse, which followed the enactment of the Aged Care Act 1997. This neo‐reform period in aged care, dominated by theories of economic rationalism, enshrined legislation based upon market principles and by implication, the provision of care at the cheapest possible price. This paper exposes some of the gaps in the neo‐reform period and challenges the assertion that the amalgamation (...) of nursing homes and hostels in such an environment can provide better quality of care and life for residents. It argues that this amalgamation entails a transformation towards a social model of care and fails to address the professional healthcare needs of the acutely sick and complex extreme old person and makes evident new gaps in the provision of aged care services. The paper proceeds to present strategies where the future for nursing practice in aged care necessarily involves a judicious balancing of individual cases alongside economic prescriptions of care and ever‐changing public policy initiatives. It concludes that this can be achieved through a more interactive public, professional and advocacy discourse. The methodology involves extensive analysis of public documents including media, academic journals, government reports and interviews with recognised leaders in the field of aged care. The study utilises a critical interpretative framework consistent with the logic of Michel Foucault. (shrink)

When governments introduce controversial policies that many citizens disapprove of, officeholders increasingly use discursive legitimation strategies in their public communication to ward off blame. In this paper, we contribute to the study of blame avoidance in government social media communication by exploring how corpus-assisted discourse analysis helps to identify three types of common legitimations: self-defensive appeals to personal authority of policymakers, impersonal authority of rules or documents and goals or effects of policies. We use a specialised corpus of (...) tweets by the Brexit department of the British government which we analyse both qualitatively and quantitatively. We demonstrate how the analysis of lexical bundles that characterise each type of legitimation might provide a new avenue for identifying the presence, characteristics and uses of these legitimations in larger datasets. (shrink)

Healthcare environments continue to prove discriminatory and marginalizing towards patients and healthcare workers themselves, which contributes to inequitable health outcomes across lines of socially constructed difference. This content and discourse analysis of nursing identity scholarship asks whether there is a connection between nursing identity and oppressive behaviour by examining the construction of nursing identity and the foundational discourses, sometimes in absentia, that support such a construction. Bourdieu's concepts of social fields and Audre Lorde's concept of the master's (...) house are applied as a framework towards understanding the constructs of power and status in healthcare. The analysis identifies a gap in nursing identity literature where social constructs of difference are not considered. In the reviewed literature, nursing identity has been co‐opted by the professionalization project in effort to stabilize a conceptualization of nursing's contribution to healthcare towards gaining professional and societal status. This leads to a monolithic, apolitical representation of nursing identity that erases difference, denies historical influence, universalizes nursing work and further marginalizes marginalized identities. The oppressive and hegemonic nature of a universal nursing identity may contribute to a lack of disciplinary reflexivity about the ongoing influences of foundational discursive constructs of gender, epistemology, power and professional status. (shrink)