Political discourse analysis from the point of view of translation studies

Political discourse very often relies on translation. Political Discourse Analysis (PDA), however, has not yet taken full account of the phenomenon of translation. This paper argues that the disciplines of Translation Studies (TS) and PDA can benefit from closer cooperation. It starts by presenting examples of authentic translations of political texts, commenting on them from the point of view of TS. These examples concern political effects caused by specific translation solutions; the processes by which information is transferred via translation to another culture; and the structure and function of equally valid texts in their respective cultures. After a brief survey of the discipline of Translation Studies, the paper concludes with outlining scope for interdisciplinary cooperation between PDA and TS. This is illustrated with reference to an awareness of product features, multilingual texts, process analysis, and the politics of translation.

British racial discourse: a study of political discourse about race and race-related matters at parliamentary and borough council levels

'British Racial Discourse' is a study of political discourse about race and race-related matters. The explanatory theory is adapted from current sociological studies of ideology with a heavy emphasis on the tradition developed from Marx and Engels's Feuerbach. The empirical data is drawn from the parliamentary debates on immigration and the Race Relations Bills, Conservative and Labour Party Conference Reports, and a set of interviews with Wolverhampton Borough councillors. Although the thesis has broader significance for British political discourse about race, it is particularly concerned with the responses of members of the two main political parties, rather than with the more overt and sensational racism of certain extreme Right-wing groups. Indeed, as the study progresses, it focuses more and more narrowly on the phenomenon of 'deracialised' discourse, and the details of the predominantly class-based justificatory systems of the Conservative and Labour Parties. Of particular interest are the argument forms (used in the debates on immigration and race relations) which manage to obscure the white electorate's responsibility for prejudice and discrimination. Such discoursive forms are of major significance for understanding British race relations, and their detailed examination provides an insight into the way in which 'ideological facades' are created and maintained.

Metaphor in (Arabic-into-English) translation with specific reference to metaphorical concepts and expressions in political discourse

Cognitive linguistics scholars argue that metaphor is fundamentally a conceptual process of mapping one domain of experience onto another domain. The study of metaphor in the context of Translation Studies has not, unfortunately, kept pace with the discoveries about the nature and role of metaphor in the cognitive sciences. This study aims primarily to fill part of this gap of knowledge. Specifically, the thesis is an attempt to explore some implications of the conceptual theory of metaphor for translation. Because the study of metaphor in translation is also based on views about the nature of translation, the thesis first presents a general overview of the discipline of Translation Studies, describing the major models of translation. The study (in Chapter Two) then discusses the major traditional theories of metaphor (comparison, substitution and interaction theories) and shows how the ideas of those theories were adopted in specific translation studies of metaphor. After that, the study presents a detailed account of the conceptual theory of metaphor and some hypothetical implications for the study of metaphor in translation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The data and methodology are presented in Chapter Four. A novel classification of conceptual metaphor is presented which distinguishes between different source domains of conceptual metaphors: physical, human-life and intertextual. It is suggested that each source domain places different demands on translators. The major sources of the data for this study are (1) the translations done by the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service (FBIS), which is a translation service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United Sates of America, of a number of speeches by the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during the Gulf Crisis (1990-1991) and (2) official (governmental) Omani translations of National Day speeches of Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman.

Political discourse, media and translation

This volume addresses the role played by translation in international political communication and news reporting and brings to light the usually invisible link between politics, media, and translation. The contributors explore the interrelationship between media in the widest sense and translation, with a focus on politics texts, institutional contexts, and translation policies. These topics are explored from a Translation Studies perspective, thus bringing a new disciplinary view to the investigation of political discourse and the language of the media. The first part of the volume focuses on textual analysis, investigating transformations that occur in translation processes, and the second part examines institutional contexts and institutional policies and their effects on translation production and reception.

Politics as text and talk:analytic approaches to political discourse

Human beings are political animals. They are also articulate mammals. How are these two aspects linked? This is a question that is only beginning to be explored. The present collection makes a contribution to the investigations into the use of language in those situations which, informally and intuitively, we call ‘political’. Such an approach is revealing not only for politics itself but also for the human language capacity. Each chapter outlines a particular method or analytic approach and illustrates its application to a contemporary political issue, institution or mode of political behaviour. As a whole, the collection aims to give a sample of current research in the field. It will interest those who are beginning to carry the research paradigm forward, as well as provide an introduction for newcomers, whether they come from neighbouring or remote disciplines or from none.

Metaphors in Hugo Chávez's political discourse:conceptualizing nation, revolution and opposition

This dissertation examines Hugo Chávez's choice of metaphors in his efforts to construct and legitimize his Bolivarian Revolution. It focuses on metaphors drawn from three of the most frequent target domains present in his discourse: the nation, his revolution, and the opposition. The study argues that behind an official discourse of inclusion, Chávez's choice of metaphors contributes to the construction of a polarizing discourse of exclusion in which his political opponents are represented as enemies of the nation.The study shows that Chávez constructs this polarizing discourse of exclusion by combining metaphors that conceptualize: (a) the nation as a person who has been resurrected by his government, as a person ready to fight for his revolution, or as Chávez himself; (b) the revolution as war; and (c) members of the opposition as war combatants or criminals. At the same time, the study shows that by making explicit references in his discourse about the revolution as the continuation of Bolívar's wars of independence, Chávez contributes to represent opponents as enemies of the nation, given that in the Venezuelan collective imaginary Simón Bolívar is the symbol of the nation's emancipation.This research, which covers a period of nine years (from Chávez's first year in office in 1999 through 2007), is part of the discipline of Political Discourse Analysis (PDA). It is anchored both in the theoretical framework provided by the cognitive linguistic metaphor theory developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson described in their book Metaphors We Live By, and in Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) as defined by Jonathan Charteris-Black in his book Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis.The study provides the first comprehensive analysis of metaphors used by Chávez in his political discourse. It builds upon the findings of previous studies on political discourse analysis in Venezuela by showing that Chávez's discourse not only polarizes the country and represents opponents as detractors of national symbols such as Bolívar or his wars of independence (which have been clearly established in previous studies), but also represents political opponents as enemies of the nation.

Unknown agents in translated political discourse

This article investigates the role of translation and interpreting in political discourse. It illustrates discursive events in the domain of politics and the resulting discourse types, such as jointly produced texts, press conferences and speeches. It shows that methods of Critical Discourse Analysis can be used effectively to reveal translation and interpreting strategies as well as transformations that occur in recontextualisation processes across languages, cultures, and discourse domains, in particular recontextualisation in mass media. It argues that the complexity of translational activities in the field of politics has not yet seen sufficient attention within Translation Studies. The article concludes by outlining a research programme for investigating political discourse in translation. ©2012 John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Learning from a deceptively spacious policy discourse

Networked Learning, e-Learning and Technology Enhanced Learning have each been defined in different ways, as people's understanding about technology in education has developed. Yet each could also be considered as a terminology competing for a contested conceptual space. Theoretically this can be a ‘fertile trans-disciplinary ground for represented disciplines to affect and potentially be re-orientated by others’ (Parchoma and Keefer, 2012), as differing perspectives on terminology and subject disciplines yield new understandings. Yet when used in government policy texts to describe connections between humans, learning and technology, terms tend to become fixed in less fertile positions linguistically. A deceptively spacious policy discourse that suggests people are free to make choices conceals an economically-based assumption that implementing new technologies, in themselves, determines learning. Yet it actually narrows choices open to people as one route is repeatedly in the foreground and humans are not visibly involved in it. An impression that the effective use of technology for endless improvement is inevitable cuts off critical social interactions and new knowledge for multiple understandings of technology in people's lives. This paper explores some findings from a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of UK policy for educational technology during the last 15 years, to help to illuminate the choices made. This is important when through political economy, hierarchical or dominant neoliberal logic promotes a single ‘universal model’ of technology in education, without reference to a wider social context (Rustin, 2013). Discourse matters, because it can ‘mould identities’ (Massey, 2013) in narrow, objective economically-based terms which 'colonise discourses of democracy and student-centredness' (Greener and Perriton, 2005:67). This undermines subjective social, political, material and relational (Jones, 2012: 3) contexts for those learning when humans are omitted. Critically confronting these structures is not considered a negative activity. Whilst deterministic discourse for educational technology may leave people unconsciously restricted, I argue that, through a close analysis, it offers a deceptively spacious theoretical tool for debate about the wider social and economic context of educational technology. Methodologically it provides insights about ways technology, language and learning intersect across disciplinary borders (Giroux, 1992), as powerful, mutually constitutive elements, ever-present in networked learning situations. In sharing a replicable approach for linguistic analysis of policy discourse I hope to contribute to visions others have for a broader theoretical underpinning for educational technology, as a developing field of networked knowledge and research (Conole and Oliver, 2002; Andrews, 2011).

Diskurzuselemzés a politika- és vezetéstudományban (Discourse analysis in the political and management sciences)

A XX. század második felében lejátszódó nyelvi fordulat révén egy újfajta posztmodern irányzat jelent meg a társadalomtudományok területén. A diskurzuselméleti megközelítésmód sajátos nézőpontjával az 1990-es évekre már diszciplínateremtő igénnyel is fellépett. Az új tudományos szemlélet számos társadalomtudományi területen jelent meg. Jelen tanulmány a különböző elméleti irányzatokat és a hozzájuk kapcsolódó módszereket tekinti át, és célja a diskurzuselemzés alkalmazhatóságának bemutatása a politika- és a vezetéstudományok területén. ____ Due to a new linguistic revolution occurred in the second half of the twentieth century new post modern tendencies appeared in the field of social sciences. Discourse theory with its unique perspective has succeeded in building up a discipline at the 1990s. This new scientific approach has appeared in several social sciences. This study surveys different theoretical trends and related methods and aims to demonstrate the applicability of discourse analysis in the field of political and management sciences.

Discourse Analysis of Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man Through a Feminist Educational Lens

This qualitative study used critical discourse analysis to highlight how educational stakeholders can examine discourses and react to power in texts using a feminist lens to problematize identity.