“This Virus is a Common Threat to All Humans”: Discourse Representation of COVID-19 in Selected Newspaper Editorials

Existing studies on viruses with bias for COVID-19 have mainly been carried out from non-linguistic fields. Linguistics-related studies have not examined the media representation of COVID-19 since it is a recent development. This study, therefore, identifies the representational strategies, discourse structures and discourse strategies deployed by selected newspapers in representing COVID-19 and associated participants. Data were retrieved from selected COVID-19-related editorials from four purposively selected countries and continents across the world: New York Times (USA, North America), The Guardian (UK, Europe), China Daily (China, Asia) and The Punch (Nigeria, Africa), published in the early periods of the pandemic, and precisely from January 1 – March 31, 2020. Guided by aspects of van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of critical discourse analysis on ideological discourse structures, data were quantitatively and qualitatively analysed. The newspaper editorials unusually converged to negatively represent an issue – COVID-19 – because it is largely negatively viewed by all. Ten representational strategies (like economic cankerworm, threat to humans, common enemy), six discourse strategies (like demonising, criminalising, condemnation) and twelve ideological discourse structures (like Actor Description, Authority, Burden) and different participant representations and roles (like solver, potential super spreader) were identified in the study. The newspapers largely set the agenda on the negative representation of the virus and its potential havoc on all facets of human endeavours, thereby giving emotional and informational appeal to all to join hands in earnestly silencing the epidemic. Keywords: COVID-19, media representation, newspaper editorials, discourse strategies, discourse structures

Conception of Harmonious Union: Philosophy History Aspect

The academic and humanitarian conception of harmonious union (hehe) has been proposed by Professor Zhang Liwen in the 1990s. It claims to explain the specifics of Chinese civilization and proposes solution of some global problems by its means. Despite the lack of direct references to the conception, it remains in demand both in the political and ideological discourse of the People's Republic of China. This presentations deals with the historical and philosophical facts available in Chinese written monuments and works of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, which are put forward as a justification for the primordial idea of harmonious union in Chinese culture. An attempt is done to show that this concept does not offer any new set of philosophical categories, but appeals to the well-known concepts of two-, three- and five-item classifications. At the same time, the emphasis is laid on the form, the method of combining opposite or dissimilar elements. In general, on the basis of the limited historical and philosophical material, it can be concluded that the concept of harmonious unification is aimed not so much at revising the composition of the philosophical system of Confucianism, but at rethinking its value criteria for interaction and mutual dependence of objects and phenomena.

Women in Culture. Introduction to the Issue

The late 1960s and early 1970s development of liberation discourses (postcolonial, racial, ethnic, gender, environmental, etc.) resulted in them turning not only and not so much into an intellectual strategy, but instead, in their entering culture as social practices, and becoming the main patterns of behavior and models of thinking. 1 In this context, the feminist discourse, 2 which initially developed as a political and legal narrative of the struggle for women’s rights, unfortunately became a world view and even an ideological discourse of opposition and competition between the sexes as it spread. In view of the above, the current cultural situation pursued by feminist activists in terms of gender can be described as a struggle for alpha leadership between an antagonist and a protagonist in the course of a liberation discourse (Gaag, 2014; Carrigan, Connell & Lee, 1985, pp. 551–604; Wood, 2011). Such a struggle is also often described in the terminology of Darwinian natural selection and, therefore, it is realized in social practices as an all-out war between the “oppressors” and the “oppressed,” justified by the criteria of biological (non)utility in nature or society.

THE ISSUE OF SUBTITLING HUMOR IN ARABIC

Subtitling humor is one of the most arduous tasks subtitlers face as it involves technical, linguistic, textual and cultural factors. This article aims at investigating the issue of manipulating humor in Arabic subtitles of American series and movies. It examines the strategies subtitlers use in translating humor and analyzes the solutions they opt for. It focuses on two fields of study: jokes and puns. The study is based on the work of Diaz Cintas (2012) and (2007) on ideological manipulation in Audiovisual Translation (AVT). The theory stipulates that translators have turned into intercultural agents and mediators shaping the ideological discourse of their culture <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0896/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT NANA AKUFFO ADDO’S 2018 STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of the 2018 (SONA)- State of the Nation Address delivered by Ghana’s president, Nana Akuffo-Addo. Using van Dijk’s (2004) ideological strategies, the study investigates how the president tries to justify his government’s ideas and persuades his audience by utilizing subtle ideological discourse structures in his speech. The text used in the study is the whole of the 2018 state of the nation address obtained from www.my joy online.org. The study employs content analysis for analysing the data. The major ideological strategies employed have been positive self-representation and in-group favouritism supported by minor ideological strategies while projecting past opponent governments negatively. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0859/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Creating the Technological Saviour: Discourses on AI in Europe and the Legitimation of Super Capitalism

Scholars in political economy of communication such as Vincent Mosco have showed how discourses around digital technologies have historically been constructed as modern myths with major references to utopian worlds and possibilities. Myths, conceived as the dominant ideologies of our time become powerful devices that normalise conventional wisdom into ‘common sense’ thus making the conception of alternatives impossible. This chapter aims to analyse the ideological discourse on Artificial Intelligence and its relevance in legitimising the hegemony of capitalism. From its beginnings in the fifties, Artificial Intelligence has been surrounded by evocative claims about the imminent creation of a machine capable of surpassing the potentials of humankind. This chapter aims to establish what hegemonic discourse around the concept of AI is emerging in Europe and what are the myths employed to construct such discourse.

Gymnasium and Bath

In the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, gymnasiums and baths served complex social functions. More than simply places to cleanse the body or engage in exercise, these became venues for public spectacle, a purpose suggested by the design features and artistic decoration that went into the construction of these spaces. By the first and second centuries ce, in the Roman world spaces dedicated to exercise were fully integrated into multipurpose bathing venues. In their developed forms, the gymnasia and the baths were both places to view and display the body and to sustain ideological discourse focusing on youthful and dynamic physicality.

Mining ideological discourse on Twitter: The case of extremism in Arabic

Extremism has been a problematic term to define and suggests different and opposing meanings. This study explores how Twitter users conceptualize extremism in Arabic and express their opinions/arguments to construct the term. A corpus of tweets was collected from Twitter API using the word ‘تطرف أو متطرف’ in Arabic for extremist/extremism. A topic modeling algorithm was then applied to the dataset to uncover latent associated concepts underlying extremism, followed by a critical discourse analysis using Van Dijk’s Sociocognitive approach. The discursive and linguistic strategies used by Twitter users to support and justify their views of extremism were examined. The findings demonstrate an ideological influence that controls the concept of extremism, keeping it open to manipulation to serve shared interests and goals. Arab users of Twitter use extremism to promote their groups’ positive schema against others-negative schema.

UMA LEITURA SOBRE O TRANSTORNO DE PÂNICO À LUZ DA TEORIA FREUDIANA DA ANGÚSTIA

Panic Disorder invites us to think about the clinical and cultural implications involved in structuring this type of suffering as treated by psychiatry through the DSM. By reducing the psychology of anguish to nosology, to a technical and ideological discourse, we disregard suffering as a result of new forms of subjectivation and modalizations of the social bond that contemporaneity has produced. Psychoanalysis is interested in psychological suffering in its symptom dimension, that is, considering the malaise in civilization without resorting to the processes of human subjectivation. In view of the above, this study aims to investigate the category of Panic Disorder from the Freudian work, following its clinical and theoretical path to understand the specificity of this form of suffering and its relations with anguish.