Irish emigration in the 1970s: The ‘problem’ discourse of political elites

Abstract

Using Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, this article analyzes documented examples of ‘emigration-as-problem’ discourse from elite Irish discourse of the 1970s. Noting that elite discourse uses perpetuation strategies of argument to frame emigration as a negative phenomenon, the author suggests that such strategies serve important social functions in regards to creating a strawperson argument for the government and in contributing to the image of the Irish at home. The article calls for a closer look at the ways elite discourse set the terms of debate for private discourse in the range of data collected about Irish emigrant experience.

Populist polarization in postcolonial Philippines: Sociolinguistic rifts in online drug war discourse

“…To answer these inquiries, we emulated prior implementations of the discourse‐historical approach entailing iterative reading of the selected Facebook comments, abductive cycling between empirical observation and theoretical explanation, and critical interrogation of the sociohistorical conditions which shaped the discursive processes under consideration (Clary‐Lemon, 1970; Li & Song, 2019). Recognition of our subject positions as middle‐class Filipino social psychologists was likewise important for reflexive analysis.…”

“…First, we briefly review the rich social psychological literature on populism and polarization, highlighting the importance and dearth of Global South perspectives (Moffitt & Tormey, 2014; Pettigrew, 2017; Staerklé & Green, 2018). Second, we introduce a discourse‐historical lens to ground our analytical focus on language in relation to our postcolonial perspective (Clary‐Lemon, 1970; Sakki & Pettersson, 2016). Finally, we introduce the context of Duterte's populist war on drugs in the Philippines, situating our examination of online conversations to probe local social psychologies of polarization (Teehankee & Thompson, 2016; Uyheng & Montiel, 2020).…”