Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265221088156
Aleksandar Takovski
The emergence of COVID-19 in Macedonia in March 2020 overlapped with a period in which the country was run by a technical Government tasked to organize premature elections. In circumstances of highlighted inter-party conflict predating the health crisis, the newly emerged health emergency has only added to the political confrontation and the existing political crisis. COVID-19 and the resulting discourses on health crisis in this respect, I argue, have been used strategically by the political actors to make a populist advancement in the struggle over state power. Moreover, the strategic use of the COVID-19 by the two major political parties in a discourse marked by blame casting and (inter)dependence on past political misconduct indexes, and at the same time perpetuates, a larger ongoing political crisis in the country. To demonstrate the strategic use of the COVID-19 health discourse within the interparty conflict and its diagnostic potential to witness a prolonged political crisis, I will use internet data collected from the websites of the two largest Macedonian political parties in order to analyze the discursive strategies of predication and argumentation employed by the political parties.
{"title":"Political alliance with COVID-19: Macedonian politics and the strategic use of the pandemic","authors":"Aleksandar Takovski","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088156","url":null,"abstract":"The emergence of COVID-19 in Macedonia in March 2020 overlapped with a period in which the country was run by a technical Government tasked to organize premature elections. In circumstances of highlighted inter-party conflict predating the health crisis, the newly emerged health emergency has only added to the political confrontation and the existing political crisis. COVID-19 and the resulting discourses on health crisis in this respect, I argue, have been used strategically by the political actors to make a populist advancement in the struggle over state power. Moreover, the strategic use of the COVID-19 by the two major political parties in a discourse marked by blame casting and (inter)dependence on past political misconduct indexes, and at the same time perpetuates, a larger ongoing political crisis in the country. To demonstrate the strategic use of the COVID-19 health discourse within the interparty conflict and its diagnostic potential to witness a prolonged political crisis, I will use internet data collected from the websites of the two largest Macedonian political parties in order to analyze the discursive strategies of predication and argumentation employed by the political parties.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"215 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45272195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265221088160
G. Diabah
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, although there have been steady increases in the number of women in politics, widespread gender inequalities persist. This is particularly pervasive in patriarchal societies where gender norms and practices are deeply entrenched, with socio-cultural barriers often cited as some of the key impediments to women’s search for political power. There have, therefore, been calls to remove such barriers for effective participation. Unfortunately, some events that occurred before Ghana’s 2020 election discourage, rather than encourage, women’s participation in governance. With data from articles, headlines and comments from various online media outlets, this paper examines three events that reinforce what may be called ‘a bloody widow discourse’ in Ghana’s politics. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper shows how traditional norms and expectations associated with widowhood can be perceived as barriers to women’s (and not men’s) quest for political power, thereby sustaining the unequal gender and power relations in politics. The use of allusion, rhetorical questions and presuppositions further perpetuate a ‘blame-the-widow’ discourse which makes the women appear unworthy of the power they seek.
{"title":"Bloody widows? Discourses of tradition and gender in Ghanaian politics","authors":"G. Diabah","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088160","url":null,"abstract":"According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, although there have been steady increases in the number of women in politics, widespread gender inequalities persist. This is particularly pervasive in patriarchal societies where gender norms and practices are deeply entrenched, with socio-cultural barriers often cited as some of the key impediments to women’s search for political power. There have, therefore, been calls to remove such barriers for effective participation. Unfortunately, some events that occurred before Ghana’s 2020 election discourage, rather than encourage, women’s participation in governance. With data from articles, headlines and comments from various online media outlets, this paper examines three events that reinforce what may be called ‘a bloody widow discourse’ in Ghana’s politics. Using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper shows how traditional norms and expectations associated with widowhood can be perceived as barriers to women’s (and not men’s) quest for political power, thereby sustaining the unequal gender and power relations in politics. The use of allusion, rhetorical questions and presuppositions further perpetuate a ‘blame-the-widow’ discourse which makes the women appear unworthy of the power they seek.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"154 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47703676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265221088143
Martin Pereira-Fariña, M. Koszowy, Katarzyna Budzynska
Collective, historical memory becomes increasingly important in public debates on cultural heritage across many countries. Their key elements are contested cultural objects – such as statues or memorials – which construct nations’ memory that governs societal processes such as decolonisation or de-Stalinization. This paper analyses arguments about five such objects in UK, US, South Africa, Poland and Spain in order to identify discursive strategies used to argue whether to remove or to keep them. Large-scale comparative discourse analysis reveals that the ethos of historical figures – such as the Confederates or Joseph Stalin – commemorated by these cultural objects plays an essential and primary role in these debates. We argue that values associated with the character of these figures determine the dynamics of discourse and its close analysis allows us to uncover what societies are struggling with when handling artefacts of the past in the present day.
{"title":"‘It was Never Just About the Statue’: Ethos of historical figures in public debates on contested cultural objects","authors":"Martin Pereira-Fariña, M. Koszowy, Katarzyna Budzynska","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088143","url":null,"abstract":"Collective, historical memory becomes increasingly important in public debates on cultural heritage across many countries. Their key elements are contested cultural objects – such as statues or memorials – which construct nations’ memory that governs societal processes such as decolonisation or de-Stalinization. This paper analyses arguments about five such objects in UK, US, South Africa, Poland and Spain in order to identify discursive strategies used to argue whether to remove or to keep them. Large-scale comparative discourse analysis reveals that the ethos of historical figures – such as the Confederates or Joseph Stalin – commemorated by these cultural objects plays an essential and primary role in these debates. We argue that values associated with the character of these figures determine the dynamics of discourse and its close analysis allows us to uncover what societies are struggling with when handling artefacts of the past in the present day.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"193 - 214"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47874758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265221088161
T. Zhang
This paper examines members’ practices involved in accounting for discrimination against their own group in interaction. Applying membership categorization analysis to interviews conducted with Chinese international students in Japan, I show that membership categories and category-based knowledge constitute crucial resources for target-of-discrimination group members’ making discrimination intelligible and reasonable. Specifically, interviewee accounts for discrimination by bounding certain activities/traits to the membership category being discriminated against. Meanwhile, those activities/traits are displayed as sanctionable given the social relation the discriminating and the discriminated sides are embedded in. Consequently, discrimination becomes reasonable and understandable in its given context. Interviewer, drawing upon common-sense knowledge about social categories, regularly challenges interviewee’s account by problematizing the association between the proposed activities/traits and the membership category and by contending the proposed sanctionable nature of those activities/traits. Interviewee can either persist through such challenges by further categorization work or modify their original account of discrimination. As such, target-of-discrimination group members’ accounting for discrimination as reasonable and intelligible is collaboratively accomplished through participants’ categorization work in interaction.
{"title":"Accounting for discrimination through categorization work: An examination of the target-of-discrimination group members’ practices","authors":"T. Zhang","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088161","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines members’ practices involved in accounting for discrimination against their own group in interaction. Applying membership categorization analysis to interviews conducted with Chinese international students in Japan, I show that membership categories and category-based knowledge constitute crucial resources for target-of-discrimination group members’ making discrimination intelligible and reasonable. Specifically, interviewee accounts for discrimination by bounding certain activities/traits to the membership category being discriminated against. Meanwhile, those activities/traits are displayed as sanctionable given the social relation the discriminating and the discriminated sides are embedded in. Consequently, discrimination becomes reasonable and understandable in its given context. Interviewer, drawing upon common-sense knowledge about social categories, regularly challenges interviewee’s account by problematizing the association between the proposed activities/traits and the membership category and by contending the proposed sanctionable nature of those activities/traits. Interviewee can either persist through such challenges by further categorization work or modify their original account of discrimination. As such, target-of-discrimination group members’ accounting for discrimination as reasonable and intelligible is collaboratively accomplished through participants’ categorization work in interaction.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"264 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47043729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265221088142
Ali Basarati
This paper is to analyse 180 speeches of the Iranian Supreme Leader (SL), Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, from 2005 to 2013 which are concentrated upon characterising the threats of doshman [enemy] and depicting the future space of Iran. Adopting the Proximisation Theory, the investigation of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s speeches reveals that doshman poses futuristic spatial-axiological threats to the central values, programmes and policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Furthermore, the future space of Iran is figured in multifarious policies to preempt the construed spatial-axiological threats of doshman. In this regard, I indicated that the Supreme Leader resorts to the characterisation of the pre-revolutionary states of affairs (the past) to analogously characterise the opposite futures space of the IRI. Therefore, the SL programmes to mould the futures based on the present time values and programmes in order to abort the re-birth of the past. It was also indicated that the future space in this discourse serves to preempt the reification of the construed threats in the future.
本文旨在分析伊朗最高领袖哈梅内伊(Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei)从2005年至2013年的180次演讲，这些演讲集中在描述doshman[敌人]的威胁和描绘伊朗的未来空间。采用近因理论，对伊朗最高领袖演讲的调查显示，doshman对伊朗伊斯兰共和国(IRI)的核心价值观、计划和政策构成了未来的空间价值论威胁。此外，伊朗的未来空间在各种政策中都有体现，以先发制人地应对doshman的空间价值论威胁。在这方面，我指出，最高领袖利用革命前(过去)事态的特征来类似地描述IRI的相反未来空间。因此，SL计划根据现在的时间价值和计划来塑造未来，以中止过去的重生。有人还指出，这一论述中的未来空间有助于在未来将所解释的威胁具体化。
{"title":"Preempting the past: How the future space unfolds in political discourse of Iran","authors":"Ali Basarati","doi":"10.1177/09579265221088142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221088142","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is to analyse 180 speeches of the Iranian Supreme Leader (SL), Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, from 2005 to 2013 which are concentrated upon characterising the threats of doshman [enemy] and depicting the future space of Iran. Adopting the Proximisation Theory, the investigation of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s speeches reveals that doshman poses futuristic spatial-axiological threats to the central values, programmes and policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Furthermore, the future space of Iran is figured in multifarious policies to preempt the construed spatial-axiological threats of doshman. In this regard, I indicated that the Supreme Leader resorts to the characterisation of the pre-revolutionary states of affairs (the past) to analogously characterise the opposite futures space of the IRI. Therefore, the SL programmes to mould the futures based on the present time values and programmes in order to abort the re-birth of the past. It was also indicated that the future space in this discourse serves to preempt the reification of the construed threats in the future.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"129 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42771963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265221077472d
Laura Hidalgo-Downing
{"title":"Book review: Lisa Nahajec, Negation, Expectation and Ideology in Written Texts: A Textual and Communicative Perspective","authors":"Laura Hidalgo-Downing","doi":"10.1177/09579265221077472d","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265221077472d","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"295 - 296"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48554378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1177/09579265211048732
A. Weatherall, Emma Tennent, F. Grattan
Societies are undergoing enormous upheavals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. High levels of psychological distress are widespread, yet little is known about the exact impacts at the micro-level of everyday life. The present study examines the ordinary activity of buying bread to understand changes occurring early in the crisis. A dataset of over 50 social interactions at a community market stall were video-recorded, transcribed and examined in detail using multi-modal conversation analysis. With COVID-19 came an orientation to a heightened risk of disease transmission when selling food. The bread was placed in bags, a difference which was justified as a preventative measure and morally normalised by invoking a common-sense prohibition of touching produce. Having the bread out of immediate sight was a practical challenge that occasioned the expansion of turns and sequences to look for and/or confirm what was for sale, highlighting a normative organisation between seeing and buying. The analysis shows how a preventative measure related to the pandemic was adjusted to interactionally. More broadly, this research reveals the small changes to daily life that likely contribute to the overall negative impacts on health and well-being that have been reported.
{"title":"‘Sorry everything’s in bags’: The accountability of selling bread at a market during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"A. Weatherall, Emma Tennent, F. Grattan","doi":"10.1177/09579265211048732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265211048732","url":null,"abstract":"Societies are undergoing enormous upheavals in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. High levels of psychological distress are widespread, yet little is known about the exact impacts at the micro-level of everyday life. The present study examines the ordinary activity of buying bread to understand changes occurring early in the crisis. A dataset of over 50 social interactions at a community market stall were video-recorded, transcribed and examined in detail using multi-modal conversation analysis. With COVID-19 came an orientation to a heightened risk of disease transmission when selling food. The bread was placed in bags, a difference which was justified as a preventative measure and morally normalised by invoking a common-sense prohibition of touching produce. Having the bread out of immediate sight was a practical challenge that occasioned the expansion of turns and sequences to look for and/or confirm what was for sale, highlighting a normative organisation between seeing and buying. The analysis shows how a preventative measure related to the pandemic was adjusted to interactionally. More broadly, this research reveals the small changes to daily life that likely contribute to the overall negative impacts on health and well-being that have been reported.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"89 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41674175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-13DOI: 10.1177/09579265211048681
C. Martin, F. Fozdar
Metaphors are powerful mechanisms by which to rally exclusionary nationalist sentiment without necessarily appearing racist. However, sometimes those metaphors are challenged, inverting exclusionary functions. In this paper, we track how metaphors in the Australian press over the last 165 years which have generally constructed migration as a threat to the integrity of the nation, are repurposed to counter the claims embedded within them. For example, while invasion, swamping and flooding are generally recruited to negative ends, the same tropes are used to argue that fears of invasion are unjustified, that numbers of migrants are too small to swamp the nation and that the so-called floods of foreigners are overstated. However, this does not necessarily result in a decrease in metaphor use, nor challenge the fundamental implications of the metaphors. We explore how the repurposing occurs, and why it may not be an effective tool for anti-racist action.
{"title":"The master’s tools: Media repurposing of exclusionary metaphors to challenge racist constructions of migrants","authors":"C. Martin, F. Fozdar","doi":"10.1177/09579265211048681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265211048681","url":null,"abstract":"Metaphors are powerful mechanisms by which to rally exclusionary nationalist sentiment without necessarily appearing racist. However, sometimes those metaphors are challenged, inverting exclusionary functions. In this paper, we track how metaphors in the Australian press over the last 165 years which have generally constructed migration as a threat to the integrity of the nation, are repurposed to counter the claims embedded within them. For example, while invasion, swamping and flooding are generally recruited to negative ends, the same tropes are used to argue that fears of invasion are unjustified, that numbers of migrants are too small to swamp the nation and that the so-called floods of foreigners are overstated. However, this does not necessarily result in a decrease in metaphor use, nor challenge the fundamental implications of the metaphors. We explore how the repurposing occurs, and why it may not be an effective tool for anti-racist action.","PeriodicalId":47965,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"56 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48039815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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