strategy); and, within each, between semiotic and other elements. There are three major ways in which semiosis relates to other elements of social practices and of social events: as a facet of action; in the construal (representation) of aspects of the world; and in the constitution of identities. And there are three semiotic (or discourse-analytical) categories corresponding to these: genre, discourse and style.
Chapter 1 - Introduction Introduction / Corpus Linguistics / Discourse / The Shift to Post Structuralism / Advantages of the corpus-based approach to discourse analysis / Reducing Researcher Bias / The incremental effect of Discourse / Resistant and changing discourses / Triangulation / Some concerns / Structure of the book / Notes Chapter 2 - Corpus Building. Introduction / Some types of corpora / Capturing data / Scanning and keying in / Spoken Texts / Online texts / Permissions / Annotation / Using a Reference Corpus / Conclusions / Notes Chapter 3 - Frequency and Dispersion Introduction / Join the Club / Frequency Counts / Considering Clusters / Dispersion Plots / Comparing demographic frequencies/Conclusions/Notes Chapter 4 - Concordances Introduction / Investigating discourses of refugees / Sorting concordances / Analysing the remainder / Semantic preference and discourse parody / Points of concerns / Step by step guide to concordance analysis / Notes Chapter 5 - Collates Introduction / Deriving Collocates / Identifying discourses from collocates / Resistant discourses / Collocational networks / Step by step guide to collocational analysis / Notes Chapter 6 - Beyond Collocation Introduction / Nominalization / Searching with grammatical tags / Collocations of grammatical forms / Modality / Attribution / Metaphor / Further directions / Notes Chapter 7 - Keyness Frequency revisited / Introducing Keyness / Analysis of keywords / Using a reference corpus / Key clusters / Key categories / Possible uses of key words / Conclusion / Notes Chapter 8 - Conclusion Corpus building / Corpus analysis / Notes.
Maciej Uberna, Michał Wawer, Jarosław A. Chudziak
et al.
Identifying the strategic uses of reformulation in discourse remains a key challenge for computational argumentation. While LLMs can detect surface-level similarity, they often fail to capture the pragmatic functions of rephrasing, such as its role within rhetorical discourse. This paper presents a comparative multi-agent framework designed to quantify the benefits of incorporating explicit theoretical knowledge for this task. We utilise an dataset of annotated political debates to establish a new standard encompassing four distinct rephrase functions: Deintensification, Intensification, Specification, Generalisation, and Other, which covers all remaining types (D-I-S-G-O). We then evaluate two parallel LLM-based agent systems: one enhanced by argumentation theory via Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and an identical zero-shot baseline. The results reveal a clear performance gap: the RAG-enhanced agents substantially outperform the baseline across the board, with particularly strong advantages in detecting Intensification and Generalisation context, yielding an overall Macro F1-score improvement of nearly 30\%. Our findings provide evidence that theoretical grounding is not only beneficial but essential for advancing beyond mere paraphrase detection towards function-aware analysis of argumentative discourse. This comparative multi-agent architecture represents a step towards scalable, theoretically informed computational tools capable of identifying rhetorical strategies in contemporary discourse.
Sara Vilar-Lluch, Donna Clutterbuck, Michael Kranert
et al.
The concept of 'resilience' is pervasive, permeating academic disciplines and political discourses. This paper considers (i) the construal of 'resilience' in the contexts of food insecurity and cost-of-living in governmental discourses in the United Kingdom (UK); (ii) to what extent the political representations are reflected in research funding calls of UK national funding bodies, thus showing possibility of shaping research agendas; and (iii) to what extent official uses of 'resilience' reflect lay understandings. We are combining a corpus-based discourse analysis of UK governmental discourses and research funding calls with a study of focus group discussions. Representations of 'resilience' are further compared with those available in general English corpora. We are observing a shift in the use of 'resilience': from an individual psychological attribute to a primarily socioeconomic and environmental characteristic. Funding calls construe resilience in relation to communities, reflecting economy and environment adaptability, whereas governmental discourses frame references to individuals in terms of 'vulnerability'. Focus groups reveal divergent conceptions of 'resilience', which may lead to potential misunderstandings. While this variety of uses may be productive in political discourses for rhetorical purposes, there is a need for specificity in shaping research and in public-facing communications.
Hasrat Efendi Samosir, Md Noor Bin Hussin, Sudianto
et al.
This study explores the Constitution of Medina as an early model of prophetic political communication grounded in consensus, offering a relevant framework for managing diversity and fostering social cohesion in pluralistic societies. Utilizing a qualitative library research method, the study draws upon the primary source—the text of the Constitution of Medina—and integrates secondary literature from the field of political communication. The data were analyzed through content analysis to identify underlying communicative principles and political strategies within the Charter. The findings reveal that the Constitution operationalizes participatory dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution mechanisms, aligning closely with contemporary consensus-based political communication theories. These principles served not only to manage inter-group tensions but also to build a cooperative and just social order. The study concludes that the Constitution of Medina is not merely a historical document but a normative model that offers practical insights into inclusive governance, interfaith cooperation, and the ethical foundations of political discourse. Its relevance is especially significant today, where polarized societies seek coexistence and constructive engagement frameworks. Thus, the Medina Charter is relevant as a prophetic guide for inclusive political communication in multicultural and multireligious contexts. This study contributes to Islamic political thought and communication by providing a normative and historically grounded model for inclusive governance. It bridges classical Islamic sources with contemporary political communication theory, offering a framework applicable to modern pluralistic societies seeking ethical and participatory governance models.
Mohammad Saleh Torkestani, Zohreh Dehdashti Shahrokh, Kobra Bakhshizadeh Borj
et al.
Purpose - Diasporas of a country of origin are groups interested in country-of-origin scattered in host countries and familiar with markets of host countries. This paper aims to discourse analysis of diaspora marketing researches. Methodology - In judgmental sampling using selected keywords 24 researches in two eras before and after 2010 are selected for discourse analysis. Faircloughs critical discourse analysis model is used to analyze research data. Findings- Two different discourses can be distinguished in diaspora marketing researches. The diaspora niche marketing discourse is focused on penetrating into diaspora niche market. The diaspora marketing strategy discourse is focused on developing into international market using diaspora leverage. Research limitations and implications - Judgmental sampling and lived experience of researchers in a developing country which is usually considered as a diasporas country of origin rather than a diasporas host country limit the generalizability of research results. Practical implications - Understanding the extensions of diaspora marketing concept and diaspora marketing discourses is helpful for designing appropriate strategies for entering and developing in the international market. Originality - this paper investigates extensions of diaspora concept in previous research identifies diaspora marketing discourses and compares dominant diaspora marketing discourse with global marketing discourse.
Jason M. Pittman, Anton Phillips, Yesenia Medina-Santos
et al.
Analyzing spoken discourse is a valid means of quantifying language ability in persons with aphasia. There are many ways to quantify discourse, one common way being to evaluate the informativeness of the discourse. That is, given the total number of words produced, how many of those are context-relevant and accurate. This type of analysis is called Correct Information Unit (CIU) analysis and is one of the most prevalent discourse analyses used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Despite this, CIU analysis in the clinic remains limited due to the manual labor needed by SLPs to code and analyze collected speech. Recent advances in machine learning (ML) seek to augment such labor by automating modeling of propositional, macrostructural, pragmatic, and multimodal dimensions of discourse. To that end, this study evaluated five ML models for reliable identification of Correct Information Units (CIUs, Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993), during a picture description task. The five supervised ML models were trained using randomly selected human-coded transcripts and accompanying words and CIUs from persons with aphasia. The baseline model training produced a high accuracy across transcripts for word vs non-word, with all models achieving near perfect performance (0.995) with high AUC range (0.914 min, 0.995 max). In contrast, CIU vs non-CIU showed a greater variability, with the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) model the highest accuracy (0.824) and second highest AUC (0.787). These findings indicate that while the supervised ML models can distinguish word from not word, identifying CIUs is challenging.
Vahid Ghafouri, Robert McNeil, Teodor Yankov
et al.
We present a large-scale computational analysis of migration-related discourse in UK parliamentary debates spanning over 75 years and compare it with US congressional discourse. Using open-weight LLMs, we annotate each statement with high-level stances toward migrants and track the net tone toward migrants across time and political parties. For the UK, we extend this with a semi-automated framework for extracting fine-grained narrative frames to capture nuances of migration discourse. Our findings show that, while US discourse has grown increasingly polarised, UK parliamentary attitudes remain relatively aligned across parties, with a persistent ideological gap between Labour and the Conservatives, reaching its most negative level in 2025. The analysis of narrative frames in the UK parliamentary statements reveals a shift toward securitised narratives such as border control and illegal immigration, while longer-term integration-oriented frames such as social integration have declined. Moreover, discussions of national law about immigration have been replaced over time by international law and human rights, revealing nuances in discourse trends. Taken together broadly, our findings demonstrate how LLMs can support scalable, fine-grained discourse analysis in political and historical contexts.
Particularly in the structure of global discourse, coherence plays a pivotal role in human text comprehension and is a hallmark of high-quality text. This is especially true for persuasive texts, where coherent argument structures support claims effectively. This paper discusses and proposes methods for detecting, extracting and representing these global discourse structures in a proccess called Argument(ation) Mining. We begin by defining key terms and processes of discourse structure analysis, then continue to summarize existing research on the matter, and identify shortcomings in current argument component extraction and classification methods. Furthermore, we will outline an architecture for argument mining that focuses on making models more generalisable while overcoming challenges in the current field of research by utilizing novel NLP techniques. This paper reviews current knowledge, summarizes recent works, and outlines our NLP pipeline, aiming to contribute to the theoretical understanding of global discourse structures.
This paper is an argument for systematic textual analysis as a part of discourse analysis, and an attempt to stimulate debate on this issue between different approaches to discourse analysis. Two types of textual analysis are distinguished: linguistic analysis and intertextual analysis. On the basis of a reanalysis of data samples in papers published in the first four issues of Discourse & Society, the paper argues that diverse approaches to discourse analysis can be enhanced through systematic use of these two forms of analysis, even those which claim a concern with the content rather than the form of texts. It is suggested that textual analysis needs to be based upon a multifunctional theory of language such as systematic-functional linguistics. Finally, the paper suggests theoretical, methodological, historical and political reasons why textual analysis ought to be more widely recognized as a method in social research.
On 25 July 2017 Juana Rivas publicly announced that she would not obey court orders by not presenting her children at the meeting point with their Italian father, whom she had left a year earlier and whom she accused of domestic violence, and then disappeared with the two children for four weeks. This article focuses on the arguments used to legitimise Juana Rivas' decision, and more specifically the use of the figure of civil disobedience. It examines the strategies employed based on an analysis of the protagonist's discourse, in the letters she made public, and the campaign of support for her launched by various feminist networks and left-wing activists during August 2017 on social networks (#JuanaEstaEnMiCasa) and in the online press. It shows how, in a context of negotiation of the State Pact against Gender Violence, calls for civil disobedience, relayed not by Juana Rivas, but by activist networks, fit into a traditional and innovative repertoire of action aimed at opening a debate on the judicial treatment of this violence and on the protection of children in cases of gender violence. This contribution thus highlights one of the strategies used by Spanish feminists to help energise mobilisation and advance their demand for feminist justice.
The problem of citizenship of the population has been one of the main problems of civilized countries for a number of centuries. In modern geopolitical conditions in the Russian Federation this problem has acquired a special scientific and pedagogical status, which is supported by a number of legislative and public initiatives. The implementation of the strategy outlined by the state for the formation of citizenship among the younger generation will be facilitated by a complex of pedagogical influences in different educational environments. This circumstance has made it possible to formulate a scientific problem, which consists in the need for a theoretical substantiation of the definition of «citizenship» as a pedagogical category. The purpose of the research is to theoretically substantiate the essence of the category «citizenship» as a subject of pedagogical discourse based on the ideas of humanitarian knowledge. To achieve this goal, the following methods have been used: analysis of scientific literature and regulatory documents, generalization, synthesis, logical modeling.The research results: scientific facts have been identified that reflect the features of approaches to substantiating the category of «citizenship»; the components of citizenship as a pedagogical category have been substantiated; the high significance of the pedagogical approach in comparison with existing approaches in the interpretation of the category under consideration has been proven.Key conclusions: «citizenship» has a diverse interpretation in modern humanitarian knowledge, most extrapolated in sociological and pedagogical research; the structural components of citizenship as a pedagogical category are cognitive, emotional, motivational-need, activity-based, and the result of its formation in young people is civic maturity. The system-forming factor in substantiating the concept of citizenship is the pedagogical approach, which forms the foundation of the substantiation, because lays down the vector and mechanisms for its formation in all institutions of socialization of the individual at all levels of education.
Warning: This paper contains examples of offensive language targetting marginalized population. The digitization of historical texts invites researchers to explore the large-scale corpus of historical texts with computational methods. In this study, we present computational text analysis on a relatively understudied topic of how Asian workers are represented in historical newspapers in the United States. We found that the word "coolie" was semantically different in some States (e.g., Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Arkansas) with the different discourses around coolie. We also found that then-Confederate newspapers and then-Union newspapers formed distinctive discourses by measuring over-represented words. Newspapers from then-Confederate States associated coolie with slavery-related words. In addition, we found Asians were perceived to be inferior to European immigrants and subjected to the target of racism. This study contributes to supplementing the qualitative analysis of racism in the United States with quantitative discourse analysis.