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How should we study the language of political legitimation? Incipient scholarship increasingly seeks to bridge the conceptual schism between the sociological is and the philosophical ought in the study of legitimacy, looking at public legitimating discourses to uncover the actual social attitudes toward prescriptive principles. And while this research agenda has recently gained traction, its methodology remains opaque. This paper suggests that normative concepts, central to the argumentations that hold common basic beliefs and discourse together, can allow us to tap into the language of legitimation. Normative concepts can be traced via mixed methods research, incorporating the quantitative method of corpus linguistics and the qualitative method of discourse-tracing – two techniques that mutually enrich and complement each other. By illuminating changes in the sort, scale, and scope of normative concepts, this mode of inquiry can explicate the language of legitimation and advance our understanding of sociopolitical legitimacy.
The self-determination of peoples is a fundamental legitimating principle of the international system; it justifies the system’s very existence. Through a vast diachronic corpus and pertinent data sets, this article nevertheless reveals a puzzling decline in the public discourse on, and practice of, self-determination over the last 50 years. I identify and assess four structural explanations for this decline: “lexical change” (replacing self-determination with alternative terms); “silent hegemony” (taking the norm for granted); “reactive rhetoric” (echoing conflicts and new state formation post hoc); and “mission accomplished” (rectifying the incongruence between national boundaries and state borders). Complementing these structural causes with agential reasons, I further suggest that powerful state actors and persuasive academics have sought to “tame” self-determination as both principle and practice, retaining the term but altering its meaning from a source of threat into a resource for containing it. Self-determination, however, has not been eliminated, and taming it may yet prove a pyrrhic victory.
2016 •
Book of Abstracts of the 6th Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines Conference (CADAAD 2016)
Perspectives. Studies in Translation Theory and Practice
What is kept and what is lost without translation? A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study of the European Parliament’s original and translated English2017 •
In July 2011, the European Parliament (EP) stopped providing a written translation of its proceedings. Some years later, it seems apposite to look back and ask: What is kept and what is lost without the EP translating? To answer this question, the present paper adopts the first (Modern Diachronic) Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis Study (MD-CADS) carried out within Translation Studies by drawing on the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) and Corpus Linguistics (CL) tools. Hence, along DHA lines, the paper proceeds from texture through strategies to content by focusing on CL key keywords and detailed consistency. It performs analysis upon the European Comparable and Parallel Corpus (ECPC) archive, compiled at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain). This study shows that MD-CADS is a potential source of data for triangulation with other more qualitative approaches.
2015 •
This study explores the discursive representation of migrants found in British newspaper articles published since the EU accessions of 2004. It investigates how depictions of victims and perpetrators crime are justified, and the extent to which ideologies embedded in news accounts are reflective of the newspapers’ political stances. A review of previous literature leads to the adoption of both corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis methodologies to examine 283 newspaper articles. Keyword and concordance analysis revealed strong collocation between migrants and extreme criminal deviance, which often worked to legitimise calls for stronger punitive measures. Romanians in particular were problematised as a threat to personal safety and domestic social order. Liberal titles were generally more favourable than conservative ones, broadly emphasising economic and judicial aspects of the debate. The discussion examines newspapers’ juxtaposition of an accepting, multicultural British community against a destructive migrant ‘other’. Exceptions are found in Northern Irish reports nuanced by past ethno-nationalist conflicts, but overall a capricious delimiting of national identity betrays deep anxieties about losing sight of differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Contrary to expectations, the results also suggest that political capital is being made in the liberal press by masking increasingly conservative ideologies with seemingly pro-immigration rhetoric. The article concludes by outlining further applications of a multidisciplinary framework in the analysis of immigration-centered journalism.
This study analyses the remaking of dementia as a social and cultural phenomenon in the public media discourse in a welfare state Norway. A content analysis was carried out of articles on dementia, published in Norwegian paper media in 1995-2015. The study combined the tools from quantitative corpus analyses and qualitative critical discourse analyses, making it possible to detect and interpret diachronic changes in the dementia discourse. Although the main focus in Norwegian dementia discourse has changed from the disease to the personhood, the agents defining what it means to live well with dementia continued to be predominantly institutional: NGOs, municipalities, health care institutions, and politicians. An analysis of the uses of the politically incorrect Norwegian term for dementia, 'senility' revealed that this term offered an alternative to the institutionalized dementia discourse and functioned as an unconventional and therapeutic free space where older people and persons with dementia could use humour to subvert these norms and power relations. 1
Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines (CADAAD Journal)
Discourse of Enticement: How Facebook Solicits Users2018 •
OPEN ACCESS, HERE IS THE LINK: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/04-Lillqvist-Harju.pdf With much contemporary discussion on social media and the ethics and transparency of the way they operate, this article examines the discursive processes of user engagement as Baudrillardian solicitation. The concept of solicitation allows us to conceptualize social media use as a transactional process whereby the user is enticed by a promise of a ‘Gift’ and thus lured into using a service or a product. Simultaneously, the very act of participation implicates the user, albeit unwittingly, in the sanctioning and legitimizing of the operational logic behind social media. Adopting a CDS perspective, we explore the ways in which Facebook entices users through discursive processes of solicitation. We analyse, making use of corpus linguistic tools, both Facebook corporate communication and user reactions. Our findings show that the user is enticed by foregrounding the value of participation for the user and promising four types of Gift: protection, freedom of expression, personal connection, and a general altruism on the part of the corporation. Thus, this study sheds light on how users are enticed discursively by the social media company and the ways in which they either accept the discourse or resist it.
"[edited, with Urszula Okulska] Featuring contributions by leading specialists in the field, the volume is a survey of cutting edge research in genres in political discourse. Since, as is demonstrated, “political genres” reveal many of the problems pertaining to the analysis of communicative genres in general, it is also a state-of-the-art addition to contemporary genre theory. The book offers new methodological, theoretical and empirical insights in both the long-established genres (speeches, interviews, policy documents, etc.), and the modern, rapidly-evolving generic forms, such as online political ads or weblogs. The chapters, which engage in timely issues of genre mediatization, hybridity, multimodality, and the mixing of discursive styles, come from a broad range of perspectives spanning Critical Discourse Studies, pragmatics, cognitive psychology, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and media studies. As such, they constitute essential reading for anyone seeking an interdisciplinary yet coherent research agenda within the vast and complex territory of today’s forms of political communication. Table of Contents Notes on contributors vii–xi Analyzing genres in political communication: An introduction Piotr Cap and Urszula Okulska, 1–26 Part I. Theory-driven approaches Chapter 1. Genres in political discourse: The case of the ‘inaugural speech’ of Austrian chancellors Helmut Gruber, 29–71 Chapter 2. Political interviews in context Anita Fetzer and Peter Bull, 73–99 Chapter 3. Policy, policy communication and discursive shifts: Analyzing EU policy discourses on climate change Michał Krzyżanowski, 101–133 Chapter 4. The television election night broadcast: A macro genre of political discourse Gerda Eva Lauerbach, 135–185 Chapter 5. Analyzing meetings in political and business contexts: Different genres – similar strategies? Ruth Wodak, 187–221 Chapter 6. Presenting politics: Persuasion and performance across genres of political communication James Moir, 223–235 Part II. Data-driven approaches Chapter 7. Legitimizing the Iraq War through the genre of political speeches: Rhetorics of judge-penitence in the narrative reconstruction of Denmark’s cooperation with Nazism Bernhard Forchtner, 239–265 Chapter 8. Macro and micro, quantitative and qualitative: An integrative approach for analyzing (election night) speeches Thorsten Malkmus, 267–295 Chapter 9. Reframing the American Dream: Conceptual metaphor and personal pronouns in the 2008 US presidential debates Michael Boyd, 297–319 Chapter 10. The late-night TV talk show as a strategic genre in American political campaigning Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska, 321–343 Chapter 11. Multimodal legitimation: Looking at and listening to Obama’s ads Rowan Mackay, 345–377 Chapter 12. Blogging as the mediatization of politics and a new form of social interaction: A case study of ‘proximization dynamics’ in Polish and British political blogs Monika Kopytowska, 379–421 Index 422 “This book is a major contribution to genre analysis. The chapters approach genres in the field of political communication from theory-driven and data-driven perspectives. Based on this theoretical-empirical interdisciplinary approach, the volume brings to light the many complexities of contemporary (political) genres, revisiting the timely questions of, i.a., generic chaining, hybridization and content migration. It is an indispensable source for anyone seeking a methodological framework for studies in the broad spectrum of mutually interactive forms of modern political communication.” Christina Schäffner Aston University "Cap and Okulska's volume provides a crucial update on the conceptual status and the methodology of genre analysis." Andreas Musolff University of East Anglia "The term genre can mean a lot of things, and here they are all good. This collection is a probing and thoughtful contribution to our understanding of political discourse – a rewarding and challenging exegesis for genre theorists of all persuasions." James R. Martin, University of Sydney"
This article discusses the extent to which methods normally associated with corpus linguistics can be effectively used by critical discourse analysts. Our research is based on the analysis of a 140-million-word corpus of British news articles about refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and migrants (collectively RASIM). We discuss how processes such as collocation and concordance analysis were able to identify common categories of representation of RASIM as well as directing analysts to representative texts in order to carry out qualitative analysis. The article suggests a framework for adopting corpus approaches in critical discourse analysis.
Diskurse - digital
‘Corpus-Assisted (Critical) Discourse Analysis’ – marrying Critical Discourse Studies and Corpus Linguistics2019 •
2008 •
Journal of Language and Politics
The tabloidization of the Brexit campaign: Power to the (British) peopleJournal of Language and Politics
Five Turns of the Screw. A CADS Analysis of the European Parliament2017 •
2000 •
Dissertationes Sociologicae Universitas Tartuensis
Language ideologies in the contemporary Estonian public discourse: With a focus on South Estonian2011 •
VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations
In Search of Legitimacy: Managerialism and Legitimation in Civil Society Organizations2013 •
Discourse & Society
Legitimating a Chinese takeover of an Australian iconic firm: Revisiting models of media discourse of legitimacy2012 •
2013 •
Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary
Fruttaldo, A. / Cambria, M. 2017. Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to Discourse Analysis: In Conversation with Gerlinde Mautner and Alan Partington2017 •
2007 •
2017 •
CADAAD journal
LGBT* People in the Speeches of Italian and British PMs: a Corpus- Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis2020 •
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics
Corpus Analysis of Political Language2012 •
Modelling World Englishes in the 21st century: Assessing the interplay of emancipation and globalization of ESL varieties, S.C. Deshors (ed.)
'I’m an Anglophile, but …’: A corpus-assisted discourse study of language ideologies in the Netherlands2018 •
2016 •
Corpora
Towards a decade of synergizing corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis: A meta-analysis2019 •
2019 •