scholarly journals Social Actors “to Go”: An Analytical Toolkit to Explore Agency in Business Discourse and Communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Darics ◽  
Veronika Koller
Keyword(s):  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Business Communication ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Analytical Skills ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Business Discourse ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies

We argue that language awareness and discourse analytical skills should be part of business communication curricula. To this end, we propose a three-step analytical model drawing on organizational and critical discourse studies, and approaches from systemic-functional linguistics, to explore agency and action in business communication. Focusing on language and discourse helps students to analyze texts more systematically, researchers to gain deeper insights into organizational discourse, and practitioners to reflect on communication processes and produce texts with more impact. We view discourse as central to organizational processes and render a specific approach accessible and easy to integrate into business communication curricula.

Language use difference and social group differentiation: Immigrants’ negotiation of an imposed category of lau in bilingual Guangzhou

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-313
Author(s):  
Jing Huang
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Language And Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Boundary Making ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Identity Category

AbstractThis study is situated in a bilingual community of Guangzhou where the local speech Cantonese used to have comparable power to the Chinese common language Putonghua regarding the range of domains, but recently a local concern has emerged over the declining status of Cantonese in association with the large number of immigrants and the vigorous implementation of the state language policy of Putonghua Promotion. This concern has been demonstrated in Guangzhou locals’ boundary-making practices and the categorization of immigrants in relation to language practices. This study aims to investigate the ways in which immigrants take up stances (Du Bois 2007; Alexandra, Jaffe. (ed.). 2009.Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) to negotiate their identities in response to an imposed category oflau. Immigrants’ narratives of and comments on language use in their interactions with natives are analysed, at both semantic and formal levels, from a perspective of Critical Discourse Studies (e.g. Martin, Reisigl & Ruth Wodak. 2015. In Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.).Methods of critical discourse studies, 3rd edn. 23–61. London: Sage, Fairclough, Norman. 2015.Language and power3rd edn. London: Routledge.). As the analysis shows, immigrants negotiate the imposed identity category through coming to terms with the underlying language beliefs, negatively evaluating the social actors who categorize them, recontextualising the category, and combining Putonghua and Cantonese in one language unit to indicate the symbolic oppositions between social groups and languages.

scholarly journals As redes sociais e a construção dos antagonismos: a imigração brasileira em Portugal representada em comentários do Facebook

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (49) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Henrique Valle-Nunes
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Qualitative Data Analysis ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
The Impact

O presente estudo visa analisar a representação dos atores sociais em discursos sobre a imigração brasileira em Portugal, tendo em vista os eixos da referenciação nominal, da dêixis pessoal, da manifestação de topoi, da intertextualidade e da interdiscursividade, a partir de uma abordagem baseada nos Estudos Críticos do Discurso (KhosraviNik & Unger 2016; Van Dijk 1984, 2006, 2018; Wodak 2001; e.o.). Para a sua realização, foram selecionados 143 comentários públicos de páginas de jornais portugueses no Facebook, coletados entre 29 de agosto de 2018 e 30 de abril de 2019, com conteúdos que apresentaram manifestações de Othering. Após o tratamento e análise qualitativa destes dados, concluiu-se que este tipo de discurso, ao realizar-se numa plataforma altamente interativa, apresenta relações com as agendas destes geradores de conteúdo e tem por fim outros intuitos implícitos, tais como o impacto em termos interacionais e a amplificação das ideologias do grupo de pertencimento.The current study aims to analyse the representation of social actors in discourses about Brazilian immigration in Portugal, taking into account nominal reference, personal deixis, topoi manifestation, intertextuality and interdiscursivity, based on the Critical Discourse Studies' approach (KhosraviNik & Unger 2016; Van Dijk 1984, 2006, 2018; Wodak 2001; e.o.). For sampling, 143 public comments of pages of Portuguese newspapers on Facebook were collected between August 2018 and April 2019, all of which presented Othering-related content. After treatment and qualitative data analysis, it was possible to conclude that this type of discourse, once on a highly interactive platform, present close relation to agendas of content generators, having other implicit goals such as the impact on audience interaction and the amplification of in-group ideologies.

scholarly journals “I wanna be a toy”

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lexi Webster
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
User Group ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Gender Variant ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
User Groups ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Sex Positive

Abstract The paradigmatic transgender woman is often negatively oversexualised, pornographised and fetishised in mainstream conceptualisations and discourses. However, self-sexualisation by transgender individuals is often portrayed as a (sex-)positive social phenomenon. Little research has been conducted that analyses the self-sexualisation strategies of the multiple instantiations of gender-variant identity, including transmasculine and non-binary social actors. This paper uses a corpus-informed socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse studies to identify differences between the self-sexualisation strategies and underpinning cognitive models of different gender-variant user-groups on Twitter. 2,565 users are coded into five categories: (1) transfeminine; (2) transmasculine; (3) transsexual; (4) transvestite; (5) non-binary. Findings show that transvestite- and transsexual-identifying users most closely fit the pornographised and fetishised conceptualisation, whilst non-binary users are the least self-sexualising user-group.

scholarly journals The Politics of Voice in the Stereotypical Representation of the Pashtuns: A Critical Study of Khaled Hosseini’s Novels

2018 ◽  
Vol III (II) ◽  
pp. 385-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rab Nawaz Khan ◽  
Abdul Waheed Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies

The current study is an attempt to critically analyze the role and politics of voice in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in terms of categorical and stereotypical representation of the Pashtuns. It is a critical discourse study (Norman Fairclough, 1989, 2018) of the selected data. Moreover, the data is viewed from the perspective of critical discourse studies. The novels under study are polyphonic in nature, and the characters belong to various Afghan ethnic backgrounds, like the Pashtuns, the Tajiks and the Hazaras. The study concludes that the novelist's choice of the characters with their respective voices and the roles assigned to them are political, ideological and somewhat biased. The Pashtuns have been stereotypically represented by categorizing them as the social, well-educated and more or less liberal Pashtuns, the tribal and traditionalist Pashtuns, extremist and fundamentalist Pashtuns, like Taliban. Misrepresentation of the tribal and fundamentalist Pashtuns as racists, ethnic nationalists, ideologists, sexists, exclusionists, traditionalists and power-abusers is indicative of the novelist's biasedness and exaggeration.

scholarly journals Trump, memes and the Alt-right: Emotive and affective criticism and praise

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 789-809
Author(s):  
Lyndon C.S. Way
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Authority Figures ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
The Ideal

Internet memes are the most pervasive and malleable form of digital popular culture (Wiggins 2019: vii). They are a way a society expresses and thinks of itself (Denisova 2019: 2) used for the purpose of satire, parody, critique to posit an argument (Wiggins 2019, see also Ponton 2021, this issue). The acts of viewing, creating, sharing and commenting on memes that criticise or troll authority figures have become central to our political processes becom[ing] one of the most important forms of political participation and activism today (Merrin 2019: 201). However, memes do not communicate to us in logical arguments, but emotionally and affectively through short quips and images that entertain. Memes are part of a new politics of affectivity, identification, emotion and humour (Merrin 2019: 222). In this paper, we examine not only what politics memes communicate to us, but how this is done. We analyse memes, some in mainstream social media circulation, that praise and criticise the authoritarian tendencies of former US President Donald Trump, taken from 4Chan, a home of many alt-right ideas. Through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies approach, we demonstrate how images and lexical choices in memes do not communicate to us in logical, well-structured arguments, but lean on affective and emotional discourses of racism, nationalism and power. As such, though memes have the potential to emotionally engage with their intended audiences, this is done at the expense of communicating nuanced and detailed information on political players and issues. This works against the ideal of a public sphere where debate and discussion inform political decisions in a population, essential pillars of a democratic society (Habermas 1991).

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