Heroes and villains: multimodal identity construction in children’s wartime visual narratives

The article investigates the Self and Other binaries in wartime visual literature published in Bengali-language children’s periodicals in West Bengal, India during the Bangladesh Liberation Struggle 1971. The study applies a critical multimodal framework using the Social Actors Approach and Social Semiotics within the Discourse-Historical Approach. The binaries are defined by the representation and subsequent differentiation of physical, linguistic, and cultural features of the Bengali and non-Bengali social actors and through their actions in the plots. The representation of social actors in the texts conforms to as well as deviates from typical wartime propaganda.

Hyphenated Identities: Voices from the Watchtower During the Cypriot Civil War

As an implication of the ethnically and nationally diverse nature of Mediterranean polities, identification-driven boundary-making strategies bear considerable relevance for their political processes, both in the contemporary context and in the historical past. By utilizing a Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), this study provides an interpretative exploration of Greek-Cypriot elite discursive framing strategies regarding Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot ethno-national identity during the Cypriot Civil War (1963–1967). The available historical interpretations of this period lead us to expect an exclusionary strategy of boundary contraction to be more prevalent than the inclusionary one of boundary expansion in the discourse of Greek-Cypriot elites. Through an examination of a sample of primary textual sources, the analysis disconfirms such an expectation, as elite figures primarily constructed broader, inclusive frames of ethno-national identity during the civil war. The relative absence of boundary contraction and the prevalence of boundary expansion indicate the applicability of Wimmer’s (2008) universalist approach to ethnic boundary-making, in contrast to the expectations that are built by the Cyprus-specific historical evidence. This study thus lays the groundwork for future research to delineate the discursive framing strategies of elite figures in Cyprus and beyond the ethno-nationally divided island.

THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF INDIGENOUS BELIEF ISSUE IN THE JAKARTA POST

As indigenous belief acknowledgement in Indonesia is still progressive, debatable but limitedly investigated from critical discourse analysis perspective, this research is aimed at revealing the discursive construction of indigenous belief issue in The Jakarta Post. This research focuses on analyzing indigenous belief as phenomenon, indigenous believers and government as social actor through the analysis of nomination and predication strategies. Articles published in The Jakarta Post online newspaper from 2013 - 2020 are chosen as corpus data. To analyze this research, Discourse-Historical Approach by Wodak and Meyer (2009) is used as the framework. This research also employs corpus analysis using Sketch Engine. The finding suggests that the issue centralized in the discussion of identity card and human right framed in five different periods. The use of collective proper name, anthroponym and deixis are significant to refer to indigenous believers, meanwhile institutional name, anthroponym and synecdoche are mostly used as referent for government. There is a shift of predication strategies from negative to positive when it discussed government policy on putting indigenous belief column on identity card. This research suggests that the use of corpus software as well as manual corpus screening is important to locate more detail language data.

A Corpus-based Study of the Discursive Construction of Corporate Identities by Chinese and American Banks

By taking the perspective of Social Constructivism and the Discourse-Historical Approach, and using the corpus linguistic tool Wmatrix, this study compares the discursive strategies adopted by Chinese and American banks in their construction of corporate identities. The research underlines the shared and unique features presented in prominent themes, communication strategies and lexical patterns. It is found that Chinese banks prefer to emphasise their historical development, industrial ranking and organisational structure to positively construct their identity as industry leaders, adopting a corporate ability strategy through the frequent usage of numbers and superlative adjectives. However, American banks tend to stress care for their employees, communities and environment. They prefer to use a corporate responsibility strategy to build their identity as social contributors through the frequent usage of performative verbs to exhibit specific corporate activities. This study may have practical implications for Chinese companies wishing to improve their international communication capability and may offer educational implications for Business English teaching.

Restoring (Old) Questions of Sovereignty under the Cover of Minority Protection?

Minority groups are often the subject of studies dealing with sovereignty and European integration. A now also common topic in political science is the rise of populist movements. Scholars study both of these issues extensively, but little research has been done on their nexus. Against this background, this article looks at the current sovereignty discourse in the minority area of South Tyrol. Even though three linguistic groups peacefully co-exist in the Italian province, various calls for dual citizenship have arisen. The possibility of acquiring an Austrian passport became a salient topic, especially since the övp/fpö government of Austria. Using the discourse-historical approach, the authors contextualize medial discourses with social-cultural context information. Results suggest that local media are disseminating a discourse regarding dual citizenship that largely differs from the opinion of the majority of the population, but corresponds to that of the populist actors who seem to fuel the issue.

“Defend your right!” How the populist radical right uses references to rights and freedoms to discursively construct identities

The article explores how the European populist radical right uses references to rights and freedoms in its political discourse. By relying on the findings of the existing research and applying the discourse-historical approach to electoral speeches by Marine Le Pen and Jarosław Kaczyński, the leaders of two very dissimilar EU PRR parties, the Rassemblement National and the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, the article abductively develops a functional typology of references to rights and freedoms commonly used in discourses of European PRR parties: it suggests that PRR discourses in Europe feature references to the right to sovereignty, citizens’ rights, social rights, and economic rights. Such references are used as a coherent discursive strategy to construct social actors following the PRR ideological core of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. As the PRR identifies itself with the people, defined along nativist and populist lines, rights are always attributed to it. The PRR represents itself as the defender of the people and its rights, while the elites and the aliens are predicated to threaten the people and its rights. References to rights in PRR discourses intrinsically link the individual with the collective, which allows to construct and promote a populist model of ethnic democracy.

Far-right discourse as legitimacy? Analysing political rhetoric on the “migration issue” in Greece

This article advances research on the normalisation of far-right rhetoric on the “migration issue” by analysing statements from the current Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the ruling political party New Democracy political figures. Having presented the discourse-historical approach (DHA) from critical discourse studies (CDS) as a suitable theory and method of analysis of political discourses, I use an argumentative-based DHA approach and add the argumentative schemes of Aristotelian topoi and fallacies to explore how the leadership of the conservative New Democracy government adopted far-right rhetoric on the refugee issue to justify its tough political agenda on security, law, and order. In particular, I focus on the representation of migration as a threat to national security and public health, the politics of hate, and theories of securitisation via an in-depth analysis of the current and former prime ministers’ discourses, the former government spokesman’s statement on the refugee issue and a popular journalist and New Democracy’s MP television interview, and intend to illustrate how extreme right rhetoric could serve the conservative New Democracy’s political strategies.

Infodemic in Germany and Brazil

Even though the topic of infodemic – a blending of the words information and pandemic – emerged just in 2020 it addresses a question that has been crucial ever since in communication: How to establish – or undermine – credibility? This article deals with rhetorical techniques applied by Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro (2019–) and high-ranking politicians of the German party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) during the COVID-19-pandemic. The analysis is based on tweets published through their official accounts during the first year of the pandemic (@jairbolsonaro, @AfD). Meanwhile Bolsonaro, who was in charge during the crisis, attacks the media claiming they would spread panic and false information, AfD, an opposition party, concentrates its criticism on the federal and state governments. The key concept credibility‹ as discussed by Ortwin Renn (2019) and basic claims that appear in Aristotle’s »Rhetoric«, dating from the 4th century BC, build the theoretical basis of this study. Methodologically, the analysis is based on the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl/Wodak 2001), focusing on discursive strategies of negative other representation, and a framework for studies on the language of legitimation and delegitimation developed by Theo van Leeuwen (1996).

Media debates over the renaming of the cityscape

This contribution presents two case studies: Poznań in Poland and New Delhi in India, focusing on the media coverage surrounding the re-naming of one street in each location. We apply a uniform method – the Discourse Historical Approach – to analyse newspaper articles, below-the-line comments and Internet forum discussions. As symbolic marking of the territory can be recruited for a political agenda going beyond memory politics, this article not only investigates the public controversy surrounding the (re-)naming of the cityscape, but also addresses the questions of how these debates link inter-discursively with other issues in contemporary politics, such as the independence of the judiciary in Poland and social justice in India.