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The story of myth
Greek myths have long been admired as beautiful, thrilling stories but dismissed as serious objects of belief, even for the Greeks themselves. Indeed, for centuries scholars have argued that the stories that the Greeks handed down to us--the epics, the tragedies and the other compelling works that the Greeks left behind--obscure the 'real' myths that supposedly inspired them, and have striven to excavate their hidden meanings. The Story of Myth, however, argues that it was precisely their nature as stories--as gripping tales, starring vivid characters--that enabled myths to do their most important work: to create and sustain belief in the gods and heroes that populated them, thus forming the basis of Greek religion. By drawing on recent work in narratology, sociology and folklore studies and by comparing Greek myths to other narratives--not only the myths of other cultures such as the ancient Near East, but fairy tales, fantasy works, 19th century ghost stories, modern novels, and television series, as well--author Sarah Iles Johnston reveals the subtle yet powerful ways in which the myths forged enduring bonds between their characters and their audience members, created coherent story-worlds, and made it possible to believe in extraordinary gods.-- Provided by publisher
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Theories and concepts in critical discourse studies
This article emphasises the need to devote more attention to concepts and theories in critical discourse studies (CDS). We are particularly eager to emphasise that CDS theory of the second decade of 2000s – often known as the post-crisis era or as the period of ‘late neoliberalism’ – faces a number of challenges that are both real world (social) and academic in nature. On the one hand, CDS theory must be reconsidered from the point of view of socio-political challenges and the necessity to tackle new (public and private) discourses as well as their trajectories that no longer undergo the once long-standing socio-political or politico-economic dynamics. On the other hand, we see the need for embracing new ways of theorising and conceptualising discourse in late modernity in the wider landscape of the social theories and their engagement with discourse. This article emphasises the need to address some voices that come from beyond the ‘core’ CDS community with the aim to enrich CDS theory by ideas that would help us move the latter beyond its foundations as well as face socio-political and academic challenges ahead.
Journal Article
Visualizing the Knowledge Domain of Academic Discourse Studies at the Beginning of 21st Century: A Bibliometric Analysis
Scholars across diverse disciplines have dedicated attention to academic discourse study (ADS), with a particular focus on the development of specific topics. However, the important research topics, methods, and divergent viewpoints within ADS remain unclear. This study adopts a bibliometric approach to systematically synthesize ADS from a disciplinary perspective, offering a comprehensive overview of relevant data over the past two decades. Using CiteSpace, the study analyzes 2,024 published articles and reviews from the Web of Science, focusing on co-citation analysis through clusters, terms, and keywords. Findings reveal that ADS encompasses a wide array of topics spanning linguistics, education, and publication practices. Researchers in ADS tend to favor employ quantitative methods for exploring the use of particular linguistic resources. However, theoretical discussions of ADS appear inadequate. Future developments in ADS may lean towards quantitative methodology and topic-driven investigations for a certain period, emphasizing the necessity for more robust theoretical inquiries.
Journal Article
A Corpus Study of Brexit Political Discourse: Exploring Modality through Lexical Modals
This paper aims to analyse the lexical modals used in the political speeches given by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the final months of the Brexit process. This study explores whether lexical choice shows the politicians’ commitment to their constituents, particularly to determine which lexical modals each politician uses and which semantic implication(s) these modals convey. The study is descriptive-interpretative and uses the corpus-assisted discourse studies approach. It contributes to research on modality in the English language by examining parts of speech other than (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. As the corpus analysis shows, lexical modals are a prominent resource employed by politicians to present facts to their audience.
Journal Article
Discourse studies: Between social constructionism and linguistics. A critical overview
This paper gives a critical overview of the analytical approaches dominating the field of discourse studies in the last three decades, from the perspective of their philosophical and formative bases: social constructionism and linguistics. It explores different conceptions of the theoretical nexus between these two bases leading to the emergence of three distinct yet complementary strands of thought (i-iii). The paper starts with poststructuralist views of discourse salient in (i) Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory. Laclau and Mouffe’s assumption that no discourse is a closed entity but rather transformed through contact with other discourses is taken as the introductory premise to present a large family of (ii) critical discourse studies, characterized as text-analytical practices explaining how discourse partakes in the production and negotiations of ideological meanings. Finally, the paper discusses (iii) three recent discourse analytical models: Discourse Space Theory, Critical Metaphor Analysis and the Legitimization-Proximization Model. These new theories take a further (and thus far final) step towards consolidation of the social-theoretical and linguistic bases in contemporary discourse studies. The empirical benefits of this consolidation are discussed in the last part of the paper, which includes a case study where the new models are used in the analysis of Polish anti-immigration discourse.
Journal Article
Language use before and after Stonewall: A corpus-based study of gay men’s pre-Stonewall narratives
This study presents a contrastive corpus linguistic analysis of language use before and after Stonewall. It uses theoretical insights on normativity from the field of language and sexuality to investigate how the shifting normativities associated with the Stonewall Riots (1969) – widely considered the central event of gay liberation in the Western world – have shaped our conceptualization of sexuality as it surfaces in language use. Drawing on two corpora of gay men’s pre-Stonewall narratives dating from two time periods (before and after Stonewall, called PRE and POST), the analysis combines quantitative (keyword analysis, collocation analysis) and qualitative (concordance analysis) corpus linguistic methods to examine discursive shifts as evident from narrators’ language use. The study identifies the terms homosexual and normal as central contrastive labels in PRE, and gay and straight as corresponding terms in POST. Other discursive shifts detected are from sexual desire/practices to identity (and vice versa), from an individualistic to a community-based conceptualization of sexuality, and from unquestioned heteronormativity and gender binarism to a weakening of such dominant discourses. The findings are discussed in relation to the desire-identity shift, which is traditionally assumed to have taken place at the end of the 19th century, and shed new light on Stonewall as a central event for the development of an identity-based conceptualization of sexuality as we know it today.
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