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20230718T083020230718T1615Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectivesHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Multimodal metaphors and Force-Dynamics: an analysis of tweets on the conflict in Ukraine
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
The force exerted in conflicts together with the online display of messages can affect the construal of warlike contexts. Force-dynamic patterns (Talmy, 2000) offer a plausible explanation on how the creation and interpretation of metaphorical content are influenced by the interaction of opposed entities, i.e. agonists and antagonists. The clash of these two forces is determined by their intrinsic tendencies towards inaction or action; consequently they become obstacles to be overcome, thrust to be blocked, or allowed to move onwards (letting). Mainly, the metaphors about the armed struggle in Ukraine found on Twitter are conveyed through verbal and pictorial modes of representation. In this study the metaphorical schema based on the use of force and multimodal metaphor theory (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi, 2009) provide insightful perspectives on the persuasive tweets in one of the most prominent social networks during the present wartime in Eastern Europe. From the tenets of these theories and in line with recent studies on the persuasive power of metaphor on Twitter (Makhortykh & Lyebyedyev 2015, Grandjean 2016, Kapranov 2016), this study compiles a corpus of 600 tweets retrieved from the hashtags #IStandWithUkraine and #IStandWithRussia about six remarkable events in the conflict occurred from February to May 2022. Essentially, the objective of this research is to analyse the metaphors used within the two different hashtags, and thus to observe how reality is constructed differently as well as compare the persuasive power of these metaphorical messages. Preliminary qualitative results show that the roles of 'us-agonist' and 'them-antagonist' are allocated in each hashtag by the users to seek support from the others through compelling texts and images that in some cases are similar, e.g. analogies with nazism. Nonetheless, these initial conclusions are to be confirmed or denied by the assessment of the obtained quantitative results.
List of main references: Charteris-Black, J. (2005, 2011). Politics and rethorics. The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. London: Palgrave Forceville, Ch. & Urios-Aparisi, E. (2009). Multimodal Metaphor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Grandjean, M. (2016). A social network analysis of Twitter: Mapping the digital humanities community. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 3: 1171458. Goriacheva, D. (2016). Understanding the "Ukrainian Crisis." Metaphors used by Ukrainian, German, and British Leaders in 2014-16. Foundation for Good Politics, 1 (6): 86-152. Kapranov, O. (2016). Conceptual Metaphors in British foreign Secreatry's twitter discourse involving Ukraine. Respectus Philologicus 29 (34) :9-20. Makhortykh, M. & Lyebyedyev, Y. (2015). #SaveDonbassPeople: Twitter, Propaganda, and Conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The Communication Review 18 (4): 239-270. Steblyna, N. (2020). Selling Insecurity via Twitter: Ukrainian President's Posts and Modern Political Discourse. Przegląd Strategiczny, 13: 317-331. Leonard Talmy. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics: Concept Structuring Systems. A Bradford Book.
Digital discourse on education policies: the case of an online community of practice in the context of Madrid’s bilingual programme
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
This study looks at a group of assistant teachers' digital discourse in an online community of practice in relation to (1) the main discursive strategies displayed to characterise their teaching context – a Content and Language Integrated (CLIL) programme in the Region of Madrid – and (2) the way they position themselves for or against this context.
There is a growing body of research in the fields of applied linguistics and critical sociolinguistic ethnography on how CLIL provisions impact teachers' daily practices and explain how these teachers either support or reject educational policy measures (i.e., Codó & Patiño-Santos, 2018; Fernández-Barrera, 2017; Relaño-Pastor, 2015). More specifically, our previous research on CLIL teachers' discourse has revealed patterns of resistance towards their education context and positionings that challenge the hegemonic discourse of education authorities, ideologically shaped by power relations (Alonso-Belmonte & Fernández-Agüero, 2021). However, there is a dearth of literature on the way these professionals depict their teaching reality within the frame of digital media, how they position themselves towards it and how this influences the construction of their socio-cultural and professional identity.
This study aims at analysing a digital forum in English, administered to a non-probabilistic sample of 140 language assistants from the United States working in bilingual schools in the Region of Madrid. The data collected was explored qualitatively by using ATLAS.ti, applying the principles of the Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The analysis of the results reveals a series of patterns or codes, such as perceived lack of coordination, economic segregation, false promises and misconceptions about bilingualism (by education stakeholders). The results of this study should be of particular interest for teachers from different educational stages and could prove useful for school administrators by helping them guide and evaluate CLIL implementation in Spain. Our study also expects to provide an opportunity for scholars to delve into the nature of the public polarization of bilingual education approached from a critical discourse analytical perspective.
References
Alonso-Belmonte, I. & Fernández-Agüero, M. (2021). Teachers' narratives of resistance to Madrid's bilingual programme: An exploratory study in secondary education. Linguistics and Education 63, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2021.100925. Codó, E. & Patiño-Santos, A. (2018). CLIL, unequal working conditions and neoliberal subjectivities in a state secondary school. Language Policy 17(4), 479–499. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-017-9451-5. Fernández-Barrera, A. (2017). Language appropriations, ideologies and identities in bilingual schools in Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature 10(2), 41–58. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/jtl3.731. Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine Press. Relaño-Pastor, A. M. (2015). The commodification of English in 'Madrid, comunidad bilingüe': Insights from the CLIL classroom. Language Policy 14(2), 131–152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-014-9338-7.
About us section and polarized discourse in engineering websites
[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
The aim of this study is to investigate the discursive strategies of polarized discourse in engineering websites. These are expressions of corporate culture and reveal ways doing and communicating across national boundaries. Corporate websites, however, have so far received little attention in linguistic studies and may be considered as peripheral discourse. This paper draws attention to the range of different modes used with the aim to provide persuasive arguments for stakeholders (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996; Stöckl 2005; Van Leeuwen, 2005a, 2005b, 2006) and in doing so, offer new ways of communicating meaning.
The "about us" section of corporate engineering websites (as multimodal public communication using different semiotic resources) and their discourse strategies to persuade customers is investigated. To this end, not only rhetorical and multimodal strategies should be seen, but also how social, cognitive and linguistic characteristics that could be ascribed to the epistemological interests of the engineering community and their shared communicative purposes interact (Van Dijk 2008; Fairclough 1992, 2003; Wodak 2013).
The main purpose of this paper is to explore thirty representative samples of the "about us" section published in international engineering websites, paying attention to the ideational, textual and interpersonal aspects in which engineering companies try to involve readers in the website, in terms of stance and engagement (Martin and White, 2004).
Results indicate that many of these "about us" sections share several themes that present engineering companies in a positive light in mission statements, outlines of a company's status, sustainability issues, external validation (awards and positions in engineering company rankings), including words implying positive judgement and appreciation (Martin and White, 2004). At the same time, companies defend against potential criticisms and include multimodal legitimation strategies in their discourse by acknowledging problems in business practices, products or sustainability issues but highlighting the changes they have made to overcome them.
Finally, there is an epideictic rhetoric at play in strengthening the adherence of the company's audience to the ideas and products presented in the engineering website, which establishes credibility and builds the corporate "ethos". References Fairclough, N. (1992). Critical Discourse Analysis: the critical study of language. Londres: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse. Londres: Routledge. Fauconnier, G. and Mark Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London, Routledge. Martin, J. and White, P. 2004. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Stöckl, H. 2005. Typography: body and dress of a text - a signing mode between language and image, Visual Communication, 4(2): 204 – 214. Van Dijk, T. 2008a. Discourse and Power. Houndsmills: Palgrave-MacMillan. Van Leeuwen, T. 2005a. Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge. Van Leeuwen, T. 2005b. Typographic meaning, Visual communication, 4: 137 – 143. Van Leeuwen, T. 2006. Towards a semiotics of typography, Information Design Journal, 14(2):139 – 155. Wodak, R. 2013. Critical Discourse Analysis - Four volumes, London: Sage.
Presenters SILVIA MOLINA-PLAZA ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID
Multimodal strategies of polarization in anti-gender violence campaigns
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
The fight against gender violence is one of 4th Wave Feminism's main worries. Feminist journalists and discourse analysts insist that, when addressing gender violence, a new discourse of solidarity and hope -rather than the traditional one of fear and threat- needs to be deployed (Arruzza et al.; Barjola 2018; Cooper et al. 2020). This new discourse, which is starting to permeate not only the more public and political discourse of the mass media, but also private, everyday conversations, is made evident in the slogans created by feminists in rallies organized worldwide in the last years, which contain many calls to stop gender violence and victim blaming, and, most importantly, to encourage women to rebel while giving themselves permission to enjoy (Requena 2020). Anti-gender violence discourse, in addition, is a prototypical field in which polarized strategies come naturally, as two opposing groups are clearly construed: the in-group including feminists and battered women and the delegitimized out-group of male aggressors. Drawing on critical and socio-cognitive approaches to multimodal discourse (Abdel-Raheem 2019; Alonso & Porto 2020; El Refaie 2009; Forceville 2020; Forceville & Van de Laar 2019; Hart 2017, 2018; Kress 2010; Machin & Mayr 2012; Author 2021, 2022; Wawra 2018), this paper focuses on how the struggle against gender violence is conceptualized in political and institutional campaigns as represented in 30 posters for November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) published on paper and on social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram (2020 to 2022). Preliminary results show clear us-them multimodal discursive strategies realized within the interactions of (i) verbal -personal pronouns, deixis and negation- and (ii) pictorial modes -specific colour ranges, participants and objects. The multimodal polarizing strategies analysed show how different institutions try to call attention on gender violence while construing new cognitive and social frames in which women are conceptualized as members of the same community; a community in which they are active citizens and not submissive victims. Key words: multimodal strategies, polarization, political posters, anti-gender violence discourse
Main references: Abdel-Raheem, A. (2019), Pictorial Framing in Moral Politics: A Corpus-Based Experimental Study. London/New York: Routledge. Alonso, I., Porto, M.D., (2020). Multimodal framing devices in European online news. Language & Communication 71, 55–7. Cooper, B., Tanner, Ch. C., & Morris, S. (2020). Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood. New York. W.W. Norton & Company. El Refaie, E. (2009). Multiliteracies: How readers interpret political cartoons. Visual Communication 8(2): 181–205. Forceville, C. (2020). Visual and Multimodal. Applying Relevance Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kress G. (2010). Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Maíz-Arévalo, C. (2008). "Don't beat me no more". Domestic violence from a multimodal approach. In Antón-Pacheco, A. (Ed.) Sites of female terror: en torno a la mujer y el terror. Madrid: Aranzadi, pp. 299-312. Requena, A. (2020). Feminismo vibrante. Si no hay placer no es nuestra revolución. Barcelona. RocaEditorial.
Polarising metaphors in far-right populist tweets: two case studies.
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
Twitter has become a productive scenario for creating and reproducing polarised political narratives and ideologies, as it enables far-right populist leaders, among others, to reach wide audiences with their antagonistic, affective-driven rhetoric (Breeze, 2020). In view of the rise of these extreme populisms and its dangers (Hidalgo-Tenorio et al., 2019), this study aims to analyse polarisation (Filardo-Llamas et al., 2021) in a corpus of tweets of two important political figures: Santiago Abascal, from Spain, and Jair Bolsonaro, from Brazil. More specifically, adopting a critical usage-based socio-cognitive approach to language and metaphor (Charteris-Black, 2011; Koller, 2014; Romano & Porto, 2016; Semino & Demjén, 2017; Soares da Silva, 2020; Van Dijk, 2018) and applying corpus-based discourse methods, especially the profile-based methodology (Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2006; Gries, 2010; Taylor & Marchi, 2018), this paper focuses on Bolsonaro and Abascal's polarising metaphors (Peterssen and Soares da Silva, submitted for publication). These can be defined as conceptual metaphors that enhance ingroup and outgroup divisions, and thus build and perpetuate social and ideological polarisation. Preliminary results point out the importance of CONFRONTATION and JOURNEY metaphors in the polarising narratives under study.
Considering the rise of far-right populisms (Hidalgo-Tenorio et al., 2019; Rovira Kaltwasser et al., 2017), this paper focuses on the metaphorical construction of polarisation in the tweets of Santiago Abascal and Jair Bolsonaro, that is, the representative far-right populist leaders of Spain and Brazil, respectively. The descriptive and comparative analysis of their tweets is carried out from a critical socio-cognitive viewpoint, that is, considering conceptual metaphors and polarisation as cognitive discursive socio-situated phenomena (Charteris-Black, 2011; Filardo-Llamas et al., 2021; Low et al., 2010; Musolff, 2016; Soares da Silva, 2020). Methodologically, this study presents a corpus-based discourse analysis of Bolsonaro and Abascal's tweets, in the trend of corpora and political discourse studies (Baker & McEnery, 2015; Taylor & Marchi, 2018). References: Baker, P., & McEnery, T. (Eds.). (2015). Corpora and Discourse Studies. Integrating Discourse and Corpora. Palgrave Macmillan. Breeze, R. (2020). Exploring populist styles of political discourse in Twitter. World Englishes, 39(4), 550–567. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12496 Charteris-Black, J. (2011). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Filardo-Llamas, L., Morales-López, E., & Floyd, A. (Eds.). (2021). Discursive Approaches to Socio-political Polarization and Conflict (preprint). Routledge. Hidalgo-Tenorio, E., Benítez-Castro, M.-Á., & De Cesare, F. (Eds.). (2019). Populist Discourse: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Politics. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429026751 Koller, V. (2014). Applying Social Cognition Research to Critical Discourse Studies : The Case of Collective Identities. In C. Hart & P. Cap (Eds.), Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies (1st ed., pp. 147–166). Bloomsbury Academic. http://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/contemporary-critical-discourse-studies/ch6-applying-social-cognition-research-to-critical-discourse-studies/ Low, G., Todd, Z., Deignan, A., & Cameron, L. (Eds.). (2010). Researching and Applying Metaphor in the Real World. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.04.003 Musolff, A. (2016). Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. Bloomsbury Academic. Peterssen, S., & Soares da Silva, A. (submitted for publication). Polarising metaphors in the Venezuelan Presidential Crisis. Romano, M., & Porto, M. D. (Eds.). (2016). Exploring Discourse Strategies in Social and Cognitive Interaction: Multimodal and cross-linguistic perspectives. John Benjamins. https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027267221 Rovira Kaltwasser, C., Taggart, P., Ochoa Espejo, P., & Ostiguy, P. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Semino, E., & Demjén, Z. (Eds.). (2017). The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315672953 Soares da Silva, A. (2020). From economic crisis to austerity policies through conceptual metaphor. A corpus-based comparison of metaphors of crisis and austerity in the Portuguese press. In M. Huang & L.-L. Holmgreen (Eds.), The Language of Crisis. Metaphors, frames and discourses. (pp. 51–86). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.87.02soa Stefanowitsch, A., & Gries, S. T. (Eds.). (2006). Corpus-based approaches to metaphor and metonymy. Mouton de Gruyter. Taylor, C., & Marchi, A. (Eds.). (2018). Corpus Approaches to Discourse. A Critical Review. Routledge. Van Dijk, T. A. (2018). Socio-cognitive Discourse Studies. In J. Flowerdew & J. E. Richardson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (pp. 26–43). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739342-3
Presenters Silvia Peterssen PhD Student And Research Assistant, Universidad Autónoma De Madrid Co-authors
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
This work explores the role of images as polarising multimodal devices in digital press. More specifically, it aims at delimiting their potential contribution in the formation of distinct, combative and opposing parts, usually taking one of the sides, in newsbites, the default format of online news (Knox 2007, Porto & Alonso-Belmonte 2016). With the digitalization of media, visual elements have progressively gained importance in the composition of news. Indeed, in today's context of news reading habits, research shows that images play a leading role in the framing of the news (Entman 1993, D'Angelo 2017) and in their meaning construction (Caple 2013; Scheufele & Iyengar 2017, Stöckl et al. 2020). However, the role that images play in polarised discourse has yet to be studied in depth. To fulfil this goal, a sample of European newsbites on the rise of extreme right and populisms was collected and analysed from a critical and socio-cognitive approach, following the notion of multimodal construal (Alonso-Belmonte & Porto, 2020), which identifies four main framing strategies: subject choice, composition, distance and point of view. Images and their relation to other modes were scrutinised to identify the main frames conveyed by the news (Semetkno & Valkenburg, 2000). Results show that, when integrated with the text, images contribute to the interpretation of a conflict frame, providing a positive representation of one group and a patent opposition to another, which is in turn negatively characterized. Findings also suggest that other frame types −responsibility, human interest… contribute to the formation of strong views and affective polarisation that may affect public opinion.
Alonso-Belmonte, I. and M.D. Porto (2020) Multimodal framing devices in European online news. Language and Communication 71: 55-71 Caple, H. (2013) Photojournalism: A Social Semiotic Approach. Palgrave Macmillan D'Angelo, P.,(2017). Framing: Media frames. In Roessler, P., Hoffner, C. A., van Zoonen, L., (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects (pp: 634-644). Wiley-Blackwell Entman, R. B. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication 43, 51–58 Knox, J. 2007. Visual-Verbal Communication on Online Newspaper Home Pages. Visual Communication 6, 19-53 Porto, M. D., Alonso Belmonte, I. (2016). Genres and Online Newspapers: Newsbites from a Socio-cognitive Perspective. In Stukker, N., Spooren, W., Steen, G. (Eds.), Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition (pp:277-302). Mouton de Gruyter. Scheufele, D. A. and S. Iyengar (2017). The state of framing research: A call for new directions. In Kenski, K., Jamieson, K. H., (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. (pp. 619-632). Oxford University Press Semetko , H. and P. Valkenburg (2000). Framing European politics: a content analysis of press and television news. Journal of Communication, 50(2): 93‐109. Stöckl H., H. Caple and J. Pflaeging (eds.), (2020) Shifts Towards Image-centricity in Contemporary Multimodal Practices. Routledge
The representation of social actors in Jair Bolsonaro's political discourse - land issues in perspective
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
In the last few years, we have witnessed in Brazil the political rise of the ultra-right (Mudde, 2020), starred by the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. Through this research, we aimed to identify how, in the online electoral discourse of the then-candidate, the representation of social actors – related to land issues – was constituted, through its different social compositions, seeking to understand how ideology and the relations of domination constituted by it (Thompson, 2011) act with regard to agrarian conflicts in Brazil. For the development of this research, we extracted all publications from the Twitter account @jairbolsonaro between January 1st and October 28th, 2018, the day of the second round of the last presidential elections. On the 1,384 tweets collected, a lexical programme consisting of 191 words – elaborated from the literature review and retrieved from secondary data analysis –, was applied to the database, filtering a total of 70 tweets, our initial corpus of analysis. On this corpus of analysis, through a Content Analysis (Bardin, 1977), considering the dimension "rural social actors", the emerging categories were then mobilized: "landless people", "family farmer", "rural producer", "indigenous peoples and quilombolas", "cultural-geographic category", "politicians (institutional politics)" and "others (comprehensive expressions)". After coding the tweets, a stratified random sample from each group was then selected in order to develop a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (van Dijk, 1983). The focus of CDA in this research falls, finally, on topics related to the "representation of social actors" (van Leeuwen, 2008), namely, the processes of: activation and passivation; individualization and assimilation; association; naming and categorization; functionalization and identification; and overdetermination of these actors. From the research carried out so far, we identify in Jair Bolsonaro's discourse 1) the populist construction of two antagonistic political camps, marking an explicit opposition to the category "landless people"; 2) the inscription of heterogeneous social groups in a "chain of equivalance" (Laclau, 2005), seeking to integrate the categories "indigenous peoples and quilombolas" in his electoral campaign, submitting them to the hegemony of a neoliberal praxis; 3) the political articulation with key actors in the Brazilian legislative branch - representatives of agribusiness in Congress; and 4) the prioritization of the social actor "rural producer", whose emphasis on the economic functionalization of the category indicates the preference in his discourse, concerning land issues, for a neoliberal logic of land use. Bardin, L. (2006). Análise de Conteúdo. Trad: Reto, L. e Pinheiro, A. Lisbon: Edições 70. (Original issue: 1977). Laclau, E. (2010). La razón populista. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. (Original issue: 2005) Mudde, C (2020). O Regresso da Ultradireita - Da Direita Radical à Direita Extremista. Lisbon: Editorial Presença. Thompson, J. (2002). Ideologia e cultura moderna: teoria social crítica na era dos meios de comunicação de massa. Trad. (Coord.) Guareshi, P. Petrópolis: Vozes. (Original issue: 1990). van Dijk, T.A. (1993). "Principles of critical discourse analysis". Discourse & Society, Sage, London. Newbury Park and New Delhi, vol. 4(2): 249-283. van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford Press.
Digital mirroring as a counter-hegemonic strategy of activism and argumentation in the Arab Levant
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
As technology-enhanced polarization shakes societies across the world, social movements, activists, and state critics are in the constant search for new tools of visibility and legitimization. Such a quest is particularly relevant in the Arab Levant, a post-colonial context where ideological divisions are exacerbated by questions of national identity and authenticity, and social movements are often delegitimized as mere neo-imperialist projects. This paper examines the visual digital strategies of social movements in the Arab Levant within a social media critical discourse perspective (SM-CDS) (KhosraviNik and Esposito 2018). The data consists of a corpus of over one-hundred memes drawn from the public Facebook and Instagram accounts of thirty-two feminist groups in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, as well as from the public Facebook and Instagram pages of Lebanese and Syrian political activists. A longitudinal, "screen-based" observation (Androutsopoulos 2017) of data published between 2011 and 2021 allowed us to "purposefully sample" (Patton 2002) texts grounded in historical events with regional and global repercussions, such as the Arab Spring, the MeToo movement, as well as the 2019 wave of protests in the Arab Levant. We analyzed these visual texts through Kress and van Leeuween's (2006) "visual grammar", as well as through the sociolinguistic notion of diglossia and hybridity in Arabic (ANONYMIZED; Brustad 2017). The analysis reveals that activists contribute to the creation, proliferation and distribution of a shared multimodal repertoire, comprising strategies of self- and other-presentation like iconization and stylization, and a vast selection of media and genres including pop art, photos of street protests and protest signs. This creative and transgressive repertoire, situated in the sociopolitical post-Arab Spring context, as well as in the digital media infrastructure (ANONYMIZED), functions as a semiotic cue through which activists engage with historically multi-layered discourses, thereby engendering a dialogue surrounding their social and political struggle on a local and global scale. The digital circulation of these multimodal strategies across different protest groups and movements in the Arab Levant arguably offers new perspectives on digital protest and social change. Contributing to the emerging literature on digital activism as embedded within the polarizing hegemonic neoliberal discourse, this study introduces digital mirroring as an emerging counter-hegemonic strategy of activism and resistance. Embedded in a historically dense context of colonization and post-colonization, and characterized by a kaleidoscope of creativity and memetics, Arab digital discourses of emancipation constitute a collective, intersectional, and argumentative effort.
References
Androutsopoulos, J. (2017). "Online Data Collection". In Data collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and applications, edited by Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs and Gerard Van Herk, 233-244. New York: Routledge.
Brustad, K. (2017). Diglossia as ideology. In The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World edited by Gunvor Mejdell and Jacob Høigilt. Leiden: Brill.
KhosraviNik, M., & E. Esposito (2018). Online hate, digital discourse and critique: Exploring digitally-mediated discursive practices of gender-based hostility. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 14(1), 45-68.
Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Presenters Eleonora Esposito Research Fellow, Universidad De Navarra
Hashtags and Polarization: a critical analysis of Greta Thunberg’s cyberactivism for the acknowledgement of climate emergency
Oral Presentation[SYMP61] Polarization and Digital Discourses: Critical and Socio-Cognitive perspectives08:30 AM - 04:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/18 06:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/18 14:15:00 UTC
Camila Belizário Ribeiro, PhD pursuant in Linguistics (University of Lisbon) Professor Dr. Maria Clotilde Almeida (University of Lisbon) Abstract Nowadays, the climate change issue, due to its very complex nature, involves a panoply of scientific domains. From the Cognition and Critical Discourse Analysis, two dyadic but complementary approaches viewing discourse as linked to the construction and dissemination of ideology and power (Fairclough, 2001; van Dijk 1997, 2010), some posts of Greta Thunberg's Instagram page, as well as the NGO Fridays for Future, will be analyzed here. Special attention is dedicated to the hashtag #uprootthesystem, widely used in cyberactivism environmental campaigns, with the intent of awakening public awareness and pressuring policymakers to reduce CO2 emissions, also addressing climate injustice, among other issues. Since hashtags are acknowledged as forms of activism in digital communication (Xiong, 2018; Medeiros 2020), it is no wonder that, in Greta Thunberg's cyberactivist communication on climate emergency, they aim at introducing controversial thematic discussions, in the form of polarized argumentation. So, she and many other young climate activists act upon public opinion by denouncing bad environmental practices worldwide, due to the lack of commitment from politicians in power, which contrasts with her inspirational participation in young activists' street rallies for urgent action measures to be taken by the population in different countries to preserve the environment. As it happens, technology per se cannot be considered a mechanism of social change but social networks are accounted as tools used for dissemination and (re)signification of "truths" and behaviours, as argued by Tagg (2015). Moreover, sequencing Nisbet (2009) and Lakoff (2010), we postulate that discussing climate emergency in social media by dissecting their conceptualization frames may change the way society thinks about the array of intricate and pressing environmental issues. Keywords: Climate Emergency. Hashtag. Discourse and Power. Cyberactivism.
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Lidia Mañoso-Pacheco
SILVIA MOLINA-PLAZA
Silvia Peterssen
M Dolores Porto
Isabel Alonso-Belmonte
Eleonora Esposito