Framing authority in language policy debates
Publication date: March 2020Source: Language & Communication, Volume 71Author(s): Patrick DrackleyAbstractThis paper explores the ways in which authority is discursively claimed and negotiated. Working within the social context of debates over orthographic reform in France, I examine how participants in a televised debate address this notion through orientation to competing chronotopes; participants in the debate engage in processes of scale-making as they argue which time-space(s) are most relevant and how those time-spaces should be understood. Thus, this paper argues that authority is not simply synonymous with social a...
Source: Language and Communication - February 5, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The ear from nowhere: Listening techniques and the politics of negation in the practice of Japanese interfaith chaplains
This article examines the politics of listening in the work of Japanese interfaith chaplains. It argues that listening is an important but often overlooked aspect of language ideologies and, more specifically, of the formation of modern subjects. Interfaith chaplains are religious professionals who apply principles of clinical psychology to help people in settings ranging from hospices to disaster areas. The desire to help suffering people who do not share the same religious backgrounds as the chaplains motivates them to cultivate what I call an “ear from nowhere,” which is divorced from their respective religious trad...
Source: Language and Communication - February 2, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Language and happiness: Cultural epistemologies and ideological conflicts in Finnish online discourses on the causes of happiness
This article approaches “happiness” as a discursive construct. We examine different understandings of happiness as socially transmitted, linguistically formulated epistemological models by which humans reflexively evaluate and rationalize their experiences and identities. Our data consists of a set of Finnish online discourses that discuss the causes of happiness. We examine media platforms that mass-mediate popular discourses of happiness to individuals and allow individuals to voice their “indigenous” understandings. We analyze the linguistic, interactional, and interdiscursive characteristics of such views of ha...
Source: Language and Communication - January 17, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Multimodal framing devices in European online news
Publication date: March 2020Source: Language & Communication, Volume 71Author(s): Isabel Alonso Belmonte, M. Dolores PortoAbstractThis paper presents a multimodal, cross-cultural analysis of the most salient framing devices in on-line news about the US Embassy relocation to Jerusalem and subsequent revolts in Gaza Strip in May 2018. Drawing from a socio-cognitive and critical approach to discourse analysis, a sample of newsbites published in different online mainstream European newspapers were analysed. Findings unveil a distinctive set of multimodal devices grouped around four categories -subject choice, composition, dist...
Source: Language and Communication - January 17, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Understanding figures of speech: Dependency relations and organizational patterns
This article attempts to fill this gap by exploring a broad range of figures of speech in terms of their dependency relations and organizational patterns. It distinguishes between basic and non-basic figures of speech, where the latter arise from variants of the basic cognitive operations that shape the former. It then discusses these figures in terms of their interrelationships, their shared features, and the attitudinal or denotational nature of their meaning effects. The result is a unified account of figurative language. (Source: Language and Communication)
Source: Language and Communication - January 11, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: January 2020Source: Language & Communication, Volume 70Author(s): (Source: Language and Communication)
Source: Language and Communication - January 11, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Making the threatening other laughable: Ambiguous performances of urban vernaculars in Swedish media
Publication date: March 2020Source: Language & Communication, Volume 71Author(s): Rickard Jonsson, Anna Gradin Franzén, Tommaso M. MilaniAbstractThe threatening young man who speaks Rinkeby Swedish has become a culturally recognizable ‘figure of personhood’ (Agha, 2007) of linguistic and ethnic otherness in Sweden. Drawing upon Billig's theory of humour, we illustrate how this characterological persona is not monolithic; nor does it remain uncontested but is constantly being (re)negotiated in the media. By drawing attention to those humorous performances that rhetorically make fun of entrenched stereotypes, the articl...
Source: Language and Communication - January 11, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: November 2019Source: Language & Communication, Volume 69Author(s): (Source: Language and Communication)
Source: Language and Communication - November 19, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
First names in social and ethnic contexts: A socio-onomastic approach
Publication date: January 2020Source: Language & Communication, Volume 70Author(s): Peyman G.P. Sabet, Grace ZhangAbstractThis paper presents an account of how first name choice is influenced by socio-ethnic changes during the transitional period between two Iranian governments. Analyzing 4,800 names in four ethnically-contrastive provinces, this socio-onomastic study shows that, in Iran, names serve a social identity function. Of the six categories, namely, Persian-Traditional, Persian-Modern, Islamic-Traditional, Islamic-Modern, Combined and Western names, the latter two showed a consistent increase in number (macro-leve...
Source: Language and Communication - November 19, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Force, content and the varieties of subject
Publication date: November 2019Source: Language & Communication, Volume 69Author(s): Michael SchmitzAbstractThis paper argues that to account for group speech acts, we should adopt a representationalist account of mode / force. Individual and collective subjects do not only represent what they e.g. assert or order. By asserting or ordering they also indicate their theoretical or practical positions towards what they assert or order. The ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received dichotomy of force and propositional content. On the contrary, only the representationalist account allows a satisfactory response to it. It ...
Source: Language and Communication - October 26, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Turn-taking and the structural legitimization of bias: The case of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Publication date: November 2019Source: Language & Communication, Volume 69Author(s): Chase Wesley Raymond, Marissa Caldwell, Lisa Mikesell, Innhwa Park, Nicholas WilliamsAbstractThis paper offers an analysis of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, with particular attention to the role of the Committee chairperson within this procedural infrastructure—an infrastructure that, we argue, systematically provides for and thereby implicitly legitimizes the insertion of bias in its proceedings, while nonetheless orienting to an ideology of fairness based on time limits for speaking. Focusing on the ...
Source: Language and Communication - October 18, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
‘Going negative’: An APPRAISAL analysis of the rhetoric of Donald Trump on Twitter
This article explores a selection of the tweets of President Donald Trump, specifically in relation to his use of negativity as a rhetorical political strategy. The study is guided by a corpus-based comparative keyword analysis and the analytical framework of APPRAISAL, from Systemic Functional Linguistics, which is concerned with the language of evaluation. The study reveals that in order to carry out an approach of ‘going negative’, Trump utilises the APPRAISAL system in a variety of ways, with the ultimate aim to attack and undermine the character of his political opponent. (Source: Language and Communication)
Source: Language and Communication - October 10, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Language ideology and practice among Judeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardim in Seattle and South Florida
This study explores language ideologies among Judeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardim in Seattle (n = 22) and South Florida (n = 20). Speakers responded to a five-point Likert scale survey containing fifteen questions, which collected data about informants' use of Judeo-Spanish, metalinguistic awareness, and personal attitudes regarding contact with other languages. Some of the most significant between-group differences include feeling integrated into a community of Judeo-Spanish speakers, communicative proficiency in Modern Spanish, knowledge of which elements in Judeo-Spanish come from other languages, as well as evaluative...
Source: Language and Communication - October 9, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Conversation analysis at the ‘middle region’ of public life: Greetings and the interactional construction of Donald Trump's political persona
This article uses conversation analysis to study the greetings that occur just before the start of a stage-managed White House media event. We first operationalize and illustrate the constellation of co-constructed practices that enable a ‘greeter’ to pivot between multiple ‘greeteds’, and we show how such an activity reconstitutes participants' situated social identities. We then broaden the scope of our inquiry to consider how such interactional practices contribute to Trump's political persona. We conclude by arguing that our approach can illuminate both the communication styles of specific individuals, as well ...
Source: Language and Communication - September 24, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Group assertion and group silencing
Publication date: Available online 19 September 2019Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Leo TownsendAbstractJennifer Lackey (2018) has developed an account of the primary form of group assertion, according to which groups assert when a suitably authorized spokesperson speaks for the group. In this paper I pose a challenge for Lackey's account, arguing that her account obscures the phenomenon of group silencing. This is because, in contrast to alternative approaches that view assertions (and speech acts generally) as social acts, Lackey's account implies that speakers can successfully assert regardless of how their u...
Source: Language and Communication - September 19, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
