Legitimizing Sexism: Critical Discourse Analysis on Sexism in a Political U.S. Podcast

Sexism in media and in politics is not a new phenomenon, yet the current U.S. political landscape and new forms of media, such as podcasts, demand the issue to be researched further. In this thesis, I analyze the sexist language used in a The Ben Shapiro Show podcast episode. Research questions explore what kind of sexist language is used and how sexism is legitimatized in the podcast. Additionally, the impact of sexist discourses on the podcast’s audience’s attitudes and stances is discussed. The analysis is based on Critical Discourse Analysis, focusing on especially its feminist branches as well as the Foucauldian understanding of power. Works of Michelle Lazar, Sarah Mills, and Alice Freed are used to form a base for sexism analysis. The legitimation analysis is completed by basing it on Theo Van Leeuwen’s Social Actors Approach and legitimization theory and realized via M.A.K Halliday’s transitivity analysis. The analysis shows that the most used type of sexism is overt sexism and that legitimations via authorization and evaluation are used equally. The results suggest that sexist language is utilized in right-wing conservative media to limit women’s participation in politics. Sexist attitudes are fostered and naturalized via podcasts and a podcaster creates a community from their audience which trusts the information spread by the podcaster. The study on sexism in podcasts adds to the research on sexist language in media. As podcasts have a unique position in the field of media, located somewhere between traditional and social media, the current study provides a unique point of view on media sexism and sexism in politics

The discourse of tourism and national heritage: a constrastive study from a cultural perspective

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Departamento de Filología Inglesa. Fecha de lectura: 20-11-2014This thesis presents a research study in the field of online tourism promotion. It focuses on the national online promotion of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, in two different types of websites –institutional and commercial– from three countries, Great Britain, Spain and Romania. The study analyses the way each country presents its national landmarks and combines various modes to create a virtual brochure with a promotional message from both institutional and commercial positions. For this, it studies the organization of the websites and their webpages, as well as the lexico-grammatical and visual features of the promotional messages. Results of the different analyses are interpreted from a cultural perspective. The theoretical framework for the analysis is Systemic Functional Linguistics. The linguistic text is analysed following Halliday’s theory of the metafunctions (1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). Thus, the analysis focuses on the ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings of the verbal message. Analysis of the visual text applies Kress and van Leeuwen’s model (1996, 2006), studying the same types of meanings realised visually. The results of the different analyses are compared from two perspectives: in relation to the types of websites and to the countries in which they were produced. Comparison between institutional and commercial websites reveals a pattern in which the similarities seem to be related to characteristics typical of web organization and layout, tourist promotion and specific topic, while differences reflect the types of websites and their functions. However, when the websites are compared from the point of view of the different countries, a number of national characteristics of web promotion, common to the two functions of websites are revealed. These are further interpreted from a cultural point of view, showing that the findings can be accounted for by the context dimension of cultural variability (Hall 1976, 2000; Hall and Hall 1990). The British and Spanish sets of websites are, in general, consistent with the literature on intercultural communication consulted (Hall 2000; Würtz 2005; Neuliep 2006; Şerbănescu 2007), whereas the Romanian sets do not follow the pattern for its usual classification as a high-context culture, but combine features of both low- and high-contexts. The consistencies seem to indicate the stability of British and Spanish cultures. At the same time, departure from the cultural contextual patterns exists in all the cases analysed. These inconsistencies can be explained by cultural changes and influences due to globalization, and internal changes in terms of politics, economy and society. They also indicate that cultural patterns can be affected by the medium of communication (Internet) and the context of communication (types of promotion). Findings from the thesis emphasize the need for an understanding of multimodality and interculturality in online tourism promotion, especially as applied to creating an image or brand for a country's successful international promotion They show that Systemic Functional Linguistics offers a useful tool from both theoretical and practical perspective which can be applied to areas like composition of promotional messages, online promotion, tourism discourse and its strategies, or intercultural communicationEsta tesis presenta un estudio de investigación en el campo de la promoción turística por internet. Específicamente, analiza la promoción nacional por internet de los Sitios Patrimonio de la Humanidad de la UNESCO, en dos tipos de sitios web – institucional y comercial – de tres países, Gran Bretaña, España y Rumanía. El estudio analiza el modo en el cual cada país presenta sus objetivos turísticos nacionales y combina varias modalidades para crear un folleto virtual con un mensaje promocional desde ambas posiciones, institucional y comercial. Para esto, estudia tanto la organización de los sitios web y sus páginas, como las características léxico-gramaticales y visuales de los mensajes promocionales. Los resultados de los diferentes análisis se interpretan desde una perspectiva cultural. El marco teórico utilizado para el análisis es la Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional. El texto lingüístico es analizado siguiendo la teoría de las metafunciones de Halliday (1985, 1994; Halliday y Matthiessen 2004). Así, el análisis se centra en los significados ideacional, interpersonal y textual de los mensajes verbales. El análisis del texto visual aplica el modelo de Kress y van Leeuwen (1996, 2006), estudiando los mismos tipos de significados realizados visualmente. Los resultados de los diferentes análisis se comparan desde dos perspectivas: en relación con los tipos de sitios web y con los países de donde proceden. Las comparaciones entre los sitios web institucionales y comerciales revelan un patrón en el cual las similitudes parecen relacionadas con las características típicas de la organización y disposición de la web, promoción turística y tema específico, mientras que las diferencias reflejan los tipos de sitios web y sus funciones. Sin embargo, cuando los sitios web se comparan desde el punto de vista de las diferentes culturas, se revela un número de características nacionales de la promoción en línea, comunes en las dos funciones de los sitios web. Estas características nacionales se interpretan más a fondo desde un punto de vista cultural, mostrando que los resultados pueden ser explicados por la dimensión del "contexto" de la variabilidad cultural (Hall 1976, 2000; Hall and Hall 1990). Los córpora de sitios web británicos y españoles son, en general, congruentes con los estudios sobre la comunicación intercultural consultados (Hall 2000; Würtz 2005; Neuliep 2006; Şerbănescu 2007), mientras que los córpora rumanos no siguen el patrón de su clasificación usual como cultura de contexto alto, sino que combinan características de ambos contextos, bajo y alto. Las consistencias parecen indicar la estabilidad de las culturas británica y española. Al mismo tiempo, existen desviaciones de los patrones culturales contextuales en todos los casos analizados. Estas inconsistencias se pueden explicar por los cambios culturales y las influencias debidas a la globalización y los cambios internos en términos de política, economía y sociedad. También indican que los patrones culturales pueden ser afectados por el medio de comunicación (internet) y el contexto de comunicación (tipo de promoción). Los resultados de la tesis ponen de relieve la necesidad de una comprensión de la multimodalidad y la interculturalidad en la promoción turística por internet, especialmente en relación a la creación de una imagen o marca para la promoción internacional de un país. Demuestran que la Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional ofrece una herramienta útil, tanto desde la perspectiva teórica como de la práctica, que se puede aplicar a áreas como la composición de mensajes promocionales, la promoción por internet, el discurso del turismo y sus estrategias, o la comunicación intercultura

La estructuración temática en inglés y español: anotación contrastiva de un corpus bilingüe para aplicaciones lingüísticas y computacionales

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filología, Departamento de Filología Inglesa, leída el 04-12-2015Thematization is recognized as a fundamental phenomenon in the construction of messages and texts by di erent linguistic schools. This location within a text privileges the elements that guide the reader in the orientation and interpretation of discourse at di erent levels. Thematizing a linguistic unit by locating it in the rst-initial position of a clause, paragraph, or text, confers upon it a special status: a signal of the organizational strategy which characterizes di erent text types playing a role as a variable in the distinction of registers, text types and genres. However, in spite of the importance of the study of thematization for message and textual structuring, to date there are no linguistic studies that have undertook the task of validating its aspects in a comparative manner, either for linguistic or computational purposes. This study, therefore, lls a research gap by implementing a methodology based on contrastive corpus annotation, which allows to empirically validate aspects of the phenomenon of Thematization in English and Spanish, it also seeks to develop a bilingual English-Spanish comparable corpus of newspaper texts automatically annotated with thematic features at clausal and discourse levels. The empirically validated categories (Thematic Field and its elements: Textual Theme, Interpersonal Theme, PreHead and Head) are used to annotate a larger corpus of three newspaper genres news reports, editorials and letters to the editor in terms of thematic choices. This characterization, reveals interesting results, such as the use of genre-speci c strategies in thematic position. In addition, the thesis investigates the possibility to automate the annotation of thematic features in the bilingual corpus through the development of a set of JAVA rules implemented in GATE. It also shows the e cacy of this method in comparison with the manual annotation results...Depto. de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y LiteraturaFac. de FilologíaTRUEunpu

The issue of 'impairment':An analysis of diverging discourses used to represent d/Deaf people in the United States of America

The aim of this thesis is to study the discourse that surrounds two common reference terms, ‘d/Deaf’ and ‘hearing-impaired’, for the North American d/Deaf community and determine how this group is being represented through that discourse. The field of Deaf Studies has long discussed the two opposing viewpoints on d/Deaf people: the humanistic/cultural view and the medical/pathological view (Lane, 1995; 1999; Lane, Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996), each of which provide an understanding of a d/Deaf person’s status and social positioning as either a member of a cultural and linguistic minority or of a disabled population. While this provides us insight into the sociological understandings of d/Deaf people, which have been highly contested on both sides, there has been little to no focus on the linguistic realization of these opposing viewpoints. In this thesis, I investigate contemporary American discourse between the years 1990—2015, including a range of genres, within which the reference terms ‘d/Deaf’ and ‘hearing-impaired’ are found. In total, I explored the discourse from over 3000 texts, consisting of media, legal, educational, and other genres. The results of my study demonstrate the ways in which the ideologies behind each of the perspectives manifest in discourse, providing evidence to support the view that a choice in reference term (‘d/Deaf’ vs. ‘hearing-impaired’) primes a particular discourse that serves the agenda of the ideology within which it is grounded. Overall, this thesis applies the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to the context of Deaf studies, exemplifying the ways in which certain discourses perpetuate the unequal power dynamics that exist between d/Deaf and hearing individuals. Through a combination of corpus analyses, including concordances and collocations, and text analyses following the tradition of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 1985; 1994a; Halliday & Mattheissen, 2014), including transitivity (Halliday, 1994a; Thompson, 2004, ), social actor representation (van Leeuwen, 1996) and Appraisal (Martin, 2000; Martin & White, 2005), this study explains the intricacies of how the social representation of d/Deaf people is linked with those reference terms and the discourse that surrounds them. It reveals that ‘hearing-impaired’ carries with it the connotation of pathology and is as such a representation of someone who is defective, incapable, and weak, while ‘d/Deaf’ has the ability to represent a person as able, competent, and proud. These findings call into question our use of identifying terms and what kind of implications our selections can have on the perception of that individual and the social group of which they are a member

Narrative Structure and Characters in the Nanzi Stories of Curacao: a Discourse Analysis.

This dissertation develops a new approach to the analysis of narratives by combining the analysis of narrative structure and character analysis. Through the in-depth analysis of two stories of a collection of 32 Nanzi stories (from Curacao), which are spider/trickster stories in Papiamentu, I develop a method to analyze the structure of the Nanzi stories. My method is based on the determination of narrative division into (1) episodes, organized as macro-propositions under a macro-structure (Van Dijk 1982; 1992); (2) different sections (six), based on narrative and free clauses (Labov 1972); and, (3) major events (Barthes 1975; Chatman 1978). By applying several theories of character analysis to one of my sample stories: Hasan\u27s -er/ed roles (1989), combined with Halliday\u27s process analysis (1997); narration and focalization (Bal 1991); interrelationship of characters (King 1992), I demonstrate (1) how an all-round image of human-like characters is created in the Nanzi story; (2) why the characters in the Nanzi story convey such a vivid impression to the reader

Specialized Discourses of Well-Being and Human Development. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

This volume brings together different kinds of expertise and disciplinary approaches to human development and well-being, crucial issues in today’s world threatened by such diverse problems as climate change, natural catastrophes, unequal distribution of wealth and economic exploitation of developing countries, uncontrolled technological progress, systematic violations of human rights, discrimination and racism, health emergencies. The language analysis toolkit ̶ e.g., cross-cultural pragmatics, corpus linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics ̶ has been enriched by the analytical tools and frameworks volunteered by scholars in demography, economics, international relations, law and political geography. The analysis of the specialized discourses of well-being and human development has meant to investigate to what extent different communities of practice share approaches and methodologies around these current issues

Teaching English poetry to Saudi students: an exploratory study for applying a Systemic Functional Linguistic based pedagogy for improving the reading, analysis and interpretation of poems in the English language

This study formulated and applied a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) based pedagogy which is culturally appropriate for Saudi students in King Saud University for improving the reading, analysis and interpretation of poetry in English. Ian Haneur affirms the necessity of the implementation of cultural knowledge for the reading of poetry; he states that cultural knowledge is “important in that it provides a basis through which understanding is achieved.”(2001: 4).This approach is concerned with linguistic applications which aim to improve analytical powers, in particular, the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 2004; Thompson, 2004). This pedagogy gives Saudi students a tool for reading poetic texts in English and critically analyzes them independently. An attempt which has not been approached much due to concerns of Arab educators about the values of English and American literature and its effects upon readers and a concern over the confrontation of the various moral, social, religious, national, political, historical, and even geographical contexts in the foreign texts (G.Rababah, 1983;M. Obeidat, 1996; Zughoul, 1987; and Asfour andDahiyat, 1983). Furthermore, in this dissertation, I also attempted to address the impact that social, cultural, religious and linguistic differences have on the students' reading and interpretation of poems in English by exploring the perceptions of Saudi students regarding these issues. In my case study, a preliminary questionnaire with closed and open ended questions, class practice answers, post teaching interviews and observation notes were examined using selective coding to interpret the collected data. Analysis of student perceptions in relation to the social, cultural, religious and linguistic differences and the influence they had on their reading of poetry in English revealed meaningful high percentages of agreement which prove that Saudi students were facing problems in all these areas. The analysis of the application of SFL based pedagogy for the Saudi students provided significant evidence that SFL was a useful theory of language which played a purposeful role in showing the architecture of the English language and provided the students with a decoding tool for interpretation