Category Archives: Politics

Current Research on COVID and Discourse

It has now been just over one month of sheltering at home here in the US.  Like most universities around the world, my institution moved all instruction online last month.  One of the courses that I teach is a doctoral seminar in Applied Linguistics, which I describe to friends in the following manner: “we sit around a conference table and discuss different research articles each week.”  Of course, we still read and discuss different research articles each week.  But rather than sitting at the same table in a shared physical space, we now sit in our individual homes and gaze at each other in the small Zoom boxes that appear on our screens. One of the students in my class shared a dream she recently had: “I dreamt that we were sitting around discussing research articles… but they all had something to do with COVID.”  With that statement, she predicted what the next iteration of the course will probably look like.

A number of colleagues I have been in touch with (mostly language people and other social-sciencey types) have found that the topics of their research have somehow been disrupted or impacted by the health crisis (and related circumstances) that we are currently experiencing.  As a response, they are shifting focus and undertaking new research projects – or adapting their current research – in ways that are somehow COVID-related. 

For instance, colleagues at UK and Hong Kong universities have launched a new blog, Viral Discourse, where you can read posts on topics ranging from war metaphors used in journalistic reporting on COVID, to the mixed messages we’re getting about the use and non-use of wearing masks to protect ourselves and others.  Another colleague here in the U.S. is researching COVID-related humor on internet dating sites.

Certainly the variable responses of different political leaders to the public health crisis as well as their messaging tactics is a topic that has elicited a wide range of reactions.  The Association for Business Communication (ABC) invited me to contribute a digital lecture to their collection of online resources, and I decided to focus on leadership discourse, as exemplified by NY governor, Andrew Cuomo’s press briefings.  Like many other viewers, his no-nonsense, stick-to the facts approach really resonates with me.  I also appreciate how he humanizes this very odd reality we are living through by sharing personal narratives about his family’s responses.  You can view my brief lecture on this topic here.

Camilla Vásquez’s lecture on Leadership Discourse

I’ve also been observing how the travel and tourism industries have been severely impacted by this crisis.  With non-essential travel and tourism currently on hold, one creative business adaptation I have been following with great interest is Airbnb’s Online Experiences. Offering remote experiences such as “Wine Class with a Cool Wine Expert,” “Easy Balinese Vegetarian Home Cooking” and “Guided Meditation with Sleepy Sheep,”  Airbnb is harnessing the immersive, educational and interactive aspects of tourism and offering a digitally mediated alternative to traditional travel.  Airbnb launched Online Experiences on April 9, and since then, the number of experiences on offer have more than doubled.  With this trend, we are likely witnessing the birth of “virtual tourism.” 

“Das sind tollwütige Tiere“ (“They are rabid animals”): How metaphors can be used to de-humanise immigrants

Today’s RDM guest blogger, Hanna Bruns, comes from the University of Bonn, in Germany. Although her data come from a set of German What’sApp Chats, her larger topic (how immigrants are dehumanized through the use of metaphors) is one with much broader international relevance today. RDM is very pleased to be able to share Hanna’s work:

We are all familiar with metaphors. After all, we know that when Robert Burns rhymes about the red red rose, he is talking about love, and that the white whale in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is supposed to represent God, nature, the subconscious, and so on… But metaphors are not only found in poems, literary works and poetic speeches: they are everywhere!

Conceptual Metaphors
In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson introduced a linguistic framework called “conceptual metaphor theory,” which described metaphors as one of “our principal vehicles for understanding” the world around us (Lakoff & Johnson 2003: 159). Metaphors facilitate our “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff & Johnson 2003: 5). In other words, metaphors are often used to make difficult and abstract concepts (“target domain”) easier to understand by using clearer and easier terms (“source domain”). Take, for example, the metaphor of life is a journey. Since life is a complicated thing which is not so easily grasped (grasp, another metaphor 😉), people try to make it easier by imagining it as a journey, which has a starting point (birth) and an end (death). In fact, this is a very popular conceptual metaphor. You can find it in a lot of contexts, for example when people say you have to move on, or you are on the right path, or that you are lost. So you see, in a way, these conceptual metaphors are made up out of a lot of smaller parts which are all connected to form one big picture. Everybody uses these conceptual metaphors, and there are a lot of them, for all kinds of situations. And metaphors can be powerful, especially because they highlight one specific aspect of the target domain while ignoring other aspects.
Although some metaphors can be helpful as tools for understanding the world around us, there are other metaphors that can be harmful. For instance, metaphors can be used to spread and justify damaging ideas about others, without people even realising this!

My focus in this post is on the metaphors found in xenophobic discourse which are used to talk about immigrants in a negative way. By using specific metaphors to refer to immigrants, immigrants can be portrayed in a very bad way without actively saying that they are “bad.” As one linguist who does research on metaphors says: “Ideological patterns […] arise when text-producers select one set of metaphors instead of alternative ones” (Hart 2010: 127).

A typical conceptual metaphor that is used often in anti-immigrant discourse is that of floods of immigrants. This belongs to the conceptual metaphor of immigration as natural disaster. In this concept, immigrants are portrayed as floods, coming in waves, or as a stream, flowing into the country, and destroying the country. Other popular xenophobic concepts portray immigrants as diseases, which makes the (national) body ill; or as animals and beasts. What all of these metaphors have in common is that they portray the immigrants as not being human, and as dangerous.

The WhatsApp group chat “AfD Info LSA”
In the past few years, the German political party “Alternative für Deutschland” (“Alternative for Germany”, in short “AfD”) has caused a lot of debate in the German political field mostly because of their (for some, not so apparent) xenophobic, nationalistic, and Islamophobic viewpoints. In June 2017, a WhatsApp group chat was leaked with the group name “AfD Info LSA”. In that group, members of the AfD from the state Saxonia-Anhalt discussed several topics.
My home-town is Dresden in Saxonia, where the AfD has a strong influence on people. I have seen how people have changed and have started being mean and openly racist because they felt supported by the opinions expressed by the AfD, so this matter is very personal for me. But I am a scientist too. So instead of basing my opinions about the party solely on my personal feelings, I decided to analyze the language in that leaked WhatsApp chat from June 2017. More specifically, I looked at racist and xenophobic metaphors.

Metaphors found in the AfD chat
I started by looking at what other studies have identified as “typical” racist and xenophobic metaphors. I found a long list of metaphors that were used by the National Socialists. These are summarized in the table below (click on table to enlarge it).

Once I knew what I was looking for, I started reading through the WhatsApp chat and searching for any of these metaphors. Let me give you some examples of what I found (they are, of course, in German, but you can find my English translations below). As you read them, maybe you can think about which category they belong to.

Example 1

06.02.17, 16:02:11: [telephone number]: I know a family in my neighbourhood, there’s a single mother. Her boy is 8 years and is in 2nd grade. He told me that he has never been on holidays. It is disgraceful, when you see these parasites here…

Example 2

17.02.17, 09:36:03: [name of sender]: These people are like water – it always finds a way. And if we don’t close it up quick enough, then we are soon under water (lit. land under)!
17.02.17, 10:05:23: [name of sender]: [Name], the land is already under water and if nothing is done about it, we will drown mercilessly. And a lifeboat is far away.

Example 3
28.02.17, 16:21:08: [name of sender]: I am at the main station in Nuremberg and feel foreign in my own country, there are invaders from Africa or from Arabic countries just everywhere
28.02.17, 16:21:34: [name of sender]: Just saw a grandma who was using the other side of the street just so that she didn’t have to walk straight towards these invaders

These are of course just a few examples, but in my analysis of the chat, I actually found that ALL of the typical racist and xenophobic metaphors were used! The most frequent conceptual metaphor was war and military, where immigrants were, for example, described as invaders of the country. The members of the AfD then described themselves a bastion against the enemies that are attacking the German nation. But, as you can see from the example, immigrants were also described as a flood, that tries to drown the German people – or as parasites feeding on the German people. To see even more kinds of metaphors used in the chat, have a look at the table below (click on the table to enlarge it).


What I have tried to show in this post is that metaphors don’t only exist in poems – they are all around us, and we use them every day. Metaphors can be really useful and cool: especially if you know what you are using them for – as well as if you can recognize how other people are using them. Sometimes, a person’s real message is actually hidden in the metaphors they use. So maybe, the next time you describe one thing in terms of another, take a minute to ask yourself about why you’re saying the things you’re saying, in the specific way that you are saying them – and pay close attention to how other people use metaphors as well. Because HOW people say things is every bit as important and meaningful as WHAT they say.

References

Bruns, H. (2017). „Scheint ein bösartiges Geschwür am Volkskörper zu sein“ – National Socialist metaphors in a WhatsApp group chat of members of the German party Alternative für Deutschland. (unpublished).
Burns, R. (1794). A red red rose. Retrieved from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43812/a-red-red-rose
Hart, C. (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science: New perspectives on immigration discourse. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Melville, H. (1851). Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Foto (Featured image): Lizard by: Free-Photos
https://pixabay.com/en/lizard-reptile-graffiti-wall-you-1210069/
Foto: Migration by: Capri23auto
https://pixabay.com/en/migration-integration-migrants-3129299/
Foto: Whatsapp-Icon by: geralt
https://pixabay.com/en/whatsapp-icon-communication-social-2317206/

Note: This blog-post is based on my term-paper, which I wrote for my M.A. studies “Applied Linguistics” at the University of Bonn, Germany. Special thanks to my lecturer, Dr. Stefanie Pohle, for her support (regarding this post and everything else).

Pragmatics in the Media!

It’s not often that stories about pragmatics — and matters of linguistic politeness, especially — make it into the mass media.  However, I just came across this interesting article in the NYT, which reports on a study of major social relevance involving language, race and police interactions.

A group of Stanford social scientists studied recordings from police body cameras, which were made during traffic stops.  Applying well-known models of linguistic politeness (e.g., Brown & Levinson) to transcripts made from these interactions, they then analyzed whether there was any difference in the language officers used with white motorists compared to the language officers used with black motorists.  Specifically, they  focused on “levels of respect,” expressed via a combination of different language features.  I like this figure that the researchers included in their report, which shows how these features were identified and quantified.  As you read this top to bottom, the examples in the figure go from least polite to most polite.  In which of these ways would you prefer to be addressed, if you were to be pulled over by a police officer?  (click on the figure to enlarge it)

The full research article with all the details is available online here.

(Spoiler alert: Yes, they did find differences.  The title of the NYT article kind of gives that away.)

Anti-Refugee Rhetoric on Twitter

This week’s RDM guest blogger, Ramona Kreis, shares her research about a topic that could not be any more timely: anti-refugee discourse.  Ramona writes

Twitter has become part of our daily lives. Twitter occupies an unprecedented position in contemporary U.S. politics, as current President Trump continues to use his personal Twitter account  to connect to his followers, to react to his opponents, and to reaffirm his political and ideological viewpoints.  On January 27, the Trump administration issued an executive order, which suspended entry of refugees to the United States, and suddenly brought the topic of refugees into the spotlight in the U.S.  However, the “refugee issue” has been a central one for some time now in Europe, where the discourse around refugees and refugee asylum policies has dominated news and social media over the last year and a half.

In mid-2015, increasing numbers of refugees and migrants crossed the borders to Europe, trying to reach countries in Western, Central, and Northern Europe. According to the Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers should apply for asylum in the state where they first enter the European Union. Public awareness of the development of a humanitarian crisis – 71 migrants heading to Germany were found dead in a truck in Austria – led German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to admit Syrian refugees to Germany, and to accept applications for asylum despite the Dublin Regulation. With her statement “We can do this” (Wir schaffen das), she encouraged the work of many volunteers and made an appeal to Germans as well as her European partners.

After an initial period of welcoming refugees however, some Europeans grew more critical of accepting large numbers of migrants, fearing financial and societal repercussions. News stories began to appear about refugees and refugee homes being attacked by right-wing extremists. On Twitter, I came across a hashtag that seemed to resonate with this changing attitude toward refugees: #refugeesnotwelcome. Many tweets that included #refugeesnotwelcome were disturbing, irritating, and, frankly, disgusting, but given the large number of tweets that used this hashtag and the increasing rejection of Merkel’s “We can do this” stance, I wanted to learn more about the types of discursive strategies being used by the authors of those tweets.

I collected over 100 tweets that were posted in the middle of September 2015, when the number of arrivals started to peak and, at the same time, when violent crimes against refugees increased drastically. Dealing with a topic so tied to inequality and relations of dominance, I chose a critical discourse analytical (CDA) perspective to guide my analysis.  My study explored how Twitter users employed this hashtag to express their discontent both with refugees and immigrants as well as with pro-refugee policies and practices (such as the initial welcoming of Syrian refugees by Chancellor Merkel). Tweets that included #refugeesnotwelcome ranged from “I have nothing against immigrants, but …”, a well-attested and commonly-used preface to all kinds of racist discourses, to “they are not ‘refugees’ but invaders”, whereby the authors reframed European nations as being under threat from an “invasion” of Muslims. Often refugees were depicted as social parasites and criminals. Overall, the authors of these tweets presented themselves positively, while presenting refugees negatively.

The following tweet illustrates how some Twitter users employ strategies to negatively depict migrants and refugees.

This author retweets a previous tweet about unrest that arose between refugees and the police in mid-September 2015 in Röszke, a Hungarian village close to the Serbian border. The original tweet also included images of rioting men, thus establishing a connection between the migrants referred to in the text, and the men depicted in the images. The author not only retweets this particular account of violent (im)migrants, but also adds the comment: These poor “refugees”. And all these women and children…. #IronyOff #RefugeesNotWelcome #Invasion. By putting the term refugees in quotation marks and adding the adjective poor, the author constructs an ironic tone, both questioning the legitimacy of the term “refugee” and the notion of refugees requiring assistance. He further adds all these women and children, a group that is often considered as in need of special protection, further questioning the need to protect refugees. Indeed, many refugees arriving in Europe were young males and this argument was often used in anti-refugee discourse. Seeing only rioting men in the images further implies that these refugees are not in need, but rather causing trouble. By including #IronyOff, the author confirms he was being ironic, however after “switching off” the irony, the following hashtags, #RefugeesNotWelcome and #Invasion, instead reveal the author’s true perspective. Although he does not refer to refugees as “illegals” or “criminals” as many other Twitter users did, he delegitimizes the term “refugee” and questions the need to help refugees. Instead he views the migration movement as an invasion, and as a threat to his identity and territory.

When I started the project, it didn’t seem like right-wing populism had fully permeated Europe or the US. We were still pre-Brexit and pre-“alternative-facts.” The discourse strategies I identified in my project are certainly not new, but as we see such nationalist and anti-the-others discourses gaining ground in many Western societies, it is necessary to be aware of these strategies in order to dismantle them.

From Internet Rules!…to Bad Hombres?

A couple weeks ago, I attended the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) in Berlin.  This conference has been held every year since 2000, and it’s dedicated to exploring all things internet-related = it’s impressively multidisciplinary.   This year’s theme was “Internet Rules!”  (polysemously referencing ideas related to who rules the internet?” as well as “what are the rules of the internet?”).  I attended 4 days of mind-blowingly good presentations, on topics ranging from humorous memes, to peer economy platforms and post-colonial computing, to what happens in our digital afterlives, to big-data visualizations.

I participated in a panel on “Sociolinguistic perspectives on everyday digital practices,” where my colleagues talked about topics such as: academics’ stances on digital writing practices (David Barton), the role of hashtags in Hong Kong’s umbrella movement (Carmen Lee), and the implications of surveillance for our digital interactions (Rodney Jones).  In my own talk, I used the conference theme as a point of departure, in exploring various types of “rule-breaking” in the Amazon review space – as well as related metadiscourse(s).

Returning from Berlin, I bounced right back into the classroom, and in my UG “Language & Society” course, one of our readings this week was Jane Hill’s “Language, Race and White Public Space.”  (I make it a point to work some discussion of “mock Spanish” into any Sociolinguistics course that I teach…but this is the first time I’m teaching this content to undergraduates.)  More than half of the students seemed to understand how covert racism operates in the examples that Jane Hill presents…but I could tell that a few students still weren’t completely convinced, as they tried to argue for alternative interpretations of the “mock Spanish” examples discussed (e.g., “they’re just having fun,” ” lighthearted Spanish practice,” “I wouldn’t take it so seriously” …)

And then presidential debate #3 happened.  Any lingering doubts about the reality of mock Spanish were instantly erased: the following day, my students came to class and ALL they wanted to talk about was Trump’s use of “bad hombres”! As my colleague, Adam Schwartz, explains so beautifully in this post, “bad hombres” may be the most emblematic example of mock Spanish that we have seen to date.  And as it continues to generate more memes and become more embedded in our online collective consciousness, I know I’ll be using this example in my own teaching for many years to come.