Discourse &Society, Ahead of Print.
This article examines how U.S. news reports sustain or overcome distance between domestic audiences and the victims of U.S. drone strikes overseas. More specifically, we explain how language is used to construe distance in two different news stories about the same drone strike, enacting different political and affective relationships between Americans and the Pakistani victims of U.S. war. Drawing on theories of cognitive linguistics, we analyze how distance is negotiated in three overlapping areas of conceptualization: specificity, time, and narrative perspective. We show how lexical and grammatical choices can make victims of drone strikes appear remote, indistinct, and uninteresting – or indeed how they can make victims and their suffering appear close, clear, and dramatic. Simultaneously, we show that minimalist reporting on distant suffering is not natural or inevitable. Despite the obstacles they face, it is possible for journalists to convey what actually happens to the distant victims of U.S. violence.
Social network analysis, habitus and the field of literary activity
Abstract
Social network analysis that draws upon the correspondence of writers has the potential to indicate aspects of the writers' habitus, that is, the economic, social and cultural capital represented by the relations between authors, poets and dramatists, and their correspondents. Social network analysis can visualise and reveal otherwise covert aspects of the field of literary activity. In particular, it can show the flow of cultural, symbolic, social and economic capital through the literary ecosystem. The article presents an introduction to social network analysis, describes a modest case study, and identifies possible future research directions.
Book review: Hazel Price and Dan McIntyre (eds), Communicating Linguistics: Language, Community and Public Engagement
Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Book review: Andreas Musolff, Ruth Breeze, Kayo Kondo and Sara Vilar-Lluch (eds), Pandemic and Crisis Discourse: Communicating COVID-19 and Public Health Strategy
Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Book review: Gwen Bouvier and Joel Rasmussen, Qualitative Research Using Social Media
Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Book review: Gordon C Chang, Revolution and Witchcraft: The Code of Ideology in Unsettled Times
Discourse &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Thinking different as an act of resistance: Reconceptualizing the German protests in the COVID-19 pandemic as an emergent counter-knowledge order
Discourse &Society, Ahead of Print.
Massive anti-government protests erupted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. The crisis activated a potential for resistance that has been simmering under the impositions of late-modern knowledge society. Made salient by the pandemic conditions of sudden extreme reliance on scientific (non) knowledge, the corona protestors activated this potential for resistance and constructed their own counter-knowledge order bound by shared resentment of and distrust in the established order and facilitated by digital platforms. Utilising social network analysis and structural topic modeling for digital critical discourse analysis, in this paper I explore how the corona protest counter-knowledge order is constructed with a particular focus on its contexts, roles, and hierarchies. I find that far-right and conspiracy imaginations are used to level out hierarchies and detach epistemic roles from their contexts to reinstate a superior self into interpretative power. The counter-knowledge order’s inherent construction of unwarranted omnipotence points to a more fundamental resistance to the established normative orders of our society that should be addressed more effectively if we want to be prepared for future crises and not lose common ground for making sense of them.
Massive anti-government protests erupted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. The crisis activated a potential for resistance that has been simmering under the impositions of late-modern knowledge society. Made salient by the pandemic conditions of sudden extreme reliance on scientific (non) knowledge, the corona protestors activated this potential for resistance and constructed their own counter-knowledge order bound by shared resentment of and distrust in the established order and facilitated by digital platforms. Utilising social network analysis and structural topic modeling for digital critical discourse analysis, in this paper I explore how the corona protest counter-knowledge order is constructed with a particular focus on its contexts, roles, and hierarchies. I find that far-right and conspiracy imaginations are used to level out hierarchies and detach epistemic roles from their contexts to reinstate a superior self into interpretative power. The counter-knowledge order’s inherent construction of unwarranted omnipotence points to a more fundamental resistance to the established normative orders of our society that should be addressed more effectively if we want to be prepared for future crises and not lose common ground for making sense of them.
Book review: Jayati Ghosh, The Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the Covid-19 Pandemic in India
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 122-126, February 2024.
Jayati Ghosh, The Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the Covid-19 Pandemic in India. Aleph Book Company, 2022, 271 pages, ₹799 (Hardbound). ISBN 978-93-90652-96-9.
Jayati Ghosh, The Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the Covid-19 Pandemic in India. Aleph Book Company, 2022, 271 pages, ₹799 (Hardbound). ISBN 978-93-90652-96-9.
Book review: Uma Chakravarti, Sadhana Arya and Vasanthi Raman (Eds), Stree Adhyayan: Ek Parichay
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 129-133, February 2024.
Uma Chakravarti, Sadhana Arya and Vasanthi Raman (Eds), Stree Adhyayan: Ek Parichay (trans. Vijay Jha). Vani Prakashan, 2021, 456 pages, ₹499 (paperback), ₹795 (hardbound). ISBN 8194939801.
Uma Chakravarti, Sadhana Arya and Vasanthi Raman (Eds), Stree Adhyayan: Ek Parichay (trans. Vijay Jha). Vani Prakashan, 2021, 456 pages, ₹499 (paperback), ₹795 (hardbound). ISBN 8194939801.
An Autoethnographic Reflection of COVID-19 and/as Biographical Disruption
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 43-60, February 2024.
The COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant measures to mitigate it have exacerbated pre-existing social inequalities and have proven to be major disruptive phenomena at both individual and community levels. People with disabilities and chronic illnesses have been some of the most drastically impacted social groups during the pandemic whose isolation and vulnerabilities have often been compounded in the wake of the massive social upheaval. Through an autoethnographic account of a woman with a physical disability in India who has also survived polio, heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, this article captures some of the complex and conflicting emotions and experiences of a life lived at the intersections of various embodied precarities and demonstrates how a social disaster can itself constitute a biographical disruption.
The COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant measures to mitigate it have exacerbated pre-existing social inequalities and have proven to be major disruptive phenomena at both individual and community levels. People with disabilities and chronic illnesses have been some of the most drastically impacted social groups during the pandemic whose isolation and vulnerabilities have often been compounded in the wake of the massive social upheaval. Through an autoethnographic account of a woman with a physical disability in India who has also survived polio, heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, this article captures some of the complex and conflicting emotions and experiences of a life lived at the intersections of various embodied precarities and demonstrates how a social disaster can itself constitute a biographical disruption.