An Ecolinguistic Approach to Critical Discourse Studies

This article explores the recently emerging area of ecolinguistics as a form of critical discourse study. While ecolinguistics tends to use the same forms of linguistic analysis as traditional critical discourse studies, the normative framework it operates in considers relationships of humans not just with other humans but also with the larger ecological systems that all life depends on. Ecolinguistics analyses discourses from consumerism to nature poetry, critiquing those which encourage ecologically destructive behaviour and seeking out those which encourage relationships of respect and care for the natural world. The expanded context of ecolinguistics complicates power relations between oppressor and oppressed since it considers impacts on non-human subjects and future generations not yet born, necessitating both theoretical development of CDS and an application of an ecologically based normative framework for judging discourses against

Enemy Aliens and Internment

The internment of enemy aliens in the First World War was a global phenomenon. Camps holding civilian as well as military prisoners could be found on every continent, including in nation-states and empires that had relatively liberal immigration policies before the war. This article focuses on three of the best-known examples: Britain, Germany and the United States. Each had its own internment system and its own internal threshold of tolerance for violence. Nonetheless, they were interconnected through wartime propaganda and diplomacy, and through constant appeals to the rules of war, the rights of "civilised" nations and the requirements of self-defence

Disability, gender and power in Japanese television drama

Traditionally, people with disabilities have been kept segregated and invisible in Japanese society and media. The 1990s, however, saw the start of a surprising boom in the portrayal of disability on Japanese television. Within the last ten years, there have been popular, prime-time dramas featuring portrayals of paraplegia, deafness, autism, visual impairment and learning disabilities. At first sight, the sudden increase in programmes about disability seems to follow a number of political changes which occurred in Japan during the 1990s, as increased disabled activism created pressure to move away from the widely condemned medical model of disability towards new constructions. But closer analysis suggests that, while the television dramas manage to avoid some of the negative images that have appeared on television in the West, their overall effect is that of reinforcing many of the aspects of the traditional medical model. This is particularly true for dramas that feature disabled female characters, suggesting a relationship between representations of disability based on the medical model and traditional representations of gender

Counter-discourses and the relationship between humans and other animals

Several recent studies have critically analyzed discourses involved in the oppression and exploitation of nonhuman animals, including those of the meat industry and zoos. This article turns the spotlight oil counter-discourses, such as those of ecology and animal liberation, to ask if the alternatives they promote have the potential to contribute towards more harmonious relationships between humans and other animals. Despite their extreme importance in opposing oppressive discourses, the counter-discourses frequently share some of the basic assumptions of the discourses they criticize

The Corporation as Person and Psychopath: Multimodal Metaphor, Rhetoric and Resistance

This article conducts a detailed analysis of multimodal metaphor in the documentary film The Corporation, with particular focus on the metaphor the corporation is a person. The metaphors that make up the film are analysed within the immediate context of the rhetorical structure of the film, the discursive context of the use of the corporation is a person metaphor by corporations to gain power, and the background context of the corporation is a person as a ubiquitous conceptual metaphor in everyday cognition. The metaphors in the film are then compared with other multimodal metaphors from two protest videos. The article can be thought of as Positive Discourse Analysis, in that the use of metaphors in the film and videos is held up as an example of how multimodal media can be used to resist hegemonic discourses that harm people and the environment. A practical aim of the analysis is to reveal the detailed workings of the metaphors in order to provide resources that can be drawn on in the construction of effective materials for challenging hegemonic constructions of the corporation in the future

Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals

This paper describes how language contributes to the oppression and exploitation of animals by animal product industries. Critical Discourse Analysis, a framework usually applied in countering racism and sexism, is applied to a corpus of texts taken from animal industry sources. The mass confinement and slaughter of animals in intensive farms depend on the implicit consent of the population, signaled by its willingness to buy animal products produced in this way. Ideological assumptions embedded in everyday discourse and that of the animal industries manufacture and maintain this consent. Through analysis of texts, this paper attempts to expose these assumptions and discusses implications for countering the domination and exploitation of animals

Health and the Social Construction of Masculinity in Men's Health Magazine

Although health has not traditionally been a male concern, the past few years have seen the gradual development of a shared concept of men’s health within the public domain. Among the leading participants in the construction of this concept is Men’s Health magazine. In this article, six issues of Men’s Health (June-December 2000) are critically analyzed to reveal the ideological assumptions on which the discourse of the magazine is based. Evidence is presented that suggests that Men’s Health magazine, while giving abundant health advice, does so in a way that reproduces a type of hegemonic masculinity associated not with health but with a variety of negative health behaviors