Volume 39, Issue 2 -

This study analyzes the relational frames constructed in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign visit speeches at three levels – the metaphorical surface frame; the non-metaphorical surface frame; and the deep frame – with the help of corpus-based mechanisms, e.g. semantic annotation and classification, semantic network retrieval, etc. In analyzing 11 foreign visit speeches between 2012 and 2017 (amounting to 20,213 words), the study reports three major findings. First, the metaphorical relational surface frames were constructed by intimate interpersonal concepts, war concepts and physical concepts, which are commonly shared by human beings. Second, the non-metaphorical relational surface frames were constructed by highlighting audiences’ beneficiary positions. Third, the deep frames were constructed by underscoring common benefits, cultural communication, people to people communication and the concerns about war and peace. The relational frames identified are compared with the cognition of the international audiences and it shows that the two conform significantly, which improves the acceptability of the speeches. Three strategies can be summarized for diplomatic speech design. First, the presentations based on universally shared experiences and knowledge can minimize perceptive difficulties in audiences. Second, presentations highlighting the audiences’ benefits are more easily accepted. Third, the cognition conceived in the presentations should conform to the audiences’ needs and preferences. The general communication features of Xi’s foreign visit speeches illustrated in the present study may offer a discourse model for diplomatic speeches.

The maritime industry is a dangerous and highly technologically saturated sector. Unfortunately, advancement in automation and technology have not minimised human error as intended. Interaction between humans and technology in the industry is also overtly pre-scripted. The main reason for this is to reduce human error by ensuring predictability in interaction. Ultimately, investigations of non-routine interaction are often based on a hindsight view of what went wrong in a given situation. This article analyses a collection of non-routine interactions that derive from a larger data corpus, using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis. It argues that such a study can capture what is missing from some investigations, namely, what makes sense for crews in the context of a given non-routine situation. Despite the constraints and the challenges of technological complexity, this article argues that reframing psychological matters in non-routine technologically mediated interaction can be a new way of showing how such matters are dynamic, visible and manageable. This can inform the general debate of how to minimise human error, and more specifically, provide insight into the increasing inclusion of technology and as a consequence, the equally increasing amount of technologically mediated interaction that we will see in the future.

This study investigates the use of disaster metaphors in the American media coverage of the 2008 global financial crisis. More specifically, it aims to examine the role of different sub-metaphors in performing various pragmatic and rhetorical functions in financial news discourse. Using the Metaphor Identification Procedure, this study identifies key words from the 1-million-word corpus which comprised the news articles published from September 15, 2008 to March 15, 2009, and examines the associated concordance lines to discern their metaphorical connotations. The findings show that a wide range of sub-source domains of disaster—namely, wind, storm, and water—metaphors was deployed by journalists to capture the various negative impacts of the financial crisis. These findings suggest that the salient extension and mixing of metaphors could enhance the popularization of specialist financial news discourse. The findings also indicate that the news media was complicit in constructing the collective illusion that the financial crisis was unavoidable and not caused by anyone.

Communication between probation officers and juvenile offenders is essential, clarifying the nature and cause of possible disorders and providing insight into the chances of recidivism and/or recovery. Forensic social work, however, is complicated as it is both oriented toward collecting information for the court (forensic aims) and aimed at helping the juvenile’s improvement (social work aims). This paper examines two unique cases of probation officer-juvenile interaction that utilize a board game intended to foster disclosure. As any disclosure may be used against the juvenile in court, the juvenile must be compliant enough without disclosing too much. Using a combination of frame analysis and discourse analyses of delicacy, we describe how the game is used to encourage disclosure as well as how the game allows juveniles to appear compliant ultimately without disclosing much personal information.

This study employs a systemic functional critical discourse analytical approach to the analysis of integrated theistic worldview of Pakistani social media users. To achieve its end, the study focuses on legitimation strategies, where these strategies serve to construct certain truth claims of the people. So, three thousand comments (comprising 8,401 words and 90,423 words) from online discussion forums of Dawn.com and Zemtv.com were studied and discourse samples were collected for in-depth analysis. The legitimation strategies, it is argued, are condensed and interpersonally charged through certain lexico-grammatical choices which embody people’s integrated theistic worldviews. The identity(ies) and identification claims of Pakistanis are found to be internally cohesive, based on theistic legitimation claims. To represent, legitimize and justify their worldviews, Pakistani social media users recontextualize discourses constructed from various combinations of discursive strategies, supported by references to Islamic scripture and popular narratives. The study is a prelude to a more detailed investigation of discursive strategies which represent (de)legitimized worldview and discourses internalized by Pakistani Muslims. Such studies provide deeper insights into (de)construction of (de)legitimation strategies of a society and facilitate further development of systemic functional critical discourse analytical approaches to text and context relations.

The present article addresses genre shifts in Israeli political campaign in 2013, specifically written advertisements published in newspapers, on the Internet, on stickers, in leaflets, and on billboards. I examine shifts to diverse genres (protest slogans, writing on social networks, personal conversation, a math exercise etc.), and analyze various discursive and para-linguistic strategies by means of which these shifts are implemented: use of registers and sociolects identified with particular genres; syntactical, semantic and lexical repetitions; graphic, typographical, and visual elements, etc. I show that due to the expectations of the addressees regarding the reconstructed genres and the addressing parties, genre shifts may serve to fulfill two main pragmatic-rhetorical functions: (1) Promoting messages regarding the desired conduct of the voters during the elections; (2) Self-positioning of the parties, either to strengthen their existing image among the public or to create a new, surprising one. I thus emphasize the key role played by genre shifts in the intertextual phenomenon of integrating semiotic meanings into a linguistic text; specifically in this case, integrating cultural-societal meanings into campaign advertisements.