scholarly journals Attitudes towards migrant workers in South Africa: A critical discourse analysis

Author(s):  
Vongai S. Ruzungunde ◽  
Sindiso Zhou

Background: The influx of migrants from neighbouring countries has contributed to diversity in South Africa. This has caused on-going clashes between local residents and migrants. This article explores the role of discourse towards enabling a cohesive society. There has been much focus on migrants working in South Africa over the 2020 December festive season as many faced challenges in travelling to their respective countries because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This limelight exposed the underlying discrimination towards migrants in South Africa remain regardless of the South African progressive Constitution that values and respects individuals as well as protecting them from discrimination.Aim: This article adopts threat theory and uses critical discourse analysis to highlight the existing and continued discrimination towards migrant workers. The article exposes the causes of social inequalities, which can assist the government in decision-making towards reducing the inequality gap in service delivery.Setting: Public viewer comments on the news updates on migrants’ travel that were posted on the national news websites over the 2020 festive season were analysed.Methods: Critical Discourse analysis (CDA) was employed as a method of analysis in this article.Results and conclusion: The article intends to add to the existing body of knowledge and to also inform local government towards canvasing agenda that incorporate all human rights and enable a cohesive society by considering the role of discourse as an enabler of the problems experienced in societies. The results show that discourse contributes to negative attitudes, hate speech, discrimination and stereotyping towards migrants in South Africa.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Phillip Joy ◽  
Matthew Numer ◽  
Sara F. L. Kirk ◽  
Megan Aston

The construction of masculinities is an important component of the bodies and lives of gay men. The role of gay culture on body standards, body dissatisfaction, and the health of gay men was explored using poststructuralism and queer theory within an arts-based framework. Nine gay men were recruited within the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants were asked to photograph their beliefs, values, and practices relating to their bodies and food. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the photographs as guides. Data were analyzed by critical discourse analysis and resulted in three overarching threads of discourse including: (1) Muscles: The Bigger the Better, (2) The Silence of Hegemonic Masculinity, and (3) Embracing a New Day. Participants believed that challenging hegemonic masculinity was a way to work through body image tension.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Donoghue

The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently employed within critical discourse analysis and provides more detailed discussion on the import of these concepts for critical discourse analysis. The article also argues that introducing the Gramscian concepts of the war of position and spontaneous and normative grammars enables the further realisation of critical discourse analysis’ ambition to be an emancipatory tool in political and social science. In so doing, the article contributes to work on critical discourse analysis as a method in political studies, particularly concerning the role of discourse in reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical power relations between classes and social groups, and potential challenges to this.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veera Kangaspunta

The aim of this article is to approach one specific environmental topic and the public debate around this topic from a user-oriented perspective – through online news comments. The article analyses online news and comments sections from three Finnish online newspapers concerning the mining accident of Talvivaara company in November 2012. Discourse and discursive legitimation strategies are used as analytical tools with the focus of critical discourse analysis. The study aims to solve what kind of discourses the public debate contains and how these discourses are connected to certain legitimation strategies. In addition, the article also continues the conceptual deliberation about the concept of the public as a group of people participating in public discussion. The study shows that Talvivaara news and news comments consist four main strategies, authorization, rationalization, moral evaluations and mythopoiesis, used for legitimation, relegitimation and delegitimation. However, the parties differ in the way they utilize these strategies and different discourses. Consequently, online news commenting appears as a unique part of the public debate about the topic, rather than remaining marginal flaming. The users tend to absorb the role of the public as a part of the public showdown about the shared issue.


JALABAHASA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Herlianto A.

Penelitian ini menginvestigasi representasi feminisme pada lagu dangdut koplo Jawa. Tidak banyak yang mengkaji lagu dangdut koplo Jawa dari perspektif feminisme. Padahal, secara historis, Jawa memiliki agen-agen pergerakan untuk feminisme yang secara faktual seharusnya mempengaruhi kesusastraan dan kesenian Jawa. Ada lima lagu dalam bentuk transkrip sebagai data yang diperoleh dengan mentranskripsi lagu dangdut koplo Jawa dari YouTube. Data lalu dianalisis dengan menggunakan analisis wacana kritis van Dijk. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa lagu-lagu dangdut koplo Jawa merepresentasikan kesetaraan perempuan terhadap laki-laki. Peran perempuan diungkapkan tidak lagi sebagai second sex, yang sepenuhnya sebagai ibu rumah tangga, tetapi mereka memiliki kesempatan untuk memilih masa depan secara independen. Sementara itu, feminisme dinyatakan secara langsung dan tidak langsung di dalam lagu dengan menggunakan bahasa kiasan dalam bentuk metafora.This research investigated the representation of feminism in Javanese koplo dangdut song. These songs have got little attention in terms of feminism representation. Meanwhile, historically, Javanese society has factual agents of movement for feminism who should be influencing to the Javanese arts and literature.There arefive transcriptions of the songs as the data which collected by transcripting the songs from YouTube. The collected data were then analysed by applying van Dijk frame work of critical discourse analysis. The results show that most of the songs present gender equality between men and women. The role of women is not only presented as the second sex or as mainly a house wife, but they have opportunities to choose their own future life independently. This condition is suggested by using indirect language or using metaphoric expressions.


2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Ruiseco ◽  
Thomas Slunecko

Following the discourse-historical approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (Wodak, de Cilia, Reisigl and Liebhart 1999; Wodak 2001), we analyze the inaugural speech of the actual president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, which he delivered on August 7th, 2002 in Bogotá. We take this speech as an illustration for the construction of national identity by the Colombian elites. In our analysis, we are particularly interested in Uribe’s strategy of referring to the European heritage and in his ways of appeasing the cultural and ethnic differences of the population.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hayes

The ‘academic orthodoxy’ (Brookfield 1986) of student engagement is questioned by Zepke, who suggests that it supports ‘a neoliberal ideology’ (2014: 698). In reply, Trowler argues that Zepke fails to explain the mechanisms linking neoliberalism to the concepts and practices of student engagement (2015: 336). In this article, I respond to the Zepke-Trowler debate with an analysis of student engagement policies that illuminates the role of discourse as one mechanism linking neoliberal values with practices of student engagement. Through a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis, I demonstrate a persistent and alarming omission of human labour from university policy texts. Instead, the engagements of students and staff are attributed to technology, documents and frameworks. Student engagement is discussed as a commodity to be embedded and marketed back to students in a way that yields an ‘exchange value’ (Marx 1867) for universities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mei Ying Tan

This study made explicit the discourses of 10 teachers working as university-based teacher educators in Singapore to understand their enacted identities. It framed identity as discursive, constructed through language and talk. Interview data were analyzed using descriptive discourse analysis tools, with critical discourse analysis influencing the process. The discourses are as follows: (a) The value of seconded teachers is located firmly within schools, with practice and practitioner elevated above theory and academics; (b) teaching is the core role of seconded teachers, and discourses about learning, development, and research are weak; and (c) an individualistic framing situates the locus of change on teacher-practitioners. Hybrid spaces that bring theory and practice together are discursive spaces. Both the strengths and limitations of existing discursive identities need to be acknowledged, and multifaceted and complex practitioner identities explored. This article contributes to the integration of practitioners into the wider community of teacher educators in the university.


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