Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture

This volume addresses demands on external and internal science communication in times of crisis. The contributions discuss present crises such as COVID-19 (e.g. vaccination campaigns or political reactions towards the pandemic in the context of science scepticism), and climate change (e.g. plausibility judgements or the role of scientists). They also relate their approaches to past crises, e.g. 9/11 or the Galileo affair. This volume is unique in that it is interdisciplinary from a theoretical and methodological perspective. In that respect, the authors apply concepts from corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, rhetoric, news values analysis, pragmatics and terminology research to various types of data, such as newspaper headlines, Tweets, open letters, corpora or glossaries. The case studies are situated within different cultural contexts, with various languages being examined, i.e. Polish, Arabic, English, French, German, and Spanish. Elevating our understanding of the interface of science communication and crisis communication, this collection of articles proves valuable to scholars and students from linguistics, communication science, political science, sociology and philosophy of science.

Mental illness is an increasing concern of government health services across the globe. It is timely, therefore, that community education about mental illness is subject to discourse analysis. Shaping Minds explores how the psychoeducational message is presented to Chinese-speaking audiences in China, Taiwan and Australia. The book uniquely examines community education materials in a language rarely examined by discourse analysts, but which is nevertheless spoken by around a fifth of the world’s population and constitutes an important ‘minority’ language throughout the Western world. The book identifies the discursive features that characterise the Chinese-language texts and analyses them cross-culturally, highlighting the impact of cultural traditions, political systems and dominant conceptions of society. These insights into how Chinese-language community health pamphlets and handbooks are positioned to shape the minds of readers will engage both discourse analysts and mental health professionals providing services to Chinese-speaking communities across the globe.

The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new lessons in history. This is the first volume that brings together analyses of a variety of discourses produced in South Africa through which we follow the evolution of transitional processes in the country’s political institutions and in the opinions of its populace. The book offers to the reader a visit to the Parliament, a peek into the internet forums, analyses of the country's official papers and speeches, and the media accounts. Through all these discourses we see the burning questions – "Who Are We Now?" and "Who Do We Want To Be?" – being repetitively examined and identities cross-formed while the country deals with new, post-apartheid challenges, as well as successes.

Social Media and Society brings together a range of scholars working at the intersection of discourse studies, digital media, and society. It is meant to respond to changes in discourse technologies, i.e. the techno-discursive dynamic of social media discourses. The book critically engages with the digital dynamics of representations around discourses of identity, politics, and culture. Other than its topical focus on highly pertinent discourses, the book aspires to offer some fresh insights into the theory, methods, and implementation of CDS in digital environments. The book can be viewed as part of the developing research framework of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies which seeks to integrate the impact of new mediation technologies on discursive meaning-making with its critical contextualisation. In addition to its strongly global outlook, the book incorporates a wide range of research perspectives including CDA, sociolinguistics, political discourse studies, media and technology, discourse theory, popular culture, feminism etc.

Sociology of Discourse takes the perspective that collective actors like social movements are capable of creating social change from below by creating new institutions through alternative discourses. Institutionalization becomes a process of moving away from existing institutions towards creating new ones. While discourses entail openness and enable the questioning of what is instituted, institutions offer continuity and stability to social mobilizations. This dual movement of openness and stabilization explains how social struggles ensure their continuity, without completely assuming the logic of the dominant order. The book proposes an analytical model of social change, which is unfolded through three intertwined areas: discourse, communication, and institution. Collective experiences of social change, from the anti-globalization movement to Occupy, illustrate the main theoretical points and concepts. Through the example of the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, the book concludes by analyzing how social change from below is possible.

The book explores the nexus of intellectual activity and nation-building from a critical discourse-analytical perspective. By examining how public intellectuals from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina commented on key national events in editorials and opinion pieces, it offers unique insights into contemporary nation-building discourses in an enlarging Europe. Through a detailed reconstruction of the debates concerning the selected events, the book also provides fresh empirical evidence of the implications and challenges of post-socialist transition, post-conflict reconciliation, democratisation and European integration in the post-Yugoslav region. Its versatile framework, which innovatively combines sociological and linguistic approaches to the discursive positioning of intellectuals, may be readily applied to the analysis of intellectual engagement with current affairs and public life in general.

How do media inform our representations of the Other and how does this influence intercultural / international relations? While officially dialogues between different national societies are conducted by diplomats in bilateral and multilateral settings, in practice journalists also participate every day in such dialogues through the phenomenon of the “international media echo” in which they report on each others’ societies. Until now, media have only been investigated for their potential role in the foreign policy of specific states. In a case study involving media in three national cultures and languages (French, American and Russian), this book presents an interdisciplinary framework that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses for the study of the international media echo in an intercultural / international relations perspective. In particular, the fundamental functioning of “spirals of anti-Other rhetoric”, i.e. media wars, is examined in a Critical Discourse Analysis approach completed with Social Identity Theory and International Relations theories.

This volume brings together analyses of governmentality from different angles in order to explore the multiple forms, practices, modes, programmes and rationalities of the ‘conduct of conduct’ today. Following the publication of Foucault’s annual lecture series at the Collège de France, scholars have attempted to critically rethink Foucault’s ideas. This is the first volume that attempts to revisit and expand studies of governmentality by connecting it to the theories and methods of discourse analysis. The volume draws on different theoretical stances and methodological approaches including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, dialogic analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach, corpus analysis and French discourse analysis. The volume is relevant to students and scholars in the fields of critical discourse studies, conversation analysis, international studies, environmental studies, political science, public policy and organisation studies.

How do people construct collective identity during profound societal transformations? This volume examines the discursive construction of identity related to important national holidays in nine countries of Central Europe and the Balkans: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia. The chapters focus on the decades during which these countries moved from communism towards democracy and a market economy. This transition saw revivals of national values and a new significance of regional and transnational ties, entangled with negotiations of national identity that have been particularly lively in discourse concerning national holidays.

The chapters apply discourse analysis in addition to approaches from history, sociology, political science, and anthropology. All of the analyses make use of empirical material in the Slavic languages, including newspaper articles, interviews and other media contributions, sermons, addresses, and speeches by members of the political elite.