Focusing on Weibo and Twitter, this study adopts computer-mediated discourse analysis to examine how influencers use emoji sequences when engaging in self-presentation. It identified a variety of text-based speech acts, emoji functions, and functional relations by conducting speech act and pragmatic function analysis. ‘Claim’ is the most common text-based speech act accompanying with emoji sequences in both data groups; however, the former had a higher percentage than the later. Moreover, emoji functioning as a combination of ‘stance and action’ in sequences (...) comprise the most prominent category in the Twitter data, whereas the ‘concept’ function accounts for the largest percentage within the Weibo data. Finally, emoji sequences serving as ‘emphasis on text’ is most employed in connection with accompanying texts in both data. This study also observed how a lack of user-desired emoji may be compensated for through collocation of emoji sequences, a device which involves significant creativity and intricacy. (shrink)

This study makes a case for the conversational phenomenon the authors have named the comical hypothetical. The CH becomes discursively co-created during ongoing conversation when one or more speakers depart from the normal turn-taking system and engage in the interactional creation of an imaginary world. Data stem from ethnographic observations as well as from spontaneous recordings of social situations in three different locations. Out of 20 hours of taped conversations, 10 recognizable CH segments were analyzed for the present study. The (...) authors present a macro-structure analysis of the comical hypothetical using Hymes's SPEAKING mnemonic, with an emphasis on the act sequence. A second-level micro-analysis uncovers the interactional properties of the CH using a conversation analytic approach. The examination reveals a distinct four-part act sequence of the CH made up of intricate and creative interactional turns. Lastly, the significance and functions of the CH are also discussed. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between person-referencing terms and attorney and judges’ stances during oral argument in three US state supreme courts as each considered whether its existing state law could restrict marriage to one man and one woman. After reviewing past work on stancetaking and person referencing, I provide background on appellate oral argument and the three cases. Combining discourse analysis with simple quantitative coding, the study shows that attorneys’ and judges’ choices of terms for gay parties and the (...) frequency of their use marked the stance of appellate parties toward same-sex marriage. Then, I describe how person-referencing terms for gays, both in the larger society and in appellate courts, changed in the 20 years preceding the cases. The article concludes by arguing for the value of studying state appellate court discourse; I also reflect about the complexities in linking changes in usage of person-referencing terms with attitudinal stance changes. (shrink)

In this article I develop tools for analyzing the identities that emerge in qualitative material. I approach identities as historically, socially and culturally produced subject positions, as processes that are in a constant state of becoming and that receive their temporary stability and meaning in concrete contexts and circumstances. I suggest that the identities and subject positions that materialize in qualitative material can be analyzed from four different perspectives. They can be approached by focusing on (1) classifications that define the (...) boundary lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’, as (2) participant roles that refer to the temporal aspect of subject positions and outline their meaning for action, as (3) structures of viewpoint and focalization that frame meaning and order to opinions and experiences of the world, and as (4) interactive positions that articulate the roles and identities taken by the participants of communication. (shrink)

We use discourse analysis to examine a group supervision meeting in which graduate students who are training to become school counselors discuss counseling experiences that they had at local high schools. Focusing on metadiscourse, or talk about talk, we integrate Ochs’ concepts of epistemic stance and affective stance and Tannen’s discussion of linguistic strategies as ambiguous and polysemous in terms of power and solidarity in order to demonstrate how counselors-in-training construct their identities as what Woodside et al. call ‘boundary-dwellers’ in (...) their professional community of practice. Examination of metadiscourse regarding address terms and the speech act of asking questions – and in particular highlighting how participants use negatively valenced affect words, the verb feel, and what Tannen calls ‘constructed dialogue’ – reveals their stances of uncertainty and discomfort, their transitional professional identities as entailing an uneasy navigation of relationships, and their recognition of the pivotal role of language in the process. (shrink)

In this paper, we study discourses of emotion management on the reality television show Survivor. We analyze segments of the program that feature emotionally charged interactional moments and examine how these interactions are interwoven with contestants’ confessional interviews and framed by the narrator’s introductions of the segments. In a two part analysis, we first analyze the talk produced by the contestants and the host as individual texts, using a discourse analytic perspective that focuses on the details of the talk itself. (...) We then consider the ways the talk constitutes a series of layered texts and analyze these texts, using a discourse analytic approach that attends to macro-level and critical perspectives. We conclude that Survivor largely reinforces dominant cultural discourses of emotion management as strategic interactional practice that allow a person to be competitive. Furthermore, the analysis links performances of emotion management to representations of specific aspects of contestants’ social identities. (shrink)

In Hungarian public talk, ‘hate speech’ is a term commonly used to morally sanction the talk of others. The article describes two dominant interpretive strategies Hungarian speakers use to identify instances of ‘hate speech’. Motivated by an interest in the observable use of the term, the author draws on speech codes theory to investigate how public speakers use the two competing meanings of ‘hate speech’ to achieve moral challenges and counter-challenges in broadcast talk. The author finds that Hungarian speakers accused (...) of ‘hate speech’ can effectively accomplish denials in response to actual or anticipated normative challenges by opting for an alternative meaning of ‘hate speech’. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for speech codes theory, the discourse analysis of denials, and antiracist action. (shrink)

This essay investigates the representation of lesbian, gay and bisexual people during the debate over whether they should serve openly in the United States military. Many studies on this topic have focused on the question of whether this debate ‘militarized’ LGB people. This study takes a broader view, tracking five rhetorical archetypes through two US Congressional Hearings. I identify and track these archetypes using a coding procedure that draws on concepts from Membership Categorization Analysis, rhetorical theory, discourse analysis and elsewhere. (...) The result is a holistic picture of how LGB people were represented across the hearings. While they were increasingly associated with military values in the later hearing, they were also less often represented as victims, spoilers or activists in a negative sense. These findings offer additional insights into how the meanings-in-use of identity categories are changed in discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I report on a quasi-case study of U.S. presidential identity based on Donald J. Trump’s presidency, demonstrating that Trump is considered by the American public as an antithesis of presidentiality. I then discuss the insights from this study on several critical issues that face identity studies, an expansive area of investigation which has attracted the attention of students from a diverse range of disciplines. I demonstrate that identity is a set of attributes the formation of which is (...) based on the mission of the group and the expected behaviors of members of that group, that the construction of identity is largely a bottom-up and gradual process, and that identity is both preexisting and emergent. (shrink)

This discourse analytic study integrates theories of stance and membership categorization to investigate one online discussion thread initiated by a woman who asks for diet and health advice on behalf of her boyfriend, an interactive move we term ‘asking for another’. Posters to the thread, in relatively explicit ways, construe the original poster as a ‘nag’ and ‘mother-figure’ and her boyfriend as a ‘victim of nagging’ and ‘childish’. Our analysis illuminates how two features of the asking-for-another post evoke these identities: (...) extreme case formulations, created via adjectives and adverbs, lead others to view the woman as inappropriately involved and controlling and her boyfriend as immature, and details about the boyfriend’s diet, provided via nouns and adjectives, index cultural ideologies of food and identity. This study illuminates the ambiguity and polysemy of the move of asking for another, contributing to research on identity construction and health-related advice-seeking online. (shrink)

While previous studies highlight the dynamic nature of identity co-construction, how and especially why speakers construct and shift their own multiple identities still remains understudied. The present study argues that identity is part of speaker communicative resources as evidenced by radio program hosts’ strategic employment and shift among their different identities to facilitate their interactional purposes. Based on data drawn from radio medical consultations, this article attempts to reveal the dynamic adaptability of hosts’ identity construction. It is found that in (...) general, hosts of medical consultation programs construct three identities for themselves, namely an authoritative expert identity, a caring friend identity and a sales representative identity; the three identities constructed are respectively adaptable to power relationships, solidarity and role relationships between hosts and callers in conversation; the three identities shift in conversations to facilitate callers’ purchasing acts. (shrink)

This paper contributes to empirical knowledge of citizen participation as a communicative event, by analyzing discursive tensions in interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents, that are part of a participatory process on how to mitigate violence in a suburban area in Sweden. Citizen participation events are increasingly initiated by public institutions in Western societies. Research, however, shows that goals of participatory processes often conflict with formal decision-making structures and institutional boundaries. Yet, how such tensions play out on the level of (...) interaction is little researched. This study therefore analyzes discursive practices deployed by civil servants and how these construct characteristic tensions for the interviews. Three practices are identified: pursuing the initial question, cueing an institutional frame, and epistemic positioning of the parents. These practices, being guided by an institutional agenda, create tensions both to the parents’ lifeworld and for the ideals of the participatory method itself. (shrink)

An important but unstudied event in US legal institutions is when judges question plaintiff and defense attorneys about the issue that brings them to an appeals hearing before a state supreme court. In this article I analyze judges' questioning during the oral argument phase of the New York Court of Appeals' hearing of Hernandez v. Robles, a case concerning whether the state was violating same-sex couples' constitutional rights by denying them access to marriage. The article's purpose is to show how (...) the content, format, and language style of judges' questioning turns constructs the judges as persons possessing particular attitudes, judicial philosophies, political leanings, and personalities. The article provides a quantitative overview of the 186 questioning turns and analyzes the discourse in selected episodes to evidence how features of questioning generate identity inferences. The conclusion considers how the oral argument phase of Appeals Court proceedings contributes to larger discourses of the law. (shrink)

This article examines a productive use of communicating gender stereotypes in interpersonal conversation: to resist activities traditionally prescribed according to gender. The analyses video-taped naturally occurring US household interactions and present three techniques participants may deploy to contest gender expectations: mobilizing categories, motivating alignment and reframing action. We show how gender is an accountable category in relation to household labor, and how gender categories provide a resource by which participants can non-seriously solicit and resist participation in domestic gender-prescribed activities. Our (...) analysis provides some insight into how participants use gender stereotypes in everyday talk and what functions such talk serves. (shrink)