Usage of Facebook by Student Leaders in Creating Awareness Regarding Covid-19 in Guwahati

Pandemic like COVID-19 has triggered disruptions in personal and collective lives globally. It is not only a pandemic, but also an Infodemic of misinformation about the virus which raises demand for reliable and trustworthy information. With the advent of social media creation and consumption of news have been changing among the young generation. Student leaders have taken on additional work and assumed new responsibilities by volunteering in their communities and creating awareness among the public about the accuracy of information and measures to be taken against the deadly virus. This study explores the use of Facebook handles by the student leaders of two universities in Guwahati in creating awareness about the health-related messages regarding Covid-19 and its vaccination. The researcher will use critical discourse analysis to evaluate the use of social networking sites by the students’ leaders. To understand the usage by the leaders, Facebook pages of the leaders would be followed and studied backed with unstructured interviews with the leaders to understand the purpose of and pattern of using the social media handles.

“This Virus is a Common Threat to All Humans”: Discourse Representation of COVID-19 in Selected Newspaper Editorials

Existing studies on viruses with bias for COVID-19 have mainly been carried out from non-linguistic fields. Linguistics-related studies have not examined the media representation of COVID-19 since it is a recent development. This study, therefore, identifies the representational strategies, discourse structures and discourse strategies deployed by selected newspapers in representing COVID-19 and associated participants. Data were retrieved from selected COVID-19-related editorials from four purposively selected countries and continents across the world: New York Times (USA, North America), The Guardian (UK, Europe), China Daily (China, Asia) and The Punch (Nigeria, Africa), published in the early periods of the pandemic, and precisely from January 1 – March 31, 2020. Guided by aspects of van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of critical discourse analysis on ideological discourse structures, data were quantitatively and qualitatively analysed. The newspaper editorials unusually converged to negatively represent an issue – COVID-19 – because it is largely negatively viewed by all. Ten representational strategies (like economic cankerworm, threat to humans, common enemy), six discourse strategies (like demonising, criminalising, condemnation) and twelve ideological discourse structures (like Actor Description, Authority, Burden) and different participant representations and roles (like solver, potential super spreader) were identified in the study. The newspapers largely set the agenda on the negative representation of the virus and its potential havoc on all facets of human endeavours, thereby giving emotional and informational appeal to all to join hands in earnestly silencing the epidemic. Keywords: COVID-19, media representation, newspaper editorials, discourse strategies, discourse structures

Learners’ reading between the signs in the English second language classroom

Background: In South Africa, developing criticality among learners is essential for their careers in school and outside school. However, knowledge and understanding of critical literacy within the schooling context is unclear, with only patchy guidance available for teachers.Objectives: An intervention project was set up to discover how community signs could be used as a pedagogical tool for teaching learners to be critical readers. The focus of the study was teaching English second language learners to use language as an instrument for creative and critical thinking.Method: In this ‘study within a study’, the learners’ role has been elevated to that of researchers. As ‘researchers’, the learners collected community signs from around their township and conducted interviews with community members. They analysed the signs and interview transcripts using Fairclough’s method of critical discourse analysis. The social semantic theory was used to anchor this study.Results: The first attempt at being critical readers was the categorisation of data. Three categories that formed broad themes were observed. The learners’ responses gave insight into their own ‘processes’ of reception and processes of production of the signs. The results suggest learners developing an ability to read signs as instantiations of township discourses.Conclusion: Teaching critical literacy awareness can be achieved when teachers use texts drawn from familiar contexts. The study contributes to knowledge on how unconventional texts can be used in the classroom to develop criticality among learners.

Majoritarian Stories and Counterstories: Critical Race Theory Approaches to Countering Deficit Discourse in Higher Education

This paper employs critical discourse analysis to interrogate rhetorics of academic deficit subtending institutional neglect of equitable opportunity for students of color at U.S. postsecondary institutions. It further reviews Critical Race Theory literature in education, paying special attention to research that foregrounds social class as a discriminate variable distinguishing truly liberatory pedagogies from the merely critical.

Unravelling Racist Ideological Attitudes in Texts for EFL Students’ Consciousness Awareness

The present paper seeks to raise students‘ consciousness about how language can be used to encode ideological meanings. It also aims to enhance their critical thinking about how social structures- notably racist practices- implicitly impact their behavior and attitudes. In that sense, it draws on critical discourse analysis (hereafter, CDA) to disentangle the meanings of a set of texts dealing with racial discrimination in Go for English Tle used to teach upper sixth students English in Benin. The study basically focuses on van Dijk (1993)‘s and Fowler & Kress (1979)‘s analytical methods to disclose the transparent and hidden situated meanings conveyed in/by the texts at stake. The results of the analysis reveal that racism, as a social practice, is not peculiar to any specific group or community; rather, it is expressed through discourse in all continents. It is concluded from the findings that CDA can serve as a potent theoretical and emancipatory tool for the analysis of important sociolinguistic, linguistic, educational, and multiracial issues facing students.

Critical analysis of the main discourses of the Spanish press about the rescue of the ship «Aquarius»

This article presents an analysis of the main discourses that appear in a sample of Spanish newspapers before and after the arrival of the Aquarius at the port of Valencia in June 2018, in order to observe if there is a solidarity discourse or one that rejects the arrival of the rescued immigrants in Spain. The corpus consists of all the news published from June 10 to July 10, 2018 in the electronic version of the Spanish newspapers ABC, El Mundo, El País and La Vanguardia. The methodology is mainly qualitative-descriptive. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was chosen to observe the main linguistic characteristics of the collected news items and the topics that appear in the articles. The analysis shows that the testimonies of politicians and members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) predominate, but there are few testimonies of immigrants. The solidarity and acceptance of Spain are strengthened, as well as the defense of human rights. This contrasts with the discourses that the press presents after the arrival of the ship in Valencia. A discourse related to the health of immigrants and their need for help and resources predominates, a fact that contributes to the alarm of the majority group.

Pesan Didaktis Simbolis Serat Tripama

This article is a philological study of the Tripama manuscript by Mangkunegara IV. Furthermore, by using Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, this article tries to interpret the symbols of educational value created by the author for the reader. The interesting thing is to take lessons from wayang characters who are generally considered to be antagonists.

PROPUESTA DE UN MODELO HOLISTICO MULTIMODAL PARA UNA LECTURA CRÍTICA DEL RACISMO DISCURSIVO EN LA PRENSA ESCRITA.

El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer un Modelo holístico multimodal para una lectura crítica del racismo en la prensa escrita. Para ello, desde el Análisis Crítico del Discurso Multimodal (ACDM), usaremos como estrategia teórico-metodológica integradora las aportaciones de Teresa Velázquez (2011) y su modelo semiótico-discursivo; el modelo sociocognitivo de van Dijk (1990, 1997, 2003a, 2003b); el modelo de la semiótica visual de Kress y van Leeuwen (1996) y el modelo intersemiótico de Nikolajeva y Scott (2001). Se validarán las matrices de análisis aplicándolas al llamado conflicto mapuche en Chile para extraer resultados y conclusiones valederas en torno a la representación periodística de las minorías étnicas. Abstract: This work aims to propose a holistic multimodal approach for making critical reading about racism in the written press. In order to achieve this, and taking account the Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we use as theoretical and methodological integrative strategies the contributions of Teresa Velázquez and her discursive-semiotic approach (2011), van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach (1990, 1997a, 2003a, 2003b), Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual semiotics approach (1996), and Nikolakeva and Scott’s intersemiotic approach (2001). The analysis matrices are validated using the so-called mapuche conflict in Chile in order to be able to draw conclusive results and conclusions about media representations of ethnic minorities.