Interdisciplinary Discourse

This book presents post-Marxist theoretical approaches towards social critique and offers discourse analytical tools for critical research.

This book sheds light on the communication of social support, language use, and therapeutic effects in the context of online self-help groups for anxiety and depression. The book has two major purposes: the first is to enhance understanding of the phatic communication through a discourse-pragmatic perspective; and the second is to demonstrate the use of discourse analysis to discuss the potential therapeutic effects of the online self-help groups. Key concepts, including genre study, speech act theory, relational work and discourse analysis, are revisited and elucidated to show their applicability in health communication research. This book focuses on the topics of communication patterns, the communicative acts of self-disclosure and advice-giving, and relevant social theories in the communication of social support.

Food Discourse explores a fascinating, yet virtually unexplored research area: the language of food used on television cooking shows. It shows how the discourse of television cooking shows on the American television channel Food Network conveys a pseudo-relationship between the celebrity chef host and viewers. Excerpts are drawn from a variety of cooking show genres (how-to, travel, reality, talk, competition), providing the data for this qualitative investigation. Richly interdisciplinary, the study draws upon discourse analysis, narrative, social semiotics, and media communication in order to analyze four key linguistic features – recipe telling, storytelling, evaluations, and humor – in connection with the themes of performance, authenticity, and expertise, essential components in the making of celebrity chefs.

This book undertakes a systematic analysis of the workings of ideology in discourse, using an interdisciplinary approach that links language, cognition and society. Through examination of two corpora - a collection of British newspaper articles and a set of political speeches - the author examines Britain's involvement in the Iraq War (2003), and critically assesses the language practices which constructed a pro-war ideology under Tony Blair's premiership. Drawing on a constellation of concepts from van Dijk's socio-cognitive model, this book carries out both qualitative and quantitative analyses and conceptualises discourse as a nonlinear, highly discursive and socio-cognitive phenomenon. This innovative work will appeal to students and scholars of Cognitive Linguistics, Quantitative Linguistics, Social Constructivism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Political Sciences and Communication Studies.