discursive strategy
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2021 ◽  
pp. 173-184
Author(s):  
João Paulo Avelãs Nunes ◽  
António Rafael Amaro ◽  
Nuno Coelho ◽  
Joana Ricarte

Following a roundtable discussion at the University of Coimbra on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel regarding the perspectives and activity of the organisation Breaking the Silence, the journal Estudos do Século XX [20th Century Studies], published periodically by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Coimbra, deemed this interview worthy of inclusion. This first conversation aims therefore to allow the two ex-soldiers and directors of Breaking the Silence to respond to questions posed by four researches from Group 1 – History, Memory, and Public Policy, of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Coimbra.             Unlike sections such as the “Thematic File”, ‘Interdisciplinary Dialogue” and “Critical Reviews”, which are aimed at publishing humanistic, artistic, scientific or technological texts, the “Interviews” section proposes to share civic-minded or memorialistic responses to questions regarding current but relevant issues in broader intellectual and social terms. Such is the intention, whether by bringing more civilian narratives into an academic journal, or simply noting correlations between humanistic, artistic, scientific or technological knowledge and civic intervention.             This interview was documented, on the one hand, due to the ethical and geostrategic importance of the ongoing situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel; and, on the other hand, to highlight the main features and discursive strategy of Breaking the Silence. It is important to remember that this organisation is made up solely of Israeli citizens who have carried out mandatory military service in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; and that their discursive strategy prioritises characterising and contextualising/comparing specific situations in order to explain value judgements and suggestions for how to bring about drastic change.             We value the existence of such an organisation within Israeli society that, in view of the grave problems in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, explicitly assumes the status of an association of ex-perpetrators. From this standpoint, Breaking the Silence defends: a) that Israeli soldiers describing in their own words what is really happening is one way of contributing to ending the ongoing systematic violation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; b) that victims and ex-perpetrators are entitled to support, should they so wish, in their efforts to overcome the effects of the mass violence that has occurred.             Avner Gvaryahu and Avihai Stollar’s answers are especially poignant. Whether consciously or not, their respective intellectual rigour and ethical self-expectations seem to correlate somehow with the likes of Benedict de Spinosa and Hannah Arendt. The options set forth are also important owing to both the complexity and lengthy duration of the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, and from the contradictions experienced in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Also considered were the verifiable connections with the overall mindset of the Cold War and the Post-Cold-War period, as well as phenomena such as the Jewish diaspora, anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.             As researchers, we try above all to recreate and analyse, to contextualise and compare how communities handle and manage situations in which human rights are violated systematically, even when those responsible for such processes of mass violence are countries under liberal-democratic or democratic regimes. As citizens, we also recognise how important it is to highlight the individual (or small group) behaviour of those notable for their profound intellectual rigour and heightened self-expectations. As has sometimes happened in the past, we hope that, both now and in the future, the example set by the fairer minority will be followed by the majority; a majority composed of perpetrators and those who are indifferent to such events.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Mateja Cerovšek

  Creating and maintaining an imaginary bond between the journalist and readers is a communicational strategy of the written sports news discourse. Since news discourse is monologal, it has specific communicational constraints that it seeks to overcome, and the lack of direct contact between the authors and their readers is a key hurdle to cross. Additionally, sport has a notable cohesive function, and as such produces a sense of a sports community even when taken as a news subject. The imaginary bond is therefore a strategy for overcoming the discursive gap between the journalist and their readers, while at the same time reinforcing the impression of community that the subject of sports draws on. In the sports news discourse this strategy is translated through different linguistic means, such as conversational elements. Based on selected articles from the French written sports news, a qualitative analysis of texts enabled us to observe the linguistic means through which the imitation of conversation contributes to the discursive strategy of bonding. The analysis is focused on informal and interactive conversational features. It shows that such conversationalization is particularly apparent in the informal character of the discourse on the lexical and discursive levels. This adds to the seeming informality of the communicational situation, and therefore to the readers’ sense of an imaginary sports community. On the syntactic level this is reinforced by interactional elements such as rhetorical questions and other interrogatives that address the reader as an interlocutor and echo the dynamics of a dialogue. Both conversational aspects, as used in the French sports news discourse, contribute to a sense of informal atmosphere and community bond among sports enthusiasts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 183-207
Author(s):  
Sibylle Marti

AbstractThe Coordinated Medical Services, an emblematic organisation of Switzerland’s total national defence system, were operational at the beginning of the 1980s. Through the Coordinated Medical Services, Swiss authorities propagated a sociotechnical imaginary the core of which was that Switzerland was able to survive a nuclear war through a huge collective effort. This vision faced severe criticism, in particular, from members of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (PSR/IPPNW Switzerland). The chapter sheds light on their resistive actions, including conscientious objection, as well as on their effective discursive strategy of subjectivisation centring around the figure of the conscientious physician. This resistance contributed to a growing civil defence criticism that challenged the Swiss total national defence imaginary.


2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-53
Author(s):  
Magdalena Nowicka-Franczak

This article revisits the category of self-criticism, which, as a speech act, plays a special role in the discourse of the intelligentsia, emerging from the peripheral status of Poland and from the imperative to catch up with the West. In contemporary Poland, self-criticism has revived as a discursive strategy in the context of coming to terms with the democratic transformation. For the right-wing intelligentsia, self-criticism is mainly a postulate that is addressed to political adversaries. For the left-liberal intelligentsia, self-criticism is not only a political weapon but also a strategy of introspective enunciation directed at the post-transformation society. A qualitative discourse analysis of selected acts of self-criticism performed by Polish left-liberal elites between 2013 and 2019 highlights two interconnected conflict-generating fields of debate: (1) reckoning with the neoliberal and pro-Western model of the 1989 democratic transition and (2) retribution on the post-transition intellectual elites that patronized the people and the attribution of responsibility for the Elite-People Division. The distinguished functions of self-criticism point to the political and class conflict as well as to the growing delegitimacy of the dominance of the neoliberal narrative about the Polish model of modernization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Malewska-Szałygin

Self-silencing can be a discursive strategy for presenting personal opinions in casual conversations about politics, especially when these take place in an unpredictable or hostile socio-political environment. In such situations, political identities may be performed through the use of inferred forms, such as allusion, irony or implicit suggestion. In this article, forms of muting one’s voice by using indirect speech are tracked in interviews conducted among villagers in the mountainous Nowy Targ county in southern Poland at the beginning of the 21st century. The aim in presenting these examples is to show that sometimes selfsilencing can serve to make an adversary’s voice more audible, to help avoid definitive judgement and to create space for an exchange of opinions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 70-80
Author(s):  
Я. Ли ◽  
Ю. Чу

В статье проведен анализ микротекстов новостных сообщений российских СМИ о китайских лидерах, изучены дискурсивные стратегии. В статье используется корпусный инструмент AntConc 3.4.3 для извлечения высокочастотных слов и анализа коллокаций (т.е. словосочетаний); используется метод системно-функцио-нальной лингвистики Хэллидея для анализа транзитивности, интертекстуальности текстов в корпусах. Результаты анализа показывают, что новостные сообщения о китайских председателях в российских СМИ имеют положительное значение в общем, имидж председателей Китая также является положительным. Расширение и углубление сфер китайско-российского сотрудничества и отношений между двумя странами всегда находятся в центре внимания российских СМИ. В новостных сообщениях о китайских председателях российские СМИ создают образ китайского председателя как друга и единомышленника России. От председателя Цзян Цзэминя до председателя Си Цзиньпина степень дружбы постепенно увеличивалась. Российские СМИ наиболее основательно создают имидж руководства Си Цзиньпина. С помощью прямых и косвенных цитат они подчеркивают лидерский имидж председателя Си Цзиньпина и его личные качества, которые помогают вести Китай к великому возрождению. This paper analyzes the microtexts of news reports of the Russian media about Chinese leaders, as well as to study the discursive strategy used by the Russian media in news reports about Chinese leaders. The article uses the corpus tool AntConc 3. 4. 3 to extract high-frequency words and analyze collocations (i.e. phrases); the Halliday method of system-functional linguistics is used to analyze transitivity, intertextuality of texts in corpora. The results of the analysis show that news reports about the Chinese presidents in the Russian media show a positive value in general and the image of the Chinese presidents is also positive. The expansion and deepening of the spheres of Sino-Russian cooperation and relations between the two countries are always in the center of attention of the Russian media. In news reports about the Chinese chairmen, the Russian media create the image of the Chinese chairmen as a friend and like-minded person of Russia. From Chairman Jiang Zemin to President Xi Jinping, the degree of friendship gradually deepened. The Russian media always create the image of the leadership of the Chinese presidents and most thoroughly create the image of the leadership of Xi Jinping. With the help of direct and indirect quotes, they emphasize the leadership image of President Xi Jinping and his personal quality in the process of leading China to a great revival.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 6770-6792
Author(s):  
Santiago U. Sánchez Jiménez

La vaguedad es una propiedad inherente de las lenguas naturales y, también, una estrategia discursiva eficaz. En este trabajo se presta atención a los rasgos de la vaguedad lingüística, a los motivos que justifican su existencia, a los tipos de vaguedad y a la relación que se establece con otros procesos semánticos como la polisemia, la homonimia o la modalidad epistémica. La vaguedad intencional (la que persigue un fin comunicativo) ha de enmarcarse dentro del contínuum precisión-imprecisión. En el ámbito de la vaguedad intencional ha de distinguirse una vaguedad pragmática (generada por el contexto) y otra vaguedad lingüística, consistente en el empleo de elementos lingüísticos que estrechan el margen de precisión o amplían el espectro de la vaguedad. La posibilidad de que el emisor pueda intervenir en el grado de precisión o imprecisión de una expresión lingüística pone de manifiesto la elasticidad del idioma. Vagueness is an inherent property of natural languages ​​and also an effective discursive strategy. In this work attention to features of linguistic vagueness, the reasons for their existence, the types of vagueness and the relationship established with other semantic processes such as polysemy, homonyms or epistemic modality is provided. The intentional vagueness (which pursues a communicative purpose) must fit within the continuum of precision-vagueness. In the field of intentional vagueness we have to distinguish a pragmatic vagueness (generated by the context) and other linguistic vagueness, consisting of the use of linguistic elements that narrow the margin of precision or broaden the spectrum of vagueness. The possibility that the speaker may select the degree of accuracy or inaccuracy of a linguistic expression shows the elasticity of language.  


2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392110492
Author(s):  
Rebecca Jablonsky

This article demonstrates how meditation apps, such as Headspace and Calm, are imbricated within public discourse about technology addiction, exploring the consequences of this discourse on contemporary mental life. Based on ethnographic research with designers and users of meditation apps, I identify a promise put forth by meditation app companies that I call attention by design: a discursive strategy that frames attention as an antidote to technology addiction, which is ostensibly made possible when design is done right. I argue that attention by design is a promise unfulfilled. Meditation app companies construct attention as socially valuable by endlessly pointing out its purported opposite, technology addiction. Attention by design is promissory in that it keeps promising even when it doesn’t deliver what it promises, compelling the user to return to a practice that represents socially desirable traits that can never be fully acquired—and that often recede further from reach as the person becomes distracted by other obligations and communication mediated through the smartphone. Despite this broken promise, users believe they are becoming more attentive. The promissory attention designed into meditation apps reflects a new form of governmentality, in which users receive a mental nudge to reinterpret similarly designed experiences as different.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad A. Khan ◽  
Sumra M. J. Satti

This study unearths the ambiguities found in the discourseof prominent Pakistani political league during the outbreak of the pandemic covid-19 from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA is an approach to the analysis of discourse which considers language as a social practice and takes particular interest in the ways in which ideologies and power relations are expressed through language (Fairclough, 2015). This paper presents a reflection to unveil the discursive strategies which are being used by the major Pakistanipolitical parties’ leaders as they did not come up with any plan of action pertaining to covid-19 yet. These statements are merely based on criticism only for the sake of criticism without any systematic planning and logical way out to get rid of this critical situation.  This analysis is guided by the framework of Fairclough’s model of CDA (2015) which consists of three inter-related processes of analysis tied to three inter-related dimensions of discourse. This paper highlights the ideological perspective of Prime minister Imran Khan, opposition leaders i.e., PML-N leader ShahbazShareef, Chairman Pakistan People’s Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and MolanaFazal-u-Rehman. This study found out that the statements which are given by the major political parties on different political forums are full of vague ideas and uncertainty about Coronavirus outbreak which is, in a way,an evidence regarding their failure to understand and tackle the dire situation.


Kalbotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Margarita Rouski

The current paper examines the function of a specific construction comme je l’ai dit and its role in a particular type of oral discourse. The phrase occurs with high frequency in an established discursive genre, namely, debates in the European Parliament (EP). It is presented as a parenthetic construction, including elements with an anaphoric function, and endowed with a specific discursive aim. In order to better understand the raison d’être of this syntactically autonomous form in the specialized corpus, a mixed semantic-discursive approach is adopted. The aim of the study is to highlight the main properties of the construction bearing a particular functionality and to specify its status in discourse from the perspective of the active interlocutor.Given its rather simple morphological paradigm, its rather stereotypical enlargements, and its easy mobility, comme je l’ai dit reveals certain specificities of the referential process. The reference of the anadeictic type causes a sort of “duplication” of the object of discourse and also its reconfiguration. The return to the already said, with the aim of re-modeling it, is in fact accompanied by a re-saying, a repetition of the locutor’s own speech.The interrupting, the going back, the reworking and advancing, involved in the use of the analysed construction, seem to have several implications. The presence of comme je l’ai dit is justified by the speaker’s intention to construct relevant discourse that takes into account intralocutive and interlocutive dialogism. The interruption followed by a relaunch is a signal that redirects the attention of the interlocutor, while the repetition, which is a reminder of the already said, preserves the continuity of the discourse.The two processes set up by comme je l’ai dit, anaphoric reference and repetition, have the function of ensuring the coherence and the continuity of ongoing discourse through the tradeoff between saying, repeating and discursive memory. The importance of adjustments between speaker and interlocutor is the basis of the chosen discursive strategy. The functional perspective brings out the interpersonal aspect of the referential procedure.


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