Difference and Political Legitimacy: Speakers' Construction of “Citizen” and “Refugee” Personae in Talk about Hurricane Katrina

Learning How to Speak Like a “Native”

“…These reports have been employed to understand, diagnose, and offer resolutions to intracultural, international, and intercultural communication conflicts and misunderstandings (Bailey, 1997;Edgerly, 2011;Hart, 2015;Miller & Rudnick, 2010;Philipsen, 2000). My case study on Eloqi suggests that teaching and learning oral communication skills is not a culture-neutral activity; on the contrary, it is a deeply cultural endeavor.…”

“…Such a speech code (which may be part of a larger cultural code) is ''a system of socially constructed symbols and meanings, premises, and rules, pertaining to communicative conduct'' (Philipsen, 1997, p. 126). Briefly, a symbolic term is a word conveying a key concept or idea that is of great significance to its users, such as citizen (Edgerly, 2011) or neighborhood (Witteborn & Sprain, 2009). Symbolic terms are important because the ways in which people use them often reflect fundamental sociocultural beliefs.…”

“…Specifically, SCT can be used to analyze situated communication practices and the cultures that such practices instantiate, including local beliefs about personhood (what it means to be a person in the world), sociality (how to connect with others in a community), and rhetoric (how to communicate strategically to achieve one's desired goals ;Carbaugh, 2005Carbaugh, , 2007aPhilipsen, 2002;. Numerous studies have used SCT to examine communication in different communities across the world (Baxter, 1993;Cohn, 1987;Coutu, 2000;Edgerly, 2011;Pratt & Wieder, 1993;Winchatz, 2001), demonstrating the amenability of this framework to a broad range of language varieties and means (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). Furthermore, there is growing precedence for using both EC and SCT to study technologymediated communication (Boromisza-Habashi & Parks, 2014;Carbaugh, Winter, Van Over, Molina-Markham, & Lie, 2013;Dori-Hacohen & Shavit, 2013;Flanigan, 2010;Hart, 2011;Witteborn, 2011Witteborn, , 2012.…”

Communicating citizenship in China’s digital society

“…The linkage between individual citizens and their right to communicate has been well noted in previous studies, especially in those examining cultural ways of speaking in American public settings (Carbaugh, 2005;Edgerly, 2011;Leighter, 2007;Philipsen, 1992). Carbaugh (2005), for instance, observed a cultural premise concerning the action of speaking as an essential part of being a citizen in American public discourses, stating that "citizens are not only entitled to speak in public freely as codified in the First Amendment, but are also expected to do so" (p. 90).…”

“…Speaking sensibly and morally with a public/communal orientation is considered the defining feature of communicating and practicing "good citizenship" in China. Participants' active contestation of meanings often demonstrates the dynamic and constructive nature of speech codes(Edgerly, 2011). In this case, online commentators' contestation of "good citizenship" captures this ongoing interactive process through which members of one more multiple online speech communities construct and negotiate the constituents of speech codes about communicating and interpreting citizenship in contemporary China.Although there are divergent views on whether an individual can be considered as a good/qualified citizen, the emphasis on serving the public or communal interest and moral virtues underpins a culturally distinctive way of communicating and interpreting citizenship.Similar to Cheng's (2018) discussion of "relational citizenship" in the cultural framing of citizenship in Taiwan with regard to foreign spouses, this public-orientation and moral virtues are deemed highly crucial for, not only communicating citizenship, but also evaluating the appropriateness of this communication.…”