‘So yo creo que es un proceso evolutivo’: Language ideologies among Puerto Ricans in southeastern Pennsylvania

Multilingua ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Shenk

AbstractThis article examines the perspectives of Puerto Ricans living in the United States in response to a publicity campaign that focuses on the correction of linguistic features that appear in some Puerto Ricans’ spoken Spanish. The campaign addresses phonetic, morphological, lexical, and syntactic features, including a specific set of words or phrases that are named as lexical and semantic borrowings from English. Participants were invited to respond to the content and ideologies present in the campaign by means of semi-structured interviews. Through a framework of Critical Discourse Analysis and language (de)legitimation, the article analyzes the ways in which interviewees (de)legitimize loanwords in Puerto Rican Spanish. A Critical Discourse Analytical framework allows for the mapping of spoken and written texts (e. g. the campaign texts) onto discourses

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Aliya Sikandar ◽  
Nasreen Hussain

This case study explored the English language related ideologies of different management groups and student representatives at a business school of Karachi, Pakistan. The study tried to bring an insider’s perspective to the causes of certain language ideologies prevalent in the business school’s social structure, and the role language played in power relations between the main actors of the community. For this purpose, a sample of four research participants from each of the focussed management cadres was selected for study. Analysis of semi-structured interviews, administered on the participants, was done using Fairclough’s (2009) dialectical-relational approach of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The study suggested the prevalence of certain language ideologies that were manifested and latent in the discourses of the participants. These deeply rooted beliefs were predominantly patterned by centering authorities: language became a means for those in power to sustain their hegemony and maintain social stratification in society. Functionally, English played a stratifying role, and also was found to be extensively perceived as a commodity, a product that is to be acquired or attained. The study realised this social wrong of inequity and divide in a particular community, and on the basis of the findings, recommends a reorganizing of social structures into those of more inclusive and democratic ones for the operationalizing of equality and fairness in social practices.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Josephine Mwasheka Nghikefelwa

This is a qualitative study designed to investigate the role of pedagogical practices in the mediation of stereotypical gender representations in the drama God of Women by Sifiso Nyathi (1998). This drama is one of the literature setworks for Grade 9 English Second Language learners in Namibian Secondary schools. Fairclough’s (2012) Critical Discourse Analysis was used as a research design, as well as the conceptual and analytical framework. The analysis of this drama by teachers during the teaching and learning process, pedagogic practices they employ, learners’ engagement in classroom activities, and the nature of comments that teachers write on students’ assignment, based on God of Women, formed part of the unit of analysis. The study explored teachers’ pedagogical practices during English Literature teaching to gain insight into whether and how teachers shape learners’ engagement with literature to promote critical thinking. Focus on the mediation process (‘teacher talks around the text’) concerned a close analysis of teachers’ engagement with the text during lessons. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observation and documentary evidence were used to generate data. The research site and study participants were purposively sampled.


2021 ◽  
pp. 233264922098109
Author(s):  
Shannon K. Carter ◽  
Ashley Stone ◽  
Lain Graham ◽  
Jonathan M. Cox

Reducing race disparities in breastfeeding has become a health objective in the United States, spurring research aimed to identify causes and consequences of disparate rates. This study uses critical discourse analysis to assess how Black women are constructed in 80 quantitative health science research articles on breastfeeding disparities in the United States. Our analysis is grounded in critical race and intersectionality scholarship, which argues that researchers often incorrectly treat race and its intersections as causal mechanisms. Our findings reveal two distinct representations. Most commonly, race, gender, and their intersection are portrayed as essential characteristics of individuals. Black women are portrayed as a fixed category, possessing characteristics that inhibit breastfeeding; policy implications focus on modifying Black women’s characteristics to increase breastfeeding. Less commonly, Black women are portrayed as a diverse group who occupy a social position in society resulting from similar social and material conditions, seeking to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit breastfeeding. Policy implications emphasize mitigating structural barriers that disproportionately impact some Black women. We contribute to existing knowledge by demonstrating how dominant health science approaches provide evidence for health promotion campaigns that are unlikely to reduce health disparities and may do more harm than good to Black women. We also demonstrate the existence of a problematic knowledge set about Black women’s reproductive and infant feeding practices that is both ahistorical and decontextualized.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110016
Author(s):  
Jessica Cira Rubin ◽  
Susan Tily

The early phases of teachers’ professional careers are multi-layered and informed by many factors, including teachers’ values, their own experiences in schools, and the nested contexts of their professional employment. While in teachers’ everyday lives government policies sometimes operate beneath the surface rather than overtly, these policies influence many teachers’ experiences, contributing significantly to what critical discourse analysis scholars call the ‘issue’ of teachers’ available subjectivities being influenced by prevailing ideologies as they are newly entering the profession. In this analysis, we activate critical discourse analysis in order to offer new understandings about policies and contexts associated with new teachers entering the profession. Our analysis is significant in its co-consideration of policies from contexts that we see as experiencing the influence of neoliberal ideologies in different ways. As critical discourse analysis is transdisciplinary, it also offers chances to transcend boundaries of politics and culture to inquire into social wrongs as we actually experience them in a world that is globally connected and globally influenced. The significance of this analysis, then, lies with the continued questioning we hope that it, and others like it, make possible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Phillip Joy ◽  
Matthew Numer ◽  
Sara F. L. Kirk ◽  
Megan Aston

The construction of masculinities is an important component of the bodies and lives of gay men. The role of gay culture on body standards, body dissatisfaction, and the health of gay men was explored using poststructuralism and queer theory within an arts-based framework. Nine gay men were recruited within the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants were asked to photograph their beliefs, values, and practices relating to their bodies and food. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the photographs as guides. Data were analyzed by critical discourse analysis and resulted in three overarching threads of discourse including: (1) Muscles: The Bigger the Better, (2) The Silence of Hegemonic Masculinity, and (3) Embracing a New Day. Participants believed that challenging hegemonic masculinity was a way to work through body image tension.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-275
Author(s):  
Mustafa Menshawy

Abstract In this article, I examine a corpus of texts that address the 1973 war; these texts cover the period from 1981 to 2011, marking the beginning and end of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I explore how Mubarak’s regime employed the war to legitimize its power and defend its policies by deploying longstanding culturally-embedded ‘macro themes’. These macro themes refer to the war as an overwhelming and undisputed ‘Egyptian victory’ and, more significantly, they portray Mubarak himself as ‘war personified/war personalized’. The analysis of linguistic and extra-linguistic features in al-Ahram newspaper (the mouthpiece of the state), among other media texts on the war, show how the discursive construction was made consistent, coherent and resonant in a managed context that characterized the political and media landscapes. Depending on unique access to those who produced, edited and even censored the texts under analysis, this method unravels a complex set of cultural messages and conventions about the war, and fills a lacuna in the literature by offering insight into the deliberate and well-coordinated process of shaping and reshaping a specific discourse for a specific purpose.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Imron Hizbullah ◽  
Muhammad Taufiq Al Makmun

<em>This paper investigates the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in studying the inauguration speech of Donald Trump at the Capitol Hill, Washington DC on January 20, 2017. The objective of the study is to uncover the hidden messages regarding ideologies shared and critiques appointed to Obama’s presidency. The paper uses the theory of CDA by Norman Fairclough by focusing on the three aspects of research which are (1) micro or linguistic analysis, (2) Mezzo or discursive analysis, and (3) macro or contextual analysis. The three dimensional model of CDA is aimed to uncover the ideologies shared and critiques appointed to based on linguistic features, socio-political aspect, and discursive practice. The American Dream is represented in seven issues risen which are (1) US economic condition during Obama’s presidency, (2) US political condition during Obama’s presidency, (3) US social condition during Obama’s presidency, (4) The concept of making America great again, (5) Anti-radical Muslim immigrants, (6) America First, and (7) Nationalism. The result of the study reveals that the speech brought some ideologies or thoughts shared to the audiences and might change the people’s perception on Obama’s two periods of presidency who is considered as failure.</em>


10.29007/tp1r ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Sancho Guinda

I explore the narrative strategies adopted by a specific type of institutional discourse grounded in the authority of expertise: risk communication, aimed at influencing our conceptions of hazard and danger to ultimately prevent unsafe behaviours. My focus is the unique discourse of the fatal aviation accident synopses issued yearly online by the National Transportation Safety Board of the United States of America (NTSB for short). Through a blended framework that merges Narratology, Critical Discourse Analysis and the Positioning and Proximisation Theories, I examine how the NTSB didactically brings risks and dangers close to its broad mixed virtual audience while undertaking fluid roles for branding purposes and disseminating the ideological principles of American democracy. In doing so, I especially attend to issues of narrative focalisation (i.e. recounting perspective) and speech representation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Nicholas Tapia-Fuselier ◽  
Veronica A. Jones ◽  
Clifford P. Harbour

Undocumented college students in the United States encounter a number of structural barriers to postsecondary education success, including disparate in-state resident tuition (ISRT) policies across the country. Texas, the first state to establish ISRT benefits for undocumented college students, has been a site of tension respective to this issue over the last 20 years. In fact, there have been eight legislative attempts to repeal the state’s affirmative ISRT policy. In order to investigate this ongoing ISRT debate in Texas, we used critical discourse analysis methods to analyze the implicit and explicit messages communicated in the policy and surrounding policy discourse. Our conceptual framework, grounded in three constructs of critical whiteness studies including ontological expansiveness, color evasiveness, and individualization, allowed us to uncover whiteness as a pernicious undergirding force within this policy discourse.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisreen Naji Al-Khawaldeh ◽  
Imad Khawaldeh ◽  
Baker Bani-Khair ◽  
Amal Al-Khawaldeh

Graffiti have received a great attention from scholars as they have been considered a vital cultural phenomenon for many years (Trahan, 2011; Divsalar & Nemati, 2012; Zakareviciute, 2014; Farnia, 2014; El-Nashar & Nayef; 2016). Although there are extensive contemporary researches on graffiti in many disciplines, such as linguistics, cultural studies, politics, art, and communication (Pietrosanti, 2010;  Farnia, 2014; Oganda, 2015), there are few studies exploring graffiti on classrooms’ walls in higher education milieus (Farnia, 2014). To the best knowledge of the researchers, very few studies were done on the Jordanian context (e.g. Al-Haj Eid, 2008; Abu-Jaber, et al., 2012) and none was done on the Jordanian universities. Therefore, this study aims at analysing the content and communicative features of writings found on universities’ classrooms’ walls, corridors, and washrooms and their relation to the socio-cultural values of the society in order to explore how universities help students voice their attitudes and thoughts. The linguistic features that characterise these writings were also examined. Graffiti-writings, which were collected from the University of Jordan and the Hashemite University, were coded and analysed using the thematic content analysis technique (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995). The analysis of the data has shown that graffiti serve different communicative language functions related to personal, social, national, religious, political, and taboo matters. The most salient linguistic features of these graffiti are simplicity and variation. It can be concluded that graffiti are distinctive and silent ways of communication, particularly in students’ society. The study will be of great importance to linguists, sociologists, educators, administrators, teachers and parents. It is enrichment to the available literature on linguistic studies.


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