1,721,293 research outputs found
Migration Discourses in Times of Crisis
No full textAs a wide-reaching and shared experience, a crisis may have different shapes
and affect different aspects and members of society. During a crisis, norms are
suspended, and the current system of rules is modified such in a way that
normality is not anymore normal: everything is open to reconsideration under
a new, different light. However, what constitutes a crisis, what is addressed as
a crisis, is not an ideologically neutral question. Crises are both directly
experienced and discursively constructed phenomena.
The papers in this special issue came out of the Approaches to Migration,
Language and Identity conference hosted at the University of Sussex, UK, in
2021. As the conference took place online under the restrictions of Covid-19,
crisis was foregrounded throughout. Over the past twenty years, even from a
limited European perspective, we have experienced several major political,
economic and environmental crises. Starting with the global financial crisis of
2007-2008 and the subsequent European debt crisis; the ‘migration crisis’ of
2015, which played a major role in the political upheaval of Brexit in the UK and
in the resurgence of populist parties across Europe; the Covid-19 pandemic
crisis; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; in addition to a greater focus on the
climate crisis (to which the awareness campaigns of movements such as
Extinction Rebellion and Friday for Futures have given great resonance), it has
become commonplace to say that we are going through an acute period of crisis.
Some of these events were shared across the globe while other events which
have shaken some countries and even continents have barely registered outside
those confines. (Indeed, in a very small-scale sign of this, two of the papers
submitted for this special issue, documenting crisis responses outside the
European sphere, could not be concluded). Within this context, this special issue emerges from the urgency of reflecting
on the impact of different kinds of crisis on migration discourses. The main
objective is to contextualize the study of migration discourses within the general
crisis discourse framework. Particularly, the focus is to study the language used
in crisis and highlight the ways in which specific groups of people or social
classes become instrumentalized in crisis discourse to fulfil political or other
strategic aims
Critical Approaches to Polycrisis: Discourses of Conflict, Migration, Risk, and Climate
No full textThis book critically examines how polycrisis is recontextualised and (ab)used in contemporary discourse from across Europe. The book brings together established and emerging researchers in the field of discourse studies from around the world to explore the accelerating interconnected challenges of climate change, conflict, risk, Brexit, democracy, COVID-19, the rising cost of living, and migration. Recognising that polycrisis is socially produced, constructed and dismantled through discourse, the authors contemplate the discursive manifestations of crisis. Falling under the banner of critical discourse studies (CDS), the methodological approaches are heterogeneous, including, but not limited to, corpus-assisted CDS and multimodal CDS. The data are equally varied, ranging from focus groups to no-war letters, media representations to environmental protection commercials. The volume provides a comprehensive consideration of how critical approaches to discourse can help to make sense of, resist, and respond to (poly)crisis, and it will be of interest to students and scholars working in the remit of discourse studies, with a particular interest in crisis communication
Critical discursive responses to polycrisis
No full textIn this chapter, we argue that a critical discursive approach to the intersecting global challenges facing humanity can provide a ‘programme of research and action’ (Lawrence et al., Global Sustainability 7:1-14, 2024) that enables us to address the interacting crises we are experiencing in European society-and the world-today. Drawing on emerging interdisciplinary research, we set out our approach to polycrisis and explain why we have chosen this term over crisis or permacrisis for our edited collection. We then highlight how the need for social action towards polysolutions (Henig and Knight, Anthropology Today 39:3-6, 2023) renders polycrisis an urgent, worthy and under-theorised object for CDA research. Finally, we introduce the chapters in the collection and tease out the questions raised and answered by their contributions
Where Are They From? : a Corpus-Assisted Study of the Geographical Representation of Migrants in the UK and Italian Quality Press in 2016 and 2017
No full textBrexit cannot be only an isolated case but the evidence of a greater phenomenon, namely the upsurge of populist political tendencies among European countries. Their political campaigns have transformed peoples’ concerns about the increasing number of terroristic attacks and of immigrants arriving in Europe into real fear. Within this context, the press plays a decisive role in reporting and commenting on social and political issues such as migration. Hence, this study analyzes how the Italian and British press reported migration discourse before and after Brexit, focusing on the frequency of representation in the quality press and on their geographical representation identified in the use of referential strategies. This study highlights the influence of political discourse on newspaper discourse: the prominence given by politicians to migration issues has influenced its newsworthiness, it has received significantly more press coverage in 2016 and 2017 than in the past. The Italian and British press frequently represent distinctively migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers as coming from
two main areas: European areas (more specifically, East Europe) and non- European areas (more specifically, Africa, Syria, and Afghanistan). The use of referential strategies to define group boundaries and to marginalize migrants
in a unique group has been detected
Metaphors and pandemics: Spanish Flu and Coronavirus in US newspapers. A case-study
No full textThe international outbreak of Coronavirus has challenged the stability of our contemporary societies. However, this is not the first time that humanity is facing a global pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic led to one of the most lethal pandemics. Metaphors play a fundamental role in influencing how we think and talk about health and illness.
With an understanding of how the Coronavirus and the Spanish Flu are metaphorically represented in newspaper discourse, it would be easier to shed light on the linguistic process through which metaphors work and to understand to what extent socio-historical-cultural conditions may affect the actualisation of a metaphor. This paper shows that metaphors are consistently present in both time contexts and Coronavirus and Spanish Flu are similarly metaphorically represented. This might suggest the existence of a rhetoric of pandemics which goes beyond the specific socio-cultural and political context: a response to a threat as a pandemic is deeply related with human nature
Drinkopoly: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Linguistic Representation of Alcohol in British and Russian Newspapers
Full text linkDrawing from the main theoretical tenets of the socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, this study investigates the linguistic strategies adopted to represent alcohol in a self-compiled dataset of articles from three British and Soviet (Russian) broadsheets published between 1990 and 2000. While most research on alcohol-related discourse in the UK and the USSR/Russia addresses the question from a socio-economic perspective, insufficient attention has been paid to the complex linguistic relationship between discourse meaning and the ideological instantiation of private and/or socially shared attitudes that guides the public debate on alcohol. The articles have been qualitatively analysed and linked back to three main cognitive models, i.e., legitimisation, delegitimisation, and neutral. The analysis reveals that while Soviet (Russian) newspaper discourse stresses the importance of state-driven alcohol production and sale to replenish the national budget revenue, English newspapers voice greater concern over health issues related to alcohol abuse
A corpus-assisted semantic profile of the noun representation in CAD and CADS studies on newspaper discourse
Full text linkThe existing literature on newspaper discourse from a CAD (Critical Discourse Analysis) or CADS (Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies) perspective is extensive and there is a large volume of published studies that mention the noun representation in their titles or who put the representation in the press as the main object of investigation. Generally, these works focus on the use of language to represent a social phenomenon like migration, Islam, Europe, homelessness, obesity, and many other events. However, except for some works, the explanation of what the act of representation means is often not directly and overtly addressed. However, the fact that the notion of representation is not often clearly defined in many works (generally for a matter of space) does not mean that the notion is taken for granted or the implications are not considered. For this reason, this paper investigates how the notion of representation is presented. On the basis that the meaning of an expression derives from its use in context, which is intended as all its manifestations through which the expression itself acquires its meaning, the aim of this work is to give a corpus-assisted discourse perspective on the use of the lexical item representation in the academic discourse focused on the news media
The Self-representation of Refugees through Pronominal Choice. A Case-study on Migration Counter-discourse in a Collection of Narratives on Refugees by Refugees
No full textThis paper explores self-representation of refugees by analysing pronoun usage in a
collection of refugee narratives. By adopting a corpus-assisted discourse studies
methodology, this work aims at providing insights into how refugees perceive
themselves individually and collectively. The analysis reveals a predominant use of the
pronoun "I," reflecting an individual identity. However, several narratives also exhibit
the consistent use of "we," which is employed in both referential and impersonal
contexts, though never in a vague sense. Three primary referents are identified: for the
referential use, the family and the community; and for the impersonal use, an undefined
generic group, which may refer to any refugee or all of humanity
Book Review: Anna Islentyeva, A Corpus-Based Analysis of Ideological Bias: Migration in the British Press
No full textBook Review: Anna Islentyeva, A Corpus-Based Analysis of Ideological Bias: Migration in the British Pres
Figures of coronavirus – conceptual and linguistic metaphors in British, U.S and Italian political discourse
No full textThis paper examines the use of metaphors in political discourse related to COVID-19,
focusing on speeches by political leaders from the UK, USA, and Italy. It investigates
how metaphors function as both linguistic and cognitive tools, shaping public perceptions
of the pandemic. The study analyzes the rhetorical and communicative strategies
employed in English and Italian political speeches, with particular attention to figurative
language. The analysis centers on how metaphors differ across the speeches of three
political leaders—Boris Johnson (UK), Donald Trump (USA), and Giuseppe Conte
(Italy)—within their respective socio-political contexts. The findings reveal cross-cultural
similarities in metaphor use, particularly in how these leaders framed COVID-19 as a
collective struggle. All three leaders predominantly used the WAR metaphor, along with
other frames such as DANGEROUS LIQUID, CONTAINER, and OBJECT.
The key differences appeared in less common conceptual mappings with fewer
lexicalizations and occurrences. These similarities suggest the presence of a global
rhetoric surrounding the virus, possibly pointing to universal cognitive structures that are
activated when humanity confronts dangerous situations, regardless of cultural or
linguistic context
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