Obsédé par le risque d'aliénation découlant de certaines certitudes spirituelles, Liam O'... more Obsédé par le risque d'aliénation découlant de certaines certitudes spirituelles, Liam O'Flaherty esquiva le réalisme avec cohérence. Son travail de romancier s'inscrit dans deux genres différents : la romance en milieu rural et le mélodrame urbain. Les images rustiques qui émergent de ses romans aux tons bucoliques sont communément considérées comme une représentation cohérente de la vie qui y est décrite. Le mélodrame urbain, par contre, ne connaît pas le même engouement chez le public, du fait de son ton excessif mêlé au sensationnel. O'Flaherty, en tant que romancier, pourrait jouir d'une meilleure considération si le recours au mélodrame par l'auteur n'était pas considéré comme une défaillance artistique mais plutôt comme la découverte d'un genre qui épouse particulièrement bien le thème de l'aliénation, si cher à l'auteur.
The Narrative and Obsession with the Game Remains A conversation with David Peace (14 September 2... more The Narrative and Obsession with the Game Remains A conversation with David Peace (14 September 2015) By Dermot Heaney
The chapter presents the results of a qualitative analysis of a number of inaugural press confere... more The chapter presents the results of a qualitative analysis of a number of inaugural press conferences by native speaker football managers, available on football club websites and/or the video sharing website Youtube.com. Initially, the chapter identifies the characteristic communicative purpose and move structure of this genre. It then examines the principal discursive strategies implemented by these professionals in order to establish their credentials and suitability for the job, their enthusiasm for the plans of their board, their unswerving commitment to the team, to the club, and its traditions. The chapter also discusses how these media interactions are exploited to interact with various other members of the participation framework, like journalists, but also other legitimated overhearing audiences, for example, fans, players, and sponsors. The results of this analysis will illustrate how in this Web-mediated media genre the language of permanence and identification with the club brand is central in this professional role, even though the unpredictable nature of the game and a ruthless corporate logic have combined to create a dynamic of pervading job insecurity and impermanence
The starting point for this chapter is Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s contention that metaphors struct... more The starting point for this chapter is Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s contention that metaphors structure \u2018the ordinary conceptual system of our culture\u2019 (1980). The two authors make the related point that though \u2018alive\u2019, these metaphors are fixed within the lexicon. The primary intention is to explore this aspect of the lexicon in the ambit of L2 translation pedagogy applied to the language pair of Italian-English. The resources provided by dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual) for L2 student translators approaching the task of translating figurative language, be it in the form of tropes like conventional metonymy, synecdoche, antonomasia and personification, or in the shape of conventional metaphor, are largely unsatisfactory and far from systematic. As a consequence translation trainers are regularly faced with the difficulties of suggesting a method for coping with this aspect of the lexicon. Often the choice seems to lie between either trusting to the students\u2019 \u2018naturally developing\u2019 figurative awareness or jettisoning all forms of intuition in preference for the \u2018certitudes\u2019 of working with corpora, or a compromise combination of both. In the light of Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s evidence that conceptual metaphor is used systematically across domains, and is thus likely to be encountered in a variety of domains and text types, the paper sets out assess strategies for developing student awareness of what is involved in the transfer of this area of the lexicon into the L2. Referring to a learner corpus of advanced MA-level, L2 student translations of SL texts produced by a cultural institution, the paper also attempts to assess the cultural issues involved in the transfer of metaphors through processes like transposition and modulation and the bearing this typology of shift can have on textual equivalenc
The lexical list is a short text par excellence, requiring a minimum of two lexical items, which ... more The lexical list is a short text par excellence, requiring a minimum of two lexical items, which can be proper names, possibly in abbreviated form, or simple nouns, regularly shorn of determiners. The list is also possibly the most ancient text-‐‑type, one that has not only persisted in various social contexts since Sumerian times, but is presently flourishing in numerous writing spaces created by new media, to the extent that the Amazon website has named the phenomenon ‘Listmania’ and recognises the existence of ‘list author’s, for whom it provides guidelines and house rules. Lists, however, have attracted very little attention from scholars of contemporary linguistics and the literature on them is mainly found in the disciplines of Bible studies or research into early Mesopotamian languages. After briefly considering, the main varieties of this text-‐‑type, its principal functions, and some possible cultural reasons for its durability, the present paper analyses syntactical and ...
This paper addresses the relationship between NNS proficiency and professional and national ident... more This paper addresses the relationship between NNS proficiency and professional and national identity by examining the case of Fabio Capello, whose four-year management of the English national football team established an extended intercultural setting for assessing the impact of the limited L2 skills of a high-profile NNS professional in the public sphere. By referring to the Interlanguage (IL) model, a quantitative and diachronic analysis of Capello\u2019s L2 competence during his tenure is carried out. The analysis is completed by drawing on aspects of identity theory to assess how closely and at what points L2 competence was involved in the mediated construction of his identity as a \u2018fitting\u2019 foreign manager of the English squad
Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was c... more Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was charged by the House of Commons to investigate doping in British sport, following revelations in the press that this practice was widespread. This study focuses on the witness sessions involving exponents of cycling, a sport frequently linked with performance enhancement. The study adopts a Computer-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach. By comparing a corpus of the Committee hearings with a corpus of online media coverage, the study offers a detailed qualitative analysis of stance and evaluation strategies in both corpora. Analysis highlights the importance of stance adverbials for witnesses and Committee members alike. It also reveals patterns of attitude adverbials. It is shown how patterns of stance in the hearing prime the press account of the issue, resulting in predominantly negative evaluations that reduce the complexity of the issue to an oversimplified more polarized account, presumably in the interests of newsworthiness.
L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Tr... more L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Translation Studies. In this paper, the feasibility of training L2 translators as cultural mediators is examined. The analysis is presented in the form of a case study of advanced L2 students translating from Italian into English. This sample was assessed primarily in terms of cultural mediation. Given this emphasis, the source text (ST) was taken from the domain of cultural information for the general public. The principal assessment criterion was the source language (SL) conventional metaphor “percorso”, a pervasive JOURNEY metaphor, widely used in that domain. This trope was chosen because it combines significant source culture (SC) attitudes to communicative style and expresses values attributed to official culture itself. The paper analyses how students responded to the challenge of negotiating between SC values, situational context, possible target language (TL) models and legitimate...
Academic analysis of sports journalism is typically conducted with reference to its role in issue... more Academic analysis of sports journalism is typically conducted with reference to its role in issues like national (Beard 1998; Billig 1995; Polley 2004; Smith 2004) and gender (Benwell and Stokoe 2006) identity construction. Consequently much critical attention is given to the disproportionate seriousness with much sports journalism is produced and consumed. However, as written sports journalism has spilled over into the internet, it appears to have acquired a new remit: to simultaneously inform and entertain (Chapman 2012). This brief is largely achieved by virtue of the declaredly humorous manner in which that \u2018serious\u2019 subject matter is now mediated. This contribution proposes to analyse the types of humorous writing techniques found in over-by-over commentary on a cricket test match in the online version of a national newspaper. A related focus will be on the social functions underlying the repertoire of techniques used in the accompanying online interactions
Error analysis and product assessment are increasingly viewed as reductive procedures in translat... more Error analysis and product assessment are increasingly viewed as reductive procedures in translation pedagogy. In the current paper, a case is made for 'rehabilitating' error analysis, especially in advanced L2 translation teaching. Attention is drawn to its usefulness in creating a group profile for L2 translation trainees, particularly as regards the scope it offers for showing how aspects of linguistic transfer frequently considered marginal, when taken individually, are, on the contrary, significant if viewed cumulatively. In the course of the article it is suggested that error analysis can be used dynamically to show that apparently sporadic and 'low level' aspects of transfer are among the most frequent problems, and that they consistently interlock with 'higher-level' textual and contextual (if not cultural) considerations. Far from encouraging a transmissionist stance on the part of the L1 teachers normally responsible for L2 translation courses, error analysis can be used to empower L2 students. One way in which this can be done is through a focus on technologies that address the issues emerging from the analysis. This should make students increasingly independent of the intuitive, internalized knowledge of their trainers, both in the short term and in the course of their professional careers.
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017
The starting point of this paper is the phenomenon of so-called MediaSport, namely the pervasive ... more The starting point of this paper is the phenomenon of so-called MediaSport, namely the pervasive and multi-faceted mediation of sports events that extends the reach and hold of the sports industry on communities of sports consumers. The specific aspect of MediaSport considered here is the streamed post-match interview with Premier League team managers, a stabilized media interaction that reflects the importance of media duties as part of the manager’s corporate brief. Critical attention to managers seems mainly confined to sociological studies of the politics of celebrity, while linguists seemingly have little to say about this kind of discourse. The data selected for analysis are two interviews following defeat. The choice falls on this scenario because it is expected it will entail a greater onus on managers to display media interaction expertise. Using a theoretical framework that draws on Goffman’s concepts of performance, participation framework, and face, the discourse analysis i...
L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Tr... more L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Translation Studies. In this paper, the feasibility of training L2 translators as cultural mediators is examined. The analysis is presented in the form of a case study of advanced L2 students translating from Italian into English. This sample was assessed primarily in terms of cultural mediation. Given this emphasis, the source text (ST) was taken from the domain of cultural information for the general public. The principal assessment criterion was the source language (SL) conventional metaphor “percorso”, a pervasive JOURNEY metaphor, widely used in that domain. This trope was chosen because it combines significant source culture (SC) attitudes to communicative style and expresses values attributed to official culture itself. The paper analyses how students responded to the challenge of negotiating between SC values, situational context, possible target language (TL) models and legitimate...
This paper presents a case study of online mainstream print media accounts of the sensitive issue... more This paper presents a case study of online mainstream print media accounts of the sensitive issue of doping within sport. Specifically, it investigates press coverage of the enquiry of the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Combating Doping in Sport (House of Parliament 2006-2018). Adopting a discourse analytical approach, the analysis entails comparison of two data sets, one comprising the transcripts of the Select Committee hearings; the other composed of news print media coverage of the committee\u2019s proceedings. The purpose is to gain insights into the prevailing discursive strategies involved in the recontextualization of institutional face-to-face interactions in the form of mainstream online print news about this charged and controversial issue
MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research, 2013
This article considers the appointment of a foreign manager to coach a national football team fro... more This article considers the appointment of a foreign manager to coach a national football team from the perspective of discursive identity construction. The data is comprised of three corpora of online versions of newspaper articles, each corresponding to a phase in Fabio Capello's first two years of tenure. Reflecting current trends in Critical Discourse Analysis, qualitative close analysis is carried out on two articles from each corpus while quantitative analysis is extended across each corpus to identify salient and consistent aspects of discursive identity construction. Exploiting the multidisciplinary basis of CDA, the data is examined in terms of transitivity, lexis (comprising vocabulary, collocation, deixis, and intertextuality), and narrative identity construction. Micro-analysis of grammatical and linguistic patterns is applied to indicate patterns in press coverage in each phase, and a corresponding overview considers how aspects of identity work diffused through each corpus cohere into general storylines.
The decision of the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympic... more The decision of the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the 2018 Pyeonchang Games in South Korea, following accusations of a state-promoted doping programme behind Russian sport, indicates that what was formerly framed as a personal misdemeanour has now developed into a geopolitical matter, a shift that involves a considerable change in the approach taken towards the phenomenon of doping. Scholars of political science and international relations now see such venues as occasions for the exercise of 'soft power', namely, "the ability of states to communicate universally shared values […] in order to court the publics of other states" (Grix, Lee 2013, p. 526). If states are "attempting to use sports mega-events to persuade the governments, businesses and the public in other countries to alter negative stereotypes they hold" (Grix, Houlihan 2013, p. 577), how are those negative stereotypes affected when the reason for non-inclusion is a bioethical one? Concomitantly, how does the ostracized nation attempt to protect its threatened identity before the eyes of the world (Altukhov, Nauright 2018)? To assess how this issue has been contested and negotiated in the media two comparable corpora have been assembled: the first comprising English language articles about the bans in the international press (IPC); the second composed of English language articles on the same topic available on the ITAR-TASS website (Russian Press Corpus; RPC). The corpora are interrogated using concordancing software to provide an initial sample of 100 keywords from each corpus, which are then placed in broad semantic fields. The IPC corpus furnishes insights both into the kinds of stereotypes that abound in reporting about Russia's alleged behaviour and also into the values the international community implicitly attributes to itself. On the other hand, the RPC provides pointers to how Russia implements its English language press service to effect damage repair to its international reputation and cushion the blow to its soft power.
Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was c... more Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was charged by the House of Commons to investigate doping in British sport, following revelations in the press that this practice was widespread. This study focuses on the witness sessions involving exponents of cycling, a sport frequently linked with performance enhancement. The study adopts a Computer-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach. By comparing a corpus of the Committee hearings with a corpus of online media coverage, the study offers a detailed qualitative analysis of stance and evaluation strategies in both corpora. Analysis highlights the importance of stance adverbials for witnesses and Committee members alike. It also reveals patterns of attitude adverbials. It is shown how patterns of stance in the hearing prime the press account of the issue, resulting in predominantly negative evaluations that reduce the complexity of the issue to an oversimplified more polarized accoun...
What follows is a qualitative analysis of the use of impoliteness for comiceffect in the British ... more What follows is a qualitative analysis of the use of impoliteness for comiceffect in the British comedy series Life’s Too Short written by Ricky Gervais and StephenMerchant. Because each episode centres on Warwick Davis, an actor with restrictedgrowth, or dwarfism, there is a considerable risk of superiority or disparagement-typecomedy about a taboo subject like physical difference, stigmatized in current Britishculture. In this analysis I set out to show that the authors’ use of impoliteness plays animportant role in allowing them to write comedy centred on this sensitive issue.The starting-point of the analysis is Culpeper’s proposal that impoliteness can beentertaining, which in this case is applied to scripted comedy rather than impromptuor semi-spontaneous examples of impoliteness for purposes of entertainment.Referring to aspects of impoliteness applied to entertainment, and with reference tothe concept of face, and to superiority, incongruity, and relief humour theories, thep...
Obsédé par le risque d'aliénation découlant de certaines certitudes spirituelles, Liam O'... more Obsédé par le risque d'aliénation découlant de certaines certitudes spirituelles, Liam O'Flaherty esquiva le réalisme avec cohérence. Son travail de romancier s'inscrit dans deux genres différents : la romance en milieu rural et le mélodrame urbain. Les images rustiques qui émergent de ses romans aux tons bucoliques sont communément considérées comme une représentation cohérente de la vie qui y est décrite. Le mélodrame urbain, par contre, ne connaît pas le même engouement chez le public, du fait de son ton excessif mêlé au sensationnel. O'Flaherty, en tant que romancier, pourrait jouir d'une meilleure considération si le recours au mélodrame par l'auteur n'était pas considéré comme une défaillance artistique mais plutôt comme la découverte d'un genre qui épouse particulièrement bien le thème de l'aliénation, si cher à l'auteur.
The Narrative and Obsession with the Game Remains A conversation with David Peace (14 September 2... more The Narrative and Obsession with the Game Remains A conversation with David Peace (14 September 2015) By Dermot Heaney
The chapter presents the results of a qualitative analysis of a number of inaugural press confere... more The chapter presents the results of a qualitative analysis of a number of inaugural press conferences by native speaker football managers, available on football club websites and/or the video sharing website Youtube.com. Initially, the chapter identifies the characteristic communicative purpose and move structure of this genre. It then examines the principal discursive strategies implemented by these professionals in order to establish their credentials and suitability for the job, their enthusiasm for the plans of their board, their unswerving commitment to the team, to the club, and its traditions. The chapter also discusses how these media interactions are exploited to interact with various other members of the participation framework, like journalists, but also other legitimated overhearing audiences, for example, fans, players, and sponsors. The results of this analysis will illustrate how in this Web-mediated media genre the language of permanence and identification with the club brand is central in this professional role, even though the unpredictable nature of the game and a ruthless corporate logic have combined to create a dynamic of pervading job insecurity and impermanence
The starting point for this chapter is Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s contention that metaphors struct... more The starting point for this chapter is Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s contention that metaphors structure \u2018the ordinary conceptual system of our culture\u2019 (1980). The two authors make the related point that though \u2018alive\u2019, these metaphors are fixed within the lexicon. The primary intention is to explore this aspect of the lexicon in the ambit of L2 translation pedagogy applied to the language pair of Italian-English. The resources provided by dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual) for L2 student translators approaching the task of translating figurative language, be it in the form of tropes like conventional metonymy, synecdoche, antonomasia and personification, or in the shape of conventional metaphor, are largely unsatisfactory and far from systematic. As a consequence translation trainers are regularly faced with the difficulties of suggesting a method for coping with this aspect of the lexicon. Often the choice seems to lie between either trusting to the students\u2019 \u2018naturally developing\u2019 figurative awareness or jettisoning all forms of intuition in preference for the \u2018certitudes\u2019 of working with corpora, or a compromise combination of both. In the light of Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s evidence that conceptual metaphor is used systematically across domains, and is thus likely to be encountered in a variety of domains and text types, the paper sets out assess strategies for developing student awareness of what is involved in the transfer of this area of the lexicon into the L2. Referring to a learner corpus of advanced MA-level, L2 student translations of SL texts produced by a cultural institution, the paper also attempts to assess the cultural issues involved in the transfer of metaphors through processes like transposition and modulation and the bearing this typology of shift can have on textual equivalenc
The lexical list is a short text par excellence, requiring a minimum of two lexical items, which ... more The lexical list is a short text par excellence, requiring a minimum of two lexical items, which can be proper names, possibly in abbreviated form, or simple nouns, regularly shorn of determiners. The list is also possibly the most ancient text-‐‑type, one that has not only persisted in various social contexts since Sumerian times, but is presently flourishing in numerous writing spaces created by new media, to the extent that the Amazon website has named the phenomenon ‘Listmania’ and recognises the existence of ‘list author’s, for whom it provides guidelines and house rules. Lists, however, have attracted very little attention from scholars of contemporary linguistics and the literature on them is mainly found in the disciplines of Bible studies or research into early Mesopotamian languages. After briefly considering, the main varieties of this text-‐‑type, its principal functions, and some possible cultural reasons for its durability, the present paper analyses syntactical and ...
This paper addresses the relationship between NNS proficiency and professional and national ident... more This paper addresses the relationship between NNS proficiency and professional and national identity by examining the case of Fabio Capello, whose four-year management of the English national football team established an extended intercultural setting for assessing the impact of the limited L2 skills of a high-profile NNS professional in the public sphere. By referring to the Interlanguage (IL) model, a quantitative and diachronic analysis of Capello\u2019s L2 competence during his tenure is carried out. The analysis is completed by drawing on aspects of identity theory to assess how closely and at what points L2 competence was involved in the mediated construction of his identity as a \u2018fitting\u2019 foreign manager of the English squad
Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was c... more Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was charged by the House of Commons to investigate doping in British sport, following revelations in the press that this practice was widespread. This study focuses on the witness sessions involving exponents of cycling, a sport frequently linked with performance enhancement. The study adopts a Computer-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach. By comparing a corpus of the Committee hearings with a corpus of online media coverage, the study offers a detailed qualitative analysis of stance and evaluation strategies in both corpora. Analysis highlights the importance of stance adverbials for witnesses and Committee members alike. It also reveals patterns of attitude adverbials. It is shown how patterns of stance in the hearing prime the press account of the issue, resulting in predominantly negative evaluations that reduce the complexity of the issue to an oversimplified more polarized account, presumably in the interests of newsworthiness.
L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Tr... more L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Translation Studies. In this paper, the feasibility of training L2 translators as cultural mediators is examined. The analysis is presented in the form of a case study of advanced L2 students translating from Italian into English. This sample was assessed primarily in terms of cultural mediation. Given this emphasis, the source text (ST) was taken from the domain of cultural information for the general public. The principal assessment criterion was the source language (SL) conventional metaphor “percorso”, a pervasive JOURNEY metaphor, widely used in that domain. This trope was chosen because it combines significant source culture (SC) attitudes to communicative style and expresses values attributed to official culture itself. The paper analyses how students responded to the challenge of negotiating between SC values, situational context, possible target language (TL) models and legitimate...
Academic analysis of sports journalism is typically conducted with reference to its role in issue... more Academic analysis of sports journalism is typically conducted with reference to its role in issues like national (Beard 1998; Billig 1995; Polley 2004; Smith 2004) and gender (Benwell and Stokoe 2006) identity construction. Consequently much critical attention is given to the disproportionate seriousness with much sports journalism is produced and consumed. However, as written sports journalism has spilled over into the internet, it appears to have acquired a new remit: to simultaneously inform and entertain (Chapman 2012). This brief is largely achieved by virtue of the declaredly humorous manner in which that \u2018serious\u2019 subject matter is now mediated. This contribution proposes to analyse the types of humorous writing techniques found in over-by-over commentary on a cricket test match in the online version of a national newspaper. A related focus will be on the social functions underlying the repertoire of techniques used in the accompanying online interactions
Error analysis and product assessment are increasingly viewed as reductive procedures in translat... more Error analysis and product assessment are increasingly viewed as reductive procedures in translation pedagogy. In the current paper, a case is made for 'rehabilitating' error analysis, especially in advanced L2 translation teaching. Attention is drawn to its usefulness in creating a group profile for L2 translation trainees, particularly as regards the scope it offers for showing how aspects of linguistic transfer frequently considered marginal, when taken individually, are, on the contrary, significant if viewed cumulatively. In the course of the article it is suggested that error analysis can be used dynamically to show that apparently sporadic and 'low level' aspects of transfer are among the most frequent problems, and that they consistently interlock with 'higher-level' textual and contextual (if not cultural) considerations. Far from encouraging a transmissionist stance on the part of the L1 teachers normally responsible for L2 translation courses, error analysis can be used to empower L2 students. One way in which this can be done is through a focus on technologies that address the issues emerging from the analysis. This should make students increasingly independent of the intuitive, internalized knowledge of their trainers, both in the short term and in the course of their professional careers.
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017
The starting point of this paper is the phenomenon of so-called MediaSport, namely the pervasive ... more The starting point of this paper is the phenomenon of so-called MediaSport, namely the pervasive and multi-faceted mediation of sports events that extends the reach and hold of the sports industry on communities of sports consumers. The specific aspect of MediaSport considered here is the streamed post-match interview with Premier League team managers, a stabilized media interaction that reflects the importance of media duties as part of the manager’s corporate brief. Critical attention to managers seems mainly confined to sociological studies of the politics of celebrity, while linguists seemingly have little to say about this kind of discourse. The data selected for analysis are two interviews following defeat. The choice falls on this scenario because it is expected it will entail a greater onus on managers to display media interaction expertise. Using a theoretical framework that draws on Goffman’s concepts of performance, participation framework, and face, the discourse analysis i...
L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Tr... more L2 translation is increasingly viewed as a legitimate and consolidated area of research within Translation Studies. In this paper, the feasibility of training L2 translators as cultural mediators is examined. The analysis is presented in the form of a case study of advanced L2 students translating from Italian into English. This sample was assessed primarily in terms of cultural mediation. Given this emphasis, the source text (ST) was taken from the domain of cultural information for the general public. The principal assessment criterion was the source language (SL) conventional metaphor “percorso”, a pervasive JOURNEY metaphor, widely used in that domain. This trope was chosen because it combines significant source culture (SC) attitudes to communicative style and expresses values attributed to official culture itself. The paper analyses how students responded to the challenge of negotiating between SC values, situational context, possible target language (TL) models and legitimate...
This paper presents a case study of online mainstream print media accounts of the sensitive issue... more This paper presents a case study of online mainstream print media accounts of the sensitive issue of doping within sport. Specifically, it investigates press coverage of the enquiry of the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Combating Doping in Sport (House of Parliament 2006-2018). Adopting a discourse analytical approach, the analysis entails comparison of two data sets, one comprising the transcripts of the Select Committee hearings; the other composed of news print media coverage of the committee\u2019s proceedings. The purpose is to gain insights into the prevailing discursive strategies involved in the recontextualization of institutional face-to-face interactions in the form of mainstream online print news about this charged and controversial issue
MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research, 2013
This article considers the appointment of a foreign manager to coach a national football team fro... more This article considers the appointment of a foreign manager to coach a national football team from the perspective of discursive identity construction. The data is comprised of three corpora of online versions of newspaper articles, each corresponding to a phase in Fabio Capello's first two years of tenure. Reflecting current trends in Critical Discourse Analysis, qualitative close analysis is carried out on two articles from each corpus while quantitative analysis is extended across each corpus to identify salient and consistent aspects of discursive identity construction. Exploiting the multidisciplinary basis of CDA, the data is examined in terms of transitivity, lexis (comprising vocabulary, collocation, deixis, and intertextuality), and narrative identity construction. Micro-analysis of grammatical and linguistic patterns is applied to indicate patterns in press coverage in each phase, and a corresponding overview considers how aspects of identity work diffused through each corpus cohere into general storylines.
The decision of the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympic... more The decision of the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the 2018 Pyeonchang Games in South Korea, following accusations of a state-promoted doping programme behind Russian sport, indicates that what was formerly framed as a personal misdemeanour has now developed into a geopolitical matter, a shift that involves a considerable change in the approach taken towards the phenomenon of doping. Scholars of political science and international relations now see such venues as occasions for the exercise of 'soft power', namely, "the ability of states to communicate universally shared values […] in order to court the publics of other states" (Grix, Lee 2013, p. 526). If states are "attempting to use sports mega-events to persuade the governments, businesses and the public in other countries to alter negative stereotypes they hold" (Grix, Houlihan 2013, p. 577), how are those negative stereotypes affected when the reason for non-inclusion is a bioethical one? Concomitantly, how does the ostracized nation attempt to protect its threatened identity before the eyes of the world (Altukhov, Nauright 2018)? To assess how this issue has been contested and negotiated in the media two comparable corpora have been assembled: the first comprising English language articles about the bans in the international press (IPC); the second composed of English language articles on the same topic available on the ITAR-TASS website (Russian Press Corpus; RPC). The corpora are interrogated using concordancing software to provide an initial sample of 100 keywords from each corpus, which are then placed in broad semantic fields. The IPC corpus furnishes insights both into the kinds of stereotypes that abound in reporting about Russia's alleged behaviour and also into the values the international community implicitly attributes to itself. On the other hand, the RPC provides pointers to how Russia implements its English language press service to effect damage repair to its international reputation and cushion the blow to its soft power.
Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was c... more Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was charged by the House of Commons to investigate doping in British sport, following revelations in the press that this practice was widespread. This study focuses on the witness sessions involving exponents of cycling, a sport frequently linked with performance enhancement. The study adopts a Computer-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach. By comparing a corpus of the Committee hearings with a corpus of online media coverage, the study offers a detailed qualitative analysis of stance and evaluation strategies in both corpora. Analysis highlights the importance of stance adverbials for witnesses and Committee members alike. It also reveals patterns of attitude adverbials. It is shown how patterns of stance in the hearing prime the press account of the issue, resulting in predominantly negative evaluations that reduce the complexity of the issue to an oversimplified more polarized accoun...
What follows is a qualitative analysis of the use of impoliteness for comiceffect in the British ... more What follows is a qualitative analysis of the use of impoliteness for comiceffect in the British comedy series Life’s Too Short written by Ricky Gervais and StephenMerchant. Because each episode centres on Warwick Davis, an actor with restrictedgrowth, or dwarfism, there is a considerable risk of superiority or disparagement-typecomedy about a taboo subject like physical difference, stigmatized in current Britishculture. In this analysis I set out to show that the authors’ use of impoliteness plays animportant role in allowing them to write comedy centred on this sensitive issue.The starting-point of the analysis is Culpeper’s proposal that impoliteness can beentertaining, which in this case is applied to scripted comedy rather than impromptuor semi-spontaneous examples of impoliteness for purposes of entertainment.Referring to aspects of impoliteness applied to entertainment, and with reference tothe concept of face, and to superiority, incongruity, and relief humour theories, thep...
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