22 research outputs found
News discourse and readersâ comments: expanding the range of citizenship positions?
First Published May 15, 2017.Little attention has been paid to the relation between citizensâ representation in news media and citizen participation in readersâ comments, and to the roles both discourses may play in fostering public engagement in official consultation processes. This article offers a discursive analysis of these questions by focusing on how commenters, through their uses of language in connection with news texts, address the political ordering of news discourse and their positioning therein. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and other interaction-oriented forms of discourse analysis, we examine, first, the topics and the framing of voices in news coverage and, second, the interactional order, stance markers and style features of readersâ comments. Based on data regarding a policy plan on hydroelectric power in Portugal that was submitted to public consultation, we show that citizen positionings emerging from the interaction between news texts and comments change the balance of power within the discussion, but their participatory potential is restrained by traditional citizenship regimes.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was developed for the project COMPOLIS: 'Communication and Political Engagement with Environmental Issues' and supported by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portugal) [grant number EXPL/IVC-COM/1717/2012] through national funds (PIDDAC) and co-funded by the European Fund of Regional Development (FEDER) through COMPETE - Operational Program Competitive Factors (POFC).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Constructing the "Stranger" in Camus' L'Ătranger - Registerial and Attitudinal Variability under Translation
This paper demonstrates insights arising when some key aspects of systemicfunctional linguistic theory (Halliday 19994) and the appraisal framework(Martin and White 2005) are applied to exploring variation between multipletranslations of the same source text. For the purposes of thisdemonstration, an investigation is conducted by reference to the muchdiscussed and debated variation between the multiple translations of theopening to Albert Camusâ celebrated novel, LâĂtranger (translated either asThe Stranger or The Outsider). It is demonstrated that Hallidayâs notions ofâinstantiationâ, ârealisationâ and âregisterâ can be applied to show that thisvariation is communicatively significant in that it involves a shift of registerand hence a shift in the social situation being construed for eachtranslation. It is also demonstrated that the account of âinvoked attitudeâdeveloped in the appraisal framework literature can be applied to show that the different translations have different attitudinal potentials. It is arguedthat these two lines of analysis can usefully be applied more generally inanalyses concerned with inter-translation variation
How products are evaluated? Evaluation in customer review texts
This study, drawing on insights from the Appraisal framework, the parameter-based approach to evaluation and corpus linguistics, investigates the evaluative language used in customer review texts. The primary goal of this investigation is to develop a framework of evaluation that can be used to account adequately for evaluative expressions in customer review texts, and the ultimate goal is to support the argument that the modelling and theorising of evaluation is context-specific. Based on the investigation into a corpus compiled of review texts retrieved from www.amazon.co.uk, this study proposes a data-driven, parameter-based and appraisal-informed framework of evaluation which comprises four parametersâQuality, Satisfactoriness, Recommendability and Worthiness. Since these parameters are not thought-up, but are generalised from real data, it is arguable that the proposed framework of evaluation is certainly valid and thus can be used to describe and analyse evaluative language used in this particular context. This in turn indicates that the description and theorising of evaluation is indeed highly dependent on the discourse type that is under examination
Crystallising the official narrative: News discourses about the killings from the Philippine governmentâs campaign against illegal drugs
News mediaâs construction of crime and drugs can shape and change public perceptions and influence popular acceptance of policy and state responses. In this way, media, through selection of sources and framing of narratives, act as important agents of social control, either independently or indirectly by state actors. This article examines how the Philippine governmentâs anti-drug campaign, and the thousands of deaths resulting from them, has been depicted by the media to the public. We conducted a discourse analysis of television news stories to extract dominant frames and narratives, finding a pattern of over-privileging of State authority as a source, resulting in a monolithic message of justifying the killing of suspects. Furthermore, the âevent-focusedâ slant, which dominates the character of reports by media, inevitably solidifies the narrative that the deaths are a necessary consequence of a national public safety campaign. By relying almost exclusively on this narrative, to the exclusion of alternative frames, the media amplifies and crystallises the stateâs narrative. As we critically examine how drugs, drug use and the zero-tolerance policy are positioned through discourse in news texts, the article raises important implications to the ethics and role of journalism in politics and provides explanations relating to crime-reporting norms, values and media organisation realities in the country
Negotiating treatment for hepatitis C: Interpersonal alignment in the clinical encounter
Antiviral treatment for hepatitis C constitutes a considerable physical and psycho-social challenge without guarantee of treatment success. Using semi-structured in-depth interviews, this article investigates the experiences of people on hepatitis C treatment and the experiences of physicians who care for people with hepatitis C. Given the importance of the interpersonal dimension of the patientâphysician relationship for patients accessing treatment, adhering to treatment, dealing with treatment side-effects and completing treatment, the article focuses on the interpersonal dimension of patientsâ and physiciansâ accounts. The theoretical foundation is âappraisalâ theory from systemic functional linguistics, which is grounded in Bakhtinâs notions of heteroglossia and dialogism. The article describes the intersubjective stances that patients and physicians adopt in accounts of their interactions about hepatitis C treatment, the values they construct and the semantic backdrop against which these meanings are constructed. The article traces the semantic patterns of intersubjective alignment and disalignment between patients and physicians, as well as the semantics of patientsâ challenging the intersubjective stances taken by their physicians. While the biomedical discourse was intersubjectively at odds with the experiences of some patients, others aligned with it. In fact, understanding and speaking the language of biomedicine enabled some patients to challenge the traditional doctorâpatient relationship and to reconfigure it into a partnership approach