Discourse & Society current issue

Bernstein and poetics revisited: voice, globalization and education

Blommaert, J. — 2008-06-30

This article engages in a theory of linguistic inequality under conditions of globalization. Starting from a development of the notion of voice as the capacity to make sense, and a development of the organized and patterned `poetic' structure of actual discourse, it analyses data from police interviews with immigrants, witness statements in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and data from classroom learning environments in South Africa and Belgium. Throughout these analyses, we see that detailed attention to poetic patterning is required in order to reconstruct the voice articulated by people whose voice's would otherwise not be heard. This insight has a bearing on our understanding of competence, and issues of competence become more and more pressing in globalizing contexts.

Why we must attack Iraq: Bush's reasoning practices and argumentation system

Chang, G. C., Mehan, H. B. — 2008-06-30

This three-part article describes the reasoning practices and argumentation system deployed by the Bush administration to build a case for the war on Iraq initiated in 2003. First, it analyzes the elaborate description of Saddam Hussein's evil character presented by the Bush administration and the political implications that followed from it. Then, it analyzes the methods by which these understandings were utilized to argue that Saddam Hussein's regime (1) possessed weapons of mass destruction and (2) had collaborative relationships with terrorists, including al-Qaeda. Last, it explains how the Bush administration creatively used event-sequencing strategies and syntactical formations to help forward their accusations in public against opponents who argued that the Bush administration had lacked evidence for its claims. The overall analysis demonstrates that an argumentation system was built through a dialectical process whereby one way of speaking, thinking, and acting helped to legitimize and `afford' subsequent ones.

The politics of recontextualization: discursive competition over claims of Iranian involvement in Iraq

Hodges, A. — 2008-06-30

The representation of issues, especially those that are highly contested or ambiguous, is an ongoing process always subject to challenge and new re-presentations. This article explores the discursive competition between journalists and White House officials over the recontextualization of words spoken by General Peter Pace, which seemingly cast doubt on White House claims of Iranian involvement in Iraq. Pace's words, along with those spoken by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and President George W. Bush in their appearances before the press, enter into a web of intertextual connections involved in the contestation over the `truth' of the matter. The analysis explores this intertextual web and the discursive moves employed by journalists and administration officials to differently represent the issue at hand. I argue that the effective study of political discourse, especially as it relates to larger forms of sociocultural knowledge, requires an analytic emphasis on intertextuality.

The intertextual origins of public opinion: constructing Ebonics in the New York Times

Sclafani, J. — 2008-06-30

In this article, I revisit the 1996 Oakland School Board (OSB) resolution on Ebonics and perform a discourse analysis of the NeW York Times coverage of the decision. Using the framework of intertextuality, I consider how reported speech allows authors to appropriate authority and construct various stances toward the OSB decision. I discuss how other framing devices work in tandem with intertextuality to discursively construct ideologies of Ebonics. I also analyze how language from early articles is incorporated in subsequent news items, and emphasize the need to consider both discursive reproduction processes and cognitive processes of reception when using intertextual analysis to understand the origin of language ideologies. I suggest that this approach to media discourse analysis can be utilized by linguists who wish to actively shape attitudes toward stigmatized language varieties.

Duelling discourses, shared weapons: rhetorical techniques used to challenge racist arguments

Fozdar, F. — 2008-06-30

Racism and anti-racism can be seen as duelling discourses which constantly cross-reference each other. Using interview data from interviews with working-class Maori and Pakeha, this article analyses the ways in which anti-racism expressed by ordinary New Zealanders engages directly with dominant racist discourses. The article explores some of the themes and linguistic devices identified in Wetherell and Potter's classic analysis of middle-class racism in New Zealand, arguing that counterhegemonic discourses challenging these themes are alive and well, and being used to resist racism at a grass-roots level. It specifically analyses challenges to the notions that resources should be used productively; that Maori should appreciate that they are much better off than other indigenous people; that there are legitimate and illegitimate ways of protesting; and that present generations are not responsible for mistakes of the past. It argues that many of the same rhetorical devices utilized in racist talk are also found in the articulation of these arguments, indicating that common linguistic resources are the shared weaponry through which an ideological battle about rights and discrimination is being waged.

Book review: EDDIE WILLIAMS, Bridges and Barriers -- Language in African Education and Development. Manchester, UK, and Kinderhook, New York: St. Jerome Publishing, 2006. Xix + 257 pp. ISBN 1900650975 (pbk)

Ogutu, J. N. — 2008-06-30

Book review: BEN RAMPTON, Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 443 pp. {pound}55/$95 (hbk), ISBN 0521812631

Rone, T. R. — 2008-06-30

Book review: ALBERT MEMMI, Decolonization and the Decolonized, trans. Robert Bononno. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Xiv + 148 pp. $17.95 (pbk), ISBN 0816647356

Pinto, J. P. — 2008-06-30

Book review: EMANUEL A. SCHEGLOFF, Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Xvi + 300 pp

Kitzinger, C. — 2008-06-30