| 1. |
|
|
| 2. |
- Alexander, Marc, et al.
(författare)
-
Somewhere to turn to: Signposting in service provision
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 15:2, s. 119-138
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article investigates how members of the public are guided or ‘signposted’ out of organisations that they have contacted to third-party agencies. Using conversation analysis, we examine the interactional practices professionals use to signpost callers to external organisations when their concerns do not fit within the remit of the present service. Drawing on a corpus of over 500 calls and meetings at five different institutions in the UK (including mediation services, local council organisations, a housing charity and a politician’s constituency office), we show how the practice of signposting is intertwined with the activities of rejecting the caller’s case for receiving service, while simultaneously offering a service – namely, a redirection to an ostensibly more appropriate service provider. We show how community problems can be treated as warranting assistance along a range of offer-ability (e.g. ‘I will do X for you’, ‘That’s the kind of thing we could do’, ‘Do you want their number?’), and how troubles-tellings without a specific request can be retroactively formulated into an actionable item for an institution. Our findings demonstrate practices for negotiating institutionality itself, through delimiting service remit, and through participants’ orientations to the relevance of service provision as an institutional goal.
|
|
| 3. |
- Björkvall, Anders, 1972-, et al.
(författare)
-
Legitimation of value practices, value texts, and core values at public authorities
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 13:4, s. 398-414
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A large number of Swedish public authorities produce ‘platform of values’ texts that present core values. This article presents a study of how such texts and practices, including the core values they revolve around, are legitimized. Using Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, three different data sets are analysed: 47 ‘platform of values’ texts, a focus group discussion with seven senior HR officers, and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants at three public authorities. The analysis shows how the existence of ‘platform of values’ texts and practices is legitimized through rationalizations, above all by describing the texts as concrete means for reaching specific ends and, with regard to the choice of core values, through a custom-conformity type of authority. Thus, this article addresses discursive transformations of contemporary organizations with a particular focus on available discursive space for critical thinking in the wake of New Public Management and related developments.
|
|
| 4. |
- Breazu, Petre, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
-
A critical multimodal analysis of the Romanian press coverage of camp evictions and deportations of the Roma migrants from France
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 12:4, s. 339-356
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we carry out a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of a sample from a larger corpus of Romanian news articles that covered the controversial camp evictions and repatriation of Romanian Roma migrants from France that began in 2010 and continue to the time of writing in 2017. These French government policies have been highly criticized both within France and by international political and aid organizations. However, the analysis shows how these brutal, anti-humanitarian events became recontextualized in the Romanian Press to represent the French government’s actions as peaceful and consensual. In addition, the demonization of the Roma in the press serves as a strategy to continuously disassociate them from their Romanian counterparts. While there is a long history of discrimination against the Roma in Romania, these particular recontextualizations can be understood in the context of the Romanian government’s need to gloss over its failure to comply with the Schengen accession requirements and acquire full European Union (EU) membership.
|
|
| 5. |
- Breazu, Petre, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
-
Romaphobia in Romanian press : The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian migrants in the European Union
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 15:2, s. 139-162
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens in the EU, in January 2014, encountered much resistance both in European political discourse and the media, as these migrants became demonised and presented as social and economic threats. In this article, we show how the Romanian press dealt with such discriminatory discourses against the Romanian migrants. We conduct a thorough Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of news items published in Romanian press, prior to the lifting of work restrictions, and we argue that the Roma emerged as the perfect scapegoats that could explain the deviant and unruly behaviours ascribed by some western media to ‘Romanians’. We also show how racism toward the Roma, referred here as Romaphobia, invokes non-racial practices and instead builds on a reverse victimhood narrative. Such discourses relate in a broader sense to well-established discursive practices in Romanian context but also to the political climate across Europe which is marked by increased intolerance toward the Roma. It is the mixture of stereotypical discourses and populist rhetoric that makes racism towards the Roma appear naturalised and increasingly more difficult to challenge.
|
|
| 6. |
- Ekström, Mats, 1961
(författare)
-
Gaze work in political media interviews
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Discourse and Communication. - : SAGE Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 6:3, s. 249-271
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article analyses the orientation of gaze as a significant communicative resource in televised political interviews. The study explores how interviewees use their gaze, in coordination with talk, in receiving and answering adversarial questions. It is guided by conversation analysis (CA), Goffman’s work on gaze in interaction, and the approach on embodied actions developed primarily by Goodwin. Gaze is described as a flexible recipient and speaker resource available for stance-taking, the downgrading and upgrading of actions, and the claiming of the floor. The study is based on taped and transcribed data from two formats of election campaign interviews on Swedish television, including 350 question and response sequences.
|
|
| 7. |
- Engström, Robin, 1988-
(författare)
-
(De)legitimizing Scottish independence on Twitter : A multimodal comparison of the main official campaigns
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 14:6, s. 580-599
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 saw the breakthrough of online political campaigning in the UK. Despite the outcome, research and media alike concluded that the main pro-independence campaign, Yes Scotland (YS), outdid the main pro-union campaign, Better Together (BT), in the online battle. This article addresses this discrepancy by exploring how YS and BT used social media affordances in order to legitimize their own and de-legitimize their opponents' positions. The material consists of multimodal tweets published by YS and BT in the run-up to the referendum. The article employs a model for multimodal legitimation that takes into consideration the construction of authority, moral evaluation and the construction and justifications of means and goals. The findings show that both campaigns made extensive use of de-legitimating strategies, although YS was more balanced. The article also shows that the campaigns' communicative choices had implications for the construction and justification of goals and means, with YS running a more visionary campaign than BT.
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
- Eriksson, Göran, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
-
How cosmetic apps fragmentise and metricise the female face : A multimodalcritical discourse analysis
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 17:3, s. 278-297
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the present time, we see a rapid development of so-called cosmetic apps promoted by prominent cosmetic companies. Although there is an emerging market for male consumers, these apps are marketed as technological innovations designed to analyse, rate and evaluate mainly women’s facial appearances through the submission of a selfie. Based on the results generated from the selfie, personalised solutions are offered in the form of recommended products to supposedly help women improve their appearances. Drawing on a critical feminist approach and using multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), the aim of this article is to study how these evaluations are semiotically reproduced and presented to the users. The paper examines in detail how apps convey the evaluation process and transform a selfie into measures, presented through diagrams and charts, that is, how the female face is fragmented and metricised. Coming with affordances of being systematic, exact and scientific, these infographics assign the facial evaluations with meaning. A key argument is that these cosmetic apps are changing the way women are implied to consider and control their (facial) appearance. Following neoliberal notions, the apps put strong pressure on women to take the responsibility to engage in intensive forms of aesthetic labour and to consume the ‘right’ products to appear as the best versions of themselves.
|
|
| 10. |
- Hanell, Linnea, 1986-
(författare)
-
Anticipatory discourse in prenatal education
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : SAGE Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 12:1, s. 3-19
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores communicative aspects of preparing others, by studying prenatal education classes in which midwives prepare expectant parents for delivery. Data include documentation from classes and interviews with the presenters. This twofold dataset enables investigation into how ideologies of communication figure into the production of discourse. A dominant idea is that discourse can stand in for lived experience in the endeavor to decrease nervousness and fear in the expectant parents. The observation data are therefore analyzed by paying attention to how the expectant parents’ future deliveries are discursively represented. Drawing on the conceptual framework for analyzing anticipatory discourse, the study shows how the midwives largely frame this future as predictable and the mother as highly agentive. When addressing unexpected turbulence, however, the midwives use the opportunity to stress the agency of medical professionals to maintain a representation of the delivery event as generally predictable.
|
|
| 11. |
- Hilling, Axel, et al.
(författare)
-
The development of a multidimensional meaning of tax: From unfair tax to fair
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : SAGE Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 17:1, s. 57-76
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Historically, companies have communicated taxes as a burden, as the benefits provided by governments are not perceived to be in proportion to their payments. With sustainable development becoming central in many policy areas, new discourses including ‘fair’ or ‘sustainable’ tax have become omnipresent in public talk on taxes. This paper analyzes tax discourses in corporate annual reports within this changing context to examine the use of language in the construction of the meaning of tax. By analyzing tax reporting by a state-owned multinational company over two decades, we observe that the communication of taxes increased in both number and types of discourses. Importantly, this highlights the shift in tax discourses from one dominated by codified accounting discourse reinforcing the monolithic representation of tax as an unfair expense, to one where tax is given a multidimensional meaning within a broader discursive context, where tax is a meaningful corporate responsibility to society.
|
|
| 12. |
- Kitis, E. Dimitris, et al.
(författare)
-
‘Black diamonds’, ‘clever blacks’ and other metaphors: Constructing the black middle class in contemporary South African print media
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Discourse and Communication. - : SAGE Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 12:2, s. 149-170
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- South Africa (SA) has been undergoing a process of transformation since the end of White minority rule (apartheid) in 1994. During this period, various employment and lifestyle opportunities have given rise to a growing Black middle class (BMC). Against this backdrop, the article draws upon an intersectional approach to corpus-assisted discourse studies in order to examine the construction of the BMC in a 1.4million-word corpus composed of 20 mainstream Anglophone South African newspaper titles published between 2008 and 2014. With the help of the corpus tool AntConc, the article investigates the collocates of ‘black middle class’, ‘black diamonds’, ‘clever blacks’ and ‘coconuts’, classifying results according to semantic categories in order to provide an idea of the multiple but nuanced representations of the BMC in contemporary SA. The analysis finds several lexically rich moralizing and paternalistic discourses that, in accordance with an intersectional perspective, enact a complex pattern of strategies that are simultaneously exclusionary and inclusionary.
|
|
| 13. |
|
|
| 14. |
- Landqvist, Mats, 1960-, et al.
(författare)
-
Collaboration, reinvented tools and specialist knowledge : Communication professionals’ experiences of global health crisis management
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821.
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Communication professionals have a paramount role in global crisis. What did they learn during the covid pandemic that could be used in future global crisis? The aim of this article is to identify and analyze strategy changes among communicators in municipalities and how their conceptions of communicated knowledge transformed during the pandemic. Retrospective interviews and textual material are analyzed with a framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis in combination with Legitimation Code Theory. The analysis shows that the work of the communicators was characterized by collaboration with other professional groups and the civil society, and that the complexity and important time aspects during this crisis gave birth to semi-new, reinvented, discursive tools in the shape of text genres. The communicators’ conceived relevant knowledge as concept-driven and developed the conception that conveyance of knowledge should be thoroughly planned in a way that takes complexity into account.
|
|
| 15. |
- Lindgren, Simon, 1974-
(författare)
-
A ghost in the machine : tracing the role of "the digital' in discursive processes of cybervictimisation
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 12:5, s. 517-534
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The study of discursive understandings of cybervictimisation draws on a dataset of crime news reporting and asks the question of if and how cybervictimisation is construed in ways that differ from other types of (non-digital) victimisation. Building on a critical discourse perspective employing corpus-based text analysis methods, the composition of news discourses about cybervictimisation are analysed, alongside the relationship between such representations and news media discourse on crime victimisation generally. The aim is to see what effect the presence of a digital dimension has for how the notion of victimisation is socially and culturally understood. The study shows, first, that news reporting on cybervictimisation has a strong bias towards crimes that fit well with the notion of the ideal victim' (such as sexual victimisation and bullying) while excluding other types like hacking and identity theft. The question is raised whether victim' discourse is able to account for the latter types or if new understandings and concepts will emerge. Second, the study shows that discourses promoting understandings of technology as contributing to amplifying danger, and that represent technology as potentially undermining social order, are strong in cybervictimisation news reports. These discourses are consequential for who is seen as a legitimate victim and not. Just as it can be very difficult to identify and apprehend perpetrators of cybercrime, so is also the identification and definition of cybervictims ambiguous and demands to be further researched.
|
|
| 16. |
- Lischinsky, Alon, 1978-
(författare)
-
Examples as persuasive argument in popular management literature
- 2008
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 2, s. 243-269
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article we take the use of examples as a means to explore the processes of persuasion and consensus-construction involved in the legitimation of popular management knowledge. Examples, as concrete instances or events used to substantiate a wider argument, have been variedly regarded in different research traditions. Classical logic and rhetoric have considered them an inferior form of argument, useful for pedagogic or public debate but inadequate for higher forms of thought. This spirit still permeates much psychological research on communication, where the great persuasive import of examples has been contrasted with more scientific and formal resources for argumentation. Considered in this light, the contingent and episodic nature of examples seems to make them cognitively inferior to explicit statements of general rules. However, various strands of research on the nature of scientific knowledge have shown that implicit forms of knowledge are an integral part of scientific expertise. Examples may thus be more central to disciplinary thought than the conventional normative view seems to allow. In this spirit, we explore the use of examples in a hotly contested field, that of popular discourse on business and management. The profusion of examples in this kind of writing has been often noted, and almost as often criticized. We seek to explore more fully how these examples are deployed, examining the discursive devices that mark examples within the development of the text, their function as rhetorical moves, and their role in presenting arguments that are never otherwise made explicit.
|
|
| 17. |
- Magnusson, Simon
(författare)
-
Constructing young citizens’ deontic authority in participatory democracy meetings
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 14:6, s. 600-618
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Young citizens are increasingly being invited to take part in participatory democracy meetings as joint decision-making has grown popular in public administration. The backbone of participatory democracy is that some authority is granted to the citizenry and by drawing on video data (38 hours) from a year-long participatory project, this conversation analytic study shows that the adolescents are instructed to a deontic role rooted in epistemics, benefactive considerations, as well as temporal aspects relating to future citizenship and hope. The institutional representatives perform actions that determine how the adolescents should, in their turn, perform actions of influence. In this way, authority is ascribed through an ambivalent configuration in which compliance with the directives is supposed to establish a strengthened deontic position.
|
|
| 18. |
- Rasmussen, Joel
(författare)
-
Governing the workplace or the worker? : evolving dilemmas in chemical professionals' discourse on occupational health and safety
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : SAGE Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 7:1, s. 75-94
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article analyses occupational health and safety discourse, bringing special attention to dilemmas that emerge as employees name and negotiate particular risks and safety measures. The study is based on 46 interviews conducted with employees in three chemical factories, and combines Michel Foucault's conception of governmentality with a discursive psychology approach. The study demonstrates how dilemmas emerge when 1) respondents make others responsible for health and safety risks; 2) they personally assume responsibility as 'risky' workers; and 3) different rationalities - such as environmental and behavioural or hierarchical - appear in the same set of statements. Overall, occupational health and safety management tends to exclude egalitarian beliefs, which creates dilemmas that become visible as speakers find themselves compelled to excuse, ironize or systematically downplay discursive moves that may diminish or exclude themselves or others. Given that previous research suggests that behavioural approaches to health become increasingly widespread in working life, this article contributes by highlighting the presence of dilemmas that implies some flux and openness to change.
|
|
| 19. |
- Rasmussen, Joel, 1978-
(författare)
-
‘Welcome to Twitter, @CIA. Better late than never’ : Communication professionals’ views of social media humour and implications for organizational identity
- 2017
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 11:1, s. 89-110
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Public authorities have traditionally used an official language style in public, but currently social media have become an outlet for humour. This article uses positioning analysis to discuss challenges that use of humour poses for the identity of public organizations. Drawing on interviews with communications professionals working in the emergency services sector, the article suggests six evaluative themes that factor into organizational identity construction, such as the frequency and type of humour in social media posts. Indeed, while humour helps fashion more flexible and risk-taking organizational identities, it can also stand contrary to a bureaucratic ethos of public servantship and equal treatment. Dilemmas thus arise for public authorities that seek to adjust to the times and still remain ‘in character’. The article contributes to organizational identity research by considering the hitherto overlooked immersion of social media use, humour and organizational identity formation.
|
|
| 20. |
- Stier, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
-
The quest for truth : The use of discursive and rhetorical resources in newspaper coverage of the (mis)treatment of young Swedish gymnasts
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 10:1, s. 65-81
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In 2012, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) published a series of articles criticising Swedish national level gymnastics for being abusive. This text analyses the subsequent debate by identifying the discursive and rhetorical resources used by the involved parties. The analysis shows how the parties negotiate accountability, manage dilemmas of stake and what the possible social consequences of these are. Five narratives are singled out in the debate: the counter narrative, the victim narrative, the defence-speech narrative, the expert narrative and the ‘not-us-narrative’. In these narratives, the involved parties used rhetorical resources to account for reality. Hence, the gymnastics community, the research community, individuals and journalists are all portrayed as actors co-producing a social problem.
|
|
| 21. |
- Söderlund, Hanna, 1979-
(författare)
-
'Joking aside' : the power of rejections in humour
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 17:3, s. 336-353
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Response is an effective tool for exercising power in humour, since it can make a person seem funny. In the same way, the lack of response can make a person seem unfunny. In this article I argue that failed jokes make a female skiing pundit on TV seem humourless and that this is due to the other interlocutors refraining from giving adequate responses. The material is from a sports programme about cross-country skiing on Swedish Television. The aim of the case study is to find out how power is exercised discursively in humour that fails and to discuss possible implications the rejections may have on notions of gender. The theoretical framework used is a feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis in combination with an analysis of internal and external control mechanisms. The discursive practice of repeated rejections of the female pundit may have consequences for her possibilities in seeming humorous.
|
|
| 22. |
- Thornborrow, Joanna, et al.
(författare)
-
Question design and the construction of populist stances in political news interviews
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : SAGE Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 15:6, s. 672-689
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper focuses on the relationship between journalism and right wing populist discourses in the context of broadcast news interviews. We analyse a specific feature of question design in which the public is invoked as a source of opinionated positions in adversarial interviewing. Analysing data from a range of socio-political contexts, we identify a shift in adversarial questioning along a scale of ‘soft’ populism, that is the attribution of views and concerns to a generic public ‘in crisis’, to ‘hard’ populism, where interviewers construct hypothetical scenarios in which populist positions are attributed to ‘some people’. We argue that the democratic role of journalists as public watchdogs, holding politicians and public figures accountable on behalf of the public, is challenged by this normalisation of populist moral order discourses in a routine journalistic practice, both drawing on and contributing to the propagation of populist agendas and antidemocratic populist rhetoric.
|
|
