Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 36 Issue 4 -

Issue of Text & Talk

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Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available June 21, 2016

Frontmatter

Page range: i-v

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Publicly Available June 21, 2016

Balancing neutrality and partiality in arbitration: discursive tensions in separate opinions

Ruth Breeze

Page range: 363-389

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Abstract

Although arbitration is increasingly being used to settle important disputes, particularly on an international level, little attention has focused on the language used by arbitrators. This article contains a qualitative analysis of the discursive moves and resources used in separate (dissenting and concurring) opinions published on the website of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes from 1987 to 2013. Arbitrators’ discursive practices in this forum are analyzed, with a particular focus on the tensions that arise between the need to sustain the arbitral system and maintain professional relations, on the one hand, and the equally pressing need to display commitment to the losing party’s cause, on the other. These tensions have parallels in other areas of legal practice and professional life, and can be understood as part of the way power systems operate and replicate through discourse.

June 21, 2016

A discursive analytical path of appellate court opinions: evaluation of ideological positioning in Bush v. Gore 2000

Ruina Chen, Haitao Liu

Page range: 391-415

Abstract

Appellate court opinions are written records based on the debates and discussions on hard cases among nine Justices in the US Supreme Court. This important genre type resists any easy paradigm of examination due to its extreme complexity in both language and law. In this paper, we propose an analytical path built upon White’s framework (2006) of “evaluative semantics and ideological positioning.” In particular, we attend to evaluative mechanisms employed by Supreme Court Justices to legitimize their decision and interpretation of complicated jurisprudences. The functionality of these mechanisms and their rhetorical potential are elaborated in the context of multiple opinions of Bush v. Gore 2000 . The analysis in this paper complements Miller’s (2002) pioneering endeavor to analyze this case. In addition, it bears out Crompton’s (2004) prediction of the existence of Rhematic Progression (RP) in the discourse, and beyond which, its intensified form – Rhematic Progression with Derived Rhemes (RPDRs) – occurs in the dissenting opinion of Justice Stevens.

June 21, 2016

Conceptualizing the economy as a living organism: vivification in Arab economic discourse

Mikolaj Domaradzki

Page range: 417-443

Abstract

The present paper is a corpus-based inquiry into the importance of vivification for producing a systematic and persuasive Arab economic discourse. Thus, this article examines how and why the economy is metaphorically conceptualized in modern Arabic as a Living Organism that can be said to ‘grow’, ‘revive’, etc. Having analyzed the frequency with which the various instantiations of this generic metaphor appear in Arab economic discourse, the paper goes on to discuss the value judgments that they convey. The analogy between a living organism and an economy is shown to induce very specific evaluations of such conditions as ‘growing’ or ‘being revived’. Hence, vivification is demonstrated to play a vital role in providing Arab economic discourse with textual cohesion. Although this article argues for the universal bodily grounding of the Economy Is A Living Organism metaphor, it also shows this experiential basis to be subject to cultural interpretation. The analyses carried out here suggest that projecting such physical concepts as those of ‘growth’ or ‘revival’ onto the social domain of economics entails that they are interpreted in accordance with the particular social interests of a given community.

June 21, 2016

Performance management discourse and the shift to an administrative logic of operation: a multimodal critical discourse analytical approach

Per Ledin, David Machin

Page range: 445-467

Abstract

This paper, using multimodal critical discourse analysis, explores a chain of performance management documents in a university which aim to meet the goal of increasing output and excellence. A system of performance management developed by Kaplan and Norton in the 1990s, which enables both tangible and also “intangible assets” such as “quality” and “excellence” to be monitored and measured, is now used fairly universally to structure the running of public institutions. Looking in detail at one case, we show that the result is an abstraction and de-contextualization of processes and agents, through a series of interlocking texts, lists and tables that follows an administrative, rather than task led, logic of operation. We show how the discourse is legitimized on the one hand by the very impenetrable nature of the resulting interlocking documents and by the Web of Science database on the other. We give reasons why the database itself is highly problematic and also show the abstract ways in which it is communicated and how it leads to research in all subject areas being codified and standardized in a “one-size-fits-all” way. This, we argue, serves the purposes of naturalizing and justifying notions of “quality,” “excellence” and “value for money” that have been promoted in service of neoliberal politics.

June 21, 2016

Busco una mujer de verdad: the gender is a performance conceptual metaphor in personal ads on the Internet

Deyanira Rojas-Sosa

Page range: 469-491

Abstract

Gender performativity theory considers that gender is not a natural consequence of people’s bodies, but a series of repeated acts regulated by social constraints that one performs to create a natural, usually heterosexual, being. Through the analysis of the conceptual metaphor gender is a performance in Spanish Internet personal ads, this study shows linguistic evidence that speakers, ad posters, are aware of the performative nature of gender, and also shows gender as a prototypical category, in which some members are more central than others. Finally, when using this conceptual metaphor, this study shows that ad posters describe the characteristics of ideal heterosexuals as naturalized and commonsense, thereby re-creating traditional ideologies about gender, and further promoting heteronormativity.

June 21, 2016

Time as a base for establishing structure in text: toward a visualization model

Anna Sahlée

Page range: 493-517

Abstract

Following Halliday and Hasan (1976, Cohesion in English . London: Longman; Halliday and Hasan 1989, Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective . 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press), text can be defined and studied as a united whole. A “text” which does not appear as a united whole can be very hard to understand and describe. Since this kind of text exists for example in the form of student writing, it is important to have methods and models which can handle all kinds of compositions – coherent and clearly structured and the opposite. This article suggests such a model. Relative to available methods, it is beneficial for understanding and comparing many different texts. The model is based on temporal unfolding of texts, realized primarily by tense and Aktionsarten . It uncovers the basic structure of the text and visualizes it – a combination that makes the text accessible for further analysis. Four texts with different structures from the national test in Swedish and Swedish as a second language are used to demonstrate the model. The model is used to discuss and compare the texts and how the students respond to the given instruction. It is shown what information the model reveals and how analysis and information can be added; in this case means for understanding the narrative text.

About this journal

Objective
Text & Talk (founded as TEXT in 1981) is an internationally recognized forum for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, focusing, among other things, on the situational and historical nature of text/talk production; the cognitive and sociocultural processes of language practice/action; and participant-based structures of meaning negotiation and multimodal alignment. Text & Talk encourages critical debates on these and other relevant issues, spanning not only the theoretical and methodological dimensions of discourse but also their practical and socially relevant outcomes.

Topics

discourse analysis
applied linguistics
pragmatics
sociolinguistics
corpus linguistics
multimodality
genre analysis
communication
professional practice

Article formats
Full Length Articles, Short Articles, Systematic Literature Reviews, Review Articles, Forum Discussions, Research Notes