Rebuilding Defenses: Explorations in Norman Fairclough’s Theory of Critical Discourse Analysis

Tutkielmassa eritellään Norman Faircloughin kriittisen diskurssianalyysin teoriaa ja siihen kohdistettua kritiikkiä. Pyrkimyksenä on sovittaa näitä erilaisia näkemyksiä keskenään ja tarjota ratkaisuja yhteen kiriittisen diskurssianalyysin keskeiseen ongelmaan eli emansipaation (sosiaalisten epäkohtien tunnistamisen ja ratkaisemisen) puutteellisuuteen. Teoriaosuudesta esiin nousevia mahdollisuuksia sovelletaan tekstianalyysiin. Tutkimuksen kohteena on teksti Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century ja jossain määrin sen tuottanut järjestö Project for the New American Century. Näitä tarkastellaan ennen kaikkea sosiaalisina ilmiöinä ja suhteessa toisiinsa. Faircloughin mallin suurimmiksi ongelmiksi muodostuvat perinteinen käsitys kielestä, jonka mukaan kielen järjestelmän abstraktit ja sisäiset suhteet ovat tärkeimpiä, sekä ideologinen vastakkainasettelu kritiikin lähtökohtana. Ensimmäinen johtaa kielellisten tutkimustulosten epätyydyttävään kykyyn selittää sosiaalisia havaintoja ja jälkimmäinen poliittiseen tai maailmankatsomukselliseen väittelyyn, joka ei mahdollista uusia näkemyksiä. Tutkielman lopputulema on, että keskittymällä asiasisältöön kielen rakenteen sijasta ja ymmärtämällä tekstin tuottaja yksittäisenä, rajattuna sosiaalisena toimijana voidaan analyysiin saada avoimuutta ja täsmällisyyttä. Kriittiinen diskurssianalyysi kaipaa tällaista näkemystä kielellisten analyysien tueksi ja uudenlaisen relevanssin löytääkseen.

Equivalence and translation strategies in multilingual thesaurus construction

In the present dissertation, multilingual thesauri were approached as cultural products and the focus was twofold: On the empirical level the focus was placed on the translatability of certain British-English social science indexing terms into the Finnish language and culture at a concept, a term and an indexing term level. On the theoretical level the focus was placed on the aim of translation and on the concept of equivalence. In accordance with modern communicative and dynamic translation theories the interest was on the human dimension. The study is qualitative. In this study, equivalence was understood in a similar way to how dynamic, functional equivalence is commonly understood in translation studies. Translating was seen as a decision-making process, where a translator often has different kinds of possibilities to choose in order to fulfil the function of the translation. Accordingly, and as a starting point for the construction of the empirical part, the function of the source text was considered to be the same or similar to the function of the target text, that is, a functional thesaurus both in source and target context. Further, the study approached the challenges of multilingual thesaurus construction from the perspectives of semantics and pragmatics. In semantic analysis the focus was on what the words conventionally mean and in pragmatics on the ‘invisible’ meaning - or how we recognise what is meant even when it is not actually said (or written). Languages and ideas expressed by languages are created mainly in accordance with expressional needs of the surrounding culture and thesauri were considered to reflect several subcultures and consequently the discourses which represent them. The research material consisted of different kinds of potential discourses: dictionaries, database records, and thesauri, Finnish versus British social science researches, Finnish versus British indexers, simulated indexing tasks with five articles and Finnish versus British thesaurus constructors. In practice, the professional background of the two last mentioned groups was rather similar. It became even more clear that all the material types had their own characteristics, although naturally not entirely separate from each other. It is further noteworthy that the different types and origins of research material were not used to represent true comparison pairs, and that the aim of triangulation of methods and material was to gain a holistic view. The general research questions were: 1. Can differences be found between Finnish and British discourses regarding family roles as thesaurus terms, and if so, what kinds of differences and which are the implications for multilingual thesaurus construction? 2. What is the pragmatic indexing term equivalence? The first question studied how the same topic (family roles) was represented in different contexts and by different users, and further focused on how the possible differences were handled in multilingual thesaurus construction. The second question was based on findings of the previous one, and answered to the final question as to what kinds of factors should be considered when defining translation equivalence in multilingual thesaurus construction. The study used multiple cases and several data collection and analysis methods aiming at theoretical replication and complementarity. The empirical material and analysis consisted of focused interviews (with Finnish and British social scientists, thesaurus constructors and indexers), simulated indexing tasks with Finnish and British indexers, semantic component analysis of dictionary definitions and translations, coword analysis and datasets retrieved in databases, and discourse analysis of thesauri. As a terminological starting point a topic and case family roles was selected. The results were clear: 1) It was possible to identify different discourses. There also existed subdiscourses. For example within the group of social scientists the orientation to qualitative versus quantitative research had an impact on the way they reacted to the studied words and discourses, and indexers placed more emphasis on the information seekers whereas thesaurus constructors approached the construction problems from a more material based solution. The differences between the different specialist groups i.e. the social scientists, the indexers and the thesaurus constructors were often greater than between the different geo-cultural groups i.e. Finnish versus British. The differences occurred as a result of different translation aims, diverging expectations for multilingual thesauri and variety of practices. For multilingual thesaurus construction this means severe challenges. The clearly ambiguous concept of multilingual thesaurus as well as different construction and translation strategies should be considered more precisely in order to shed light on focus and equivalence types, which are clearly not self-evident. The research also revealed the close connection between the aims of multilingual thesauri and the pragmatic indexing term equivalence. 2) The pragmatic indexing term equivalence is very much context-depended. Although thesaurus term equivalence is defined and standardised in the field of library and information science (LIS), it is not understood in one established way and the current LIS tools are inadequate to provide enough analytical tools for both constructing and studying different kinds of multilingual thesauri as well as their indexing term equivalence. The tools provided in translation science were more practical and theoretical, and especially the division of different meanings of a word provided a useful tool in analysing the pragmatic equivalence, which often differs from the ideal model represented in thesaurus construction literature. The study thus showed that the variety of different discourses should be acknowledged, there is a need for operationalisation of new types of multilingual thesauri, and the factors influencing pragmatic indexing term equivalence should be discussed more precisely than is traditionally done.

Perspectives interculturelles et interlinguistiques sur le discours académique – Crosscultural and Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Academic Discourse. Volume 1

The Department of French Studies of the University of Turku (Finland) organized an International Bilingual Conference on Crosscultural and Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Academic Discourse from 2022 May 2005. The event hosted specialists on Academic Discourse from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, and the USA. This book is the first volume in our series of publications on Academic Discourse (AD hereafter). The following pages are composed of selected papers from the conference and focus on different aspects and analytical frameworks of Academic Discourse. One of the motivations behind organizing the conference was to examine and expand research on AD in different languages. Another one was to question to what extent academic genres are culturebound and language specific or primarily field or domain specific. The research carried out on AD has been mainly concerned with the use of English in different academic settings for a long time now – mainly written contexts – and at the expense of other languages. Alternatively the academic genre conventions of English and English speaking world have served as a basis for comparison with other languages and cultures. We consider this first volume to be a strong contribution to the spreading out of researches based on other languages than English in AD, namely Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian and Romanian in this book. All the following articles have a strong link with the French language: either French is constitutive of the AD corpora under examination or the article was written in French. The structure of the book suggests and provides evidence that the concept of AD is understood and tackled to varying degrees by different scholars. Our first volume opens up the discussion on what AD is and backs dissemination, overlapping and expansion of current research questions and methodologies. The book is divided into three parts and contains four articles in English and six articles in French. The papers in part one and part two cover what we call the prototypical genre of written AD, i.e. the research article. Part one follows up on issues linked to the 13 Research Article (RA hereafter). Kjersti Fløttum asks wether a typical RA exists and concentrates on authors’ voices in RA (self and other dimensions), whereas Didriksen and Gjesdal’s article focuses on individual variation of the author’s voice in RA. The last article in this section is by Nadine Rentel and deals with evaluation in the writing of RA. Part two concentrates on the teaching and learning of AD within foreign language learning, another more or less canonical genre of AD. Two aspects of writing are covered in the first two articles: foreign students’ representations on rhetorical traditions (Hidden) and a contrastive assessment of written exercices in French and Finnish in Higher Education (Suzanne). The last contribution in this section on AD moves away from traditional written forms and looks at how argumentation is constructed in students’ oral presentations (Dervin and Fauveau). The last part of the book continues the extension by featuring four articles written in French exploring institutional and scientific discourses. Institutional discourses under scrutiny include the European Bologna Process (Galatanu) and Romanian reform texts (Moilanen). As for scientific discourses, the next paper in this section deconstructs an ideological discourse on the didactics of French as a foreign language (Pescheux). Finally, the last paper in part three reflects on varied forms of AD at university (Defays). We hope that this book will add some fuel to continue discussing diverse forms of and approches to AD – in different languages and voices! No need to say that with the current upsurge in academic mobility, reflecting on crosscultural and crosslinguistic AD has just but started.

DISAGREEING OVER EVALUATIVES: PREFERENCE, NORMATIVE AND MORAL DISCOURSE

Abstract Why would we argue about taste, norms or morality when we know that these topics are relative to taste preferences, systems of norms or values to which we are committed? Yet, disagreements over these topics are common in our evaluative discourses. I will claim that the motives to discuss rely on our attitudes towards the standard held by the speakers in each domain of discourse, relating different attitudes to different motives -mainly, conviction and correction. These notions of attitudes and motives will allow me to claim that different domains of evaluative discourse have a different distribution of disagreements driven by them.

Communicative and Anticipatory Decision-Making Supported by Bayesian Networks

The purpose of this research is to draw up a clear construction of an anticipatory communicative decision-making process and a successful implementation of a Bayesian application that can be used as an anticipatory communicative decision-making support system. This study is a decision-oriented and constructive research project, and it includes examples of simulated situations. As a basis for further methodological discussion about different approaches to management research, in this research, a decision-oriented approach is used, which is based on mathematics and logic, and it is intended to develop problem solving methods. The approach is theoretical and characteristic of normative management science research. Also, the approach of this study is constructive. An essential part of the constructive approach is to tie the problem to its solution with theoretical knowledge. Firstly, the basic definitions and behaviours of an anticipatory management and managerial communication are provided. These descriptions include discussions of the research environment and formed management processes. These issues define and explain the background to further research. Secondly, it is processed to managerial communication and anticipatory decision-making based on preparation, problem solution, and solution search, which are also related to risk management analysis. After that, a solution to the decision-making support application is formed, using four different Bayesian methods, as follows: the Bayesian network, the influence diagram, the qualitative probabilistic network, and the time critical dynamic network. The purpose of the discussion is not to discuss different theories but to explain the theories which are being implemented. Finally, an application of Bayesian networks to the research problem is presented. The usefulness of the prepared model in examining a problem and the represented results of research is shown. The theoretical contribution includes definitions and a model of anticipatory decision-making. The main theoretical contribution of this study has been to develop a process for anticipatory decision-making that includes management with communication, problem-solving, and the improvement of knowledge. The practical contribution includes a Bayesian Decision Support Model, which is based on Bayesian influenced diagrams. The main contributions of this research are two developed processes, one for anticipatory decision-making, and the other to produce a model of a Bayesian network for anticipatory decision-making. In summary, this research contributes to decision-making support by being one of the few publicly available academic descriptions of the anticipatory decision support system, by representing a Bayesian model that is grounded on firm theoretical discussion, by publishing algorithms suitable for decision-making support, and by defining the idea of anticipatory decision-making for a parallel version. Finally, according to the results of research, an analysis of anticipatory management for planned decision-making is presented, which is based on observation of environment, analysis of weak signals, and alternatives to creative problem solving and communication.

A Bridge Builder or a Raconteur? How Japan Manoeuvres the Global Development Discourse within the TICAD Process

Japan has been a major actor in the field of development cooperation for five decades, even holding the title of largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the 1990s. Financial flows, however, are subject to pre-existing paradigms that dictate both donor and recipient behaviour. In this respect Japan has been left wanting for more recognition. The dominance of the so called ‘Washington Consensus’ embodied in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank has long circumvented any indigenous approaches to development problems. The Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) is a development cooperation conference that Japan has hosted since 1993 every five years. As the main organizer of the conference Japan has opted for the leading position of African development. This has come in the wake of success in the Asian region where Japan has called attention to its role in the so called ‘Asian Miracle’ of fast growing economies. These aspirations have enabled Japan to try asserting itself as a major player in directing the course of global development discourse using historical narratives from both Asia and Africa. Over the years TICAD has evolved into a continuous process with ministerial and follow-up meetings in between conferences. Each conference has produced a declaration that stipulates the way the participants approach the question of African development. Although a multilateral framework, Japan has over the years made its presence more and more felt within the process. This research examines the way Japan approaches the paradigms of international development cooperation and tries to direct them in the context of the TICAD process. Supplementing these questions are inquiries concerning Japan’s foreign policy aspirations. The research shows that Japan has utilized the conference platform to contest other development actors and especially the dominant forces of the IMF and the World Bank in development discourse debate. Japan’s dominance of the process is evident in the narratives found in the conference documents. Relative success has come about by remaining consistent as shown by the acceptance of items from the TICAD agenda in other forums, such as the G8. But the emergence of new players such as China has changed the playing field, as they are engaging other developing countries from a more equal level.

"It's Barack Obama Who's Soft" Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News: A Critical Discourse Analysis of News Websites

Tutkielmassa analysoidaan kolmen internetsivuston uutisartikkeleita kielitieteen näkökulmasta. Tavoitteena on selvittää esiintyykö internetsivustojen BBC, CNN ja Fox News uutisoinnissa politiikkaan liittyviä ennakkoasenteita tai puolueellisuuksia ja miten ne käytännössä näkyvät uutisartikkeleiden kielessä. Kriittiseen diskurssianalyysiin pohjautuen tutkielma esittelee jokaisen uutissivuston taustaan (esimerkiksi rakenteeseen ja rahoitukseen) liittyviä seikkoja sekä mediadiskurssiin ja politiikkaan liittyvät taustatiedot, jolla taataan Norman Fairclough'n kolmivaiheisen menetelmän mahdollisimman perusteellinen toteuttaminen. Uutissivustoja analysoidaan kriittiselle diskurssianalyysille sopivan funktionaalisen kieliopin ja muiden lingvististen välineiden avulla. Koko aineiston (404 artikkelia) otsikot analysoidaan ensin, minkä jälkeen analysoidaan yhdeksän kokonaista artikkelia kolmeen eri aihealueeseen liittyen niin, että jokaiselta internetsivustolta analysoidaan yksi artikkeli jokaista aihetta kohden. Analyysikeinoina käytetään ensisijaisesti systeemis-funktionaalisen kieliopin tekstuaalisen metafunktion välineitä (thematic structure). Myös ideationaalisen metafunktion välineitä (transitivity), referenssiketjuja (referential identity chains) ja leksikaalista analyysia käytetään hyväksi. Lähtökohtaisesti tavoitteena on analysoida uutissivustoja vertailevasti, jolloin analyysin tulokset ovat paremmin havainnoitavissa ja perusteltavissa. Hypoteesi aikaisempien tutkimusten ja yleisen mielikuvan perusteella on, että CNN uutisoi demokraattipuolueelle ja Fox News taas republikaanipuolueelle edulliseen sävyyn. Tutkimustulokset vaihtelivat hypoteesia tukevista ja sen vastaisista tuloksista niihin, jotka eivät olleet tarpeeksi tuettuja kumpaankaan suuntaan. Vahvimmat tulokset ovat kuitenkin hypoteesia tukevia, joten tässä tutkielmassa todetaan, ettei uutisointi ole puolueetonta ainakaan näiden kolmen internetsivuston kohdalla. Lisäksi muutaman aihealueen kohdalla uutisointi on niin toistuvaa tietystä näkökulmasta, että luonnollistumisteorian mukaista aatteiden luonnollistumista saattaa tapahtua. Tutkielmassa käytettyjen menetelmien menestyksen perusteella suositellaan, että tekstuaalisen metafunktion analyysivälineitä käytetään enemmän. Lisäksi suositellaan meta-analyysin harkitsemista, jotta voitaisiin selvittää, mitkä analyysimetodit parhaiten sopivat minkäkinlaisen aineiston analysointiin.

Irruptive discourse and conflicted curiosity

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Communicative Purposes of Press Releases Announcing Reduction in Workforce

Tämä tutkielma käsittelee kaupallisten yhtiöiden julkaisemia lehdistötiedotteita, joissa ilmoitetaan henkilöstövähennyksistä. Erityisenä tutkimuskohteena ovat lehdistötiedotteiden informatiiviset ja promotionaaliset päämäärät ja tarkoitukset sekä näiden päämäärien ja tarkoitusten ilmentyminen tekstin retorisen rakenteen, valittujen retoristen strategioiden sekä leksikaalisten ja kieliopillisten valintojen kautta. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostuu 50 englanninkielisestä lehdistötiedotteesta, jotka sisältävät ilmoituksen henkilöstövähennyksistä. Lehdistötiedotteet kerättiin yritysten verkkosivuilta. Tutkimuksen teoreettisena viitekehityksenä toimivat soveltavan kielentutkimuksen alalla erityisesti ammattikielentutkimuksessa (ESP, English for Specific Purposes) laajalti käytetty Swalesin (1990) tekstilajia (genre) koskeva määritelmää ja Bhatian (1993) kehittämä geneerisen analyysin malli. Ennen aineiston kielitieteellistä analysointia tutkimuksessa perehdyttiin Bhatian (1993) mallin mukaisesti lehdistötiedotteiden historiaan, kohdeyleisöihin, diskurssiyhteisöön ja sen tuottamiin muihin tekstilajeihin, aikaisempiin lehdistotiedotteita käsitteleviin kielitieteellisiin tutkimuksiin sekä erityisesti yritysten henkilövähennyksiin liittyvään tilannekontekstiin. Kielitieteellisessä analyysissä tutkittavista teksteistä tunnistettiin kahdeksan retorista vaihetta (move), jotka olivat tyypillisiä tutkituille teksteille. Kunkin retorisen vaiheen yksittäiset ilmentymät koottiin yhteen erillisiksi aineistoiksi, joista pyrittiin tunnistamaan kullekin vaiheelle tyypilliset retoriset strategiat sekä toistuvat leksikaaliset ja kieliopilliset valinnat. Tutkimuksessa todettiin, että vaikka tutkittujen lehdistötiedotteiden pääasiallinen tarkoitus oli yhtiön toiminnasta tiedottaminen, niillä oli myös promotionaalinen päämäärä, joka ilmeni mm. pyrkimyksenä välittää yhtiöstä mahdollisimman positiivinen kuva eri kohdeyleisöille, erityisesti sijoittajille. Tämän positiivisen kuvan välittämiseen käytettyjä keinoja olivat mm. odotettavissa olevien saavutusten korostaminen, ulkoisten tekijöiden nimeäminen nykyisen tilanteen aiheuttajaksi, passiivin käyttö sekä erilaiset yrityksen julkisen kuvan säilyttämiseen pyrkivät (face-saving) strategiat.

Perspectives on narrative discourse markers : focus on Old English þa

Ett element som har intresserat forskarna av fornengelska sedan början av filologiska studier är adverbet þa ’då’, som är högfrekvent i många berättande texter. Utöver ordföjldsregeln enligt vilken satsinitialt þa följs av omvänd ordföljd, finns det redan tidigt kommentarer om användningen av þa för emfas, livlighet och konnektivitet. Även om sådana karakteriseringar tar den textuella kontexten i beaktande, är deras fokus inte på diskursfunktioner utan på satsgrammatik. Denna avhandling betraktar användningen av þa från diskursstrukturens perspektiv och undersöker dess funktioner i markeringen av berättelsens huvudlinje (eng. grounding), kohesiva kontinuiter (eng. continuities), samt vändpunkter och spänning (eng. peak, tension) i texten. I stället för att fokusera på bara en funktion som har associerats med þa, undersöks denna frekventa element från olika perspektiv. Genom både kvantitativa och kvalitativa analyser av narrativt material, visar de inkluderade delstudierna att detta ord spelar en viktig roll i struktureringen av fornengelska berättelser. Parallellt med kärnfunktionen att markera berättelsens huvudlinje, används þa i samspel med andra strukturerande element för att uttrycka den hierarkiska strukturen och spänning i berättelsen. Jämförelser med andra uttryck av temporal kontinuitet visar att þa skiljer sig från dem i sina användningsmönster, vilket vidare bekräftar dess status som en narrativ diskursmarkör.

Providing Discourse Services for Researchers in a Repository Setting

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Between Memory and Strategy: Media Discourse Analysis of an Industrial Shutdown

In 2006 UPM was able to gain a level of social legitimacy that allowed it to carry out one of the largest industrial restructuring programmes in Finnish industrial history, shut down major operations in Finland and still appear to be functioning in the interests of the nation as well as itself. This study considers and examines various contexts of this shutdown with the aim of demonstrating how profoundly mediated such organizational events are though they appear to be produced primarily through strategic company decisions. The study aims to examine the processes of mediation at two levels. At one level, through close analysis of press releases and newspaper reports in local and national newspapers, the study presents a discursive analysis of the Voikkaa case. The discursive analysis focuses on providing historical contexts for understanding why this organizational event was also an occasion for reimagining the past and future of the Finnish nation; spatial contexts for understanding the differing struggles over the meaning of the event nationally and regionally; and the temporal dynamics of the media reports. At another level, the study considers and refines methods for reading and analyzing mediation in organization studies. Bringing together recent research of media text–based legitimation studies, emerging research on organizational memory and organizational death and a Foucaultian analytics of power, this work suggests that organizational research needs to be less concerned with particular typologies and narratives of shutdowns, and more curious about the processes of mediation through which organizational events are imagined and remembered.