Social media is the preferred communication platform for today’s youth, yet little is known of how online intergender communication is shaped by social identity norms. Drawing from the Social Identity and Deindividuation Effects approach, we argue that through depersonalization, online interactions are marked by the salience of social identities and identity performance conforming to perceived norms of behavior. We specifically look at discursive terms and their meaning-making as a strategic performance of gender in uncontrolled social media interactions. We examined a (...) corpus of 442 comments from selected public Indian Facebook pages in two phases over a span of 1 year. Thematic discourse analysis revealed established and emerging discursive strategies within the major themes on feminism and antifeminism, men’s rights, intersectional feminism, and sexual behavior. These meaningful terms are used to modulate identity performance in a heavily contested space, reflecting both consolidation as well as mobilization functions, as proposed by SIDE. The findings highlight that intergender communication on social media is both dependent on existing offline norms, while challenging the same to create new discourses of gender. (shrink)

The paper presents findings on primary teachers’ and other school actors’ constructions of the teacher and parental role. Specifically, it focuses on strategies for maintaining borders between the personal (parent) and professional (teacher) roles in school environments in Slovakia. We approached the concepts of role and identity from the perspective of social constructivism and symbolic interactionism. Thirty-one interviews and focus groups with school actors were analysed using critical discourse analysis. In the next step, discourses on managing the dual role were (...) analysed using thematic analysis. Results show participants described regulating or restricting verbal, emotional and behavioural expression, and engaged in favouritism avoidance as strategies for separating out the roles. All point to the need to eliminate favouritism as a key meaning in the construction of the teacher role through impartialness and parental role as favourably inclined to create inter-role conflict. We stress the importance of exploring teacher and parental roles in various circumstances in order to obtain a complex picture of negotiating these roles in everyday life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although dominant discourses of various kinds are frequently reproduced on talk radio, the fundamentally collaborative nature of the medium also means that it is able to serve as a channel through which to challenge these discourses. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this article examines how neoliberal ideology structures discussions around ‘service delivery protest’ on South African talk radio, and explores some of the roles that talk radio is, and is not, able to play in constructing resistance to neoliberal ideology. Our (...) analysis yielded two discourses, namely: naturalisation of the commodification of everyday life, and market over welfare – both of which seemed to cohere with neoliberal frameworks and rationalities in different ways. We conclude by suggesting how radio can be used to denaturalise neoliberalism’s impulse towards making common sense conditions that enable economic oppression and exploitation. (shrink)

This article analyses the discursive practices of scientists engaged in controversial science in their narrated accounts of encounters with activists. It explores what happens when scientific credibility and authority are challenged in a public debate on the benefits and risks of such science. The aim is to understand how scientists discursively negotiate and make sense of their encounters with activists, the range of subject positions they claim, and how power is implicated in identification with the public. The article shows how (...) scientists counter emotional appeals, utilizing both scientific and public identities respectively to legitimate the epistemic and moral authority of science and to marginalize opposing activists. It is argued that a unitary view of scientific identity is inadequate. Rather, in times of public challenge and controversy, scientists may utilize a multiplicity of subject positions to achieve identification with public interests. The discursive construct, public interest, is interpreted as a contested discursive space and a discursive resource for influencing public opinion. (shrink)

Our study of a public inquiry shows how particular constructions of the older worker — as male and lacking in self-esteem — were privileged as a result of discursive manoeuvres that established comparative disadvantage among different identities. Paradoxically, traditional gender stereotypes were subverted to construct female willingness to accept low status, low paid jobs as a reason why they did not need help in the form of policy initiatives; while men's intransigence meant they deserved greater support. A second paradox concerned (...) the construction of the older worker as lacking self-esteem: it led to self-esteem based solutions that were the responsibility of the individual to remedy but, precisely because older male workers lacked self-esteem, they were unable to help themselves and needed the help of employment and welfare agencies. Thus we can see the link between particular identity constructions, discourse and the reproduction of particular institutional structures. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough dominant discourses of various kinds are frequently reproduced on talk radio, the fundamentally collaborative nature of the medium also means that it is able to serve as a channel...

ABSTRACTAt the end of 2016, Taiwan witnessed a string of massive protest demonstrations held by both ends of the ideological debate on marriage equality. These public demonstrations can be seen as...

ABSTRACTThe ‘City of David’ in Silwan is on the original site of Jerusalem. Located in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, it is both an illegal Israeli settlement in a Palestinian neighbourhood and a popular international tourist destination. This article examines how the site is narrated by tour operators and tourists through fieldwork, interviews and analysis of tourist comments on the TripAdvisor site. It argues that Israeli settlers have successfully harnessed tourist discourse in order to present their vision of a Jewish Jerusalem in (...) which Palestinian existence is ignored or treated as a threat. The site allows tourists to connect to and experience a mythical biblical past, something which answers to tourist desires to have an authentic encounter with the destination culture. In the site’s narratives, the presence of Palestinians in the area is elided over through spatial and linguistic separation and by denying their legitimate presence. This indicates how the congruence between Zionist and tourist discourses discursively legitimises Israeli colonisation of Silwan. (shrink)

This paper will use the theoretical concepts of ‘intertextuality’, ‘interdiscursivity’ and ‘resemiotization’ to analyse four media texts on South African president, Jacob Zuma. The aims of the paper are, first, to analyse the role that intertextual references play in the construction of the identity of public figures. Second, the paper investigates the semiotic affordances of the visual and linguistic mode by tracing how previous discourses and texts about Jacob Zuma move across discursive spaces and modes. The findings suggest that reference (...) to previous discourses play a fundamental role in the way in which Jacob Zuma is constructed. More specifically, resemiotization from the verbal to the visual mode seems to serve as a way to bring multiple discourses into a text without necessarily articulating these discourses linguistically. These findings are discussed within the broader framework of critical discourse analysis. (shrink)