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The effects of modal value and imperative mood on self-predicted compliance to health guidance: the case of COVID-19 Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-09-12 Sara Vilar-Lluch, Emma McClaughlin, Svenja Adolphs, Dawn Knight, Elena Nichele
Health messaging is effective if it achieves audience adherence to guidance. Through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics, we examine the expression of obligation in poster-based health campaigns (4 posters) employed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK by considering whether differences in grammatical mood and modality values impact on public compliance toward the message content. Effects
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Meaning-making and transformative engagement – notes on Gunther Kress’s social semiotic and multimodal approach to learning Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-07-15 Staffan Selander
Against the background of a longstanding collaboration between Gunther Kress’s research group in London and my own research group in Stockholm, I reflect, in this paper, on the role of Kress’s ideas in our joint development of a social semiotic, multimodal, and design-oriented approach to learning, an approach which sees learning as performative, and as an activity in which learners create their own
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“The results might not fully represent…”: Negation in the limitations sections of doctoral theses by Chinese and American students Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Shuyi Amelia Sun, Feng (Kevin) Jiang
The ability to achieve social interaction is both a key feature of research writing and an important aspect of advanced academic literacy. It can be seen in how doctoral students employ rhetorical resources to acknowledge limitations in thesis writing while securing a positive view of the research. Negation is one of the crucial interactional options, but less explored in English for Academic Purposes
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Recurrent gestures and embodied stance-taking in courtroom opening statements Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Min Yang, Min Wang
Despite the inherently multimodal nature of the courtroom, studies of multimodality in forensic linguistics have been scarce. This study uses the stance triangle and ideological square concepts and the assumption that recurrent gestures serve as stance-taking resources to analyze conflicting embodied stances taken by the prosecutor and defense attorney in their opening remarks during the State of Minnesota
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Turning talk into text: the representation of contemporary urban vernaculars in Swedish fiction Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Natalia Ganuza, Maria Rydell
This article examines the literary representation of contemporary urban vernaculars (CUV) in fiction. It focuses specifically on four Swedish novels published in the last ten years, whose narratives are set in the urban and increasingly multilingual, migrant-rich and class-stratified peripheral areas of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The analysis centers on how they are situated in these urban peripheries
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Critical comments in the disciplines: a comparative look at peer review reports in applied linguistics and engineering Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Hadi Kashiha
Critical comments have shown to figure prominently in determining the fate of manuscripts submitted to reputable journals. While various studies have explored different facets of this evaluative genre, there has been limited examination in the context of second language and disciplinary writing. Using a discourse analytic approach, this study analyzed a corpus of 160 reviewers’ reports on submissions
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Fictional characterization through repair, membership categorization, and attribute ascription Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-25 Ryo Okazawa
Linguistics and discourse studies have recently started treating fictional interactions as data worth analyzing in their own right, rather than incomplete representations of naturally occurring conversations. Aligning with advances in research on the use of language in fiction, this study addresses the functions of characters’ conversational practices in fictional works from an interactional perspective
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Genre-structural analysis of Arabic accident news reporting Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Abdulmohsin A. Alshehri
This paper is concerned with an exploration of the structural arrangement of Arabic hard news reporting with reference to a corpus of twenty accident news stories drawn from two leading Middle Eastern news organizations, Aljazeera and Alarabiya. A range of journalistic traditions has been examined with respect to organizational structures used in their hard news reporting texts. Within journalism discourse
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Disease mongering, overdiagnosis, and media practices: a critical discourse analysis of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and the motivational deficiency disorder (MoDeD) spoof Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Dermot Heaney, Giorgia Riboni
This paper explores ways in which the strategic use of discursive and generic conventions has the potential to create a non-existent pathology and mislead the public. This case study compares and examines datasets of different genres (newspaper issue reports, online videos, and Wikipedia pages) dealing with a condition considered as an actual illness (Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, SCT), and another (Motivational
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Expanded and non-conforming answers in standardized survey interviews Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Sanne Unger, Yfke Ongena, Tom Koole
Respondents in standardized survey interviews do not always answer closed-ended questions with just a type-conforming answer, such as “yes” or “three.” Instead, they sometimes expand the type-conforming answer or provide a response that does not contain a type-conforming answer. Standardized survey methodology aims to avoid such answers because they are found to cause interviewers to deviate from their
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Automated football match reports as models of textuality Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Simon Meier-Vieracker
This paper deals with automated football match reports as a common genre of automated journalism. Based on a corpus of automated and human-written reports (n = 1,302) on the same set of matches and with reference to linguistic concepts of text and textuality, the textual properties of these texts are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis is based on the idea that the task of
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Marked Themes in academic writing: a comparative look at the sciences and humanities Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-22 Alvin Ping Leong
Differences between science writing and humanities writing often appear as glosses in guidebooks, but empirical studies comparing these two genres of writing are uncommon. This study investigated the use of a highlighting mechanism – the Hallidayan notion of the marked Theme (MT) – to understand how the sciences and humanities foreground contextual information, and what this implies about the nature
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Motivated signs and multimodal analysis in Gunther Kress’s semiotics Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Bob Hodge
This article addresses the issue of motivated signs in semiotic theory and practice. It examines two influential versions of the term, Saussure’s and Kress’s, focussing on and triggered by Kress’s influence. It claims Kress’s importance lies not so much in theory as such, as in his analytic practice, multimodal analysis, as underpinned by this theory. Accordingly, it deploys a version of this practice
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Insincerity in lawyers’ questioning strategies in Malawian criminal courtroom discourse Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Wellman Kondowe
This paper introduces a new perspective on analysing courtroom insincerity by focusing on questions asked by lawyers in the Malawi criminal justice system. The study aimed at examining the linguistic tools of tracing insincerity in lawyers’ questions; the varying degrees of insincerity in defence and prosecution lawyers and their rationale for making such choices. The study argues that courtroom setting
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National discourses in (de)legitimations of the Swedish COVID-19 strategy Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-07 Karin Idevall Hagren, Theres Bellander
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden’s way to handle the crisis was referred to as ‘the Swedish strategy’ and regarded as unconventional. Most studies of the Swedish strategy have focused on politicians’ legitimations, but not on the discursive negotiation in a media context. The objectives of this critical discourse study are to examine how the Swedish strategy was (de)legitimised in Sweden’s largest
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Using genre to explain how children linguistically co-construct make-believe social scenarios in classroom role-play Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-11-24 Sarah Jane Mukherjee
This paper argues that classroom role-play can be conceptualised theoretically as an oral genre, as defined within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The work draws on analysis of 15 video-recorded child-led role-plays in which groups of three 4–5 year-old children engage in five different life-like social scenarios. The study is underpinned by SFL register and genre analysis of the children’s
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Educators’ uptake of Kress’s ideas on meaning-making and literacy: a case study from South Africa Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-11-24 Denise Newfield
This article is a practitioner-based account of the uptake of Kress’s ideas on literacy, literature and meaning-making in South African educational contexts, in particular, his integration of politics, semiosis and literacy. It examines the affective force of these ideas in South African classrooms in certain institutions during the immediate post-apartheid period from 1994 onwards, showing how Kress’s
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What modes can and cannot do: Affordance in Gunther Kress’s theory of sign making Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Jeff Bezemer
This paper presents a conceptual analysis and critical review of the notion of ‘affordance’ and its uptake, transformation and application in the work of Gunther Kress. It traces its origins and explores how Kress, co-founder of social semiotics, (re)conceptualised affordance and incorporated it in his social semiotic theory of sign making, defining affordance in terms of the “potentials and limitations
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Determination and agency in the work of Gunther Kress Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Theo van Leeuwen
In this paper I show how Gunther Kress, throughout his work, struggled with the contradictory poles of intellectual attraction that lead many other thinkers to firmly anchor themselves to fixed positions and safeguard themselves from doubt. I will focus on two issues, the tension between social determination and individual agency, and the tension between ‘critique’ and ‘design’. In his early work,
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The normative order of sensing: enacting the tasting sheet in tasting training sessions Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Lorenza Mondada
Tasting sessions are a social activity in which the senses and the sensorial features of the tasted objects are the main focus of the participants, who do not only experience taste but also aim at precisely describing it. For doing that, they use pre-formatted tasting sheets and pre-existing standardized repertoires of descriptors. This paper investigates the relations between bodies and sensations
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Masking directions: teacher instructions and COVID-19 protocols Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Robert Jean LeBlanc
The arrival of COVID-19 disrupted the everyday life of the classroom. This interactional sociolinguistic research explores a teacher providing directions to students about COVID-19 safety protocols, delivered on the first three days of the students’ return to the classroom in August 2020 after a multi-month hiatus. Using audio-data collected over multiple hours as part of an ongoing long-term study
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Recontextualization of the arguments of ‘innocence’ by a football club on Turkish newsprint media Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Emel Kökpınar Kaya, Emre Yağlı
We explore the media representation of the involvement of Fenerbahçe, a football club in Türkiye, in the 2011 Turkish Sports Corruption Scandal. Specifically, the study focuses on the discursive construction of Fenerbahçe’s ‘innocence’ and ‘corruption’ through the central arguments of Fenerbahçe’s self-defense and how the newsprint media represents these arguments of innocence in Türkiye. The data
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Phrase-frames in business emails: a contrast between learners of business English and working professionals Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Detong Xia, Mark A. Sulzer, Hye K. Pae
A phrase-frame (p-frame) is a multi-word sequence with a one-word variable within the sequence (e.g., it is * to). P-frames are important components of language production and can demonstrate phraseological patterning. This study examined p-frames retrieved from one learner business emails corpus (1,413 texts based on the Education First-Cambridge Open Language Database) and one working professional
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Time for Brexit? Temporalities in the 2019 UK European election campaign Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Ruth Breeze
Although the importance of time in political discourse cannot be denied, few recent studies address the representation of time as a factor in election campaigns. This discourse analytical study focuses on the role of time in the campaign literature produced by the nine main parties in the 2019 EU election in the UK, which resulted in a landslide victory for the newly-formed Brexit Party. The corpus
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Bold and impactful: a reappraisal of Gunther Kress’s (social) semiotic legacy in the light of current multimodality research Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Hartmut Stöckl
This paper is a critical appreciation of some of Gunther Kress’s central (social) semiotic notions: i.e., motivation, materiality, rhetorical aptness and semiotic mode versus medium. These will be discussed in relation to four landmark models of sign-making and semiosis by Saussure, Peirce, Bühler and Jakobson. Based on these comments, the paper identifies the persistent difficulties current multimodality
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The use of material resources in vocabulary explanations: a conversation analytic inquiry Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-23 Tuncay Koç, Hatice Ergül
Recent studies have examined the interactional management of verbal and non-verbal vocabulary explanations in second language (L2) classrooms. However, the use of material resources in vocabulary explanations has not been fully investigated yet. Based on a corpus of fourteen class-hours of (50-min each) video recordings of an L2 Oral Communication classroom at a higher education setting in Turkey,
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Car bumper stickers in Jordan as a site of carnivalesque transgression and degradation Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Muhammad A. Badarneh
The present study investigates how car bumper stickers in Jordan are exploited as public texts and spaces to communicate transgressive messages about the self and the other. Using Bakhtin’s notions of the carnival and the carnivalesque, eighty-four ethnographically collected bumper stickers were analyzed. The analysis of data shows that this public form of communication is exploited by Jordanian drivers
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Stance construction via that-clauses in telecommunications research articles: a comparison of L1 and L2 expert writers Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Juanjuan Wu, Fan Pan
Given the unsettled debate about the role of nativeness and/or expertise in academic writing, we compared the first language (L1)-English expert writers and the Second language (L2)-English (Chinese L1) expert writers with a similar expertise level in the use of stance complement that-clauses. For our analysis, we selected equal numbers of published research articles written by the L1 and the L2 experts
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Typography and meaning-making in Arabic children’s literature: the covert communication! Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Ali A. Al-Jafar, Mohammed R. Jouhar
Little is known about typography and its contribution to the meaning-making process in children’s storybooks. This study applied the systematic framework for a distinctive feature analysis of typography to explore the manifestations of typography in 24 recently published Arabic children’s storybooks and outline typography’s ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions as interpreted according to
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Self-categorization: a resource for the management of experiential entitlement in talk about child death Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Daniella Rafaely
In this paper, I examine self-categorization practices as resources for the interactional organization of relative experiential entitlements. Locating the study in talk about child death, an explicitly moral domain of social life, this study utilizes 18 radio-based interactions from a South African talk-radio broadcaster. Using an ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic approach, I examine affective
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Linguistic complexity of public legal information texts for young persons Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2023-01-03 Monaliza Hernandez Mamac
The present study explores the linguistic complexity (LC) of public legal information (PLI) texts for young persons by deploying the Hallidayan model of lexical density and grammatical intricacy. It examines how the Australian legal statutes’ grammatical intricacy and lexical density are reformulated into PLI texts to make them more accessible for a specific vulnerable group. The findings reveal that
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Teacher talk in primary school science: a focus on the exploration phase Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Megan Oats, Beryl Exley
In this article, we narrow our investigation to the talk provided by one teacher in the exploration phase of a primary school science project. The exploration phase warrants attention given its role in providing students with a common base of science activities that draws on their prior knowledge. We examine lesson excerpts from a grant-winning primary years science teacher who sets up her Year 3 students
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Developing an annotation protocol for evaluative stance and metaphor in discourse: theoretical and methodological considerations Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-11-08 Laura Hidalgo-Downing, Paula Pérez-Sobrino
The process of identification and annotation of evaluation has received a lot of attention in recent years. However, given the complexity of the topic, the discussion of some of the central issues is still ongoing. The present article contributes to this debate by presenting an annotation scheme that is designed for the identification and annotation of evaluative stance in a corpus of four English
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The creative minds of Arab cartoonists: metaphor, culture and context Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-10-28 Ahmed Abdel-Raheem
This article addresses the question of whether context plays a role in creating novel multimodal metaphors. Or, to put the question differently, from where do Arab political cartoonists (as members of several, overlapping or hierarchically related knowledge communities) recruit creative conceptual materials for metaphorical purposes? Specifically, it draws a distinction between direct and indirect
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The discursive construction of a conflict: a case of disputed islands in the East China Sea Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Hideo Watanabe
Abstract This article aims to identify how Chinese and Japanese online English-language newspaper editorials construct their arguments about a group of disputed islands – the Diaoyu Islands in Chinese, and the Senkaku Islands in Japanese – from a linguistic perspective. Newspapers in the two countries have played an important role in appealing not just to domestic readers, but also to international
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“I did not know that there were problems”: government officials’ blame avoidance strategies in the Life Esidimeni Arbitration Hearings Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-04-25 Susan Brokensha,Thinus Conradie,Willfred Greyling
Abstract The travesty of the Life Esidimeni project in South Africa, which claimed the lives of 144 mental health users at psychiatric facilities in Gauteng between 2016 and 2017, is multifaceted. One facet involves strategies of blame avoidance designed to escape liability for the deaths that were expressed by the former Member of the Executive Council for Health and other public health officials
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Lifting the pen and the gaze: embodied recruitment in collaborative writing Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-04-20 Jakub Mlynář
Abstract This article investigates sequences of collaborative writing that are part of classroom interaction in student dyads and triads working with a digital device and a paper worksheet. In analyzing instances from a corpus of 18 h of video recordings made in five high-school classrooms through an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approach, I focus on two embodied practices which do
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The chair’s use of address terms in workplace meetings Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-04-18 Innhwa Park
Abstract This conversation analytic study investigates the chair’s practice of addressing participants in multiparty meeting interaction. Paying close attention to the participants’ verbal and embodied actions, I examine 12 h and 30 min of video-recorded faculty meetings in a U.S. school district. I focus on how the meeting chair uses terms of address (e.g., first name, occupational title) during the meetings
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Metaphors we are robbed by: a critical discourse analysis of ‘the national cake’ and Nigeria’s prebendal elite Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-03-21 Umar Bello
Abstract This paper focuses on aspects of Nigerian corrupt practices and how perceptions of public service and leadership responsibilities are framed linguistically, or discursively, around predatory elitist interests. It is based on two premises. The first pertains to the ways in which the national wealth is metaphorically called the national cake, and how it is viewed as an object that elicits consumption
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Interactional functions of truncated predicative complement construction “AP + (dek)le” as topic initiator in Shanghai Wu Chinese conversation Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-03-11 Xiaoting Li,Yaqiong Liu
Abstract “VP/AP + (dek)le + AP/VP” is a predicative complement construction in Shanghai Wu Chinese (SWC) with (dek)le being the complement marker. In everyday SWC conversation, the terminal complement is often dropped, forming the Truncated Predicative Complement Construction (TPCC): “AP + (dek)le”. The data for the present study are approximately 4.5 h of naturalistic SWC face-to-face conversations
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Nextness and story organization: ‘my day’ sequences in parent-child interaction Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-03-07 Younhee Kim,Andrew P. Carlin
Abstract In this paper we offer a longitudinal Conversation Analysis of talk lasting 18 months between a father and son, which reveals changes in the child’s level of Interactional Competence (IC). We propose an index of developing IC based upon Sacks’ distinction between “invited” and “volunteered” stories. While stories have a “socialization function” we suggest stories may be tracked in terms of
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The Love Letters: ethnopoetics and echoes of the past in a Danish spoken narrative of personal experience Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-03-07 Bettina Perregaard
Abstract In developing ethnopoetics as an approach to the interpretation and analysis of oral performance, Dell Hymes controversially insisted that spoken narratives should be heard and read as poetry rather than prose. Although ethnopoetics is cross-culturally intended, only a few studies in a limited number of languages have so far been conducted. This article provides an analysis of a Danish spoken
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Moral legitimation in capital trials: the case of the prosecution’s closing summation Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Krisda Chaemsaithong
Abstract Underpinned by the assumption that the legitimacy of a social practice is obtained discursively, this study proposes a linguistically-grounded model for examining moral legitimation in the sentencing phase of capital trials. Drawing upon state lawyers’ closing speech in six capital trials (Indiana, USA), the study identifies key strategies the State uses to justify death and explores their
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Ear cupping in EFL classroom interaction: an embodied means of pursuing students’ response Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-23 Cheikhna Amar
Abstract This paper describes one of the embodied resources language teachers use to pursue a response from students: placing one hand behind the ear in an Ear Cupping (EC) gesture. The data analyzed are taken from over 20 h of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom interaction video-recorded at a Japanese university. The paper explores how teachers use EC to pursue a response in cases when
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Display of understanding in a second story: second teller’s reenactments and reuses of the prior teller’s resources Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-21 Eiko Yasui
Abstract In everyday conversations, after a story of an event or one’s experience is told, the recipient often tells a second story, similar to the previous one in terms of content and structure. A second story exhibits, rather than simply claims, its teller’s understanding of a prior story. While stories are often told with reenactments of an event, this study specifically examines the cases in which
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ACTIVATE! Change Drivers: blame-attribution and active citizenship on a South Africa youth blog Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-21 Marthinus Stander Conradie
Abstract Processes of blame-attribution can be conceptualised as socially-situated and discursively-mediated events that feature attempts to assign meaning to harmful (or at least potentially harmful) occurrences. Part of the process involves the search for culprits and subsequent argumentation as to the blameworthiness of those singled out for blame. This study conducts a discourse analysis of blame-attribution
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Referential accessibility as an index of the discourse functions of predicative and specificational clauses Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-18 Wout Van Praet
Abstract This paper studies referential accessibility marking in predicative and specificational clauses, in particular the ones in which the roles of ‘description’ and ‘variable’ are realised by an indefinite NP (e.g. He is a baker vs. One of his talents is pastry). While the indefinite NP in the two clause types has been studied in detail, little is known about how the other two roles – of ‘describee’
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The use of clarificatory metaphors in argumentative discourse in British Public Bill Committee debates Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-17 Kiki Y. Renardel de Lavalette,Corina Andone,Gerard J. Steen
Abstract In this paper, we aim to explain how metaphors can be employed for clarificatory purposes in British parliamentary debates. These debates typically involve an exchange of arguments concerning complex issues, which more often than not may require clarification. In clarifying something complex, metaphors are often employed in which an unfamiliar and abstract concept is compared to a more familiar
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Enacted category claims and tacit orientations to older identities in the telling of a sexually-explicit anecdote Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-17 Rachel Heinrichsmeier
Abstract This paper examines the identities – older and other – being claimed and attributed through the telling of a sexually-explicit anecdote by an older female client in a hair salon. I draw on the methods of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to analyse both the anecdote itself and the longer (3 min) sequence of which it was a part. I show that in telling this rather
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“Together we can all make little steps towards a better world”: interdiscursive construction of ecologically engaged voices in YouTube vlogs Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-16 Małgorzata Sokół
Abstract Drawing on the resources of Ecolinguistics and Positive Discourse Analysis, this paper investigates the interdiscursive practices that lifestyle vloggers engage in to construct their expertise and credibility when performing eco-activism. The analysis of the corpus of 30 YouTube vlogs promoting a sustainable lifestyle reveals the interplay of cross-generic conventions that young adult YouTubers
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Environmental issues in the Victorian era: an ecostylistic examination of metaphor and framing in Ruskin’s The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-03 Daniela Francesca Virdis
Abstract This article presents an ecostylistic analysis of the use of metaphor and framing in The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, two lectures by the Victorian polymath John Ruskin. The metaphors and frames identified and examined here are those triggered by the two title words ‘storm’ and ‘cloud’. The overall purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the ‘storm-and-cloud’ metaphors and frames
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The Anthropocene: genesis of a term and popularization in the press Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-02 Angela Zottola,Claudio de Majo
Abstract The term Anthropocene first appeared in 2000 when scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer attempted to define the environmental effects of anthropic activities. Since then, it has become a widespread, but also controversial, term in the academic community. As environmental discourses increasingly permeate our lives, it has trespassed the borders of scholarly traditions, becoming acknowledged
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Communicating climate change: how (not) to touch a cord with people and promote action Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-02 Hermine Penz
Abstract Climate science has established human activity as the major cause of climate change. The successive reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have also provided future scenarios of the detrimental effect of rising temperatures. Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus, the voices of climate deniers are still given ample space in the media. Moreover, the urgency of
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Narratives of industrial damage and natural recovery: an ecolinguistic perspective Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-02-02 Douglas Mark Ponton
Abstract In this paper, websites promoting a nature reserve on the South Eastern coast of Sicily, Priolo Saltpans, are analysed from an ecolinguistic and narrative perspective. The heuristic device of proximisation is used, connecting it to more traditional concepts of temporal-spatial deixis. More specifically, the paper investigates narratives of contact between the modernist discourse of industrial
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Proximization: a critical cognitive analysis of health security discourse Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Ke Li,Xiaonan Gong
Abstract With the surge of global health threats, “health security” constitutes a large proportion of international security. Drawing on proximization theory, the study aims to reveal how proximization serves to legitimize health emergency measures based on a case study of U.S. policies on travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The study annotated and counted the lexico-grammatical items identified
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Risk and resilience in a changing climate: a diachronic analysis in the press across the globe Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Cinzia Bevitori,Jane Helen Johnson
Abstract Building on our previous work investigating discourses of climate-induced mobility in the UK and US press, this paper addresses the overarching theme of environmental issues and the anthropocene by looking into representations of migration as adaptation in the context of climate change. In particular, drawing on corpus-assisted discourse analysis methodologies, the paper will focus on, and
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Changing discourses of climate change: building social-ecological resilience cross-culturally Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Anna Franca Plastina
Abstract Social-ecological resilience (SER) is setting a new trend of thinking about environmental issues since it considers climate unpredictability as the norm in the Anthropocene and climate disturbance as offering opportunities for change. This paper argues that SER can be conceptualized as a function of narrative text and talk in the recent practice of online environmental activism. Based on a
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The dynamic configuration of non-linear texts in live blogs: a discursive approach Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-01-28 Pablo Porto López
Abstract News platforms increasingly cover ongoing events through live blogs. In these texts, individual updates with the latest developments are issued every few minutes and added into a reverse chronology list containing everything published up to that point. Even though the fragments work as a whole – as they make up a single account of a specific event – they must, at the same time, let online
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“Nature needs you”: discursive constructions of legitimacy and identification in environmental charity appeals Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska,Elżbieta Szymańska-Czaplak
Abstract This study traces how discursive constructions of legitimacy and identification are enacted textually and visually with respect to environment-oriented causes, such as landscape or species restoration. Such conservation projects actually clash with human economic priorities typical of the Anthropocene. Drawing on models of social trust and assuming the discursive nature of legitimacy and identification
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Employing political persuasion to manage rapport: qualitative analysis of campaign leaflets in Sheffield Central constituency Text & Talk (IF 0.8) Pub Date : 2022-01-24 Wuhan Zhu,Yangfei Zhu
Abstract Rapport management is argued to be a critical antecedent of voter support in election campaigns, as it can motivate cooperation. However, little research has been conducted exploring how rapport is managed in such practice. In the present study, the campaign leaflets of four political parties in Sheffield Central constituency for the 2017 UK general election were analysed in relation to rapport-management