Equality, Democracy, Monogamy: Discourses of Canadian Nation Building in the 2010–2011 British Columbia Polygamy Reference

Author(s):  
Joanna Sweet

Abstract This article examines how the 2010-2011 Reference re s 293, which considered the constitutionality of the polygamy prohibition, contributed to nation building discourses in Canada. A critical discourse analysis demonstrates that traditional views of monogamous marriage remain an important tenet of nation building in Canada. Discourses in the reference portrayed monogamous marriage as a central national institution and as a means of safeguarding women’s equality rights. These discourses, in turn, had racialized consequences for defining Canadian national identity.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Duffy ◽  
Annabel Pang

While a discourse of difference has routinely been used as a marker of national identity, such an approach is premised on exclusion. By contrast, this article considers how inclusion or diversity may be employed in nation-building discourse, and its impact on the citizenry, as embodied in the omnivore ‐ one who appreciates a wide range of cultural artefacts and, in doing so, evokes a high status. Using a Verstehen approach to critical discourse analysis, we analyse one kind of state media ‐ the Singapore Tourism Board’s food-related webpages ‐ to assess how they represent citizens and tourists as culinary omnivores, and how this may be interpreted to reveal mechanisms of hegemonic state control.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaina Singh

On August 13th 2010, the MV Sun Sea ship carrying 492 Tamil asylum seekers arrived off of the coast of British Columbia. Immediately upon arrival the Tamil asylum seekers were detained for a prolonged period of time, subjected to intensified interrogation techniques, and unfairly questioned even when in possession of identifying documents. This paper examines how the government used political discourse to try and justify the unusually harsh detention of asylum seekers. Through a critical discourse analysis strategy, eight newspaper articles will be analyzed and the theories of securitization, discourse, and orientalism will be used to advance certain political ideologies. The political justifications of detention operate through the theme of the egocentric state, and the theme of categorizing and demonizing asylum seekers. The final theme discussed is the concept of victimization, which will offer an alternate perspective to this paper’s main focus on political discourse.


2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Ruiseco ◽  
Thomas Slunecko

Following the discourse-historical approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (Wodak, de Cilia, Reisigl and Liebhart 1999; Wodak 2001), we analyze the inaugural speech of the actual president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, which he delivered on August 7th, 2002 in Bogotá. We take this speech as an illustration for the construction of national identity by the Colombian elites. In our analysis, we are particularly interested in Uribe’s strategy of referring to the European heritage and in his ways of appeasing the cultural and ethnic differences of the population.


k ta ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Aprillia Firmonasari ◽  
Rosidin Ali Syabana

The issue of immigration became prominent in French political discourse in 2005 that leads to debate about France and nationalism. During the lead-up to the 2007 French Presidential election, various concepts of a French national identity were promoted by candidates: Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolene Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Candidates gave particular attention to ethos, specifically ethos émotif. In this article, the researcher will characterize the ethos émotif presented by the four candidates mentioned above. The ethos will be then examined whether it were successfully embodied in these candidates' speeches by investigating the public reaction they received based on articles published in the French media. This research will apply a critical discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics approach using elements of interaction formulated by Stébe (2008) and Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1990). Data will be classified using the software LEXICO 3.


2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A Morton

Whether too much or the wrong kind, constraining Indigenous mobility is a preoccupation of the province of British Columbia. The province remains focused on controlling Indigenous mobility and constructing forms of contentious mobility, such as hitchhiking, as bad or risky. In Northwestern British Columbia hitchhiking is particularly common among Indigenous women. Hitchhiking as a mode of contentious mobility is categorically named as “bad mobility” and is frequently explained away as risky behaviour. Mobility of Indigenous women, including hitchhiking is deeply gendered and racialized. The frequent description of missing and murdered Indigenous women as hitchhikers or drifters fosters a sense that “choosing” a bad mode of mobility alone is the reason that these women disappear. This paper will identify how hitchhiking, framed as contentious mobility supports the construction of missing and murdered Indigenous women as willing, available and blame-worthy victims. Morality is tangled up with mobility in the province’s responses to Indigenous women who hitchhike. This paper engages in a critical discourse analysis of billboards posted by the province of British Columbia along the Highway of Tears that attempt to prevent women from hitchhiking. This paper will identify the point of convergence between contentious mobility, violence against Indigenous women and larger questions of colonialism and the negotiation of racialized and gendered power imbalances through the province’s constraining of Indigenous mobility. Résumé Excessives ou mal ciblées, les tentatives visant à restreindre la mobilité des Autochtones dans la province de Colombie-Britannique sont une source de préoccupation. La province s’efforce à contrôler la mobilité des Autochtones et à présenter les formes de mobilité controversées, tel l’auto-stop, comme des pratiques indésirables ou risquées. Au Nord-Ouest de la Colombie-Britannique, l’auto-stop est une pratique tout particulièrement courante chez les femmes autochtones. L’auto-stop en tant que mode de mobilité controversé est désigné comme « mobilité indésirable » et est fréquemment considéré comme un comportement à risque. La mobilité des femmes autochtones, incluant la pratique de l’auto-stop, a une dimension profondément sexuée et ethnique. La description fréquente de femmes autochtones enlevées ou assassinées comme étant des auto-stoppeuses ou des fugueuses alimente une perception selon laquelle le « choix » d’un mode de transport risqué est l’unique raison pour laquelle ces femmes ont disparu. Cet article discute de comment le fait de présenter la pratique de l’auto-stop comme un moyen de transport à haut risque encourage la perception des femmes autochtones enlevées ou assassinées comme des victimes consentantes et responsables de leur sort. La réponse de la province aux femmes autochtones pratiquant l’auto-stop est un discours sur la mobilité présenté sur un ton moralisateur. Cet article présente une analyse critique du discours des panneaux affichés par la province de la Colombie-Britannique le long de la route des pleurs qui tentent de dissuader les femmes de faire de l’auto-stop. Cet article détermine le point de convergence entre la mobilité controversée, la violence faite aux femmes autochtones et des questions plus vastes sur le colonialisme et la négociation du déséquilibre des pouvoirs liés à l’ethnie et au sexe par le biais de la contrainte de la province sur la mobilité des autochtones.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Legault

Viewing Métis identity not as a natural, essential, or fixed phenomenon, but as an experience formed through internal and external factors, this article examines the mechanisms by which people residing in British Columbia identify as Métis. Through interviewing Métis Peoples and engaging in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Narrative Analysis (NA), this research demonstrates how Métis narratives centre on and replicate three hegemonic discourses based on racial mixedness, Métis cultural values, and Métis nationalism. The ‘Métis subject’ is then not an easily described coherent subject, but rather a co-constructed description based on transient identification with multiple and sometimes contradictory texts, which are themselves made meaningful through discourses. Understanding ‘Métis’ in this way allows for an exploration of the role of power in producing meanings of ‘Métis’ and how individuals, groups, and institutions can strategically mobilize particular meanings and resist definitions of Métis prescribed by Eurocentric perspectives embedded in colonial institutions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-338
Author(s):  
Ibukun Filani

This article explores the comedic construction of national identity in Nigerian stand-up comedy. By national identity, I mean collective perspectives on the sociopolitical and cultural realities of postcolonial Nigeria. While critical discourse analysis provided the framework for interpretation, data was derived from purposively sampled recorded videos of Nigerian stand-up comedians. Such collective perspectives are constructed when a comedian indexes cultural/political events and situations in a monologue. The investigation reveals four identity mapping strategies: performing (non)theatrical identities, using the comedy voice to indicate multiple identities, constructing a trickster identity and constructing a resilient spirit identity. These strategies entail foregrounding assumptions about the Nigerian state and using language in a strategic way to indicate sociopolitical and cultural realities.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Varghese ◽  
Kamila Ghazali

This study focuses on the discussion of 1Malaysia, Malaysia’s latest national blueprint for unity and identity, in the New Straits Times (NST), Malaysia’s oldest and state-owned English language print media. We examine the means by which NST has constructed the latest political venture in forging a national identity, while negotiating the various challenges to such an undertaking. Employing the critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, we look at distinctive nomination and predication patterns as well as the occurrence of high and low factuality. This is conducted primarily through an analysis of social actors, their predication and modality to show how these contribute to the construction of the 1Malaysia ideology. Findings suggest that the signifier of 1Malaysia serves not only as a reference point for discussing subjects of concern to reformists, but also provides opportunities for the newspaper to hold institutions to account.


لارك ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (36) ◽  
pp. 258-270
Author(s):  
ساره علي حسين

Abstract                     This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the discursive construction of national identity in selected political discourses. The nationalist narratives affect the ways people view problems that are related to them as a group, i.e. related to their ethnicity, nation, and country. Because of the effective role of the national narratives in directing people's decisions, the study aims to investigate the ways in which national identities are maintained or reproduced in political discourse to reach political purposes. Thus, the researchers use a qualitative thematic analysis based on three levels to investigate the construction of the national identity in discourse. To achieve this aim, the study analyses two political speeches in which one of them is presented by the First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond and the second one is given by the Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron. Both speeches are presented a day after the Scottish independence referendum. The researchers employ Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl and Liebhart's (2009) theory of the discursive construction of national identity to examine the strategies that are used by those opposing sides to maintain or reproduce a specific national identification. The study arrives at identifying certain strategies used to express the opposing views of both politicians to construct, maintain or destroy national identities.


Author(s):  
Ángela Alameda Hernández

AbstractTheoretically based on the paradigm known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores the discursive representation of Gibraltar’s identity as it was perceived both from inside –Gibraltar itself- and from its metropolis –Britain, during two crucial moments for this community: the referendums held in the colony in 2002 and 1967. The textual corpus consists of editorial articles drawn from Gibraltarian and British newspapers. Analysis shows how Gibraltar strongly builds its identity on the expression of its inner self, hence as a victim and passive entity, while the British press constructs Gibraltar as a political entity with little interest on the human side of the issue.Key words: Discourse analysis, CDA, national identity, media discourse, transitivity system, editorial articles.ResumenBasado en el paradigma lingüístico conocido como Análisis Crítico del Discurso (CDA), este artículo explora la identidad Gibraltareña a través de la representación discursiva construida tanto desde dentro de la colonia como desde fuera, su metrópolis, durante los dos referendums que se celebraron en 2002 y 1967. El trabajo analiza artículos editoriales extraídos de la prensa gibraltareña y británica. Los resultados han mostrado cómo Gibraltar construye su representación discursiva como una víctima, mientras que la prensa británica refuerza su identidad política con escaso interés por el lado humano del asunto.Palabras clave: Análisis del discurso, CDA, identidad nacional, discurso mediático, sistema de transitividad, editoriales.


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