Reference and Identity in Public Discourses

Editors

Ursula Lutzky | Vienna University of Economics and Business

Minna Nevala | Tampere University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027204202 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027262059 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

This volume explores the concepts of reference and identity in public discourses. Its contributions study discourse-specific reference and labelling patterns, both from a historical and present-day perspective, and discuss their impact on self- and other-representation in the construction of identity. They combine multiple methodological approaches, including corpus-based quantitative as well as qualitative ones, and apply them to a range of text types that are or were (intended to be) public, such as letters, newspapers, parliamentary debates, and online communication in the form of reader comments, discussion pages, and tweets. In addition to English, the languages studied include Polish as well as European and Latin American Spanish. The volume is aimed at researchers from different research paradigms in linguistics and related disciplines, such as media communication or the social and cultural sciences, who are interested in the interplay of reference and identity.

[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 306] 2019. vi, 284 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.306

Table of Contents

Pragmatic explorations of reference and identity in public discourses

Minna Nevala and Ursula Lutzky | pp. 1–16

Part I. Public discourses in the history of English

Two miserable creatures or those atrocious criminals? : Evaluative reference in the Mannings murder reporting

Minna Nevala | pp. 19–41

The Prince and the Sassenach: Constructing group homogeneity through labels (and anachronisms) in Late Modern times and beyond

Marina Dossena | pp. 43–65

“Right trusty and well-beloved”: The socio-pragmatics of gender, power and stance in sixteenth-century English letters

Imogen Marcus and Mel Evans | pp. 67–96

Kinship references in the British Parliament, 1800–2005

Jukka Tyrkkö | pp. 97–124

Part II. Public discourses in Present-Day English

“Thanks for the donds”: A corpus linguistic analysis of topic-based communities in the comment section of The Guardian

Andrew Kehoe and Matt Gee | pp. 127–158

From ‘country’ to ‘confederation’ – debating terms of reference for the EU on a Wikipedia talk page

Susanne Kopf | pp. 159–180

After we #VoteLeave we can #TakeControl: Political campaigning and imagined collectives on Twitter before the Brexit vote

Sylvia Jaworska and Tigran Sogomonian | pp. 181–202

Part III. Public discourses around the world

To be or not to be … a patient: Identity construction of healthcare professionals and patients in public online diabetes-related interaction

Barbara De Cock | pp. 205–225

What’s in a diminutive? The pragmatics of the Spanish diminutive in a televised political interview and its reverberations in online comments

Bettina Kluge | pp. 227–250

From Poland to #SanEscobar: On strategies subverting political discourse on Twitter

Nadine Thielemann | pp. 251–280

Index | p. 281

“With a strong background provided in the introductory chapter, this volume is accessible, even for those who do not have specialties in Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, or Sociolinguistics. [...] This monograph remains an important breakthrough for scholars working in the two interconnected areas of Pragmatics, namely, reference and identity. Because of the detailed and clear introduction, it can certainly be used as a first orientation by those new to the importance of reference terms for identity work.”

Krisda Chaemsaithong, Hanyang University, in Journal of Pragmatics Volume 167 (2020).

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