Australia Day
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This article uses Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) in a case study of national day reporting, focussing on the discursive dimension of news values. The study crosses disciplinary boundaries by bringing together linguistics and... more
This article uses Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) in a case study of national day reporting, focussing on the discursive dimension of news values. The study crosses disciplinary boundaries by bringing together linguistics and journalism studies. More specifically, it examines reporting about “Australia Day”—the official national day of Australia, which is set on a date that is becoming increasingly controversial, as it marks the beginning of colonisation. Importantly, the article utilises digital technologies (computer-based text analysis and visualisation of word co-occurrence) to apply and test these methods for the analysis of news values in English-language reporting. The study findings will thus have broader implications for journalism research. These methods (e.g., word frequency, collocation, concordancing) have been used in corpus linguistics and other areas of the digital humanities, including in the analysis of journalistic texts, but most often with a focus on language practices or discourses. Our study demonstrates that journalism research can profit from the use of free and user-friendly tools such as the ones that are applied in this study. Beyond this methodological innovation, the study will contribute new insights to research on news values in national day reporting.
Australia Day and Anzac Day, held on January 26 and April 25 annually, are key moments used by Prime Ministers to share, shape, and reproduce their understanding of what and whom is considered to be representative of a unique Australian... more
Australia Day and Anzac Day, held on January 26 and April 25 annually, are key moments used by Prime Ministers to share, shape, and reproduce their understanding of what and whom is considered to be representative of a unique Australian identity and nationalism. This paper uses both qualitative and quantitative methods via content analysis to evaluate and compare prime ministerial and party rhetoric of race and national identity, class and economic relations, and gender and sexuality in their Australia Day and Anzac Day speeches between 1990-2017. We ask: how have Prime Ministers as reflexive actors used their speeches on Australia Day and Anzac Day to represent what it means to be Australian? The study reveals that despite Prime Ministers sometimes using intentionally inclusive discourses, they simultaneously reproduce the hegemonic classless, hetero-masculine, and Anglospheric Australianness present at the apex of power in Australian society.
Keywords: prime ministers; nationalism; identity; gender; race; class.
Keywords: prime ministers; nationalism; identity; gender; race; class.
Narrative medicine may take certain methodological cues from literary studies, linguistics and narrative theory, but until now it has remained firmly grounded in the health sector. It views storytelling and narrative as tools that can... more
Narrative medicine may take certain methodological cues from literary studies, linguistics and narrative theory, but until now it has remained firmly grounded in the health sector. It views storytelling and narrative as tools that can improve the performance of medical practitioners – first, by helping them process the confronting nature of their everyday jobs, and then by facilitating more effective communication with patients. Narrative competence thus provides an important supplement to the medical gaze, enhancing the clinical experience for practitioner and patient alike. But narrative medicine also has important implications from a literary point of view. It highlights the special position that the medical worker occupies in terms of being able to observe a cross-section of society. When a medical practitioner decides to engage not only with the scientific method of evidence-based medicine but also in the arts-based practice of narrative medicine, he or she has the opportunity to make an intervention in the broader culture. Consequently, the literature that emerges almost as an offshoot of narrative medicine is capable of creating forms of representation that more accurately reflect the heterogeneity of social conformance. It is a literature that draws attention to demographic sectors of society that might otherwise be denied mainstream representation.
This essay examines the ways in which a medical practice can inform a writing practice, and vice versa. Using the work of Chinese-Australian author Melanie Cheng as a case study, I show how narrative medicine traverses an important space between the medical gaze and the empathetic instinct. Cheng has worked as a General Practitioner (GP) for over ten years, whilst developing a parallel writing career. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day (2017), functions on one level as a therapeutic outlet for Cheng’s day job. In addition, by recasting the GP as a repository of secrets, her stories provide matchless insights into the lives of people from a range of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Cheng’s writing therefore transcends the boundaries of her own personal history and ethnicity, pointedly venturing beyond the territory expected of her as a Chinese-Australian author. Viewing Cheng’s work through the lens of her medical training shows us how the practice of medicine can work alongside that of writing to deepen our understanding of what is commonly referred to as the ‘human condition’.
This essay examines the ways in which a medical practice can inform a writing practice, and vice versa. Using the work of Chinese-Australian author Melanie Cheng as a case study, I show how narrative medicine traverses an important space between the medical gaze and the empathetic instinct. Cheng has worked as a General Practitioner (GP) for over ten years, whilst developing a parallel writing career. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day (2017), functions on one level as a therapeutic outlet for Cheng’s day job. In addition, by recasting the GP as a repository of secrets, her stories provide matchless insights into the lives of people from a range of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Cheng’s writing therefore transcends the boundaries of her own personal history and ethnicity, pointedly venturing beyond the territory expected of her as a Chinese-Australian author. Viewing Cheng’s work through the lens of her medical training shows us how the practice of medicine can work alongside that of writing to deepen our understanding of what is commonly referred to as the ‘human condition’.
Australia Day and Anzac Day, held on January 26 and April 25 annually, are key moments where Prime Ministers share, mould, and reproduce their understanding of what and whom is representative of a unique Australian identity and... more
Australia Day and Anzac Day, held on January 26 and April 25 annually, are key moments where Prime Ministers share, mould, and reproduce their understanding of what and whom is representative of a unique Australian identity and nationalism. Prime Minister’s speeches push or ignore particular representations of gender and sexuality on these two days and police their expression in national agendas. We analyse this agenda setting process by examining all Prime Ministerial speeches on Australia Day and Anzac Day between 1990-2019 using a conceptual framework of gendered regimes and states and heteronormative masculinity. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of these speeches demonstrates the way that masculinity dominates both days in differing manners. There is also an assumed heteronormativity reinforced in association with the hegemonic construction of Australianness. Despite the presence of outliers to these patterns – highly indicative of specific events across the time period of the corpus – we find little variance in these heteronormative masculine gender regimes and rhetorical paths, regardless of party affiliation, or individual Prime Ministers ideological positioning and social location.