Conflicting Discourses of ‘Democracy’ and ‘Equality’: A Discourse Analysis of the Language of Pro- And Anti-Lgbtq+ Inclusion in the Relationships and Sex Education Guidance for Schools in England
Abstract:New statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance for schools in England was published in 2019. One of the major revisions since the preceding version has been the new inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities and relationships. Some groups in the UK have recently protested against this inclusion of positive teaching about LGBTQ+ identities and relationships, suggesting that, although there is overwhelming support for the new guidance, there are still groups in society who are opposed to democratic teaching ab… Show more
“…In the UK setting, drawing on PDA, Sauntson [ 32 ] devoted part of the analysis to unpacking the positive discourse of resistance against the discriminatory discourse used by the people who are anti-LGBTQ+. Also, Bartlett [ 28 ] used the framework in the Guyana context, arguing that using an ethnographic method might potentially further enhancing PDA by placing the discursive product within a wider context in terms of the customs and routines of the social actors producing it.…”
Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodology: Corpus-based Positive...mentioning
Contributing to a much-needed ‘outward turn’ in interpreting studies, this intervention examines the role of interpreting and interpreters in (re)articulating the welcome ‘voice’ of a developing nation in the global South. Against the backdrop of reform and opening-up (ROU), China, the world’s largest developing country, is increasingly open and keen to engage globally. Such elements as openness, integration, and international engagement represent vital components of the overarching ROU metadiscourse that justifies China’s sociopolitical system and multifarious policies and decisions. As part of a series of digital humanities (DH) informed empirical studies exploring the part played by interpreting in rendering China’s ROU metadiscourse, this study zooms in on the government interpreters’ mediation of Beijing’s international engagement and global involvement discourses. Unlike CDA which often foregrounds the negative themes (e.g. injustice, oppression, dominance, and hegemony), an innovative corpus-based positive discourse analysis (PDA) is introduced and applied, drawing on 20 years of China’s press conferences. This article points to the interpreters’ visibility and agency in facilitating and strengthening China’s discourse through (over)producing core lexical items and salient collocational patterns. Following the trends of interdisciplinarity and digital humanities, this corpus-based PDA study illustrates ultimately how a major non-Western developing country from the global South communicates its discourse bilingually in front of the international community. The potential impact and implications of the interpreter-in(tro)duced discursive changes are discussed vis-à-vis the ever shifting and delicate East-West power balance from the perspective of (geo)politics
“…In the UK setting, drawing on PDA, Sauntson [ 32 ] devoted part of the analysis to unpacking the positive discourse of resistance against the discriminatory discourse used by the people who are anti-LGBTQ+. Also, Bartlett [ 28 ] used the framework in the Guyana context, arguing that using an ethnographic method might potentially further enhancing PDA by placing the discursive product within a wider context in terms of the customs and routines of the social actors producing it.…”
Section: Theoretical Framework and Methodology: Corpus-based Positive...mentioning
Contributing to a much-needed ‘outward turn’ in interpreting studies, this intervention examines the role of interpreting and interpreters in (re)articulating the welcome ‘voice’ of a developing nation in the global South. Against the backdrop of reform and opening-up (ROU), China, the world’s largest developing country, is increasingly open and keen to engage globally. Such elements as openness, integration, and international engagement represent vital components of the overarching ROU metadiscourse that justifies China’s sociopolitical system and multifarious policies and decisions. As part of a series of digital humanities (DH) informed empirical studies exploring the part played by interpreting in rendering China’s ROU metadiscourse, this study zooms in on the government interpreters’ mediation of Beijing’s international engagement and global involvement discourses. Unlike CDA which often foregrounds the negative themes (e.g. injustice, oppression, dominance, and hegemony), an innovative corpus-based positive discourse analysis (PDA) is introduced and applied, drawing on 20 years of China’s press conferences. This article points to the interpreters’ visibility and agency in facilitating and strengthening China’s discourse through (over)producing core lexical items and salient collocational patterns. Following the trends of interdisciplinarity and digital humanities, this corpus-based PDA study illustrates ultimately how a major non-Western developing country from the global South communicates its discourse bilingually in front of the international community. The potential impact and implications of the interpreter-in(tro)duced discursive changes are discussed vis-à-vis the ever shifting and delicate East-West power balance from the perspective of (geo)politics
Mobilizations against gender equality and sexual diversity have gained political traction globally despite their
hyperbolic modes of action and conspiracist rhetoric. These anti-gender campaigns rally around “gender ideology,” a trope used to
anathemize feminist and LGBTQIA+ activism/scholarship. This paper argues that anti-genderism is a register – a conventionalized
aggregate of expressive forms and enactable person-types – of which “gender ideology” is the most famous shibboleth. The paper
shows how inchoate collections of words, modes of action, and images of people (i.e. signs) have been enregistered into the
cohesive but heterogeneous whole of anti-genderism through semiotic processes of clasping, relaying, and grafting (Gal 2018; 2019). The paper offers a
sociolinguistic analysis of anti-genderism to understand the challenges it poses to the enfranchisement of women, queer, trans,
and nonbinary people.
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