Gender, Language and Ideology: A Genealogy of Japanese Women’s Language Momoko Nakamura (2014)

Gender, Language and Ideology: A Genealogy of Japanese Women’s Language Momoko Nakamura (2014) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 253 pp.

“Repressions Are Necessary; the Newspaper Hype Is Not”: Explaining Terror in Soviet Terms

Ever since Robert Conquest’s pioneering study of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union first appeared in 1968, the high point of state-sponsored violence in the 1930s has been commonly referred to as the “Great Terror”. The subsequent adoption of the eponymous title by scholars to describe the broader phenomenon of “state terror” in the Stalinist period is similarly now widespread within the field. This terminology is, however, highly problematic. In the language and ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) terror was consistently portrayed as a threat to, rather than strategy of, the state. It formed part of a tightly controlled terminology of terror, rooted in the Party’s experiences of revolution and civil war, and employed by the regime to marginalize and condemn opponents in official propaganda and private discourse. This study will address this key distinction and illuminate an important element of continuity in the tactics, ideology and self-perception of the CPSU, and its satellite parties within the Communist International, when approaching challenges to their authority (both real and imagined), whether they were of a social, political or even international flavour. Deploying a case study approach, this paper will demonstrate the extent to which “terror” and other related language offered a stable characterisation of the “enemy” throughout the interwar period.

The UN at 75: Human rights and global pandemic

This column reflects on the continuing relevance of human rights in the 75th anniversary year of the founding of the United Nations. Despite the background circumstances, which included the catastrophe of a recent world war, ongoing colonial violence, and the dawn of the nuclear age, the new international body adopted the language and ideology of human rights as the moral foundation for the new world order. 75 years later, amidst a global pandemic, and in light of other pressing problems that include economic inequality, the return of pervasive ethno-nationalism, and the inevitable consequences of human-induced climate change, how well has this moral foundation stood the test of time?

COMPARISON OF THE MODEL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS BY MILLS AND FAIRCLOUGH AT ONLINE MEDIA IN CASE REPORTING OF “IKAN ASIN”

This study examines how the relationship between gender language and ideology is constructed in media texts, and aims to interrogate a small number of articles taken from the most widely read online editions of national newspapers in Indonesia regarding online media reporting on the harassment of women in the "Ikan Asin" case. The focuses of this research are 1) how the women are displayed in the text. 2) How media displays texts, discursive practices that include the production and consumption of texts, and social practices. 3) What are the differences between the Mills and Fairlough critical discourse analysis models? The results of the study are that women are displayed positively even though the case they experience is negative. Text production is closely related to the ideology of journalists and the media as well as the audiences who consume the text. Both Mills and Fairclough's critical discourse analysis models have similarities and differences in analyzing texts. Key Words: Critical Discourse Analysis, Mills, Fairclough, Ikan Asin.

Ideologies in Nigerian Stand-up Comedy

The bond between language and ideology has caught the attention of discourse analysts. Investigating this bond, discourse analysts have further demonstrated that everyday interactions are embedded in and with different ideologies. Likewise, the performance of humour is motivated by the interlocutors’ ideological inclinations. On the strength of these propositions, this study attempts a critical analysis of the ideologies in selected Nigerian stand-up comedy routines (NSC), with particular reference to Fairclough and Wodak’s notions of ideology in discourse. Routines were purposively selected from editions of “Night of a Thousand Laughs” (NTL), the earliest stand-up event and a stand-up comedy road show in Nigeria, so as to focus on the performances of practicing and professional stand-up comedians in the country. Two categories of ideologies were found in NSC routines: the first relates to the art of comedy performance while the second relates to the country’s sociocultural context. In the first category, the comedians project stand-up comedy as a “dignified” profession, while in the second, they draw from sociocultural beliefs in order to project their ideologies about gender, ethnicity and the political class.

Language and ideology: glossopoesis as a secondary narrative framework in Le Guin’s The dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The dispossessed (1974) has been read from a multiplicity of angles that mostly vary from focusing on the characters to highlighting the anarchist ideology that the story preaches. In this article, we promote a distinct analysis, which, despite also approaching the ideological themes in the novel, centres on the use the author makes of glossopoesis (creation of artificial languages) through Pravic, Iotic and Niotic. Bourdieu (1991), Freedman (2000), Conley and Cain (2006), Edward James (2003) and Ken Macleod (2003) critically motivate our discussion. As a result, we demonstrate how glossopoesis plays a significant representational role in the plot as a secondary narrative framework intended to communicate the author’s beliefs both on language and politics.