Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict - Current Issue
Volume 11, Issue 2, 2023
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Journalistic practice in the international press corps
Author(s): Lindy Comstockpp.: 145–175 (31)More LessAbstractThis paper investigates what form journalistic questioning takes within the international press corps when representatives of different press systems work in close proximity. Within the U.S. context, adversarial questioning is valued as a key resource to ensure an independent press. Yet independent journalism is not universally upheld in media systems worldwide; Russian officials have explicitly criticized adversarial reporting by Western journalists in their coverage of Russian affairs. Questions posed to Russian Presidents Putin and Medvedev in G8/G20 press conferences 2000–2015 were assessed for two indicators: (a) initiative, and (b) critical content, with the aim to determine whether journalistic practice will converge in an international context, and whether the rise in adversarialness documented within U.S. presidential press conferences parallels a more general international phenomenon. Findings show a significant increase in both indicators over time and by presidential term. Questioning practices exhibited by Russian, non-Western, and Western journalists are discussed.
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Rhetorical questions as reproaching devices
Author(s): Marta Albelda Marcopp.: 176–199 (24)More LessAbstractThis paper studies rhetorical questions containing cognitive verbs that function as reproaches in Spanish. Its two main goals are to determine the degree of specialization of rhetorical questions as reproaches and to examine the characterization of reproaching as a speech act, indicating the distinctive features that distinguish it from other similar speech acts.
Based on a contextual analysis of approximately 500 instances of reproaches in conflict talk drawn from the Spanish Royal Academy’s Corpes XXI corpus, I identify and describe the most commonly used cognitive verbs and syntactic structures used in rhetorical questions. The results show that reproach is a reactive-provocative speech act in which the speaker reacts to a contradiction perceived in their interlocutor’s words, actions or thoughts. The speaker appeals to their interlocutor’s moral conscience, making them think about this inconsistency; finally, the speaker creates the expectation of a duty that should have been carried out by the interlocutor.
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Reinventing identity and resistance ideology in protest narratives
Author(s): PraiseGod Aminu and Innocent Chiluwapp.: 200–225 (26)More LessAbstractThe Oduduwa secessionist group is a good reminder that Nigeria’s nationhood is still highly contested. Unfortunately, there appears to be very little or no linguistic research on the discourses produced by this emerging group of activists. This study examines Oduduwa agitators’ Facebook activism as a form of political communication in order to identify their prevalent ideology and techniques for constructing their group’s identity and activities.
Facebook data are studied by applying Critical Discourse Analysis, more specifically van Dijk’s ideological framework, to investigate the rhetorical and discourse structures of the campaign narratives. Findings indicate that, since the Oduduwa agitators are a group of individuals determined to secede from Nigeria, the structures of their campaign discourse contain crucial metaphorical expressions that construct the group’s identity. Among those expressions, we find prejudicial generalisations, emphasis on victimisation of ‘Us’, the use of number games to stress victimhood and ideological polarisation of individuals and groups.
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Competing place names
Author(s): Yliana V. Rodríguez and Adolfo Elizaincínpp.: 226–255 (30)More LessAbstractThe ongoing Argentinian claim of sovereignty over the Falklands has impacted its toponymy by assigning the archipelago, and places within it, different names than those used on the Islands. Place naming phenomena like this one have not received much attention. To our knowledge, there is no prior research either on place naming in the Falklands within the framework of critical toponomatics or on ethnography regarding Islanders’ language attitudes. This is a preliminary attempt to do so, by looking into the Spanish place names used in Argentinian maps but not in local ones. In our analysis, we further resort to in situ interviews, participant observation, and social media data. Our analysis suggests that these Argentinian toponyms receive neither official nor societal approval by Islanders. We conclude that Argentinian Spanish names became a point of contention because of the political conflict, leading to a linguistic conflict scenario.
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“Not all motherfuckers are MENA, but most MENA are motherfuckers”
pp.: 256–278 (23)More LessAbstractThe number of unaccompanied foreign minors (Menor Extranjero No Acompañado, MENA) in Spain has risen, which has led to them being the subject of discriminatory language and negative stereotyping on Twitter. This study analyses the characteristics of hate speech against MENA on the social platform Twitter and seeks to identify its triggers. A quantitative analysis using text mining and text analytics was performed on 10,776 tweets mentioning MENA published from January 2018 to March 2021. The study concluded that hate speech was built around the terms criminal, rape and steal, and was characterized by use of language that stripped these minors of the features usually attributed to children, a process which can be described as adultification. Similarly, the analysis revealed that the main trigger of hate speech was the way in which the media reported violent crimes attributed to MENA, displaying what was perceived as positive bias towards their integration.
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Understanding and appraising ‘hate speech’
Author(s): Sara Vilar-Lluchpp.: 279–306 (28)More LessAbstractHate speech has become a matter of international concern, permeating institutional and lay discussions alike. Yet, exactly what it means to refer to a linguistic act as ‘hate speech’ remains unclear. This paper examines the lay understanding of hate speech, focusing on (1) the relationship between hate speech and hate, and (2) the relationship between hate speech and offensive speech. As part of the second question, the paper considers how hate speech is defined as a legal matter in the UK Public Order Act 1986. The study adopts a corpus-based discourse analysis approach and examines 255 hate speech-related news articles and the general English Web 2020 corpus. Hate speech is a complex multifaceted phenomenon; while ‘hate’ is one of its core characteristics, it is not sufficient to assess a certain behaviour as hate speech. Threats, denigration of the targets based on a protected characteristic (age, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability), the potential to cause harm and the intent to stir up hatred are also essential in distinguishing hate speech and offense.
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The hate that dare not speak its name?
Author(s): Robbie Love and Paul Baker
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Introduction
Author(s): Eleonora Esposito
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