Volume 38, Issue 6 -

This study explores coherence as a textual phenomenon in research writing Introductions. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics, the analysis identifies differences in the quality of coherence in both experts’ and students’ texts by examining the semantic overlaps between the global Themes, followed by the quality of lexical chain deployment, and by how these inform the development of three rhetorical moves. Close analysis was performed on four texts, drawn from the corpora comprising 35 expert and 35 student research Introduction texts. The analysis reveals that the expert and student writers feature different paths in arguing. At global levels, the experts tend to have the key concepts resonate and their arguments are gradually narrowed down to occupy the niche of the study. The key concepts therefore often form into long and mixed chains both to sustain the line of the argument and to elaborate the difficult concepts. In the students’ texts, the key concepts are less consistently deployed, evidenced in how different paragraphs can develop different sets of concepts. Their long chains are also often formed by static terms which do not effectively develop the argument. Critical concepts often do not occupy prominent positions or are not mentioned earlier to allow for elaboration. When combined, these features compromised the development of the rhetorical move in the students’ texts.

Internet revenue is currently threatened by an increase in the use of advertisement blocking software. This presents a moral problem for Internet users, as by blocking advertisements, they deprive content creators of income for their work. Four hundred and thirty-six comments taken from three naturally occurring online discussions were analyzed from a discursive psychological perspective to explore how posters engage with online debates concerning the morality of blocking advertisements. Posters were found to orientate to a moral dimension against blocking online advertisements. They sought to manage this moral dimension by drawing upon the neutralization techniques of denial of responsibility, denial of injury, condemnation of the condemners, and appeals to higher loyalty. Two aspects of neutralization discourse have also been shown to be used in a novel manner. Rather than denying the victim, Internet users adopt the subject position of “victim” for themselves. Rather than denying injury, they present themselves as injured by online advertising. Posters here present blocking online advertisements as being in their own best interests. In order to change this behavior, then, advertisers must reposition themselves with consumers, to orientate to the presence of advertising online as mutually beneficial, rather than parasitic.

This article examines how subjective paranormal experiences are shared and understood through embodied talk and action. Paranormal experiences often possess subjective qualities, regularly experienced as “senses” or “feelings”; however, the ability to share these experiences collectively provides the opportunity to validate such events. Drawing upon video data selected from over 100 hours of recorded footage during UK-based paranormal investigations, this study uses conversation analysis to examine how individuals communicate their experiences to others and through this evoke a way of understanding their experience as potentially paranormal. It is argued that embodied talk and action invite others to not only see the subjective paranormal experiences of others, but to understand and become co-experiencers in these events.

Modalities are fundamental in building, maintaining and contesting ideological systems. While modalities have been described as resources for constructing both representational and interpersonal aspects of reality and truth, the analytical focus has been on modalities as a relationship between authors, their texts and their audiences, i.e. on their interpersonal functions. Informed by a framework on modalities for discourse analyses of values, Hodge and Kress ’ s theory on ideological complexes and Fairclough ’ s three-dimensional conception of discourse, in this paper I develop a method for examining modalities as resources for building dominant and counter discourses. I use example excerpts that come from my research on Finnish equality discourses to build and demonstrate the method. The example texts were written by people who are differently positioned in relation to salient norms and institutions on gender/sex and sociability: people contacted through a national random sample, people diagnosed with Asperger ’ s syndrome, and people with transgender experiences. The method allows not only for systematic examinations of how modalities function in ordering power-imbalanced interpersonal relations but also attends to an underexplored dimension dealing with how modalities work in ideological representation.

I propose that the fictionalized reader as observed in popular science represents a novel approach to the incorporation of a reader into a non-fiction text. The traditional approach relies on “the reader-in-the-text” – an entity that covertly represents a generalized real reader through author’s voice using evaluation, modalization, concession, and mood among other mechanisms. The findings are based on a comparative analysis of a corpus of 193 occurrences of presented discourse of scientists (extracted from 100 narratives of discovery) and 73 occurrences of presented discourse attributed to the reader (observed outside the narratives). The analysis shows that the fictionalized reader uses presented discourse (speech and thoughts assigned to the reader) to shape a reader-character, who represents a singular individual (as opposed to a generalized audience) with whom a reader can relate. The need for a more concrete reader arises in thought experiments commonly used as explanatory devices in popular science. The fictionalized reader helps popular science authors explain scientific concepts in more engaging terms and contributes to a more interactive and inclusive model of popularization.

This article examines the way that collective identity was discursively constructed during the anti-austerity protests of 28 and 29 June 2011 on the environs of the Greek Parliament. Drawing on the framework of critical discourse analysis, we study the interrelation between macro-level (dominant) values and views, and micro-level individual positions as expressed in graffiti slogans that appeared during the protests. The graffiti data comes from a personal archive which consists of 40 slogans, collected during June 2011. We conduct a systemic-functional analysis to scrutinize the transitivity structures of graffiti slogans, employing the notion of anti-language as central to the micro-level. We then draw on the notion of collective identity to frame the graffiti at the macro-level. Among our main findings is that the writers of graffiti slogans construct their collective identity on a two-fold oppositional axis: the first consists of the dominant institutions or “others,” which are negatively represented, while the second consists of a positively represented and inclusive in-group or “we.” The focus on graffiti has two manifest and interrelated goals: (a) to scrutinize the protesters’ semiotics in order to piece together their identity, thus avoiding subsequent hegemonic interpretations of the participants’ identity; and (b) to preserve the elaborate counter-reality constructed by these ephemeral messages against the official and “mainstream” discourses and their reality.