Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees

Smith‐Khan, Laura

doi:10.1017/s0047404519000186

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The university discourses in our data reinforce precisely that association by subjugating a group of applicants who numerically are mostly Asian to the objectivized scrutiny of language testing while exempting others. In the process, it is not only the perception of the ELP of this group that is called into question but also their credibility and moral worth (Piller et al 2021; Smith-Khan 2019, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission

Piller

Bodis

2022

Lang. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines the language ideologies undergirding university English language admission requirements. Universities are today caught between the order of the nation state and that of corporate globalization as they seek to attract both national and international students. This tension produces conflicting processes of (converse) racialization and linguistic (un)marking within which universities construct language proficiencies and ethnonational identities. Our study finds two categorically different constructs of English language proficiency (ELP): inherent ELP based on citizenship, linguistic heritage, and prior education, and tested ELP. These two constructs of ELP map onto two dichotomous student groups. One side of this binary—the white native-speaker citizen construct—is subject to converse racialization and unmarking. While it becomes blurred, it casts its Other into clear relief: the Asian non-native speaker non-citizen. The research has implications for critical language testing and language policies in higher education. (Citizenship, English as a global academic language, internationalization of higher education, international students, language ideologies, language testing, native speakerism, racialization, World Englishes)

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission

Piller

Bodis

2022

Lang. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They reinforce the authors' neutrality and background their inherently subjective evaluations (cf Smith- Khan, 2017aKhan, , 2017bKhan, , 2019c. Using the parliamentary-bestowed title, 'the Committee', with capitalisation, indexes the actors' official affiliation to legitimate their authority (Smith- Khan, 2019a;Van Leeuwen, 2007). The attribution of certain parts of the chapter to the submitters is reinforced by embedding excerpts of written submissions and public hearings.…”

Section: Actors and Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, registered migration agents (RMAs), the professionals authorised to assist people with their visa applications, attract ongoing scrutiny in political and media discourse (Khan, 2019). This includes high-level government officials accusing lawyers and advocates of trying to undermine entry bars to achieve 'migration outcomes' for their clients (Smith- Khan, 2019aKhan, , 2019b.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation

Smith‐Khan

2021

Discourse & Society

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In Australia, access to high-quality migration advice can often be crucial to obtaining a visa, and migration advisors have attracted ongoing scrutiny from policymakers, leading to successive inquiries and reviews. Such inquiries and the recommendations they produce are used to justify policy design and reform that can have significant impacts on a range of stakeholders, including of course, migration advisors and their clients. This article explores one such recent inquiry, completed in 2018. It adopts a critical discourse analysis to examine the way the inquiry’s official report presents migration advisors, and how it frames the inquiry process itself. Finding that the report presents its recommendations as being based on evidence created by external stakeholder submissions, the examination goes on to explore to what extent this is actually the case. Through an examination of the ‘textual travels’ submissions undergo when incorporated in the report, the article finds that these texts are either transformed to support dominant discourses, or simply excluded. The article concludes that decision-making is inaccurately presented as a participatory, evidence-based process, thus legitimising particular policy decisions, and unfairly continuing to present migration advisors as problems requiring fixing.

show abstract

“…On the contrary, identity negotiations are constrained by conventionalized identity options and these options are hierarchically ordered. In other words, identity options and the conditions under which they are negotiated are highly unequal (Smith- Khan, 2019a).…”

Section: The Discursive Construction Of Identities In the Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Securing the borders of English and Whiteness

2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines how racial and linguistic identities are constructed on the Australian reality TV show Border Security. Based on an analysis of 108 episodes of the show involving 253 border force officers and 128 passengers, we explore how the hegemonic Australian identity of the White native speaker of English is constructed on the show. Officers are represented as a relatively uniform group of heroes devoted to protecting Australia’s national security. Simultaneously, most of them look white and sound like native speakers of Australian English. In contrast to the officers, passengers, as their antagonists, do not have a predominant racial or linguistic profile. They are represented as highly diverse. What unites them is not any racial or linguistic profile but that they represent a security risk. Threat thus comes to be mapped onto diversity. The show’s schema of heroes and antagonists invites the audience to identify with the heroes. By identifying with the White-English heroes, the audience also comes to take on their power of judgment over its diverse linguistic and racial Others. The analysis shows how the White-English identity bundle is constructed as the authoritative and legitimate position of the judging knower. The article’s main contribution is to show how the raciolinguistic construct of the White-English complex is made hegemonic in a diverse society officially committed to multiculturalism.

show abstract

Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees

Cited by 11 publications

References 48 publications

Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission

Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission

Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation

Securing the borders of English and Whiteness

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About