Jul 04
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Unified Discourse Analysis
Subtitle: Language, Reality, Virtual Worlds and Video Games
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
http://www.routledge.com/
Book URL: http://bit.ly/1mls2TZ
Author: James Paul Gee
Electronic: ISBN: 9781315774459 Pages: 175 Price: U.S. $ 44.95
Hardback: ISBN: 9781138774513 Pages: 134 Price: U.S. $ 145.00
Paperback: ISBN: 9781138774520 Pages: 134 Price: U.S. $ 39.95
Abstract:
In this ground-breaking new textbook, best-selling author and experienced
gamer, James Paul Gee, sets out a new theory and method of discourse analysis
which applies to language, the real world, science and video games. Rather
than analysing the language of video games, this book uses discourse analysis
to study games as communicational forms. Gee argues that language, science,
games and everyday life are deeply related and each is a series of
conversations. Discourse analysis should not be just about language, but about
human interactions with the world, with games, and with each other,
interactions that make meaning and sustain lives amid risk and complexity.
Jul 01
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: The Social Origins of Language
Series Title: Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language 19
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Oxford University Press
http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199665327.do
Author: Daniel Dor
Author: Chris Knight
Author: Jerome Lewis
Hardback: ISBN: 9780199665327 Pages: 528 Price: U.K. £ 90.00
Paperback: ISBN: 9780199665334 Pages: 528 Price: U.K. £ 35.00
Abstract:
This book presents a new perspective on the origins of language, and highlights the key role of social and cultural dynamics in driving language evolution. It considers, among other questions, the role of gesture in communication, communities, and the time-frame for language evolution.
Jun 30
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Multimodal and Visual Literacy in the Adult Language and Literacy Classroom
Helen de Silva Joyce
This latest resource aims to assist teachers to systematically integrate a focus on multimodal and visual literacy into their programming and classroom practice.
It provides:
an introduction to the elements through which multimodal and visual texts make meaning
sample analyses of multimodal texts from community and workplace contexts
programming and assessment approaches aligned to accredited curricula and training packages
sample classroom activities which will help teachers integrate multimodal and visual literacy into their teaching program
NSW AMES Publications
Order online at www.ames.edu.au
T: +61 2 8293 6940
F: +61 2 9715 8300
E: publications@ames.edu.au
Multimodal and visual literacy-flyer
Jun 30
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION IN PRIMATES: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
Edited by Marco Pina & Nathalie Gontier
Book Abstract:
How did social communication evolve in primates? In this volume, primatologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science systematically analyze how their specific disciplines demarcate the research questions and methodologies involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of social communication in primates in general, and in humans in particular. In the first part of the book, historians and philosophers of science address how the epistemological frameworks associated with primate communication and language evolution studies have changed over time, and how these conceptual changes affect our current studies on the subject matter. In the second part, scholars provide cutting-edge insights into the various means through which primates communicate socially in both natural and experimental settings. They examine the behavioral building blocks by which primates communicate, and they analyze what the cognitive requirements are for displaying communicative acts. Chapters highlight cross-fostering and language experiments with primates, primate mother-infant communication, the display of emotions and expressions, manual gestures and vocal signals, joint attention, intentionality and theory of mind. The primary focus of the third part is on how these various types of communicative behavior possibly evolved, and how they can be understood as evolutionary precursors to human language. Leading scholars analyze how both manual and vocal gestures gave way to mimetic and imitational protolanguage, and how the latter possibly transitioned into human language. In the final part, we turn to the hominin lineage, and anthropologists, archeologists and linguists investigate what the necessary neurocognitive, anatomical and behavioral features are in order for human language to evolve, and how language differs from other forms of primate communication.
Table of Contents: http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/evolutionary+%26+developmental+biology/book/978-3-319-02668-8
ABOUT THE SERIES INTERDISCIPLINARY EVOLUTION RESEARCH
Website: http://www.springer.com/series/13109
FORTHCOMING ANTHOLOGIES (to appear in Fall & Winter 2014):
Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, Evidence, Emanuele Serrelli & Nathalie Gontier (eds)
Reticulate Evolution: Symbiogenesis and Horizontal Gene Transfer, Nathalie Gontier (ed)
Cultural Phylogenetics: Concepts and Applications in Archaeology and Anthropology, Larissa Mendoza Straffon (ed)
Jun 06
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
AUTHOR: Dániel Zoltan Kádár
TITLE: Relational Rituals and Communication
SUBTITLE: Ritual Interaction in Groups
PUBLISHER: Palgrave Macmillan
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Sukriye Ruhi, Middle East Technical University
SUMMARY
‘Relational Rituals and Communication’ can be viewed as the full-blown
product of Kádár’s longstanding interest in linguistic rituals and
ritualization (e.g., Kádár, 2007). The monograph is theoretical in orientation
and argues for a discursive and relational approach to researching
constructive and destructive rituals in interpersonal communication. It
illustrates the approach with data drawn from both written and spoken language
in a variety of social contexts and languages. Drawing on insights and
concepts from various fields such as anthropology, cultural history,
(im)politeness, and psychology, the book offers an innovative perspective on
how people (re-)create their interpersonal relationships through ritual acts.
With this work, Kádár aims to
– offer a discursive, relational perspective on the ritual aspects of
communication, particularly in the context of in-group social networks,
– examine how ritual relational practices shape discourse and our relations
with people,
– show that rituals and ritualization are wider in scope in interpersonal
communication, both in terms of the ‘unit’ of the ritual act and in terms of
the social contexts in which rituals are performed.
Chapter One opens with the book’s motivation, and presents preliminaries for
its relational and discursive approach to rituals and rituality in language
use and interaction. It highlights the book’s scope as a study on relational
rituals primarily in in-group social networks, and situates the relational
approach against the background of traditional approaches to rituals such as
in the foundational work of Durkheim (1912/1995). Contrary to the idea that
interaction in contemporary Western societies is characterized by
deritualisation (e.g., Burke, 2005), Kádár argues that rituality in language
use is very much a part of both Western and Eastern societies, albeit in
different forms. The author defines and describes the characteristics of
relational ritual in the following manner: “Relational ritual is a
formalised/schematic, conventionalized and recurrent act, which is
relationship forcing, i.e. by operating it reinforces/transforms in-group
relationships. “Ritual is realized as an embedded (mini-)performance
(mimesis), and this performance is bound to relational history (and related
ethos), or historicity in general (and related social ethos). Ritual is an
emotively invested affective action, as anthropological research has shown”
(pp. 11-12).
Chapter One continues with a discussion of the data and the data analytic
methodology employed in the study. Kádár underscores that the discursive
approach necessitates the analysis of “longer stretches of interaction” (p.
14), to observe how rituals are deployed in interaction. The discursive
methodology is complemented by a look at the data from both participant and
theoretical perspectives. In line with this approach, the author utilizes data
from diverse languages (English, Hungarian and Chinese), comprising
conversations with his family and friends, “post-event interviews” (p. 18),
computer-mediated communication, historical epistolary discourse, and literary
works.
Chapter Two presents the theoretical framework and expands on the features of
relational rituals. The first two features identified in the definition of
relational rituals are their “formalised/schematic and conventionalised”
nature and their recurrence. Kádár places relational rituals within the
innermost circle of three concentric circles comprising (linguistic) acts that
have relatively fixed forms. Ordered from the outermost towards to innermost,
these are: Schematic acts, conventional relational acts, and ritual relational
acts. Schematic acts are defined as “pre-existing forms of behaviour used in
recurrent ways that are readily recognisable to members” (p. 25). Relational
rituals share with schematic acts their reference to the relational history of
the interactants and their possible lack of transparency to the outsider.
Conventional relational acts form the next level of the inner circle. These
are acts that pertain to relating and may operate in both societal and
in-group networks. They create normative expectancies and acquire fixed
pragmatic meanings for the group in question (p. 42). While relational rituals
are also conventionalised, they are distinguished by an emphasis on “mimetic
performance” (ibid.). Kádár describes the central feature of mimetic
performance as the enactment and re-enactment of “certain beliefs and values”
(p. 45). Ritual practice thereby co-constitutes relations in a ‘ritual
moment’. Quoting Koster (2003: 219), Kádár states that the ritual moment
creates “a temporary destruction of awareness of the wider meaningful
relations of one’s individuality and the reduction of the self to the
immediate experience of the here and now” (p. 48). Performance is central to
the understanding of ritual in the book, and I give one example below to
illustrate a number of recurring themes in the argumentation: how rituals may
‘neutralise’ to a convention or disappear; how they may crucially depend on
relational history; how they may interface with politeness; and how they
differ in the extent of their possibility of being recognised by outsiders to
a relational network.
During his stay in Taiwan, the author went to martial art training sessions
every day, where he became friends with a Taiwanese who was attending a
Chinese chef school and who was keen to talk about Chinese recipes and advise
the author on what Chinese dishes to taste. It became the author’s habit to
greet his friend with the question “What do we need to eat today?” uttered in
Chinese. The greeting enhances the “Taiwanese person’s professional identity
as a chef” and thus has politeness value for the interactants (p. 41). But it
also displays a performance value as it harks back to their conversations
about Chinese food. In this respect the utterance is not transparent as an
in-group conventionally polite act of greeting to an outsider. However, the
author remarks that the greeting lost its ritual value in time and “was
responded to with a standard ‘Hi’ and … was normatively expected to occur”
(p. 43). He cautions, however, that ritual value may be different for the
participants in an interaction.
The focus of Chapter Three is on the constructive and discursively organised,
fixed formal and functional properties of in-group rituals and network
identity formation, which may rely on in-group ethos and topics that are
significant for the network. In this chapter Kádár draws here on both e-mail
and historical Chinese epistolary discourse. He underscores that besides
network identity formation, rituals allow people to “act beyond social
conventions” (p. 62) and thereby prevent offence.
Chapter Four develops a typology of relational rituals based on their
visibility to outsiders rather than the size of the network. Ordered with
respect to transparency from the least to the most transparent, these are
covert, personal, in-group, and social rituals. The first type includes
rituals that are described in psychology as compulsive (delusional) rituals
which relate the performer to imaginary entities (e.g. imaginary relatives) or
compulsive behaviour (e.g. touching people several times when they touch the
performer). Covert rituals may evoke negative evaluations and be considered
unconventional for network insiders and outsiders. Irrespective of the
evaluation, Kádár notes that they assist “social ‘survival’” (p. 89). Personal
rituals, on the other hand, are more likely to conform to network expectancies
(e.g. praying). Significantly, covert rituals may become personal rituals if
they are not negatively evaluated (e.g., talk between parents and children on
imaginary entities). Similarly, if taken up by the in-group, personal rituals
may become in-group rituals. The author notes that the last two types also
differ in terms of accessibility. Yet another difference between in-group and
social rituals concerns their lifespans such that the former is more likely to
disappear if the relational network no longer exists.
The cognitive dimension of relational rituals is further examined in Chapter
Five with respect to their recognition in interaction and to their affective
value. Regarding the noticing of rituals, Kádár argues that rituals may rise
from “consciousness” to “awareness” through the performer’s reflexive
awareness that the ritual may be more noticeable to other participants. From
the perspective of the participant, the ritual may become “marked” if it is
counter to expectations or if the participant’s “interactional situation”
changes (p. 110). Based on this terminology, the author mainly discusses how
rituals may be (strategically) brought from unmarked consciousness to marked
awareness to effect relational outcomes (e.g. avoiding relational tension and
giving face). Following earlier work, Kádár describes emotion as an “internal
response” and affection as a “process of social interaction”, which produces
emotion. While short-term emotions may be tied to interaction per se,
long-term emotions produced by rituals concerns feelings of relatedness and
are referred to as affectivity/affection (pp. 114, 125, 197). The author
underscores that emotion in ritual may not have a means-ends pattern and that
they may fluctuate during the interaction itself.
Chapter Six investigates destructive rituals, which are defined as acts that
stigmatise a person and corrupt the relationship. The analysis shows that some
forms of impoliteness also occur in destructive rituals, with the difference
that destructive rituals are recurrent phenomena. Kádár explains that the
destructive rituals in his data fall into three types. Ordered from the least
visible to the most visible these are: Recurrent non-doing (e.g., exclusion
from social events); recurrent covert offence (e.g., seemingly harmless but
destructive jokes; and recurrent reference to the stigma (e.g., personal
features) (pp. 148-160). The analysis also points to the significance of
recognising rituals, but this time it is observed that stigmatised persons
attribute the higher-order intention of planning (Talliard 2002; Bratman,
1999) to victimise the person.
Chapter Seven, the conclusion, first summarises the advantages of viewing
rituals as discursive relational phenomena. Kádár notes that the relational
approach places rituals within the broader context of
schematic/conventionalised acts, thereby allowing for their contextualised
investigation. He further notes that the approach also provides a framework
for researching the ritual-politeness interface at the discursive level. Based
on findings in his ongoing cross-cultural project on rituals, Kádár points out
the need to research the cross-cultural significance attached to social
rituals and ideologies of rituality. Further avenues of research are also
notedm, such as studying historical conceptualisations of rituality, the
function of discursive repetition in the development of ritual, and rituals
between networks.
EVALUATION
With its explicit focus on relating, ‘Relational Rituals and Communication’
offers a new dimension to researching (linguistic) rituals from a discursive
perspective. As already noted, this work charts the analytic framework from
both the participant and the theoretical perspectives. A further significant
contribution is that it moves beyond the study of conventionalised
(ritualistic) speech act analysis to show that rituals may be expressed
through words, phrases and discourse frames. One of the volume’s strengths is
the variety of languages used to illustrate the framework. As such the book
promises to be a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers
investigating rituals and communication in pragmatics, social interaction,
(im)politeness, and cultural anthropology. In the following I dwell on some
theoretical aspects that are intended to develop future research, and point to
a terminological issue, with a suggestion for re-wording.
With good reason, Kádár’s definition of relational rituals highlights the
emergence of ritualised language from the relational history or the social
ethos of the participants. In this respect, the ritual practices that the
author discusses can be interpreted as dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense in
that one hears polyphonic voices and discourses (Bakhtin, 1981) that
(re-)create and (re-)shape ritual performances and frames of interaction
(e.g., the greeting reported in the summary). Intertwined with polyphony is
the notion of chronotopes, which place individuals within multiple time-space
dialogic interaction frames (Bakhtin 1981: 252). Systematically incorporating
such a dialogic understanding of ritual performance would enrich the analysis
of ritual moments in terms of changes in footing in the sense of participation
statuses (Goffman, 1979/1981) and the social frameworks (Goffman, 1974) that
are evoked in both constructive and destructive ritual practices. Expansion of
the framework along these lines would fall neatly into the analytic approach
in the work as the author himself too frequently refers to the animation of
voices and in-group ethos (e.g., pp. 19, 59). As ritual performance is closely
related to discursive identity construction (Koster, 2003), a dialogic
analysis could further elaborate how and what aspects of (relational) identity
are brought to consciousness and (strategically) employed in ritual practices.
Such an analytic approach could also open the way to future discursive
investigations of the interplay between relational rituals and power.
The recognition of a ritual practice is a significant aspect of the discursive
framework developed by Kádár. The author proposes two sets of terms in
discussing ritual practice that is considered normative for interactants and
cases of ritual practice that are made discursively salient either through
shifts in ritual frames effected by implicit and explicit metapragmatic
language or through metapragmatic talk on the ritual practice itself:
‘consciousness’ and ‘unmarked’ for ritual practice that is uncontested by
participants; and ‘awareness’ and ‘marked’ when a ritual practice becomes or
is made salient through metapragmatic devices (Verscheuren, 2000) or
discourse. Since the analyses of the data concern metapragmatic language and
discourse, a more suitable term in describing salient ritual practice
recognition could be ‘metapragmatic awareness’, as ‘consciousness’ and
‘awareness’ are used in overlapping senses both in everyday language and in
the technical literature, where terminology is notoriously varied (Velmans,
2009). It also seems to be more appropriate given the discursive analytic
approach employed in the book.
REFERENCES
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press.
Bratman, Michael E. 1999. Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and
Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burke, Peter. 2005. The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays
on Perception and Communication. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Durkheim, Emile. 1912/1995. Karen E. Fields (trans.), The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of
Experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Goffman, Erving. 1979/1981. Footing. In Forms of Talk (pp. 124-159).
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kádár, Daniel Z. 2007. On historical Chinese apology and its strategic
application. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture 3.
125-150.
Koster, Jan. 2003. Ritual performance and the politics of identity: On the
function and uses of ritual. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4. 211-248.
Taillard, Marie-Odile. 2002. Beyond communicative intention. UCL Working
Papers in Linguistics 14. 189-206.
Velmans, Max. 2009. Understanding Consciousness (2nd. edn). London/New York:
Routledge.
Verschueren, Jef. 2000. Notes on the role of metapragmatic awareness in
language use. Pragmatics 10. 439-456.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Sukriye Ruhi retired from Middle East Technical University as professor of
linguistics in 2012. She is currently manager of the Spoken Turkish Corpus
project. She has published articles and chapters on face and (im)politeness,
and continues research in these areas, along with research on emotion in
relating, and corpus linguistics.
Jun 04
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
http://www.equinoxpub.com/
Journal Title: Linguistics and the Human Sciences
Volume Number: 9
Issue Number: 3
Issue Date: 2013
Main Text:
Editorial
Editor’s Introduction
Jonathan J. Webster
http://equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/LHS/article/view/17470
LHS 9.3 (2013)
pp 227-228
Articles
Tenor in Judicial Reasoning: Modality in majority and dissenting judgments in the High Court of Australia
Rosemary Huisman and Tony Blackshield
http://equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/LHS/article/view/17871
LHS 9.3 (2013)
pp 229-248
Developments in the linguistic description of Indian English: State of the art
Abhishek Kumar Kashyap
http://equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/LHS/article/view/16122
LHS 9.3 (2013)
pp 249-275
Argument structure as an interactive resource by undergraduate students
Sook Hee Lee
http://equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/LHS/article/view/15527
LHS 9.3 (2013)
pp 277-306
Looking out: Functional linguistics and genre
James R. Martin
http://equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/LHS/article/view/21528
LHS 9.3 (2013)
pp 307-321
May 29
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
AUTHOR: M. Grazia Busa
TITLE: Introducing the Language of the News
SUBTITLE: A Student’s Guide
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University
SUMMARY
Living in the age of information, we are surrounded by news reports. These
stories not only keep us updated on current affairs around the globe, but also
fundamentally shape our values, beliefs, and behaviors through their
agenda-setting and framing effects. Thus, it is crucial for undergraduates who
are interested in news to learn the production of news texts and the functions
of language within this process.
Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, “Introducing the Language of the
News” aims to offer an accessible reference for the study of news from
linguistic perspectives. Using English news as its primary examples, this
textbook covers key issues within news discourse analysis and introduces how
different linguistic choices can highlight different interpretations of news
texts. In addition, the exercises after each chapter make the book an ideal
reference reading for students learning English news writing in an English as
a Foreign/Second Language (i.e., EFL/ESL) context.
Introduction: Language and Texts
The introduction overviews “linguistic competence” and “register”. The author
highlights several factors contributing to variation in language use in our
daily lives: communicative purposes, discourse participants, communication
media (e.g., spoken versus written), and social contexts (e.g., formal versus
informal). In short, this introductory chapter discusses key components of
genre/register research and sets the theoretical background for the discussion
of news discourse in the following chapters.
Chapter One: Making News
The focus of Chapter One is the media industry and driving factors of news
production. To be specific, the chapter reviews six factors of news
production: media ownership, market pressure, labor division with the
newsroom, time deadline and space-on-the-page constraints, information
technology, and convergence of media forms.
Chapter Two: Defining News
This chapter provides a definition of news and explains factors influencing
the writing of news stories. According to the author, news can be defined as
“the relaying of events that are both recent (new) and relevant (interesting)”
(p. 25). Following such a definition, the author reviews the primary factors
that make a story potentially newsworthy: timeliness, location, topic and
familiarity, pictures and multimedia, dramatic potential, and public
interests. In addition to newsworthiness, objectivity is another crucial
standard for news texts and it determines the neutral language style of news
texts. The author concludes this chapter by explaining different types of
newspapers (e.g., broadsheets versus tabloids) and stories (e.g., hard news
versus soft news).
Chapter Three: Sourcing News
Chapter Four: Conveying Meaning through Design
These two short chapters (each is 10 pages long) briefly review the
information gathering stage of news production and the visual layout of a
newspaper page. Chapter Three starts by making a distinction between on-diary
sources (i.e., regular contacts of journalists) and off-diary sources (i.e.,
contacts reached by journalists when unanticipated events happen). The chapter
then reviews general issues regarding interviews and how information gathered
by journalists is used in news stories: attributions, anonymous sources, and
quotations. Following the above discussion, Chapter Four focuses on print news
and analyzes how page design (e.g., the position of headlines, pictures, body
copies, etc.) represents a powerful form of non-verbal communication.
Chapter Five: Structuring the Story
Chapter Six: Head, Lead and Proper Story
These two Chapters examine news story structures and the linguistic features
of news headlines, leads and the body copies. To be specific, Chapter Five
deals with three basic features of news stories: story structure, impersonal
language, and coherent texts. The chapter starts with an overview of three
common structures of news stories: the inverted pyramid, narrative
storytelling, and the hourglass (i.e., a combination of the previous two).
Then, the chapter goes into an exploration of impersonal writing and how
certain linguistic rules (e.g., the avoidance of first- or second-person
pronouns and emotive words or expressions) maintain the objectivity of news.
The chapter concludes with a brief explanation of coordination and
subordination and their function in language coherence.
By comparison, the focus of Chapter Six is on the components of news stories
(e.g., headlines, leads and body copies) and their grammatical features and
embedded rhetorical strategies. The author first discusses the synthetic
language of news headlines and how such linguistic characteristics lead to a
nominalization tendency in news headlines. Then, the discussion of news
headlines shifts to their rhetorical features (e.g., intertextuality, word
association, and metaphor), followed by an overview of informative headlines.
Finally, the chapter explains two types of news leads (i.e., direct leads and
delayed leads) and offers an example of how information is structured in the
body section.
Chapter Seven: The Tools of the Trade
Chapter Eight: Reporting Information and Evaluation of Likelihood
Chapter Nine: The Power of Words
The final three chapters are the most linguistic-centric ones, as they offer
an overview of linguistic strategies used in news discourse. Chapter Seven
examines the linguistic strategies used by journalists to compact lots of
information in short texts, such as nominalization, brevity (e.g., using
“although” instead of “despite the fact that”), and the passive voice. The
chapter then reviews some general syntactic issues in news writing: verbal
structure, voice, and thematization.
Chapter Eight discusses how journalists use various linguistic choices to
convert news sources into news stories. The Chapter explores two aspects of
information reporting: the use of reported speech (e.g., direct quote,
indirect quote, paraphrase, etc.), and the use of modality (e.g., epistemic
modality versus deontic modality).
Finally, Chapter Nine explains the “power of words” and how newswriters can
exploit the expressive potential of language to convey particular stances on
news topics. The primary focus of the chapter is the English language, and the
author demonstrates how careful word choices influence readers’
interpretations of the same news event, reinforce society’s perception of
certain groups, and promote particular ideologies.
EVALUATION
Overall, this book presents a concise but well-organized introduction of news
production and discourse. Covering a wide range of topics in only 164 pages,
the book can serve as a good complementary reading for ESL/EFL learners
interested in English news. As mentioned earlier, the student exercises at the
end of each chapter make the book ready-to-use for ESL/EFL instructors. In
addition, the book’s language style is straightforward and succinct, which is
another advantage for its usage in ESL/EFL settings.
Meanwhile, there are two minor limitations within the book, which might be
addressed in its further editions. First, the book may consider re-organizing
certain chapters to make its presentational logic more coherent. Chapter Three
(Sourcing News) can be combined with Chapter Eight (Reporting Information and
Evaluation of Likelihood), as many linguistic details of the former are not
properly explained until the latter. Similarly, Chapter Five (Structuring the
Story) and Chapter Six (Head, Lead and Proper Story) can be combined, since
both chapters deal with the structuring of news texts. Second, although the
book’s simplicity is a desired design for its primary readers (ESL/EFL
learners), it would still be beneficial if more theories regarding news
discourse were introduced in the book. In the current version, the critical
analysis of news discourse is only introduced in the very last chapter and
several key texts within the field (e.g., Fairclough, 1989; van Dijk, 1988)
are not discussed. In the discussion of the media industry (Chapters One &
Two), some additional reviews of the political economy of communication would
also be beneficial (e.g. Mosco, 2009; Wasko, Murdock & Sousa, 2011).
Overall, the book is a good reference for intro-level courses on language and
communication, especially for ESL/EFL learners who want a concise overview of
English news discourse.
REFERENCES
Busa, M. G. (2013). “Introducing the language of the news”. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (1989). “Language and power”. London: Longman.
Mosco, V. (2009). “The political economy of communication” (2nd ed.). London:
Sage.
Wasko, J., Murdock, G., & Sousa, H. (2011). “The handbook of political economy
of communications”. London: Sage.
Van Dijk, T. (1988). “News as discourse”. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum
Associates.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Sibo Chen is a PHD student in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
University. He received his MA in Applied Linguistics from the Department of
Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada. His major research interests are
language and communication, discourse analysis, and genre theories.
May 26
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook review
EDITOR: Piotr Cap
EDITOR: Urszula Okulska
TITLE: Analyzing Genres in Political Communication
SUBTITLE: Theory and practice
SERIES TITLE: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 50
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University
SUMMARY
Although investigations of political language have been a pivotal topic in
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the broad body of previous studies has done
relatively little to provide a comprehensive and organized set of answers to
the theoretical complexities of political genre research. Given that
situation, “Analyzing Genres in Political Communication” has a two-fold
objective: “(1) to make a contribution to the study of genres in political
communication; and (2) to offer insights that add to the analysis of
communicative genres in general (p. 11)”. With contributions from a range of
experts with diverse backgrounds, this edited collection presents the latest
developments in political genre analysis and can be informative for
researchers in a wide range of disciplines, such as Applied Linguistics,
Communication, Political Science, and other fields.
The introduction, “Analyzing Genres in Political Communication”, addresses
general problems in genre analysis and overviews the studies in the following
chapters. Generally speaking, genre could be interpreted as: (1) abstractions
of communicative acts, (2) indicators of situational contexts, (3) flexible
macrostructures with both obligatory and optional elements, (4) interrelated
units in a social field, and (5) assigners of social roles for their
participants (pp. 3-7). In the field of political genre analysis, research
thus far has been mainly conducted at the national level, focusing on
discourse with significant mediation functions, such as political speeches,
press conferences, debates, and so on. Overall, research in political genres
poses three key questions for the theory of communicative genres (pp. 8-9):
A. The heterogeneity of political genres questions the analytical consistency
proposed by genre theories: Can the current methodological procedures
adequately address the typologies and hierarchies observed in political
genres?
B. The analysis of political genres requires the revisit of many common
properties of communicative genres: Do these properties also apply to
political genres, especially those on situational contexts and social
relations?
C. The interactions between policies and political genres bring the issue of
genre accomplishment: Is there a hypothetical “hyper-genre” in general for
various forms of political communication?
To address these questions, the collection explores various genres within
political communication in 12 chapters, divided into two parts based on their
research focus: “theory-driven approaches” (Part I: Chapters 1-6) and
“data-driven approaches” (Part II: Chapters 7-12).
Chapter One, “Genres in Political Discourse”, follows up on the theoretical
account in the introduction and reviews genre theories in various traditions:
the “New Rhetoric” approach (Bazerman, 1988), the “Systemic Functional
Grammar” approach (Martin, 1992), the “Functional Move” approach (Swales,
1990), and the “Socio-critical” approach (Bhatia, 2004). Then, the chapter
provides an analysis of Austrian chancellors’ inaugural speeches and concludes
that analyses of politically sensitive genres need to not only focus on
generic features of political texts, but also to account for the texts’
relevant registers and discourses.
Chapter Two, “Political Interviews in Context”, presents an analysis of
political interviews based on an integration of various discourse methods,
such as conversation analysis, pragmatics, social psychology, and content
analysis. The authors conceptualize political interviews as a “hybrid genre”
in essence and discuss how this hybrid genre frequently departures from its
default organization.
Chapter Three, “Policy, Policy Communication and Discursive Shifts”, deals
with the European Union’s (EU) policy discourses on climate change via a
critical discourse analysis of its policy documents. The analysis was
conducted from two perspectives: policy-making and policy-communication. The
conclusion reached is that the EU discourse on climate change can be
characterized by a large degree of discursive change that frames climate
change from an EU perspective (i.e. climate change as a crisis will threaten
EU’s future economy and presents a global crisis).
Chapter Four, “The Television Election Night Broadcast”, describes the genres
and sub-genres of television election night broadcasts and demonstrates that
they, as a macro-genre, involve complex interlocking of different genres
(speeches, interviews, breaking news, etc.), which shows how complex generic
structures are influenced by both internal and external factors. The
structures of election night broadcasts depend on the external social and
political contexts in which they are situated as well as their internal
communication logic and information economy.
Chapter Five “Analyzing Meetings in Political and Business Contexts” focuses
on meetings in political and business contexts and explores common strategies
shared in both situations. The chapter highlights the scarcity of theories of
meetings across different settings and discusses specific discursive
strategies in spontaneous interactions during meetings. Based on comparative
analyses of political and business meetings, the chapter further investigates
the impact of organization knowledge on the meeting genre as well as the role
of communications for genre identification.
Chapter Six, “Presenting Politics”, the last chapter of Part I, serves as a
transition between the collection’s two parts and offers a reflection on
persuasion and performance across political genres. The chapter reviews two
approaches to addressing persuasion in political communication (persuasion as
a psychological process versus persuasion as a cultural performance). The
chapter tackles Question C (see above): given the heterogeneity of political
genres and their theoretical frameworks, can the complexity of political
genres be addressed within the existing genre theories, or should the research
go beyond them?
Chapters in Part II pay more attention to the investigation of specific genres
through data-driven methods. Chapter Seven, “Legitimizing the Iraq War”,
discusses the theory of legitimation through the rhetoric of judge-penitence.
The chapter further analyzes the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s
self-critiques of Danish collaboration with German Nazis during World War II,
which established moral credibility and moral ground for the legitimation of
the Danish government’s engagement in the Iraqi war.
Chapter Eight, “Macro and Micro, Quantitative and Qualitative”, explores
election night speeches in Britain and German and addresses the most typical
characteristic in political speeches: the construction of the binary
opposition of “us versus them”. Based on quantitative and qualitative
analyses, the chapter shows that for election night speeches, the
cross-cultural similarities at the micro level may not correspond to
similarities at the macro level.
Chapter Nine, “Reframing the American Dream”, examines the genre of political
debates. Focusing on the final televised presidential debate in the 2008 US
election, the chapter argues that the ‘nation as family’ metaphor proposed by
Lakoff (2002) has significant implications for US political discourse. The two
competing moral models (paternal vs. maternal) within US politics were
consolidated through the strategic use of personal references and pronouns by
John McCain and Barack Obama during the debate.
Chapter Ten, “The Late-night TV Talk Show as a Strategic Genre”, and Chapter
Eleven, “Multimodal Legitimation”, continue to investigate the 2008 US
presidential election, exploring late night shows and online election
advertisements. To be specific, Chapter Ten works with a selection of popular
talk shows in US and shows that their generic conventions tend to be recruited
to suit politician’s aims. By comparison, Chapter Eleven approaches the
multimodal legitimation offered by Obama’s 2008 campaign and discusses the
general question of hybridity within political genres: if a well-established
genre (e.g. political speeches) was adapted into a non-conventional
communication form (e.g. online advertisements), would it continue to dominate
the legitimation process of political communications, or would it be reduced
to a supportive role? The analysis in Chapter Eleven highlights the
significance of semiotic simultaneity in multimodal legitimation.
Finally, Chapter Twelve, “Blogging as the Mediatization of Politics”, deals
with the issue of mediation offered by political blogs, reflecting the
digitization and interdiscursivity of online discourse. Based on quantitative
corpus analysis, the study scrutinizes the functional and structural features
of political blogs. Overall, the chapter shows how political communication
function as a complex network with increasingly mediated and interactive
practices of civil society.
EVALUATION
In summary, this book presents an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of
political communication from the genre perspective. Covering a wide range of
genres, tit demonstrates not only the complexity of political genres
themselves, but also the contributions of political communication for genre
theories. Specifically, Chapters Five and Six provide theoretical updates on
current political genre research, showing how studies on political genres can
further benefit not only genre theory, but also other disciplines such as
political science and communication. Meanwhile, Part II continues the
theoretical discussion of legitimation, which can benefit the growing body of
scholarship in this area. Finally, this volume also offers much needed
insights on political TV talk shows and political blogs, which have previously
received little linguistic attention but are becoming significant
communicative phenomena in public discourse.
Unfortunately, the book does have one minor limitation, which might be
addressed in a future edition: it focuses exclusively on the Western context.
All chapters are based on political communications in Europe and United
States, which limits some of the findings to non-western contexts such as Asia
and Latin America. As pointed out in Chapter Eight, further studies based on
non-western cultures may “contribute even more to the way political genres can
be defined without running the risk of a Western bias” (p. 287) and in this
regard, more studies based on non-Western contexts in a future edition would
further improve the book’s theoretical depth and breadth.
Overall, though, this book offers significant theoretical and methodological
updates for genre theories. The book is sure to appeal to genre scholars as
well as those in related disciplines. It is an interesting and useful
collection with a wealth of up-to-date information for anyone interested in
political genres.
REFERENCES
Bazerman, C. (1988). “Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the
experimental article in science”. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Bhatia, V. (2004). “Worlds of written discourse”. London: Continuum.
Lakoff, G. (2002). “Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think”.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Martin, J. (1992). English text. Systems and structure.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Swales, J. (1990). “Genre analysis: English in academic and research
settings”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Sibo Chen is a graduate student in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
University. He received his MA in Applied Linguistics from the Department of
Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada. His major research interests are
language and communication, discourse analysis, and genre theories.
May 09
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Multimodal Epistemologies
Subtitle: Towards an Integrated Framework
Series Title: Routledge Studies in Multimodality
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
http://www.routledge.com/
Book URL: http://www.routledge.com/u/MaioraniChristieLL
Editor: Arianna Maiorani
Editor: Christine Christie
Hardback: ISBN: 9780415825238 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 130.00
Abstract:
This volume develops a new multimodal semiotic approach to the study of communication, examining how multimodal discourse is construed transmedially and interculturally and how new technologies and cultural stances inform communicative contexts across the world. It contributes to current theoretical debates in the disciplines of semiotics, linguistics, multimodality, and pragmatics, as well as those aspects of pedagogy and film studies that engage with the notions of text and narrative by addressing questions such as: How do we study multimedia communication? How do we incorporate the impact of new media technologies into the study of Linguistics and Semiotics? How do we construe culture in modern communication? How useful are the current multidisciplinary approaches to multimodal communication?
Through the analysis of specific case studies that are developed within diverse academic disciplines and which draw on a range of theoretical frameworks, the goal of this book is to provide a basis for an overarching framework that can be applied by scholars and students with different academic and cultural backgrounds.
May 09
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements
Title: Linguistic Approaches to Emotions in Context
Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 241
Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.241
Editor: Fabienne H. Baider
Editor: Georgeta Cislaru
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027270740 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 143.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027270740 Pages: Price: Europe EURO 95.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027270740 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 80.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027256461 Pages: Price: Europe EURO 100.70
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027256461 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 80.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027256461 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 143.00
Abstract:
This book presents new issues in the study of the interface of emotions and
language, and their use in social context. Two fundamental questions are
tackled: the way different languages encode emotional information and the core
role emotions play in languages’ structure, use and learning. Seldom treated
means of expressing emotions (such as interjections, conditionals, scalarity,
allocentric constructions), the social and professional impact of emotions and
the latest developments in the interface of speech recognition / emotions are
some of the key contributions to this volume. The cross-cultural perspective
contrasts new couples of languages (among which Australian aboriginal
languages, Cypriot Greek, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, Russian) and addresses
sociolinguistic, pragmatic and discursive issues. Most of the papers attempt
interesting theoretical articulations that aim at a better understanding of
the linguistic and sociolinguistic nature of emotions. This book will be
highly relevant for students and researchers interested in emotions,
semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as prosody and philosophy
of language.
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