Volume 36, Issue 6 -

Drawing on Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” movement, this paper explores the construction of discursive illusions in both China Daily and South China Morning Post ’s ( SCMP ) contrasting coverage of the event. More specifically, the paper investigates how a multi-perspective analytical approach can enable a deeper study of how and to what extent abstract constructs with significant social implications are discursively formed. In order to do so, the framework draws on a three-pronged approach: historicity (habitus as key to the creation of discursive illusions, dealing with the change of perceptions over time); linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualizations of the world to give rise to linguistic and semiotic actions, often through metaphorical and dominant rhetoric); and the degree of social impact (as language and actions engender many categories and stereotypes). The analysis reveals that data from both newspapers draws on similar linguistic and rhetorical tools, including temporal referencing, metaphor, category-pairings, and recontextualization in the discursive construction of a “double contrastive identity” (Leudar et al. [2004], On membership categorization: “Us”, “them” and “doing violence” in political discourse. Discourse & Society 15(2/3). 243–266.) of the movement and its participants in diametrically opposed ways around themes such as law versus lawlessness, victim versus aggressor, etc.

This paper investigates the discourse of LifeChurch.tv, an American evangelical megachurch – headed by the influential pastor Craig Groeschel – whose sermons are accessed by thousands of followers on the Internet. The study is based on the transcripts of a five-year period of online preaching (177 sermons). The goal was to apply the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to digital sermons, particularly focusing on examining the elements of personalization in this relatively new form of “net” evangelism. Groeschel’s “hyper-personalized” style of preaching, we argue, utilizes strategies intended to lessen any perceived barriers between the speaker and his virtual congregation. The study discusses the implications for the commodification and mediatization of religion in the digital age.

The present study examines a set of discussions among professional counselors in the area of youth counseling, as they participate in the development and design of an online video-mediated communication platform. With an overarching interest in how participatory design is performed through conversations, the analysis focuses on analogical reasoning through which the envisaged system is anchored to existing technologies and work practices. Three forms of analogical reasoning are identified: formulating design alternatives; challenging problem formulations; and telling stories. In various ways, these forms of analogical reasoning inform the ongoing design decision-making process, where the hypothetical technology and its organizational and work-related implications are evaluated. The study contributes to how analogical reasoning is done in interaction, and places the findings in the context of participatory design and studies of design reasoning.

Using tools from critical discourse analytic approaches informed by systemic functional linguistics, this paper is an examination of how social values – specifically equality values in Finland – are given meaning by differently socially positioned Finnish citizens, and how those meanings are positioned in constructions of identities. The focus of my examination is on how respondents align with different meanings of equality using linguistic resources of engagement and graduation (James R. Martin and Peter R. R. White [2005], The language of evaluation . Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan). I conduct my analyses on written texts that were elicited in response to open items on a questionnaire. Respondents include individuals recruited through a national random sample, and individuals with transgendered life experiences and/or Asperger’s diagnoses. I consider how being positioned in the margins by institutionalized norms may interact with representation and alignment of Finnish equality in identification. I also pay attention to how individuals strategically reconcile meanings of equality with other important yet potentially conflicting values, such as national identity, sameness and moderation. I discuss the implications of the study in relation to the historical path of equality, and in terms of how particular formulations of equality may contribute to building and maintaining relations of domination.

This study draws on video recordings of interactions between volunteers and evacuees from the areas affected by the March 2011 nuclear power plant explosions in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture. This article has two purposes. The first is to provide a conversation analytic description of a set of interactional practices: displacing responses from their unmarked status as responses to immediately preceding turn-at-talk. The second is to explicate the ways in which the volunteers use the practices in post-disaster communication to address difficulties in affiliating with evacuees who are assumed to have had distressful experiences. The practices, with the Japanese word demo (‘but’) deployed at the turn-beginning position, propose that participants selectively focus on one aspect of the ongoing talk. The volunteers use them to accomplish “being a listener” appropriately in their interactions with the evacuees.

This study investigated self-mockery as an exemplar of jocular mockery. Drawing on authentic verbal data, collected in a university dormitory in Isfahan, Iran, this paper examined the interactional functions of self-mockery, and how self-mockery arose and was responded to in Persian face-to-face multi-party interactions. Seven cases of self-mockery were identified in the recorded transcripts of six multi-party conversations. Analysis of the transcripts indicates that self-mockery was performed to fulfill three interactional functions: (i) saving one’s own face; (ii) saving the face of the listeners; and (iii) bringing reciprocated amusement to the conversation. Furthermore, self-mockery was performed in response to either humor initiated by other interlocutors, or the display of humiliation. The results also revealed two interactional functions for the recipients’ responses, including (i) saving the face of the self-mocker; and (ii) bringing amusement to the conversation. By and large, the results indicated that the relative appropriateness of the response strategy may depend on the interactional function of self-mockery that the recipient wishes to fulfill. And finally, the results showed that the self-mockers and the recipients go along with each other’s interactional exchanges to maintain interactional solidarity.