2023 Vol. 14 №1

Levels of context: how textual analysis becomes discourse analysis: the case of Internet lifestyle media

DOI

10.5922/2225-5346-2023-1-7

Pages

107-125

Abstract

Today the so-called problem of discourse should boil down to (1) identifying relevant con­textual variables, (2) matching these to specific linguistic categories, and (3) operationalizing the former vis-à-vis the latter. Having posited this, the purpose of the article is twofold. In a more theoretical sense, the purpose is to outline one possible model of context each 'tier' of which is potentially related to certain linguistic categories and linguistic analytical toolkits. The suggested model has five tiers of contextual variables and two dimensions cutting through the five tiers. These dimensions are discourse (in the most general sense — as one of the 'moments' of social practice) and individuals (theorized here in two ways — in terms of cognition and as a complex of semiotic resources used to 'perform' identities). In a more prac­tical sense, the purpose of the article is to use (certain fragments of) the model to analyze dis­course. The discourse used for such analysis is a lifestyle instruction video from YouTube. Methodologically, the analysis draws on (1) the category of engagement as described in the Appraisal Model within Systemic Functional Linguistics and (2) the interpretation of dis­course/text as simultaneously invoking different discourses and genres, as suggested in the Faircloughian approach to discourse analysis. When seen as a complex semiotic happening, the discourse is analyzed in terms of it being part of the YouTube media platform. It is con­tended that as a result of the communicative technology in question, which has drastically changed participatory frameworks for mediated communicative events of this sort, a minimal discursive unit of analysis and interpretation should include, in addition to the text and ac­companying modalities (the discourse of the original video), comments made by other users (collaborative discourse). When seen more through the Foucauldian lens, the discourse of the video is analyzed as a discursive and generic hybrid invoking several social practices associat­ed with consumer culture, which can (to a certain extent) be shown to have (pre)defined the contents, the language and possible interpretations by the tentative addressee.

Reference

Andersen, T. H. and van Leeuwen, T. J., 2017. Genre crash: The case of online shopping. Discourse, Context & Media, 20, pp. 191—203, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. dcm.2017.06.007.

Arutyunova, N. D., 1990. Discourse. In: Lingvisticheskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ [Linguistic Encyclopedia]. Moscow, pp. 136—137 (in Russ.).

Askehave, I. and Nielsen, A. E., 2005. Digital genres: A challenge to traditional genre theory. Information Technology and People, 18 (2), pp. 120—141, https://doi. org/10.1108/09593840510601504.

Askehave, I. and Swales, J. M., 2001. Genre identification and communicative purpose: a problem and a possible solution. Applied Linguistics, 22 (2), pp. 195—212, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/22.2.195.

Auer, P., 1992. Introduction: John Gumperz’ Approach to Contextualization. In: P. Auer and A. Di Luzio, eds. The Contextualization of Language, pp. 1—37, https:// doi.org/10.1075/pbns.22.

Auer, P., 2009. Context and contextualization. In: J.-O. Östman and J. Ver­schueren, eds. Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam, pp. 86—101, https://doi.org/ 10.1075/hoph.1.05aue.

Beattie, G. and Ellis, A., 2018. Conversational Structure. In: The Psychology of Lan­guage and Communication. Londone, pp. 138—156, https://doi.org/10.4324/97813 15187198.

Bell, D. and Hollows, J., 2005. Making sense of ordinary lifestyles. In: D. Bell and J. Hollows, eds. Ordinary Lifestyles: Popular Media, Consumption and Taste. Maiden­head, pp. 1—18.

Bhatia, V. K., 1993. Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London and New York.

Bhatia, V. K., 2015. Critical Genre Analysis: Theoretical Preliminaries. HERMES-Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 27 (54), pp. 9—20, https://doi. org/10.7146/hjlcb.v27i54.22944.

Biber, D. and Conrad, S., 2012. Register, Genre, and Style. New York: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511814358.

Blommaert, J., 2005. Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge.

Blommaert, J., 2015. Meaning as a nonlinear effect: The birth of cool. AILA Re­view, 28, pp. 7—27, https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.28.01blo.

Boyd, M. S., 2014. (New) participatory framework on YouTube? Commenter in­teraction in US political speeches. Journal of Pragmatics, 72, pp. 46—58, https://doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.03.002.

Chernyavskaya, V. E., 2003. Discourse. In: M. N. Kozhina., ed. Stilisticheskii entsi­klopedicheskii slovar' russkogo yazyka [Stylistic Encyclopedia of Russian]. Moscow, pp. 53—55 (in Russ.).

Chernyavskaya, V. E., 2009. Lingvistika teksta: Polikodovost', intertekstual'nost', in­terdiskurisvnost' [Text Linguistics: Multimodality, Intertextuality, Interdiscursivity]. Moscow (in Russ.).

Chernyavskaya, V. E., 2019. Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Russian Uni­versity 3.0 Identity. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya [Tomsk State University Journal of Philology], 58, pp. 97—114, https://doi.org/10.17223/ 19986645/58/7 (in Russ.).

Chouliaraki, L. and Fairclough, N., 1999. Discourse in late modernity: rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh.

Coupland, N., 2007. Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge.

de Beaugrande, R.-A., Dressler, W. U., 1981. Introduction to text linguistics. Lon­don and New York.

Dementyev, V. V., 2010. Teoriya rechevykh zhanrov [The Theory of Speech Genres]. Moscow (in Russ.).

Dementyev, V. V., 2020. Headlines With Figures in the Media: A Structural and Functional Analysis. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya [Tomsk State University Journal of Philology], 63, pp. 5—27, https://doi.org/10.17223/ 19986645/63/1 (in Russ.).

Devitt, A. J., 2009. Re-fusing form in genre study. In: J. Giltrow and D. Stein, eds. Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, pp. 27—48.

Du Bois, J. W., 2014. Towards a dialogic syntax. Cognitive Linguistics, 25 (3), pp. 359—410, https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2014-0024.

Eckert, P., 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12 (4), pp. 453—476, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00374.x.

Fairclough, N., 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge.

Fairclough, N., 2003. Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Lon­don and New York.

Giltrow, J. and Stein, D., eds., 2009. Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.188.

Giltrow, J., 2010. Genre and difference: The sociality of linguistic variation. In: H. Dorgeloh and A. Wanner, eds. Syntactic Variation and Genre. Berlin and New York, pp. 1—26.

Goodwin, C. and Duranti, A., 1992. Rethinking context: an introduction. In: A. Du­ranti and C. Goodwin, eds. Rethinking Context. Cambridge, pp. 1—42.

Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, C. M. I. M., 2004. An introduction to functional grammar. London.

Hodge, R. and Kress, G., 1988. Social Semiotics. Ithaca, New York.

Jaffe, A., 2016. Indexicality, stance and fields in sociolinguistics. In: N. Coupland, ed. Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge, pp. 86—112, https://doi.org/ 10.1017/CBO9781107449787.005.

Jenkins, R., 2004. Social Identity. London and New York, https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9780203292990.

Kok, K., Bergmann, K., Cienki, A. and Kopp, S., 2016. Mapping out the multi­functionality of speakers’ gestures. Gesture, 15 (1), pp. 37—59, https://doi.org/ 10.1075/gest.15.1.02kok.

Kozhina, M. N., 2002. Rechevedenie i funktsional’naya stilistika: voprosy teorii. Iz­brannye trudy [Speech Studies and Functional Stylistics: The Theory. Selected Papers]. Perm (in Russ.).

Lehti, L., Isosävi, J., Laippala, V. and Luotolahti, M., 2016. Linguistic analysis of online conflicts: A case study of flaming in Smokahontas comment thread in YouTube. WiderScreen, 1—2. Available at: http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2016-1-2/ linguistic-anaead-on-youtube/ [Accessed 28 May2022].

Levinson, S. C., 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge.

Machin, D. and van Leeuwen, T., 2007. Global Media Discourse: A Critical Introduc­tion. London.

Martin, J. R. and Rose, D., 2007. Working with Discourse: Meaning Beyond the Clau­se. London and New York.

Martin, J. R. and White, P. R. R., 2005. The Language of Evaluation. London, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511910.

Nefedov, S. T., Chernayvskay, V. E. Context in Linguistics: Pragmatic and Dis­course Analytical Dimensions, 2020. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya [Tomsk State University Journal of Philology], 63, pp. 83—97. doi: 10.17223/19986645/63/5.

Rose, D., 2012. Genre in the Sydney School. In: J. P. Gee and M. Handford, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London and New York, pp. 209—225.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A. and Jefferson, G., 1974. A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation. Language, 50, pp. 696—735, https:// doi.org/10.2307/412243.

Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W., 2004. Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the emerging In­ternet. London and New York, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-6441.2006.00321b.x.

Silverstein, M., 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description. In: K. H. Basso and H. A. Selby, eds. Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque, pp. 11—55.

Silverstein, M., 1992. The Indeterminacy of Contextualization: When Is Enough Enough? In: P. Auer and A. Di Luzio, eds. The Contextualization of Language, pp. 55—76, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.

Silverstein, M., 1993. Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In: J. A. Lucy, ed. Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. Cambridge, pp. 33—58, https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511621031.004.

Spitzmüller, J. and Warnke, I. H., 2011. Discourse as a ‘linguistic object’: method­ical and methodological delimitations. Critical Discourse Studies, 8 (2), pp. 75—94, https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2011.558680.

Swales, J. M., 1990. Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings. 3d ed. Cambridge.

Szabla, M. and Blommaert, J., 2018. Does context really collapse in social media interaction? Applied Linguistics Review, 9 (2), pp. 251—279, https://doi.org/10.1515/ applirev-2017-0119.

Talbot, M. M., 2007. Media Discourse: Representation and Interaction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

van Dijk, T. A., 1980. Macrostructures: An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Struc­tures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition. Hillsdale, New Jersey.

van Dijk, T. A., 1997. Cognitive Context Models and Discourse. In: M. I. Sta­menov, ed. Language Structure, Discourse and the Access to Consciousness. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, pp. 189—226, https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.12.09dij.

Verschueren, J., 1999. Understanding pragmatics. London, https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9780203776476

Verschueren, J., 2000. Notes on the role of metapragmatic awareness in language use. Pragmatics, 10 (4), pp. 439—456, https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.10.4.02ver.

Verschueren, J., 2001. Predicaments of Criticism. Critique of Anthropology, 21 (1), pp. 59—81, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X0102100104.

Wortham, S., 2004. From Good Student to Outcast: The Emergence of a Class­room Identity. Ethos, 32 (2), pp. 164—187, https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.2004.32.2.164.