1,018 research outputs found
'Foreigners are stealing our birth right': Moral panics and the discursive construction of Zimbabwean immigrants in South African media
We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African
Media (SAM) database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social
condition - moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy
to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation
and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader 'experience' the actual content. In addition to
making the anti-immigrant rhetoric appear legitimate, and the danger immediate and real, we
argue that the apparent seamless content is often biased by selection and structured in such a way
as to deny voice to immigrants and their advocates. Among other things, we conclude that since
the readers' interpretations are filtered through lenses of subjectivities defined by communicative
contexts characterized by job scarcity, poverty, crime and wanting healthcare, the news content
heightens anxiety and miseducates more than it enlightens readers on migration issues. Hence
there is a danger of SAM becoming unwitting conveyors of the same vices they preach against.IS
‘Bring back Hitler’s gas chambers’: asylum seeking, Nazis and facebook – a discursive analysis
In this article, we explore how talk about Nazis is used in Internet discussions regarding asylum seeking, and the issue of whether or not opposition to asylum seeking is racist. Discursive analysis was conducted on discussions about asylum seeking from the social networking website Facebook, where references to Nazis were made. Three strategies were identified: (1) people supporting asylum seeking accuse asylum opponents of being racist by referring to Nazis; (2) opponents of asylum seeking deal with such accusations by arguing that the debate is being suppressed because of references to Nazis; (3) in the final, and most striking, strategy, opponents of asylum draw upon ideas associated with the Nazis and Hitler to bring about their anti-asylum position. These findings are discussed in relation to how the link between Nazis and racism is emerging in the asylum debat
Recommended from our members
Beyond the Refugee Crisis how the UK news media represent asylum seekers across national boundaries
Migration is one of the most pressing, divisive issues in global politics today, and media play a crucial role in how communities understand and respond. This study examines how UK newspapers (n = 974) and popular news websites (n = 1044) reported on asylum seekers throughout 2017. It contributes to previous literature in two important ways. First, by examining the ‘new normal’ of daily news coverage in the wake of the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. Second, by looking at how asylum seekers from different regions are represented. The content analysis finds significant variations in how asylum seekers are reported, including terminology use and topics they are associated with. The paper also identifies important commonalities in how all asylum seekers are represented - most notably, the dominance of political elites as sources across all media content. It argues that Entman’s ‘cascade network model’ can help to explain this, with elites in one country able to influence transnational reports
Discourse revisited : dimensions and employment of first-order strategy discourse during institutional adoption
Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process
'Kids sold, desperate moms need cash': Media representations of Zimbabwean women migrants
The article draws on 575 randomly selected articles from the South African Media database
to explore the representation of Zimbabwean women migrants. Using critical discourse analysis
(CDA), the article shows that some of the dominant construction types depict a picture of caricatured,
stereotypical and stigmatised Zimbabwean migrant women without voice and individuality. In turn,
the diversity of their actualities is not captured in the process of constructing the twin images of
Zimbabwean women as victims and as purveyors of decadent and other negative social ills in
society. We conclude that Zimbabwean women migrants appear in the SA media primarily in three
negative images: suppliers of sexual services, as un-motherly, and as victims. We also conclude
that there is need for media to capture the voices of migrant women recounting their everyday lived
experiences in different political and socio-economic contexts in order to account for the migrant
women's voices of resilience, defiance and victimhood and of agency, against the normalising and
marginalising influences of political institutions and national border controls. This would also help
capture the transformative nature of migration to the women, the 'home' in Zimbabwe and the 'home'
in South Africa.IS
Opposition as victimhood in newspaper debates about same-sex marriage
In this paper, we take a queer linguistics approach to the analysis of data from British newspaper articles which discuss the introduction of same-sex marriage. Drawing on methods from CDA and corpus linguistics, we focus on the construction of agency in relation to the government extending marriage to same-sex couples, and those resisting this. We show that opponents to same-sex marriage are represented and represent themselves as victims whose moral values, traditions, and civil liberties are being threatened by the state. Specifically, we argue that victimhood is invoked in a way that both enables and permits discourses of implicit homophobia
Pledging to harm:A linguistic appraisal analysis of judgment comparing realized and non-realized violent fantasies
Intent is a psychological quality that threat assessors view as a required step on a threatener’s pathway to action. Recognizing the presence of intent in threatening language is therefore crucial to determining whether a threat is credible. Nevertheless, a ‘lack of empirical guidance’ (p. 326) is available concerning how violent intent is expressed linguistically. Using the subsystem of judgment in Appraisal analysis, this study compares realized with non-realized ‘pledges to harm’, revealing occasionally counterintuitive patterns of stancetaking by both author types – for example, that the non-realized texts are both prosodically more violent and more threatening, while the realized pledges are more ethically nuanced – which may begin to shed light on which attitudinal markers reliably correlate with an author’s intention to do future harm
Paving the way for research findings: writers' rhetorical choices in education and applied linguistics
Notwithstanding the existence of previous investigations into how research results are presented in different academic disciplines, fewer studies have looked into how authors pave the way for their results, the interdisciplinary differences in ‘result pavements’, and the interconnections between their communicative functions and linguistic choices. Using the techniques of genre analysis, I have analyzed two corpora of research reports in applied linguistics and education in order to identify the possible ways in which experienced writers schematically pave the way for their findings. Using evidence based on authentic research articles, this study demonstrates how writers set the stage for their research results by (i) demonstrating their control of the structure and flow of result-related information, (ii) connecting past research with a current finding while furnishing pertinent background elements that lead the readership progressively to specific findings, (iii) regenerating readers’ interest in their initial research purposes, and (iv) deploying locatives to embed results in a ‘space-saving strategy’ aimed at presenting an abridged Results section. I have also analyzed interdisciplinary differences in the frequencies of these rhetorical steps and the range of intricate linguistic mechanisms employed by authors as communicative resources in each step to establish a smooth rhetorical transition that sets the stage for their research results
What lies beneath: exploring links between asylum policy and hate crime in the UK
This paper explores the link between increasing incidents of hate crime and the asylum policy of successive British governments with its central emphasis on deterrence. The constant problematisation of asylum seekers in the media and political discourse ensures that 'anti-immigrant' prejudice becomes mainstr earned as a common-sense response. The victims are not only the asylum seekers hoping for a better life but democratic society itself with its inherent values of pluralism and tolerance debased and destabilised
Negotiating professional and social voices in research principles and practice
This paper draws on work conducted for a qualitative interview based study which explores the gendered racialised and professional identifications of health and social care professionals. Participants for the project were drawn from the professional executive committees of recently formed Primary Care Trusts. The paper discusses how the feminist psychosocial methodological approach developed for the project is theoretically, practically and ethically useful in exploring the voices of those in positions of relative power in relation to both health and social care services and the social relations of gender and ethnicity. The approach draws on psychodynamic accounts of (defended) subjectivity and the feminist work of Carol Gilligan on a voice-centred relational methodology. Coupling the feminist with the psychosocial facilitates an emphasis on voice and dialogic communication between participant and researcher not always captured in psychosocial approaches which tend towards favouring the interviewer as ‘good listener’. This emphasis on dialogue is important in research contexts where prior and ongoing relationships with professional participants make it difficult and indeed undesirable for researchers to maintain silence
- …