Discourse & Communication recent issues

Focus on form: foregrounding devices in football reporting

Chovanec, J. — 2008-07-29

This article documents some foregrounding devices that the media use to attract readers' attention to linguistic forms, all identified in sports reports relating to the Euro 2004 Football Championship published in various British newspapers. A functional explanation is offered in terms of the poetic and interactive character of such devices and their role in simulating friendship and encouraging `bonding' between the writers and readers (phaticity). Their omnipresence in the British media is linked with structural characteristics of the English language, the readiness of the British to tolerate manipulation of linguistic forms, and the general trend towards `infotainment' in the media.

Examples as persuasive argument in popular management literature

Lischinsky, A. — 2008-07-29

In this article we take the use of examples as a means to explore the processes of persuasion and consensus-construction involved in the legitimation of popular management knowledge. Examples, as concrete instances or events used to substantiate a wider argument, have been variedly regarded in different research traditions. Classical logic and rhetoric have considered them an inferior form of argument, useful for pedagogic or public debate but inadequate for higher forms of thought. This spirit still permeates much psychological research on communication, where the great persuasive import of examples has been contrasted with more scientific and formal resources for argumentation. Considered in this light, the contingent and episodic nature of examples seems to make them cognitively inferior to explicit statements of general rules. However, various strands of research on the nature of scientific knowledge have shown that implicit forms of knowledge are an integral part of scientific expertise. Examples may thus be more central to disciplinary thought than the conventional normative view seems to allow. In this spirit, we explore the use of examples in a hotly contested field, that of popular discourse on business and management. The profusion of examples in this kind of writing has been often noted, and almost as often criticized. We seek to explore more fully how these examples are deployed, examining the discursive devices that mark examples within the development of the text, their function as rhetorical moves, and their role in presenting arguments that are never otherwise made explicit.

Emergency communication: the discursive challenges facing emergency clinicians and patients in hospital emergency departments

2008-07-29

Effective communication and interpersonal skills have long been recognized as fundamental to the delivery of quality health care. However, there is mounting evidence that the pressures of communication in high stress work areas such as hospital emergency departments (EDs) present particular challenges to the delivery of quality care. A recent report on incident management in the Australian health care system (NSW Health, 2005a) cites the main cause of critical incidents (that is, adverse events such as an incorrect procedure leading to patient harm), as being poor and inadequate communication between clinicians and patients. This article presents research that describes and analyses spoken interactions between health care practitioners and patients in one ED of a large, public teaching hospital in Sydney, Australia. The research aimed to address the challenges and critical incidents caused by breakdowns in communication that occur between health practitioners and patients and by refining and extending knowledge of discourse structures, to identify ways in which health care practitioners can enhance their communicative practices thereby improving the quality of the patient journey through the ED. The research used a qualitative ethnographic approach combined with discourse analysis of audio-recorded interactions. Some key findings from the analysis of data are outlined including how the absence of information about processes, the pressure of time within the ED, divergent goals of clinicians and patients, the delivery of diagnoses and professional roles impact on patient experiences. Finally, the article presents an in-depth linguistic analysis on interpersonal and experiential patterns in the discursive practices of patients, nurses and doctors.

Organizational discourse and communication: the progeny of Proteus

Guowei Jian, , Schmisseur, A. M., Fairhurst, G. T. — 2008-07-29

As Van Dijk (2007) proposed in the first issue of Discourse and Communication , the main purpose of this journal is to bridge the two cross-disciplines of communication and discourse studies. Given this goal, this article sought to help clear the ground for such interdisciplinary development by investigating how organizational researchers use the terms `discourse' and `communication' and cast discourse—communication relationships. By reviewing 112 organizational discourse studies from major journals in communication, organizational studies, and interdisciplinary journals published between 1981 and 2006, this study identified diverse conceptualizations of these basic concepts. The findings help dispel some of the misunderstandings that scholars from one research field may possess toward the other and sort through some, if not all, the confusions regarding the terms `discourse', `communication', and their relationships.

The communicative constitution of what? A response to Jian et al.

Karreman, D., Alvesson, M. — 2008-07-29

Discourse and/or communication: living with ambiguity

Bargiela-Chiappini, F. — 2008-07-29

Directions for thought leadership in discourse and communication: a commentary on Jian et al.

Barker, J. R. — 2008-07-29

Images of the communication-- discourse relationship

Putnam, L. L. — 2008-07-29

Communication and discourse: is the bridge language? Response to Jian et al.

Taylor, J. R. — 2008-07-29

The debate about organizational discourse and communication: a rejoinder

Guowei Jian, , Schmisseur, A. M., Fairhurst, G. T. — 2008-07-29

Book review: NANCY AALTO and EWALD REUTER, Aspects of Intercultural Dialogue. Theory. Research. Applications. Cologne: SAXA, 2006, 337 pp

Benchiba, N. — 2008-07-29

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

Perakyla, A. — 2008-07-29

Book review: CHRIS BRAECKE, GEERT JACOBS, KATJA PELSMAEKERS and TOM VAN HOUT, Lodz Papers in Pragmatics. Special Issue on Discourse in Organizations. Lodz: Lodz University Press, 2006. 219pp. 25 (pbk)

Schnurr, S. — 2008-07-29

Book review: ROSALIND GILL, Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. vi + 291 pp

Talbot, M. — 2008-07-29

Propaganda in the trivial: puzzles in the women's section of the Volkischer Beobachter

Barbe, K. — 2008-04-16

This article examines word-based puzzles as texts. In particular, it analyzes the potential of using a seemingly harmless pastime — the solving of puzzles — for propagandistic ends. Propaganda is an attempt to manipulate and dominate discourses some of whose manifestations are texts. Because a thorough examination of puzzles has not yet been undertaken, word-based puzzles will be considered first in general, followed by a detailed examination of the potential propagandistic impact of puzzles drawn from the official Nazi newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter [Folkish Observer].

Aspects of sequential organization in text message exchange

Hutchby, I., Tanna, V. — 2008-04-16

This article builds on a range of work analysing interactive properties of text-based technologically mediated communication (e.g. email, internet relay chat, text messaging) which has revealed its deeply interactive properties. Based on a corpus of 1250 SMS text messages, it examines in detail the sequential organization revealed in extended series of text exchanges. Adopting methods and findings from conversation analysis, the study looks at the internal construction of texts as interactive artefacts, focusing on the production of both single-unit and multi-unit messages, and analyses how participants construct exchanges that show both similarities and differences with sequential organization in verbal conversation.

Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds debating the attack on Iraq

Porpora, D. V., Nikolaev, A. — 2008-04-16

This article examines a distinct form of moral argumentation found to be common in a corpus of 500 editorials and opinion pieces written in 23 US newspapers and news magazines between August and October 2002 debating whether or not the US should attack Iraq. The purpose of the article is to delineate this communicative phenomenon, which we call moral muting . Moral muting occurs when a message either blunts the moral considerations involved in a case or presents an equivocal moral meaning. Moral muting overlaps with but is distinct from mitigation, and even when it involves mitigation, moral muting depends on devices that go beyond those generally associated with conversational mitigation. The examination of moral muting offered here contributes to a better understanding of moral communication in general and of the conduct of the American public sphere.

From cultural adaptation to cross-cultural discursive competence

Yunxia Zhu, — 2008-04-16

Cross-cultural competence is often studied as part of the foreigner's one-way adaptation to the host culture while ignoring the dynamic nature of adaptation at the discourse level of interactions. To address this issue, this article proposes a conceptual model to study cross-cultural discursive competence exhibited in individual interactions in business settings. The model is based on relational empathy and genre theories and, in particular, it develops the notional concepts of `cultural space' and `text reconstruction' that stress a two-way cultural adaptation underpinned by building relational empathy and intercultural alliances. In addition, the study proposes that the triangulation of cultural, institutional and sociocognitive spaces is the key to understanding and interpreting text reconstruction as a dynamic process of two-way cultural adaptation. The three-space model is exemplified through an analysis of cross-cultural interactions that occurred at a business negotiation meeting.

Book review: FRANCESCA BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, CATHERINE NICKERSON and BRIGITTE PLANKEN, Business Discourse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 282 + xiv pp, {pound}19.99. ISBN 1403935769 (pbk)

O'Rourke, B. K. — 2008-04-16

Book review: DAVID SILVERMAN, Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction. Los Angeles/London/New Delhi: SAGE, 2006, xv + 428 pp., $46.95. ISBN 9781412922456 (pbk)

Zhong Hong, — 2008-04-16

Book review: SHI-XU (ed.), Discourse as Cultural Struggle. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007, pp. xiv + 200

Hailong Tian, — 2008-04-16

'This poll has not happened yet': temporal play in election predictions

Jaworski, A., Fitzgerald, R. — 2008-02-13

Although the past plays a large part in election campaigns, predictions and promises are its lifeblood, with the various parties promising great things if elected and predicting doom if not. Indeed the `manifestos' usually published at the beginning of an election campaign are a study in pledges, promises and wishes that parties use to entice the electorate to vote for them. Whilst talk of the future often dominates election discourse, one aspect of the future that is largely passed over without comment is the actual make up of the result, despite the relentless publication of opinion polls results. However, towards the end of the general election campaign in the UK in 2001, the Conservative Party began to warn of the dangers of the Labour Party winning the election by a large majority. The media gave wide prominence to this event, seen as tantamount to conceding defeat to the Labour Party, though the reaction of all the main political parties was to downplay its significance. In this article, we explore the discursive manipulation of temporal relations in the 2001 election campaign, and the politicians' work in gaining political capital out of the Conservative Party `breach' in the routine election prediction structure.

Surging ahead to a new way forward: the metaphorical foreshadowing of a policy shift

Hobbs, P. — 2008-02-13

The role of metaphor in political discourse has received significant attention in recent years. Expanding on the cognitive theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), scholars in the fields of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis have examined politicians' use of metaphorical concepts to justify policies and define events. The metaphors examined in these studies frequently have attained the status of idioms; they consequently pass unnoticed while retaining their ability to frame perspectives. However, political discourse does not limit itself to such lexicalized metaphors, but makes use of new metaphors (or new uses of existing metaphors) as well. Such uses are specifically designed to attract attention, which may become problematic if the metaphor is rejected, resulting in a classic `failure to launch'. This article examines such a case. Through an analysis of the metaphors used to describe President Bush's military plan to increase US forces in Iraq, I explore the mechanisms by which the meanings of novel metaphors are negotiated in the political arena, and demonstrate that, although their vivid imagery can generate persuasive force in political language, this effect may backfire when they encounter resistance.

Re-branding academic institutions with corporate advertising: a genre perspective

Osman, H. — 2008-02-13

The end of the 1990s witnessed the corporatization of public universities in Malaysia resulting in the publication of corporate literature in these universities and the type of writing Fairclough (1993) refers to as the marketization of academic discourse. Marketization is necessary in public universities due to stiff competition in attracting students among the public universities as well as from the increasing number of private universities. This article reports how Malaysian universities re-brand themselves using the results of an investigation on corporate brochures from these universities. The investigation employs a structural analysis and a textual analysis. Although informative in nature, these corporate brochures exhibit the use of promotional elements in the texts as seen in the contents and the language use. The communicative functions of university brochures are viewed to be more promotional than informative.

Guiding metaphors of nationalism: the Cyprus issue and the construction of Turkish national identity in online discussions

Baruh, L., Popescu, M. — 2008-02-13

This article is a study of three major metaphors organizing nationalistic discourse about Cyprus in two online forums for Turkish university students. The analysis suggests that discussants symbolically warranted their constructions of the future of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots with metaphors of blood and heroism that emphasized their personal and collective memory of sacrifice. Sports metaphors were used predominantly to convey a sense of the strategic importance of Cyprus. In addition, discussants employed gender and sexual metaphors to structure the tension between nationalist feelings associated with motherland Turkey as a pure, virgin female, and the geopolitical demands of the nation-state, portrayed as a father faced with uneasy choices.

Book review: JOHN MYHILL, Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 2006, ix + 300 pp., US$138.00. ISBN 902722711X

Babaii, E. — 2008-02-13

Book review: RUTH E. PAGE, Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, x + 209 pp., {pound}47. ISBN 1403991162 (hbk)

Erkazanci, H. — 2008-02-13

Book review: CHAIM NOY, A Narrative Community: Voices of Israeli Backpackers. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2007

Cavaglion, G. — 2008-02-13

Book review: CHRIS BRAECKE, GEERT JACOBS, KATJA PELSMAEKERS and TOM VAN HOUT, Lodz Papers in Pragmatics: Special Issue on Discourse in Organizations. Lodz: Lodz University Press, 2006, 219 pp

Nickerson, C. — 2008-02-13

Neutralism and adversarial challenges in the political news interview

Rendle-Short, J. — 2007-11-08

This article aims to examine journalists' adversarial challenges within the Australian political news interview. Within the Australian context, journalists tend to challenge interviewees: (1) by challenging the content of the prior turn, (2) by `interrupting' the prior turn, and (3) by initially presenting their challenge as a freestanding assertion, not attributed to a third party. As a result, journalists could be interpreted as expressing their own perspective on the topic at hand, rather than maintaining a neutralistic stance. Although the challenging nature of journalistic questions has been previously noted within the Australian context (e.g. Adkins, 1992), there have been few analyses of such challenges. Using the framework of conversation analysis, the aim of the following article is to examine adversarial challenges in more detail. In particular, the article will focus on how interviewers (IR) and interviewees (IE) collaboratively produce the political news interview in such a way as to avoid accusations of bias or non-neutrality. First, the article will focus on the challenging nature of the IR's turn, by examining the various techniques used by journalists to ensure that they maintain a neutralistic stance. Second, it will examine the way in which IEs respond to such adversarial challenges. It will show how although politicians do not overtly accuse IRs of bias or impartiality, they clearly orient to the challenging nature of the journalists' turn.

Cooperation in interpreter-mediated monologic talk

Napier, J. — 2007-11-08

Discourse-based interpreting research has determined that interpreters are participants within interaction. Grice (1975) established that conversation participants conform to a cooperative principle. With respect to interpreting, what is the cooperative principle? How do sign language interpreters and deaf people work together to negotiate meaning in interpretation? The aim of this article is to present a case study of a deaf presenter and two sign language interpreters and evidence of their strategies for cooperation in interpreter-mediated monologic talk. Drawing on a framework of interactional sociolinguistics, naturalistic data from a seminar presentation was analysed, focusing on the use of pauses, nods and eye contact as contextualization cues in the interpreter-mediated event. It was found that these three participants used these cues deliberately and strategically for signalling comprehension, marking episodes, clarification and controlling the pace of the presentation; drawing on their frames of reference. Thus, the data suggest that the cooperative principle of interpreting involves the establishment of particular cues for communication.

Leadership and communication: discursive evidence of a workplace culture change

Holmes, J., Schnurr, S., Marra, M. — 2007-11-08

Communication is an important component in the construction of workplace identities, including leader and group identities. Micro-level analysis of everyday workplace discourse provides valuable insights into the way leadership is constructed and how workplace culture is created, maintained, and changed. In this context, leaders and managers are inevitably significant and influential participants, with a crucial impact on workplace culture. Drawing on audio and video data collected in 12 meetings of an IT department, the analysis demonstrates ways in which two leaders, who succeed each other in the role of Director, reinforce and shape the culture of the workplace in which they operate. While both leaders claim teamwork as an important cultural value for their teams, their respective instantiations of teamwork are rather different. To explore the leaders' effect on the culture of their department, this investigation of leadership change examines ways in which the leaders manage regular workplace meetings (communication with a predominantly transactional orientation) and how they contribute to workplace humour (more relationally oriented behaviour). The analysis provides detailed evidence of the ways in which a change in leadership style can create the conditions for a change in the culture of a community of practice.

Co-management in healthcare: negotiating professional boundaries

Schryer, C. F., Gladkova, O., Spafford, M. M., Lingard, L. — 2007-11-08

This article investigates discursive practices associated with the co-management of patients between healthcare providers. Specifically, we focus on two genres (38 referral letters and 37 consultant reports) written by optometrists and ophthalmologists — two groups who are experiencing interprofessional tension over their scopes of practice. In our analysis we foreground four kinds of modality associated with verbs — epistemic, deontic, phatic and subjective. We found that these healthcare providers shared in the epistemic resources used to hedge their sense of clinical certainty, and that ophthalmologists used deontic resources to control future action. However, we also noted that both professions used deontic, phatic and subjective resources to create dialogical space for each other to participate in some future relationship. In fact, one of the main points of this correspondence might be to establish personal relationships between practitioners. Unfortunately, however, this subtle use of modality to negotiate professional boundaries is fading as many ophthalmologists, due to workload issues, are not responding to referral letters or are converting their correspondence to form letters.

Book review: EVIATAR ZERUBAVEL, The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, xi + 162 pp. ISBN 0195187172

Burridge, J. — 2007-11-08

Book review: LIA LITOSSELITI, Gender and Language: Theory and Practice. London: Hodder Arnold, 2006, 192 pp

Conrick, M. — 2007-11-08

Book review: DURK GORTER (ed.), Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006, LXXXIX + 89 pp., US$54.95, {pound}29.95

Garcia Prudencio, S. — 2007-11-08

Book review: ELEMER HANKISS, The Toothpaste of Immortality: Self-Construction in the Consumer Age. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, xvi + 425 pp., US$60.00 (hbk), US$24.95 (pbk)

Koller, V. — 2007-11-08