A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of the construction of people of colour (POC) as criminals in UK and US print media following the Black Lives Matter protests of May 2020

Around 2,000 ‘thugs’ were present and over 150 arrested were made in London boroughs during far-right protests to counteract the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, but how accurately was this portrayed in the news? This study used publicly available data in the form of newspapers and blog posts of the BLM protests to conduct a Foucauldian Discourse analysis of 25 articles. How authors used language is explored to conceptualise and construct the depiction of POC as more violent and prone to adopting aggressive means to resist social inequalities. Our findings indicated there is an inherent belief that ethnic minorities possess a predisposition to criminality. The examination of rhetorical constructions in the reviewed articles indicated practical implications, including the potential to highlight issues with the emergence of ‘fake news,’ but hopes to influence policy evaluations on the quality and truth of stories produced in UK and US print media.

Den mångtydiga ortodoxin

The history of Christianity is marked by frequent debates over doctrinal truth. From an early stage, Christian authors began to use the terms "or­thodoxy" and "heresy" to deal with diversity of faith. While the orthodox faith was seen as the one that had been preserved from the time of the apostles, heresies were seen as later innovations. This idea was expressed in the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century, and became influential in later Christian history writing. Up until the twentieth century, orthodoxy and heresy were concepts typically associated with doctrinal content. However, with Walter Bauer's immensely influential work Rechtgläubligkeit und Ketzerei im Frühesten Christentum (1934), a socio-historical understanding of orthodoxy and heresy came to be adopted. According to this view, the concepts corresponded to social realities. With the influence from poststructuralist thought from the 1980s onwards, further developments took place in this scholarly area, with a new understanding of the concepts as rhetorical representations. This article argues that even in modern research, orthodoxy and heresy are typically associated with value judgment, and that ancient Christian cat­egorizations of "orthodox" and "heretic", and of the heretics them­selves, have continued to determine the way in which we read the sources today. Giving an example of heresiology produced by Jerome of Stridon during the Origenist controversy, it is suggested that in order to avoid essential­izing the rhetorical constructions of the heresiologists, a greater attention to their strategies as well as to their context is needed.

SYNTAX EXPRESSEMES IN THE POETIC DISCOURSE BY LESIA UKRAINKA: INTENTIONALITY AND AESTHETICS

The article analyses Lesia Ukrainka’s poetic discourse from the standpoint of syntactic expressemes functioning within it. Expressemes are viewed as figurative-rhetorical constructions that express aesthetic, emotional-evaluative and expressive potential, effectively influence the human cognitive-mental complex, consciousness, spiritual worldview, emotional perception, in contrast to conventional syntactic units. Based on the relevant linguistic methodology, a significant amount of empirical data has been studied, which testifies to the artistic perfection of Lesia Ukrainka’s poetic idiolect. The use of a rich data source enabled systematization of syntactic expressemes and investigation of syntactic means of rhetoric speech, such as rhetorical questions, exclamations, dialogues. It is noted that rhetorical questions, in particular, realize emotionalexpressive statement or objection, creating figurative, semantic-aesthetic effect of communication, accentuate important information, representing a high style speech, and emphasize its sophistication and imagery. Drawing on empirical data the author also outlines functional potential of interrogative and exclamatory statements, focusing on the intentional potential of antiphrasis constructions and repetitions, and study period as a complex figurative-rhetorical construction, characterized by aphorism, dynamic nature and special syntactic structure. In the context of the poetic idiolect, vocative communication and addressing are analysed, which not only verbalize direct appeal but also serve as a source of aesthetic pleasure. Syntactic expressemes as a means of verbalizing the intentions of aesthetics in Lesia Ukrainka’s poetic discourse correspond to the author’s idea, create aesthetics and expressiveness, represent the writer’s linguistic creativity, testifying to the inalienable relevance of her work through the prism of time, history and personalities. The prospect of the research is seen in a more detailed study of the functional capabilities of syntactic expressemes in Lesia Ukrainka’s lyrical-epic discourse.

Translation Analysis of Ideological Aspects through the Use of Rhetorical Constructions in How to Win Friends and Influence People

Rhetorical construction may have a number of functions in a text. It attempts to prompt a reaction to the message of a statement by expressing it in words that have particular connotations. The study aims at the application of rhetorical constructions reflecting the author’s ideology, Dale Carnegie, in ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ and how the translator rendered them through the selection of translation techniques into Indonesian version using Van Dijk’s CDA model to determine the quality of translation. By applying a content analysis, the study finds that in general the author uses rhetorical constructions such as repetitions, metaphors, rhetorical questions, and hyperboles to represent his ideology in this book. The author explores a lot on the persuasive and motivational ideology. The findings also show evidence that the translator implements several different translation techniques, such as established equivalent, variation, transposition, amplification, and modulation in order to attain a high quality of translation and to preserve the author’s ideology. Meanwhile, the use of translation techniques such as literal, reduction, generalization, modulation (optional), and discursive creation result in a lower quality of translation and also create a shift (in form and meaning) in the translated version. Thus, these techniques used show the translator’s ability to comprehend what is behind the text, and the translator must also take into consideration any shift in meaning of the ideological construction in the translation process so as to avoid a low quality of translation. This implies that translator should consider the ideology behind the author’s intention to deliver his or her message and chooses the appropriate techniques of translation to maintain the original message in the translated version

Parody and Garden Path

This is a study of Chinese rhetorical constructions, parody and garden path (GP), from the perspective of lexico-constructional pragmatics (LCP). LCP adopts a holographic view of lexicon and construction so that they can be analyzed alike. We take parody and GP examples from Chinese advertisements for analysis. The LCP analysis highlights the pragmaticity and rhetoricality of each case: for a particular effect. When difficulty arises, pragmatic means may be used to “pragma-coerce” the right, clever, or erroneous use of a rhetorical construction for delivery of a retrievable intended effect, an Aha-effect. We conduct a mini-questionnaire with two cases, the former dealing with parody and the latter with GP. The study indicates the humor competence of ordinary Chinese participants (around the level of BA) as far as parody and GP are concerned and the participants’ potential for cognition of the pragma-rhetorical values of parody and GP or their potential for generation of such utterances. It is suggested that rhetorical constructions outwit the less rhetorical or grammatical constructions iff they are available and accessible, and that LCP can offer us a feasible interpretation of such tropes as parody and GP.

Autobiographical narration in short prose by Yevgeniya Bozhyk

The article devotes to the analysis of the autobiographical aspect of narration in short prose by Yevgeniya Bozhyk (1936–2012). It investigates interesting stories, essays, sketches as well as short stories. They are united by a holistic thematic and problematic circle of relevant universal issues that are outside of time and space. The writer reveals the secrets of her creative laboratory, uses various expressive means (metaphor, metonymy, refrain, symbol, rhetorical constructions, ellipse, excursion and anticipation, stream of consciousness, and open finale). She emphasizes such qualities of the creator as the ability to hear and listen, to catch the slightest nuances of mood in the world around her. It is noteworthy that literary texts have components of fiction, journalism in confessional presentation (author, hero and reader). The works have unique textual structure (fragmentation, sensitive dominant, intersemiotic components, primarily musical, aphoristic statements, changes in tempo, and autoallusions). The writer can communicate with people, read thoughts and feelings thanks to fine mental organization, guess unsaid things by female intuition, feel the relationship with the interlocutor at the highest sensory and mental levels. The artist of the word manages to capture the moment when there are changes in nature and man — two components of the universe. Therefore, the reader also becomes an author. He empathizes with the heroes, relates them to himself, learns and ponders what he has read. So, the creator builds conditional and frank conversation with each recipient of her works. Yevgeniya Bozhyk reproduces in literature her rich experience of meeting with different people (prototype characters), sharing her own view of the world with the reader and presents the vision of the Motherland in the bright and exciting kaleidoscope of events, perceptions, reflections. The keynote is the search for Man and Will. Only the brave can get rid of stereotypes and slavery. Indeed, the freedom of the country is unthinkable without the freedom (primarily spiritual) of each of its citizens.

The Rhetorical Biopower of Eugenics: Understanding the Influence of British Eugenics on the Nazi Program

The relationship between the British and Nazi eugenics movements has been underexamined, largely because of the more obvious ties between the American and Nazi programs and the lack of a state-sponsored program in Britain. This article revisits this gap to reinsert the British eugenics movement into the historiography of the Nazi program by way of their shared rhetoric. To do this, I employ Foucault’s concepts of biopower and power/knowledge, arguing that biopower exists in rhetorical constructions of power and identity, which the eugenics movements employed at national and individual levels to garner support and participation, particularly from women. The article is not an exhaustive account of the rhetorical overlaps between the two movements, but rather serves as a model of how one might understand eugenics as a rhetoric of biopower.

How Can You Not Shout, Now That the Whispering Is Done? Accounts of the Enemy in US, Hmong, and Vietnamese Soldiers’ Literary Reflections on the War

As typified in the Christmas Truce, soldiers commiserate as they see themselves in the enemy and experience empathy. Commiseration is the first step in breaking down the rhetorical construction of enemyship that acts upon soldiers and which prevents reconciliation and healing. This essay proceeds in three steps. We will identify first the diverse forms of enemyship held by the American, by the North Vietnamese, and by the Hmong soldiers, reading political discourse, poetry, and fiction to uncover the rhetorical constructions of the enemy. We will talk about both an American account and a North Vietnamese account of commiseration, when a soldier looks at the enemy with compassion rooted in identification. Commiseration is fleeting; reconciliation and healing must follow, and so finally, we will look at some of the moments of reconciliation, after the war, in which Vietnamese, Hmong and American soldiers (and their children and grandchildren) find healing.

ANTINOMY AND PARADOX IN ST. AUGUSTINE’S “CONFESSIONS” AND THE “SHIMMERING CONCEPT” OF L. WITTGENSTEIN

The aim is to show the disintegration of a personality by analyzing the fragment of “Confession” by St Augustine. It allows us to come from the phenomenological description of personality transformation process to means of psychological defense. By solving the questions of love St Augustine uses hidden rhetorical constructions, which reflect his emotional processes in the most adequate way. They should be analyzed and clarified. The rhetorical aspect of this transformation can be reconstructed from that part of “Confession” where Augustine describes his Carthage impressions. He suffers psychological chaos: he “ran into love”, “loving love”. Augustine finally summarizes these impressions by saying “I loved not yet, yet I loved to love”. Thesis becomes antithesis and that is the circle. Wittgenstein wrote in “Tractatus Logico-philosophicus” (1922), that “a function cannot be its own argument”. In “Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics” (1942) Wittgenstein returns to this topic. For the description of this contradiction Wittgenstein proposes a kind of function:”F (F), where F (ξ) = – ξ (ξ)”. It is “a shimmering concept”. Contradiction is part of logical symbolism, but topologically, the figures of contradictions, which use Augustine and Wittgenstein, are different. They describe a variety of psychological processes. The figures of contradictions by St Augustine are the paradox in time. The figures of contradictions by L. Wittgenstein are the antinomy in space.