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The general discourse in health and social care policy purports digital technology as necessary to meet growing demands for long-term care and health care as a result of an ageing population. This needs critical investigation since public policy influences people's health and wellbeing. This study aims to interrogate critically what we call the 'digital technology solution' discourse in local Swedish health and social care policies. The main concern of our analysis is the discursive constructions of older people and their informal carers and how the concept of health is constructed. A discourse analysis was conducted of 61 local policy documents using the 'What's the Problem Represented to Be' method. Our analysis revealed that so-called 'e-health strategies' were rarely concerned with health. Health was often referred to as an activity and seen as a means to achieve independence among older people. The norm advocated independence, with the responsibility placed upon the older person, supported by digital technology. Informal carers were constructed as a resource within an older person's environment and largely taken for granted. We argue that the digital solution discourse ignores older people's agency and capacities as contributors to society, not least with regards to being providers of informal care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media discourse is the main ideographic system in the world today. Post-Marxist discourse theory, represented by Laclau and Mouffe, argues that media discourse no longer merely conveys information but, more importantly, it has a powerful constructive and representational power over reality. Post-Marxist discourse theory has been gradually applied to social science research, and has also been further developed in the field of communication studies. 'Articulation' is a very significant rhetorical practice in the discursive generation mechanism of image events. The basic idea of articulation is to discover and activate the relationship between things and specific discourses. Many of the image events are disseminated through the deliberate appropriation of a series of established discourses, discovering a hidden interface between the topic and the established discourse, which not only enables the production and recreation of a new discourse, but also gives the event a legitimate discursive underpinning. This article aims to provide a post-Marxist analysis of the media discourse interface that exists in the image event in order to broaden theoretical and methodological horizons and create new perspectives for the study of media discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Discourse analysis is one of the clinical methods commonly used to assess the language ability of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the majority of published analytic frameworks are not geared for highlighting the pragmatic aspect of discourse deficits in acquired language disorders, except for those designed for quantifying conversational samples. This study aimed to examine how pragmatic competence is impaired and reflected in spoken monologues in Chinese speakers with TBI. Methods: Discourse samples of five tasks (personal narrative, storytelling, procedural, single- and sequential picture description) were elicited from ten TBI survivors and their controls. Each discourse sample was measured using 16 indices (e.g., number of informative words, percentage of local/global coherence errors, repeated words or phrases) that corresponded to the four Gricean maxims. Twenty-five naïve Chinese speakers were also recruited to perform perceptual rating of the quality of all 50 TBI audio files (five discourse samples per TBI participant), in terms of erroneous/inaccurate information, adequacy of amount of information given, as well as degree of organization and clarity. Results: The maxim of quantity best predicted TBI's pragmatic impairments. Naïve listeners' perception of pragmatics deficits correlated to measures on total and informative words, as well as number and length of terminable units. Clinically, personal narrative and storytelling tasks could better elicit violations in pragmatics. Conclusion: Applying Gricean maxims in monologic oral narratives could capture the hallmark underlying pragmatic problems in TBI. This may help provide an additional approach of clinically assessing social communications in and subsequent management of TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have studied how women's domestic and transnational civil society activism addresses the gendered nature of transitional justice. In contrast, they have paid scant attention to women's impact on transitional justice policy-making in institutions. We leverage the feminist institutionalist perspective that makes visible gendered norms, rules, and discourses in institutions. Homing in on women's influence in parliaments where women are outnumbered by men and marginalised by adversarial discourse, we develop a conceptualisation of women's discursive agency. Foregrounding discourse in women's ability to drive change, women's agency is enacted through their linguistic communication style and substantive normative positions that constitute micro- and macro-level structures of domination. Quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis is applied to a corpus of parliamentary questions about transitional justice in the Croatian parliament from 2004 to 2020. Our results show that women adopt the adversarial style of questioning, which they use to broaden the scope of entitlements and press for reparations for female and male victims. They overcome constraints posed by partisanship and ideology, while constraints of nationalism are less easily broken. The article advances feminist transitional justice by demonstrating how women's language contributes to dismantling men's policy domination in institutions, with implications for mixed-sex interactions in non-institutional domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated government initiatives have become a common approach following the institutional fragmentation of New Public Management reforms. Complex societal issues require equally complex solutions, which sectorial units of government cannot attend to alone. However, integrated policy initiatives are prone to a range of obstacles. Using a study of policymaking aimed at homelessness in Norway as a case, this paper discusses how sectorial-shared knowledge creates barriers to a common view of policy problems and solutions. Engaging theories of governmental fragmentation, coordination, discourse, and epistemic cultures enable an exploration of how the involved policy sectors understand and address homelessness. The findings indicate that all policy sectors seem to recognise their responsibility within a social welfare frame, but despite having cooperated for several years, embeddedness in sectorial discourse and epistemic culture causes differing problem definitions. Established terms and categories within homelessness policies are filled with content according to epistemic embeddedness, thereby contributing to obscure the differences, rather than integrate the policy initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a book review of "French theories on text and discourse" by Ablali and Achard-Bayle. The book focuses on contemporary trends in French text and discourse studies, exploring the connection between text linguistics and discourse analysis. It also discusses the epistemology of text and various approaches to studying textual complexity and meaning. Additionally, the book examines the relationship between discourse analysis and other fields such as argumentation, society, and literature. Overall, the book offers a comprehensive understanding of text and discourse linguistics from a French perspective, challenging established paradigms and providing innovative perspectives. [Extracted from the article]

Global awareness about an increase of chronic diseases and premature mortality due to 'unhealthy eating' and 'sedentary lifestyles' is embedded in various discourses shaped by relationships and power. In this article, I investigate the role of physical activity in the lives of middle-aged women in Australia and how their experiences with exercise influence the way they position themselves within the context of inter-discursivity regarding fitness and 'healthy ageing'. Results reveal how 'knowledge' about 'healthy lifestyles' is created and accessed, and how women make sense of the healthism discourse, the obesity crisis, and discourses around menopause and ageing. The participants for this study are nine women in their forties to sixties who volunteered to participate in semi-structured interviews after completing an online survey about physical activity that was part of a larger project. Their accounts of health and fitness, healthy eating, weight management, mental wellbeing and ageing are categorised and interpreted in a post-structuralist framework through the lens of feminist relational discourse analysis. Results show that all women are influenced by healthism discourses as well as being affected by assumptions and recommendations for ageing, menopausal women. They shape female identity by adopting, but also by resisting, discourses around their bodies and minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study promotes replication research as a methodological approach that is needed in order to compare earlier and more recent analyses of digital discourse. When much of the existing research was conducted, the primary means of communication included the use of a computer keyboard, (presumably) less bandwidth, and fewer devices. However, with an increase of the range of device types, the study of diacritics deserves another look within the Digital Media landscape. The present study examines the variable use of diacritics in synchronous (i.e., real-time) French chat discourse. We have replicated a study with different data sets from the same chat corpus, which is composed of data from a European chat server. We have also compared the data from the 2008 half of the corpus to data from the same chat channels collected in 2016 (just over 60,000 words in each half of the corpus, which included a total of 7,569 tokens that were coded). Our analysis of the 2008 corpus showed that one main finding was not the same as ours (from a different part of the 2008 corpus). Moreover, a diachronic analysis (2008 vs. 2016) revealed reversed trends between the two age-based channels (i.e., 20s vs. 50s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: Cet article propose une documentation empirique du processus social de construction de l'immigration comme un problème de sécurité pour l'État canadien et sa population, et ce, au travers d'une analyse de contenu thématique d'articles de journaux publiés par La Presse et le National Post entre 1998 et 2015. Il quantifie et compare la place occupée par quatre discours-types au sein du discours médiatique canadien sur l'immigration. Ultimement, il révèle un discours de sécurité publique élevé fluctuant de façon importante sur la période et réfute l'hypothèse d'une intensification linéaire de la sécuritisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peace and security were once marginal in Sino-African relations. Recently, however, reflecting China's more proactive role as a global security actor, they have become central. Yet while China's actions mirror this shift, the official China–Africa discourse has not changed. This article, based on fieldwork interviews and discourse analysis of official Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) documents, proposes a theoretically grounded study of China's Africa discourse to account for the role it plays in maintaining continuity through time. It makes a threefold claim. First, while the China–Africa discourse has not been given much attention in the literature, it is crucial to explaining the overall success of China's engagement in the continent. Second, the shift in China's policies towards greater participation in peace and security is not mirrored by changes in the official discourse. Third, and related, this is owing mostly to the successful articulation of the link between the promotion of economic growth and the achievement of stability – the security–development nexus – and to the generally positive reception the discourse has found among African leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of populist discourse in South African politics. We investigate speeches of leaders from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). We find that the EFF consistently employs populist appeals, while both the incumbent ANC and official opposition DA largely refrain. Our longitudinal analysis allows an examination of fluctuation across party leaders and electoral cycles, and illustrates that neither the ANC nor the DA have modified their political discourses in light of a rising populist challenger. However, there is some evidence that the two most dominant parties have reformed their programmatic offerings and behaviour in an attempt to compete with the EFF's popular appeal. The South African case offers important insights into the study of oppositional populism on the African continent, and a window into how major political parties may respond to emerging populist contenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst representations of old age and older people in traditional media have been well documented, examinations of such representations within social media discourse are still scarce. This is an unfortunate omission because of the importance of social media for communication in contemporary society. In this study, we combine content analysis and discourse analysis to explore patterns of representation on Twitter around the terms ageing, old age, older people and elderly with a sample of 1,200 tweets. Our analysis shows that 'personal concerns/views' and 'health and social care' are the predominant overall topics, although some topics are clearly linked with specific keywords. The language often used in the tweets seems to reinforce negative discourses of age and ageing that locate older adults as a disempowered, vulnerable and homogeneous group; old age is deemed a problem and ageing is considered something that needs to be resisted, slowed or disguised. These topics and discursive patterns are indeed similar to those found in empirical studies of social perceptions and traditional media portrayal of old age, which indicates that social media and Twitter in particular appears to serve as an online platform that reproduces and reinforces existing ageist discourses in traditional media that feed into social perceptions of ageing and older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding alternatives to prominent information contributes to successful native language discourse comprehension. Several past studies have suggested that the way second language (L2) learners encode and represent an alternative set in L2 speech is not exactly native-like. However, because these studies involved contrastive pitch accents in running speech, these native language–second language differences may reflect the demands of comprehending running speech in L2 rather than intrinsic deficit in discourse processing per se. Here, we tested L2 learners' discourse encoding and representation using a different cue to prominence: font emphasis in self-paced reading. We found that, in this temporally less demanding modality, L2 learners' encoding of salient alternatives became native-like. Font emphasis facilitated L2 learners' memory for the discourse by ruling out salient alternatives, just as how it facilitates native speakers'. L2 learners were also similar to native speakers in using the situation model to constrain an alternative set. The results suggest that L2 learners can show native-like processing of prominence and that previous underuse of contrastive accents in L2 comprehension could reflect cognitive demands of processing running speech in L2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores policy makers’, health-care professionals’ and senior volunteers’ perceptions of senior volunteers. Two Norwegian government white papers regarding older adult care and welfare services, which were published over a period of 19 years, were selected for close examination. Furthermore, focus group interviews with a purposeful sample of five senior volunteers and 15 health-care professionals were conducted. The study explores the discursive formations of senior volunteers in the government white papers and how they are negotiated in the senior volunteers’ and the health-care professionals’ narratives. Two dominant discourses were presented in the white papers: a prevention discourse (in which volunteering was presented primarily as a means to prevent volunteers’ loneliness and need for care services) and a sustainability discourse (in which the volunteers were presented as instrumental in future sustainable care services). Both discourses echo a common overarching discourse about a capacity crisis due to the ageing population. The senior volunteers were positioned as partners and active agents in both their own narratives and the health-care professionals’ narratives. Their position as independent and as spokespersons for the less empowered were evident only in the senior volunteers’ own narratives. Only the health-care professionals referenced the prevention discourse and capacity issues. The senior volunteers presented themselves as competent, efficient political actors, and they resisted both the prevention and sustainability discourses. In the senior volunteers’ narratives, social and political participation were interrelated. The study demonstrates that new discursive landscapes must be created to capture the diversity among senior volunteers and their efforts. While senior volunteers must be meaningfully involved in decision making, planning and design, their positions as independent and active agents must also be ensured. Authentic partnerships between senior volunteers and public care services involve a balance between involvement and independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrastive pitch accents benefit native English speakers' memory for discourse by enhancing a representation of a specific relevant contrast item (Fraundorf et al., 2010). This study examines whether and how second language (L2) listeners differ in how contrastive accents affect their encoding and representation of a discourse, as compared to native speakers. Using the same materials as Fraundorf et al. (2010), we found that low and mid proficiency L2 learners showed no memory benefit from contrastive accents. High proficiency L2 learners revealed some sensitivity to contrastive accents, but failed to fully integrate information conveyed by contrastive accents into their discourse representation. The results suggest that L2 listeners' non-native performance in processing contrastive accents, observed in this and other prior studies, may be attributed at least in part to a difference in the depth of processing of the information conveyed by contrastive accents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on a corpus analysis of samples of spoken discourse between a group of British and Taiwanese adolescents, with the aim of exploring the statistically significant differences in the use of grammatical categories between the two groups of participants. The key word method extended to a part-of-speech level using the web-based corpus analytical tool, Wmatrix, highlights those linguistic domains which deserve particular attention. Specifically, it reveals the lexical and grammatical categories that occur unusually frequently or unusually infrequently in the English learners’ discourse when compared with the language used by the native speakers of English in the sample. The research findings delineate the pedagogical merit of key domain analysis and thus help to inform English as a foreign language teachers and materials developers in the design of courses emphasising spoken interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the construction of political identity in the 2011–2012 US Republican presidential primary debates. Focusing on candidates’ self-introductions, I analyze how candidates use references to family members and roles to frame their political identities or ‘presidential selves’. Family references are shown to (i) frame candidates’ personal identities as family men/women; (ii) interweave the spheres of home and politics and consequently, their private and public selves; (iii) serve as a tool of discursive one-upmanship in self-introduction sequences; and (iv) demonstrate intimate familiarity and expertise on the topic of national security. This study extends research on family discourse and identity by examining the rhetorical function of mentioning family-related identities in explicitly persuasive public discourse, and contributes to sociolinguistic research on political discourse by examining how family identities serve as a resource for framing political identities. (Discourse analysis, framing, family, identity, political discourse, presidential debates, sequentiality) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Readers actively construct representational models of meaning when reading text, and they do so by drawing on a range of kinds of information, from the specific linguistic forms of the sentences to knowledge about how the world works (Ferretti, Kutas, & McRae, 2007; Madden & Zwaan, 2003). The present set of studies focused on how grammatical aspect is integrated into a situation model and how it is connected to other dimensions of model construction. In three experiments, participants were asked to complete sentences with a choice of grammatical aspect form (perfective or imperfective). The test sentences systematically varied four dimensions of the sentence that were linked to grammatical aspect in different ways: telicity and transitivity (both linked through their semantic representations), subject animacy (linked through an inference over semantic representations), and related location information (linked through an inference grounded in world knowledge). In addition, to examine the influence of discourse function (backgrounding vs. foregrounding) on aspectual choice different construction types were varied across experiments – specifically a fronted locative construction and the presence of a generic narrative opener (Once upon a time). The results found that aspectual choice depends on information linked to the semantic representation of grammatical aspect; however, in contrast to previous work (e.g., Ferreti et al., 2007) information grounded in world knowledge (location information) did not influence aspectual choice except when it was integrated in a specialized discourse construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of theoretical and research issues in the study of writer identity in written discourse. First, a historical overview explores how identity has been conceived, studied, and taught, followed by a discussion of how writer identity has been conceptualized. Next, three major orientations toward writer identity show how the focus of analysis has shifted from the individual to the social conventions and how it has been moving toward an equilibrium, in which the negotiation of individual and social perspectives is recognized. The next two sections discuss two of the key developments—identity in academic writing and the assessment of writer identity. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications and future directions for teaching and researching identity in written discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]