Discourse and Society: : An International Journal for the Study of Discourse and Communication in their Social, Political and Cultural Contexts

Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, Ewa; Bogdanowska, Nika

doi: 10.1177/09579265251380603pmid: N/A

The aim of the study is to analyze false labeling and double standards in the populist discourse of the “new” opposition – the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which lost the 2023 Polish parliamentary elections after 8 years rule. The data used in the study come from our corpus of Polish political discourse. The theoretical framework within which the analysis has been conducted is the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Studies. The discourse has been analyzed in terms of its content, discursive strategies, linguistic expressions and rhetorical devices and context. The main findings of the study allowed us to formulate the following conclusions: The PiS party evaluation of the Polish political reality involves double standards and the biased use of false labeling. PiS rhetoric resembles Hitler’s and Donald Trump’s rhetorical styles. The strategy “call them what they call you” is frequently employed in negative presentations of the current governing coalition.

Castro, Reese

doi: 10.1177/09579265251387154pmid: N/A

Past literature on the “protest paradigm” has acknowledged that power plays a role in negative media coverage toward protests, but lacks research that specifically analyzes the mechanisms by which power is exerted through discourse. This paper argues that the protest paradigm theory would benefit from a deeper examination of the power relations between media discourse and other institutional discourses. As a case study, a comparative critical discourse analysis of university statements and news coverage about the 2024 Pro-Palestine student protests was conducted to examine how both discourses evolved in relation to each other over time. Findings reveal that universities had more negative mentions about the protests than the media did, and most of the invalidating news coverage found reflected the institutions’ attempts at invalidating the protests. It suggests that comparative discourse analysis can trace how the dialogic relationship consisting of the media’s multivoicedness and institutions’ strategic discourse enables the protest paradigm.

Chu, Rong-Xuan

doi: 10.1177/09579265251352866pmid: N/A

This study examines the evolving discourse surrounding the nuclear waste on Orchid Island (Lanyu), Taiwan, through the frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis and metaphorical framing. It analyses linguistic features across three textual genres—news reports, a declaration, and a government report—spanning from Taiwan’s late Martial Law period to the present. The findings reveal a discursive shift from environmental concerns to the indigenous Tao people’s belief in the malevolent spirit Anito, and, ultimately, to issues of land and identity. This trajectory underscores the complexity of the discourse and its broader implications for indigenous transitional justice. Drawing on interviews with 10 key stakeholders, the study emphasizes the necessity of confronting the historical marginalization of indigenous voices. It advocates for genuine engagement with these voices rather than superficial inclusion, arguing that such a shift is crucial to addressing entrenched injustices and ensuring the meaningful representation of the Tao people’s perspectives.

Consuegra-Fernández, Marta; Castaño, Emilia; Burguera-Serra, Joan-Gabriel

doi: 10.1177/09579265251384333pmid: N/A

Research indicates that the pejorative metaphorical use of mental health conditions in the media reinforces the social stigmatization of those affected. Beyond the media, however, the figurative use of such conditions remains largely unexplored. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Critical Metaphor Analysis, and van Dijk’s ideological square, this study examined the metaphorical use of nine highly stigmatized mental health conditions—anorexia, autism, bipolar disorder, bulimia, paranoia, psychosis, psychopathy, schizophrenia, and sociopathy—in 617 publicly available speeches delivered in the Spanish Parliament (1993–2024). The aim was to study whether and how political discourse reinforces negative perceptions of such conditions through metaphor. The findings revealed that 62.1% of references to these disorders were metaphorical, carried negative connotations, and functioned as a negative presentation strategy aimed at discrediting others. These findings call for greater awareness of how the metaphorization of mental health in political discourse can contribute to perpetuating prejudices and stereotypes.

Gulenko, Petr

doi: 10.1177/09579265251386464pmid: N/A

This study investigates the strategic use of aggression as propaganda in Russian political talk shows from 2000 to 2023. Employing a mixed-method approach, it analyzes changes in aggression levels, targets, and propagandistic mechanisms. We found no direct correlation between aggression design and its actual level, noting producers’ flexible formats. While pre-2012 aggression served entertainment, it consistently became a propaganda tool thereafter, initially indirect (2012–2014) then direct (2014–2022) against a surrogate ‘enemy’. Paradoxically, aggression declined post-February 2022, shifting toward apathy-fostering and targeting ‘internal enemies’ to establish new normality. The research highlights talk show hosts’ pivotal role in manufacturing and channeling aggression.

Hu, Christopher

doi: 10.1177/09579265251381840pmid: N/A

Color-evasion is a discursive process of power that upholds and reproduces dominant race-blind ideologies, but the discursive strategies and tactics—along with their ideological effects—that individuals mobilize to evade race require further and more specific examination. Drawing on interviews with parents of children who attend highly selective and racially disproportionate public magnet high schools in the United States, I offer a typology of color-evasive strategies used to actively evade race, arguing that such tactics allow people to circumvent taking a critical stance toward systematic educational inequality while reinscribing racism in the form of individualist deficit discourses. This critical discourse analysis demonstrates how individualist deficit thinking is ideologically tethered to color-evasion and how evading race makes race significant.

Mohamad Jamil, Siti Nurnadilla

doi: 10.1177/09579265251388500pmid: N/A

The New York Times’s coverage of Gaza has been extensively studied for media bias, yet its role in legitimising mass violence has been relatively unexamined. Addressing this gap, I analyse the newspaper’s reporting from 7 October 2023, through 7 April 2024 to conceptualise what I term subtle demonisation. Drawing on Hart’s Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis, I integrate Bakhtin’s chronotope with attention distribution to identify four destructive patterns: (1) chronotopic displacement, (2) agentive asymmetry, (3) semantic bundling, and (4) metaphor-driven reclassification that construes Palestinians as existential threats requiring elimination. I find these patterns collectively construct Palestinians as demons without naming them as such, rendering their lives structurally expendable. In doing so, I extend debates on media bias by showing how the language of journalistic objectivity functions as an instrument of epistemic erasure and a mechanism of complicity in atrocity.

Rheindorf, Markus; Vollmer, Bastian

doi: 10.1177/09579265251380606pmid: N/A

Irregular migration has become a politically and socially charged topic in Germany, shaping public sentiment and electoral outcomes alike. This article presents findings from a large-scale discourse analysis that examines how ‘irregular migration’ and the figure of the ‘irregular migrant’ are constructed across political and media discourse. Irregularised migrants, whose legal status falls outside regular residency, are rendered vulnerable to exclusion, precarity, and heightened control. Drawing on a corpus of over 6000 texts (67 million tokens) from major newspapers and parliamentary sources (2019–2023), the study investigates how discursive strategies reinforce exclusion and normalise control. Our mixed-methods approach combines corpus-based analysis with qualitative narratology, revealing a convergence between political and media discourse in conflating legal categories, using vague terminology, and advancing overlapping exclusionary logics. We show how discursive patterns of securitisation, economisation, and deservingness shape representational and narrative strategies. These findings reveal how language reinforces exclusion and normalises control, indicating the need for conceptual clarity and alternative discourses beyond technocratic or moralistic framings.

Sikorskii, Sergei; Carrió-Pastor, María Luisa

doi: 10.1177/09579265251380605pmid: N/A

This article examines how the Spanish monarchy’s symbolic authority was contested in digital crisis discourse during the 2024 DANA flood. Based on 500 posts on X.com, the study analyzes gendered judgments of King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia across text, images, emojis, and hashtags. Using Appraisal Theory and multimodal discourse analysis, we identify four recurrent evaluative patterns: reinforcement, complementarity, contradiction, and specialization. Findings indicate a shift from competence- to morality-based judgments, with Queen Letizia receiving intensified scrutiny through Veracity and Propriety. Intersemiotic contradiction emerges as a key strategy for challenging authenticity. We also propose the notion of legitimacy layering to capture how gender, class, and ceremonial status intersect in evaluation. The study shows how crisis discourse foregrounds moral judgment and identitybased critique, offering a framework for understanding public responses to symbolic institutions in volatile contexts.

Sun, Yanni

doi: 10.1177/09579265251389131pmid: N/A

During the pandemic, students from elite Chinese universities (Project 985), facing failure or unemployment, began labelling themselves as 985 waste. Scholars debate whether it signals rebellion against meritocracy or merely a stage of youth socialisation. I analysed 449 online posts by self-identified 985 waste, examining their identity negotiation through self-reference, predication, and argumentative topoi. The findings complicate those views. While referential patterns show growing awareness of structural inequality, meritocratic values remain internalised. Predication analysis highlights intense self-criticism and psychological distress, challenging its dismissal as mere youth socialisation. Yet their narratives feature self-repair or hope for self-repair, signalling resilience over defeatism and reconciliation over revolt. Topos analysis reveals a dominant sense of internalised failure, and also resistance via external blame, non-meritocratic values, and redefined success. These disidentification strategies reclaim agency without rejecting the system. 985 waste are caught between disillusionment and aspiration within a system they neither fully trust nor fully reject.