Inger Lassen

Is the press release a genre? a study of form and content

Although using different labels, genre theorists from different traditions have generally given privilege to the communicative purpose, in this article referred to as rhetorical objective, as genre determinant (see e.g. Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993; see also Hasan, 1989; Halliday and Martin, 1993; Eggins, 1994). Genre analysts who have studied press releases in particular (e.g. Frandsen et al., 1997; Jacobs, 1999) tend to share this view, but nevertheless categorize communicative events conveyed through the press release as belonging to one genre despite variation in rhetorical objectives. This article argues that although the press release may be seen as a genre on the basis of textual form, it does not qualify for the genre label if analysed in terms of content and rhetorical objective. To substantiate my claim, I shall discuss a small corpus of press releases, all focusing on a specific biotechnological issue. In my analyses I shall discuss staging in terms of content as well as logico-semantic relations between stages, patterns of stage combinations and their linguistic realizations with the aim of identifying variation in rhetorical objective.

Climate Change Discourses and Citizen Participation: A Case Study of the Discursive Construction of Citizenship in Two Public Events

Citizen participation is a recurrent and democratically important issue in the ongoing debate about climate change. However, different meanings are ascribed to citizen participation in different contexts, ranging from top-down involvement to bottom-up engagement, thus creating tension between conflicting ideals. Focusing on public engagement and its construal in different situational contexts, we explore how citizens are discursively included or excluded from participation, as various climate change discourses unfold in two forums where local needs and global concerns interact. Furthermore, we address some opportunities and barriers regarding citizen participation in climate change issues.

Commonplaces and social uncertainty: Negotiating public opinion

This article explores commonplaces in focus group discussions about genetically modified food. In the discussions, members of the general public interact with food biotechnology scientists while negotiating their attitudes towards genetic engineering. Their discussions offer an example of uncertainty discourse in which the use of commonplaces seems to be a central feature. My analyses support earlier findings that commonplaces serve important interactional purposes and that they are used for mitigating disagreement, for closing topics and for facilitating risk discourse. In addition, however, I argue that commonplaces are used to mitigate feelings of insecurity caused by uncertainty and to negotiate new codes of moral conduct.

The discursive construction of self positioning amongst minority ethnic patients in a hospital ward

Abstract This paper deals with results from an ongoing research project about how patients and health professionals talk about and enact culture in a specific Danish hospital ward, whether this may have implications for staff–patient relationships and how knowledge of cultural complexities may add value to patient care. The project and this paper are based on a discourse analytic and social constructivist approach and, contrary to some earlier studies focusing on health professionals’ perceptions of culture in relation to the care of minority ethnic patients, this project and paper deal with culture seen from a patient perspective. Data have been collected from interviews with minority ethnic patients and with nurses about the intercultural encounter in an infectious diseases ward, and the analysis focuses on evaluating statements present in the discourses. The analysis aims at studying how such discourses may display the patients’ roles and self positioning, to discuss whether such positions and roles are attributable to culture, language proficiency or social conditions.

The Red Gold: analysing a nexus of practices

The case study discussed in this article focuses on two communicative events unfolding in connection with trials in Angola of a genetically modified plant designed to detect landmines. The case is based on an independent observers report and a documentary, The Red Gold, which was broadcast on Danish TV during 2004. I use a nexus analysis approach combined with critical discourse analysis to suggest that intertextuality and discourse interaction across genres influence ideological representations. This point is brought to the fore through analysis of the commonly accepted intertextuality markers of attribution, assumption, denial, hedging, and metaphor. However, the main contribution of this article is to demonstrate a point that has so far been largely ignored in critical discourse analysis – that intertextuality has a temporal dimension which may be subtly loaded with ideology through the intertextuality markers of time and tense. The primary purpose of this study is to throw light on the representation of ideological stances in a debate characterized by polarization and contestation, which I try to achieve by exposing a nexus of practices to critical discourse analysis. This may have wider implications for the formation of attitudes in general and the ‘disciplinary becoming’ of biotechnology, students in particular.

Timing GMO: discursive constructions of temporality in local discussions of a global issue

In this article, we study the relationship of temporality and ideology through examples from a local controversy over field testing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), in casu maize, in a rural area in the north of Denmark. Our primary focus is on ways in which participants represent time on shorter or longer timescales, and how these timescales are linked discursively. Our data stem from three sources: a video-recording of an anti-GMO demonstration in a minor town in Denmark, a recording of a public meeting of farmers who consider possible advantages of growing GM crops, and a focus-group interview with citizens. We argue that temporality contributes significantly to the discursive construction of genetically modified crops, and we suggest that a temporal perspective should be added to the repertoire of critical discourse analysis.

Health care policy at a crossroads?: A Discursive Study of Patient Agency in National Health Quality Strategies between 1993 and 2015

The Danish health care sector currently undergoes changes that imply a gradual transition from an evidence-based activity model to a value-based quality model centered on patient involvement and value-based governance. The patient naturally occupies a central position in health care, and the transition therefore raises important questions about health care quality and how successive national health quality strategies value quality and ascribe roles and agency to patients. To explore the complexity of these quality strategies, we analyze and discuss how political discourse moments influence the contents of the national health quality strategies and how variation in the construal of patient roles and agency indicates discursive struggle in Danish national health care policy. Underlying theoretical concepts are informed by New Public Management, the welfare state, health communication, and discourse theory. Our analytical approach is inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis and combines content analysis with linguistic analysis.

Resisting dehumanization: Citizen voices and acts of solidarity

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen an increase in the influx of asylum-seekers in Scandinavia, and in Denmark this has led to ever-tighter immigration control. This article discusses emerging practices of refugee solidarity and resistance to migration policy in Danish civil society in the wake of what has been referred to as the European refugee crisis. To accomplish this purpose, I analyse how participants in Facebook discussions construe topoi and attitudes when facing the ethical dilemma of respecting the law versus showing concern for humans in need, in line with what Foucault (1983. The subject and Power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) has referred to as ‘ethical self-formation’. This is illustrated through a case study of an incident from September 2015, when a member of a Danish City Council offered private shelter to immigrants on their way to Norway. The incident led to legal proceedings in August 2016 for what the defendant referred to as ‘the offense of helping fellow human beings in need’. The study is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London and New York: Routledge; Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear. London and New York: Sage) and governmentality theory (Foucault, M. (1983). The subject and Power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–78. (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan; McIlvenny, P., Klausen, J. Z., & Lindegaard, L. B. (2016). Studies of Discourse and Governmentality. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins). Data include media representations and facebook comments published during 2016. The analytical approach combines topos analysis (Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2010). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage; Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear. London and New York: Sage) and appraisal analysis to tease out evaluative meaning.

Discourse trajectories in a nexus of genres

Departing from the view that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action, this article explores the interconnectedness of genres and Discourses that transit generic boundaries. Situating the study in a local energy transition project in Denmark and exploring what happens in a series of citizen meetings without a narrowly defined agenda, I argue that the meetings may be seen as a nexus of genres constituted by a tissue of interwoven Discourses with a lifespan that extends beyond the specific communicative moment. I understand a nexus of genres as a point where genres in a wider sense meet and interact. Relating the Discourses initiated by the participating citizens to the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions in systemic functional linguistics, I analyse topics made salient by actors participating in the citizen meetings. By following these topics intertextually across generic boundaries, I identify Discourses that are mutually entangled and genres that are taken up in the process. These include anticipatory Discourse, Discourse of legitimation, Discourse of motivation, Discourse about technology and Discourse about energy saving initiatives or in other words Discourses that exceed the boundaries of the specific genre in which they are realized.