Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 13, Issue 4, 2014

Large-scale protests have recently transformed urban common spaces into sites of resistance. Squares and urban places, monumentally designed as political and economic centres, have been reclaimed as places for discussion and decision-making, for increasing participation and intervention in the governance of the community. Through banners and signs, open assemblies, and other communicative practices in the encampments and interconnecting physical and virtual spaces, participants permanently reconfigure the spatial context discursively. The attempt to account for on-going social phenomena from the moment they first happen, and with an international perspective, undoubtedly represents a theoretical and methodological challenge. This special issue focuses on this complex interplay between social, spatial, and communicative practices, drawing on complementary and alternative methods. Keywords: Occupy; large-scale protests; urban spaces; social movements; sites of resistance; communicative practices; desterritorialisation; reterritorialisation

The year 2011 saw unprecedented waves of people occupying key locations around the world in a statement of public discontent. In Egypt, the protests which took place between 25 January and 11 February 2011 culminating in the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have now come to be known as the Egyptian Revolution. Media reporting of the revolution often portrayed it as a ‘spectacle’ playing out on the stage of Tahrir Square which was dubbed ‘the symbolic heart of the Egyptian revolution’. Tahrir Square quickly became a space serving various functions and layered with an array of meanings. This paper explores the relationship between the discourse of protest messages and the space of Tahrir Square during the January 25 revolution, demonstrating how the two were mutually reinforcing. The messages are drawn from a corpus of approximately 2000 protest messages captured in Tahrir Square between 25 January and 11 February 2011. The analysis is presented in the form of six conceptualising frames for the space of Tahrir Square which take into account both its geographical and social context. The conceptualisation draws from the field of geosemiotics, which posits that all discourses are ‘situated’ both in space and time (Scollon & Scollon 2003), and on the Lefebvrian principles of the production of space which provide a useful framework for interpreting urban space (Lefebvre 1991). Keywords: Linguistic landscapes; geosemiotics; discourse and space; Tahrir Square; January 25 revolution

In this paper I study the extent to which the 15-M or Spanish Indignados movement has transformed the discourses of social movements, not only in terms of their content, but also in the way their communicative practices are produced and circulate. Thus, this paper firstly explores how changes in the conditions of production and circulation of linguistic practices contribute to the “deterritorialisation” and “reterritorialisation” of space, by means of which protestors replace the traditional organisation and uses of space with their own beliefs, ideologies and communicative practices. Secondly, I examine the extent to which this “reterritorialisation” leads to an in-depth transformation of the forms of communication, which could be, in their turn, not only transforming public spaces, but also social movements themselves, and the way of doing politics. The paper addresses whether these practices, in projecting themselves onto a public space which they transform, prefigure in the present moment the kind of society being proposed and fought for. Keywords: Linguistic landscapes; communication practices; sociolinguistic market; deterritorialisation; reterritorialisation; production/circulation of linguistic practices

In this article, I expand a category of linguistic landscapes, the signs by individuals in public spaces, to include another form of linguistic landscape even more transgressive in nature and intent: the panoply of protest signs produced and mobilized by the Occupy Movement during the Fall of 2011 at Los Angeles City Hall Park. My data are drawn from the photographs I took of these signs at the Park and the near vicinity, a YouTube video of a protest sign, a blog commenting on this sign, and a political cartoon using the same image featured on two other signs. I explore how social actors drew upon and mediated specific discourses in their protest signs that became transportable across time and space, the role of these signs in transforming public space, and this linguistic landscape’s ensuing mobilities in its mediated relocations to online social media sites and blogs. Keywords: linguistic landscapes; space; mobility; allusion; social media; mediated discourse analysis; Occupy Movement

The paper studies the textual, discursive and social practices of the Greek “aganaktismeni” (indignados) movements, which mainly took place in the public gathering of tens of thousands of Greeks in Syntagma Square, outside the Greek parliament from May to August 2011. Data come from multiple sources, including the General Assembly proceedings and resolutions, while a linguistically-informed approach is followed, which combines Critical Discourse Analysis concepts with corpus linguistic methods. It is argued that the Syntagma protests generated a new context in Greek politics, by introducing new genres and the innovative articulation of already existing discourses. It was also found that social/political identities and social/public space were co-articulated, since the identity of the movement was crucially constructed in terms of space. Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; corpus analysis; Greek protests; identity; public space

A key feature of the Occupy movement has been the General Assembly (GA), in which participants, gathered in outdoor public space, engaged in emergent forms of direct deliberative democratic practice. GAs created opportunities for renewed, co-constructed discourses about human rights, collectivity and autonomy, and the nature of fairness. The physical, durative occupation of public space and establishment of encampments enabled participants to converse and collaborate meaningfully about these matters and their implications for action. An attested ideology of horizontalism was produced and reflected in practices of decision-making within a direct participatory democratic framework. The generation of local intersubjectivity and global solidarity as well as the embodied augmentation of personal and group agency were lodged within face-to-face interactions at Occupy GAs. Participants developed and adapted specific embodied tools for assembly use, including hand signals and the human mic, to facilitate a discursive praxis of egalitarianism within the context of a speech exchange system suited to a large outdoor deliberative body. These practices are central to the Occupy movement, as they constitute the discursive experiments in direct democracy set in motion by a shared recognition of social crisis and systemic injustice felt increasingly around the world. This paper examines how several embodied practices at Occupy Los Angeles attend to participants’ attested ideologies and the practical problems of open, large-group direct democracy. Keywords: Occupy; people’s mic; human mic; hand signals; assembly; interaction; horizontalism; stance; direct democracy; deliberative democracy; public space; embodiment; discourse analysis; participation

The Chilean students’ rebellion emerged in 2011 within the wave of global protests. Even though it is an organized movement, with roots in a specific historical context, it shares with the global movement the use of new media technologies, the appropriation of public spaces, and the concern for democracy and equality. The movement deploys flexible forms of organization and mobilization such as flash mobs, in the case analyzed in this article, the GenkiDama for Education. The students create a narrative based on the famous Manga series Dragon Ball Z to reframe the conflict between students and government. As Manga fans, they open up participation to other less politically defined identities. The flash mob moment works as a communicative event in which the narrative is put into place and strengthens a sense of community in the streets of Santiago de Chile. To analyze the connections between the fictional narrative of Manga and the use of the public space, we draw on Michel de Certeau’s theory on spatial practices and the function of stories and place/space. Spatial practices during the flash mob challenge the social and spatial order in order to represent a symbolic victory of the students over the political system. Key words: Flash mob; spatial practices; narrative; space; place; Manga; students’ movement; mobilization

This study adopts a Critical Discourse Analytical approach to investigate how a form of Iranian national(ist) identity is (re)constructed and (re)presented on a popular Facebook Page called Persian Gulf. It focuses on linguistic practices of the Iranian side of the debate over the name of this body of water. After briefly discussing some of the challenges of applying CDA to a participatory web platform e.g. Facebook, This paper explores the characteristics of the Persian identity discourse in the way that it is utilised to legitimize the name Persian Gulf vs. the claim to the name Arabian Gulf. The paper concludes that the emergent Persian national/ist identity discourse is strongly preoccupied with opposing a perceived cultural invasion of the Arabic Other in its emphatic defence of the name Persian Gulf but in the meantime it aspires to distinguish itself from the officially propagated Islamic identity. It is also shown that aspects pertaining to powerfulness, defiance and conflict are the main thrusts of the discursive representation of this Self-identity. Key words: Critical Discourse Analysis; Social Media discourses analysis; Facebook; National identity; Nationalism; Iran; Persian Gulf; Arab identity; the Middle East.

In the article I model an alternative critical discourse analysis (CDA) pedagogy which is based on an ethical subjectivity instead of a political subjectivity. Aimed at undergraduates, it facilitates critical purchase on arguments which attack the standpoint of relatively powerless groups/organizations (who seek political change). Via corpus linguistic analysis of appropriate web-based data, I show how the analyst can rigorously find out at scale the recurrent key concerns of a relatively powerless Other with whom they were previously unfamiliar. They use this counter-discourse information as a lens on an argument which criticises the relatively powerless group, ascertaining whether or not the argument has distorted the group’s key concerns. Should this be the case, I highlight how the analyst can go on to explore whether any mischaracterisation has implications for the argument’s credibility because it loses coherence relative to the outlook of the Other. The approach is grounded in Jacques Derrida’s ‘ethics of hospitality to the Other’. It is in being hospitable to the outlook of a relatively powerless Other, and adopting it for purposes of argument evaluation, that the analyst effectively creates an ethical subjectivity. That said, the ethical and political are, in principle, relatable with this method as I indicate. Keywords: absences; argumentation; change.org; corpus linguistics; counter-discourse; critical discourse analysis; ethical subjectivity; Jacques Derrida; online comments; text cohesion.

This article takes a critical approach to the language used by Australian politicians during the global financial crisis of 2007–8. Critical periods in history provide a rich substrate for the appearance of new expressions with the potential to frame the debate, influencing the ways events are interpreted and blame attributed. Passing unnoticed into usage, such memes have the potential to become part of unexamined background knowledge and covertly co-opt hearers and users into shared systems of value and belief. The study focusses on one specific neologism deployed by opposition politicians, firstly in an attempt to create the erroneous impression that a recession was occurring and secondly that it was the fault of the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Patterns of occurrence were tracked against local and international events, indicating a life cycle with several distinct phases: chance emergence, a strategic deployment, cross-genre diffusion, resistance and eventual rejection. Keywords: Alliteration; critical discourse analysis; economic crisis; blame; political discourse; slogans; social media; memes.

Political lying recurrently becomes a major issue in the media. Audience members seldom have first-hand information and hence rely on media stories to assess claims. Although background information may not be available, the tactics used by key players are more likely to be reported. Two models for analysing tactics are introduced, one based on methods of deception, detection and response, the other based on methods to reduce or increase outrage over something perceived to be wrong. Each model is applied to claims and counter-claims concerning the behaviour of two Australian politicians. Most of the tactics used in the case study fit the deception-detection-response model, but some do not; the outrage management model overcomes these limitations: nearly all tactics used fit into the model’s categories. Media audiences, by being aware of likely tactics, can better judge whether lying is involved. Keywords: lying; deception; politicians; detection; tactics; outrage