Discursive Illusions In Public Discourse

This book presents a unique perspective into the investigation and analysis of public discourses, such as those of the environment, politics, and social media, springing from issues of key relevance to contemporary society, including the War on Terror, the ‘Arab Spring’, and the climate-change debate. Employing a qualitative approach, and drawing on data which comprises both written and spoken discourses, including policy documents, political speeches, press conferences, blog entries, informational leaflets, and corporate reports, the book puts forward a unique theoretical framework, that of the Discourse of Illusion. The research draws on discourse analysis, in order to develop and implement a multi-perspective framework that allows a closer look at the intentions of the producer/actor of various discourses, power struggles within social domains, in addition to the socio-political and historical contexts which influence the individual repositories of experience that create multiple, often contesting, arguments on controversial issues, consequently giving rise to discursive illusions. Discursive Illusions in Public Discourse: Theory and practice intensively explores the discourse of illusion within multifarious dimensions of contemporary public discourses, such as: • Political Voices in Terrorism • Activist Voices in New Media • Corporate Voices in Climate Change This book will particularly appeal to researchers working within the field of discourse analysis, and more generally for students of postgraduate research and specialists in the field of language, linguistics, and media. The book can also be used as a guide for non-specialists in better understanding the complexities of public discourses, and how they shape society’s perceptions of some key social and political issues.

Genre theory has focused primarily on the analysis of generic constructs, with increasing attention to and emphasis on the contexts in which such genres are produced, interpreted, and used to achieve objectives, often giving the impression as if producing genres is an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. The result of this focus is that there has been very little attention paid to the ultimate outcomes of these genre-based discursive activities, which are more appropriately viewed as academic, institutional, organizational, and professional actions and practices, which are invariably non-discursive, though often achieved through discursive means. It was this objective in mind that the book develops an approach to a more critical and deeper understanding of interdiscursive professional voices and actions. Critical Genre Analysis as a theory of discursive performance is thus an attempt to be as objective as possible, rigorous in analytical endeavour, using a multiperspective and multidimensional methodological framework taking into account interdiscursive aspects of genre construction to make it increasingly explanatory to demystify discursive performance in a range of professional contexts.

Over recent decades, legal language and its representation of social action, social actors and social practices have provided systematic insights into the meaning and function of text, discourse or talk realised in academic, professional and institutional sites of communication, and generated a variety of data for analysis, method and theory. Constructing Legal Discourses and Social Practices, the first issue of the Legal Discourse and Communication international series, looks descriptively and interpretatively at the realised forms of legal discourse and how these are framed and organised by social practices within distinctive sites of legal communication. The four main parts of the book provide a broad coverage of key issues and perspectives arising from a variety of genres (spoken, as well as written) employed in institutional, professional and organisational communication of the law, and bring into focus recent research where language and law play out in the real world. This invaluable book is multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival in its design and implementation, and will be an essential reference for those researching and working in the areas of applied linguistics and for postgraduate students.

There are multiple aspects of electronically-mediated communication that influence and have strong implications for legal practice. This volume focuses on three major aspects of mediated communication through social media. Part I examines social media and the legal community. It explores how this has influenced professional legal discourse and practice, contributing to the popularity of internet-based legal research, counselling and assistance through online services offering explanations of law, preparing documents, providing evidence, and even encouraging electronically mediated alternative dispute resolution. Part II looks at the use of social media for client empowerment. It examines how it has taken legal practice from a formal and distinct business to one that is publicly informative and accessible. Part III discusses the way forward, exploring the opportunities and challenges. Based on cases from legal practice in diverse jurisdictions, the book highlights key issues as well as implications for legal practitioners on the one hand, and clients on the other. The book will be a valuable reference for international scholars in law and other socio-legal studies, discourse analysis, and practitioners in legal and alternative dispute resolution contexts.

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies provides a state-of-the-art overview of the important and rapidly developing field of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). Forty-one chapters from leading international scholars cover the central theories, concepts, contexts and applications of CDS and how they have developed, encompassing: approaches analytical methods interdisciplinarity social divisions and power domains and media. Including methodologies to assist those undertaking their own critical research of discourse, this Handbook is key reading for all those engaged in the study and research of Critical Discourse Analysis within English Language and Linguistics, Communication, Media Studies and related areas.

This book analyses some of the many upheavals brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the COVID-19–communication–culture interface, with a particular focus on the new global, virtual workplace. It brings together a pluridisciplinary and multinational team of researchers from the fields of sociology and organisational studies, discourse analysis, linguistics, communication and cultural studies, and includes testimonials from actors within the professional sector such as international managers, consultants and foreign trade advisors. The collection examines a wide range of phenomena including communication on the pandemic by public authorities, the pandemic as a discursive construct, the digital turn and its impact on communication, the role of social media, as well as national diplomacy and questions of surveillance, (bio)power and trust. Issues pertaining specifically to the workplace focus on the impact of remote work, including the challenge of building cohesive work relations and managing cultural difference, distance recruitment, the new forms of professional online communication, the future of the remote work model and questions of identity that are underpinned by the culture of professions. It aims to theoretically inform some of the enormous changes which have been brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic at multiple levels of our professional and social lives. It concludes with a virtual round-table discussion on the question of cultural difference with respect to both the pandemic itself and work practice. COVID-19, Communication and Culture: Beyond the Global Workplace will be of great interest to academics and professionals interested in the communication and discourse and the cultural impact of COVID-19.

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which digital communication facilitate and inform discourses of legitimization and delegitimization in contemporary participatory cultures. The book draws on multiple theoretical traditions from critical discourse analysis to allow for a greater critical engagement of the ways in which values are either justified or criticized on social media platforms across a variety of social milieus, including the personal, political, religious, corporate, and commercial. The volume highlights data from across ten national contexts and a range of online platforms to demonstrate how these discursive practices manifest themselves differently across a range of settings. Taken together, the seventeen chapters in this book offer a more informed understanding of how these discursive spaces help us to interpret the manner in which digital communication can be used to legitimize or delegitimize, making this book an ideal resource for students and scholars in discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, new media, and media production.

Based on data from beauty vlogs published by well-known YouTubers, Bhatia explores how they discursively negotiate multiple identities in a creative and participatory space, giving rise to complexities in the definition of categories such as expert, layperson, learner, and teacher in fluid and dynamic digital contexts. In this insightful book, Bhatia sets out to investigate the interdiscursive construction of identity on YouTube. Taking a multi-methodological approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, Bhatia examines beauty vlogs at the levels of sociocognition, language, and genre to provide a better understanding of some of the measures of success and effect as well as new practices of expertise in online communication. The book contributes to a better understanding of how young people work online, often collaboratively, to conform to or resist mainstream notions of expertise, authenticity, race, and beauty, as well as the linguistic and semiotic tools they use to perform their identity, in order to become digital entrepreneurs and cultural influencers. Students and scholars in the field of discourse analysis, situated within the contexts of popular culture and social media, will find this book a valuable read. This volume also enhances the everyday person’s understanding of the complexities of new media communication and a new generation of cultural intermediaries.