Papers by Michael S. Boyd
Routledge eBooks, Jan 20, 2023
The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, 2017
Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference - Sinteza 2023
Nowadays, higher education institutions are faced with the complex challenge of serving increased... more Nowadays, higher education institutions are faced with the complex challenge of serving increased enrollment levels with tighter budgets. This has prompted universities around the world to explore new approaches, including the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS)-such as Moodle-for delivering courses to help extend teaching and learning beyond the classroom. The implementation of these systems was also spearheaded by the forced adoption of online tools during the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper investigates UNINT (Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma) educator and learner experiences in using a modified version of Moodle-called Everywhere-as an online learning management system, which was created to facilitate learning in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). In particular, it examines issues about adopting Moodle as an online learning management system and implementing blended learning in EFL/ESP education. The incorporation of Moodle into Everywhere learning platform has led to the development of an interactive platform for both students and teachers. The authors discuss their own course page on Everywhere, which is seen as a boon for the development of an interactive learning platform, but it is highlighted the course might become even more blended with further implementation of the plethora of resources and activities available to course developers.
Transmedia Crime Stories, 2016
This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian jus... more This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian justice system and its criminal procedure through the various phases of Amanda Knox’s arrest, trial, conviction, acquittal, and retrial (in absentia). Specifically, it considers how news readers textually interacted with and reacted to articles dealing with the case through the online comment function. The work aims to demonstrate how text producers (the media and text commenters) selectively recontextualise and possibly transform elements of the case based on previous versions recounted by the media. A quantitative analysis exploits tools from Corpus Linguistics in order to determine the specific legal lexical representations in a number of different corpora of both newspaper articles and comments from different periods of the case.
Chapter from the Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (2018), John Flowerdew and John... more Chapter from the Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (2018), John Flowerdew and John Richardson (Eds.), Final uncorrected proofs.
This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian jus... more This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian justice system and its criminal procedure through the various phases of Amanda Knox’s arrest, trial, conviction, acquittal, and retrial (in absentia). Specifically, it considers how news readers textually interacted with and reacted to articles dealing with the case through the online comment function. The work aims to demonstrate how text producers (the media and text commenters) selectively recontextualise and possibly transform elements of the case based on previous versions recounted by the media. A quantitative analysis exploits tools from Corpus Linguistics in order to determine the specific legal lexical representations in a number of different corpora of both newspaper articles and comments from different periods of the case.
From Text to Political Positions, 2014
Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2009 2009 Pag 246, 2009
Chapter from the Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (2018), John Flowerdew and John... more Chapter from the Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies (2018), John Flowerdew and John Richardson (Eds.), Final uncorrected proofs.
This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian jus... more This chapter focuses on the ways that newspaper producers and readers represented the Italian justice system and its criminal procedure through the various phases of Amanda Knox’s arrest, trial, conviction, acquittal, and retrial (in absentia). Specifically, it considers how news readers textually interacted with and reacted to articles dealing with the case through the online comment function. The work aims to demonstrate how text producers (the media and text commenters) selectively recontextualise and possibly transform elements of the case based on previous versions recounted by the media. A quantitative analysis exploits tools from Corpus Linguistics in order to determine the specific legal lexical representations in a number of different corpora of both newspaper articles and comments from different periods of the case.
From Text to Political Positions, 2014
Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2009 2009 Pag 246, 2009
The Journal of Environmental Education, 1984
Journal of Pragmatics, 2014
This article examines the various participant roles adopted by users on YouTube, when watching an... more This article examines the various participant roles adopted by users on YouTube, when watching and commenting on Barack Obama's Inaugural Address (January 2009). Based on the notion that YouTube has become a powerful medium for (re)broadcasting institutional texts and genres, the article argues that text commenting practices allow for the co-creation of distinct participatory roles. Drawing on a quantitative and qualitative corpus-assisted analysis of the comments to the speech, the article examines how roles are defined and participatory positions delimited through linguistic and non-linguistic means. It addresses the different types of production and reception roles (Goffmann, 1981; Levinson, 1988) exploited by users for communication and how they differ from the traditional ones, 'ratified' and 'unratified' participants in the medium, and the ways in which the YouTube medium affects participation. A reworking of the traditional participatory framework categories is proposed on the basis of the new online environments. Specifically, it proposes a multi-level representation of production, with the original speech and speaker (Obama) seen as the first level of production, and the comments as a secondary level. Both levels entail various reception roles, which are exploited to various degrees by YouTube participants.
The article provides an in-depth critical analysis of an article published by the UK mid-market p... more The article provides an in-depth critical analysis of an article published by the UK mid-market press newspaper the Daily Mail criticizing the role of High Court judges for ruling that Parliamentary approval was necessary to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and formally leave the EU. It argues that the article and the newspaper itself can be considered populist through the discourse strategies that they adopt to represent the pro-Brexit voters and public positively and negatively the three judges involved in the High Court decision. The investigation is based on a fine-tuned multimodal analysis of the newspaper report and demonstrates that textual means are combined with visual means to denigrate the three judges responsible for the decision but further expanded to the entire judiciary and pro-Remain supporters and to legitimize the voice of the “people” of the Daily Mail or those 17.4 million Britons who voted to leave the UK in the referendum of June 2016.
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Papers by Michael S. Boyd
The empirical data are taken from the third 2008 US presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, and focus specifically on the turns which mention “Joe the Plumber”. The figure was invoked to varying degrees as an embodiment of two opposing worldviews shaped by the liberal and conservative ideologies of the two candidates (Lakoff 2002). It is posited that Family-based metaphors combine with pronominal use and other pragmatic features in the candidates’ discourse as a reflection of the two models.
While the paper is primarily an attempt at extending the claims made in Boyd (2013) to Italian interpreter-media TT data, it also intends to provide a test case for the translatability of “systemized ideology” (Chilton & Schäffner 2002: 29) from one language and culture (English) into another (Italian) and how such remappings reflect conflicting realizations of the NATION IS A FAMILY metaphor.
This paper is focused on this specific media portrayal of Tsarnaev and the subsequent reception by the public. Firstly, the work considers the various modes of presentation adopted by the text producer: the photograph, the associated text on the cover and the verbal forms used in the accompanying articles. Secondly, and more importantly, the discussion focuses on the importance of reception factors in the visual and textual communication process through the analysis of two small corpora taken from Facebook: a semi-public one involving a “conversation” between the author and other users and another public one taken from Rolling Stone’s Facebook page.
On a theoretical plane, the paper draws on social semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006), text world theory (Chilton 2004; Gavins 2007; Werth 1999), and multimodal metaphor theory (Forceville 2009). Crucially, it is assumed that viewers interpret the visual input on the Rolling Stone cover according to their discourse- and text-world alignment (Goffman 1981). Furthermore, it is argued that the Tsarnaev Rolling Stone cover represents a multimodal metaphor, which either glorifies or puts into question Tsarnaev, depending on the recipient’s alignment. Moreover, the relationship between different participants in the visual process, or what Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) call “interactive” and “represented” participants, are considered. Finally, the analysis of the empirical data serves to demonstrate that visual communication can indeed create and reinforce interaction between the producer and the image recipient.
References
Chilton, P. 2004. Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London/New York: Routledge. Forceville, C. 2006. “Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: Agenda for research”. In: C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (eds.), Multimodal Metaphor. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 19-42.
Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kress, G. & T. van Leeuwen's. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman.
From a theoretical perspective, the work is grounded in Lakoff’s seminal Moral Politics (2002), which maintains that US political divisions are shaped and subsequently framed by competing interpretations of family-based moral systems realized through the NATION AS FAMILY conceptual metaphor. These practices create fundamentally different moral models for conservative and liberal politicians to articulate their values and worldviews in their discourse practices. It is further argued that while the use of these metaphors create a certain textual coherence that reflects ‘a systematized ideology’ (Chilton and Schäffner 2002), pronominal use further consolidates this conceptual coherence (Boyd 2013). The work aims to demonstrate the various cognitive and pragmatic factors that may trigger certain linguistic choices at a pronominal level (Wales 1996) especially in relation to the MORAL ACTION AS FAIR DISTRIBUTION metaphor. Furthermore, it is argued that it is precisely the hybrid nature of the genre of the debate that favours the emergence of the two models. Finally, the Italian data aim to demonstrate the complications involved in the remapping of these often conflicting realizations of the ST forced by both linguistic differences and a divergent application of the NATION AS FAMILY conceptual metaphor."
Text commenting is one of the YouTube affordances that foster user participation and co-creativity in both positive and negative ways. On the one hand, comments encourage the creation of ‘technologically-mediated public spaces’ (Wodak and Wright 2006) in which users can share ideas and opinions and interact with each other in constructive ways. On the other, since much of what is done on YouTube is anonymous, comments allow users total freedom of expression often with little self-control and respect for typical politeness strategies leading to what I call disruptive commenting. Such strategies include hating (Lange 2007), flaming and trolling and can be use for varying purposes.
This study focuses on disruptive behavior in the comments to the YouTube version of Barack Obama’s “Inaugural Address” (January 2009). Quantitative and qualitative analyses of two corpora drawn from the comments of the speech are aimed at uncovering instances of disruptive commenting and determining its role within the overall “conversation” (Herring 2010). The quantitative analysis is based on a 1.8 million word corpus and focuses on the obscene, discriminatory, homophobic and racist lexical items. A smaller corpus (500 comments) was also compiled to determine if and how disruptive commenters interact with other users, the video and/or Obama. Thus, the study is concerned with the ways in which such disruptive commenting affects participation and its roles in conversation. While some of the obscene language is clearly used “playfully” other examples would appear to purvey “racist, sexist, and extreme nationalist ideas and other forms of hate speech” (Thornborrow 2006).
Herring, S.C. 2010. “Computer-mediated conversation: Introduction and overview”. Language@Internet, 7. Retrieved 27 June 2011 from http://www.languageatinternet.de/articles/2010/2801/index_html/
Lange, P. 2007. “Commenting on comments: Investigating responses to antagonism on YouTube”. Paper presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology Conference. Tampa, Florida. Retrieved 27 June 2011 from http://sfaapodcasts.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/update-apr-17-lange-sfaa-paper-2007.pdf
Wodak, R. & S. Wright 2006. The European Union in Cyberspace. Journal of Language and Politics 5(2). 251–275.
Thornborrow, J. 2006. Media: Analysis and methods. In Brown, Keith (ed.) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 616-623.
The murder of British exchange student, Meredith Kercher, in November 2007 and the subsequent conviction (December 2009) and acquittal (October 2011) of American, Amanda Knox, provide an interesting case study to analyze recontextualization on various levels for a number of different reasons. First, due to the sensationalism of the crime, it was discussed at length in both the US and UK press. Secondly, many of these reports are drawn on clearly nationalistic lines with the US press on Knox’s side and the UK against her. Thirdly, while the reports are often critical of the Italian judicial system, they do not always demonstrate a clear understanding of it workings and its differences from the Anglo-American system. A corpus-assisted empirical study is aimed at uncovering examples of recontextualization on various levels. From a theoretical point of the view, the work proposes a multi-level application of recontextualization that fully embraces the importance of translation.
References
Bell, A. 1991. The language of news media. Blackwell: London.
Fairclough, N. 1995. Media Discourse. Arnold: London.
Schäffner, C. & S. Bassnett. 2010. “Introduction – Politics, Media and Translations: Exploring synergies”. In Schäffner & Bassnett (eds.), Political Discourse, Media and Translation, 1–30. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars."
As most new media, YouTube offers a number of affordances that allow users to interact with the medium as well as with each other. One of these, text commenting, expands the potential for text production (Savoie 2009) making it possible for the co-creation of distinct participatory roles and the reshaping of linguistic and social practices (Cf. Boyd Forthcoming). This article focuses on how roles are defined and (political) positions delimited through linguistic and non-linguistic means in these comments. Specifically, it addresses the different types of production/reception roles (Cf. Goffman 1981 & Levinson 1988) exploited by users for communication and how they differ from the traditional ones, the notion of ‘ratified’ and ‘unratified’ participants in the medium, and the ways in which the medium YouTube affects participation.
The empirical data are drawn from a sample of 502 threaded comments from Barack Obama’s “Inaugural Address” (January 2009) and are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. A quantitative analysis exhibited a high frequency of conversation-like features, such as first- and second-person pronouns, terms of address and addressivity, such as @ (Honeycutt & Herring 2009), user names and examples of “hating” (Lange 2007). A subsequent qualitative analysis of the corpus determined a high incidence of multi-participant ‘conversations’ (76.5%), with an average of 3.4 participants/conversation. The comments were further classified according to two general strategies: constructive and disruptive. While the former comments appear to be more focused on establishing political positions, encouraging/maintaining conversation and addressing individual users and the public in general, disruptive strategies include hating, flaming and/or trolling. From a theoretical perspective, the work proposes a reworking of the traditional participatory framework categories on the basis of new media. Thus, while the original speech and speaker (Obama) are seen to represent the primary level of production, the comments are seen as a secondary level. In between these two levels we can find the reception roles, which are exploited to various degrees by YouTube participants. Although these receptive roles consist of both ratified and unratified participants, the overwhelming majority remain on the periphery as mere watchers or ‘lurkers’. Finally, the work highlights the importance of the distinction between constructive and disruptive commenting, which is seen as crucial for the description of the participatory framework in new media.
References
Boyd, M.S. Forthcoming. “Participation and recontextualization in new media: political discourse analysis and YouTube”. In B. Kaal, E. Maks, & A. Van Elfrinkhof (Eds.), From text to political position: State-of-the-art approaches to estimating party positions.
Goffmann, E. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Honeycutt, C. and S. Herring. 2009. “Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via Twitter”. Proceedings of the Forty-Second Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-42). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press.
Lange, P. 2007. “Commenting on comments: Investigating responses to antagonism on YouTube”. Paper presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology Conference. Tampa, Florida. Retrieved 27 June 2011 from http://sfaapodcasts.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/update-apr-17-lange-sfaa-paper-2007.pdf
Levinson, S. C. 1988. “Putting Linguistics on a Proper Footing: Explorations in Goffman´s Concepts of Participations”. In: Drew, P. & Wootton, A. (Eds): Erving Goffman. Exploring the Interaction Order. Oxford.
Savoie, H. 2009. “John McCain gets Barackroll’d: Authorship, culture and community on YouTube. Proceedings from YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In this new edition I have attempted to correct the mistakes that remained in the first version. I would like to thank the attentive readers who pointed out many of these to me hoping that I have managed to rectify all of these shortcomings in the new edition. Secondly, I have updated some sections in the theoretical part of the book to address the changed role of the UK in the European Union. Thirdly, an entirely new section about the main differences between the common law and (European) civil law has been added. Finally, I have expanded the section on contracts. It is hoped that these additions will be useful to Italian learners who would like to learn more about the Anglo-American legal system but through the lens of their own legal system and that in the European Union. The methodology of the book remains unaltered: the theoretical sections are complemented by the practical chapters in the second part of the book. During the preparation of this second edition I continued to draw inspiration from all of my students and colleagues in Italy and in Europe.
From a theoretical point of view the discussion is underpinned by two underlying notions: first, the news producers influence public discourse and “reinforce beliefs” among readers (Richardson, 2007, p. 13) and, second, news texts and the issues and discourses portrayed in them are received by the wider public “in ways which correspond to the concerns, priorities and goals of the current stage [of the news cycle]” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 48). The work is also partially inspired by Text World Theory and its claim that discourses result from “a deliberate and joint effort on the part of producer and receiver to build up a ‘world’ within which the propositions advanced are coherent” (Werth, 1995, p. 95). Such an approach can be useful in explaining the linguistic construction of multiple representations of society (Filardo-Llamas, 2014) emerging in text comment conversations.
By focusing on reader comments, the study attempts to determine readers’ varying opinions about the issue and how this reflects and/or diverges from the view(s) presented by the editorial. Through comments users can react to or interact with an overt opinion genre, thereby providing insight into how discourses about migration are perceived and recontexualized by a wider readership. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the two sets of empirical data (the editorial and reader comments) aim to demonstrate the various representations of society inherent in online newspaper discourse. In particular, the analysis focuses on the linguistic means adopted by text producers to align themselves with (proximization), or differentiate themselves from (distancing), different discourse/text worlds.
References
Fairclough, N. 1995. Media Discourse. London: Arnold.
Filardo-Llamas, L. 2014. Between the Union and a united Ireland: Shifting positions in Northern Ireland’s post-Agreement political discourse. In: B. Kaal, I. Maks & A. van Elfrinkhof, eds. From Text to Political Positions: Text Analysis Across Disciplines. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 207-224.
Richardson, J. E. 2007. Analysing newspapers: An approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Werth, P. 1995. ‘World enough, and time’: Deictic space and the interpretation of prose. In: P. Verdonk & J. Weber, eds. Twentieth Century Fiction: From Text to Context. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 181-206.