Christof Demont-Heinrich | University of Denver (original) (raw)
Papers by Christof Demont-Heinrich
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, May 1, 2008
Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative un... more Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative universality. It does so primarily by way of the analysis of discourses on the global hegemony of English in five American-owned prestige press publications—the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. It also draws parallels between broader contemporary and historical examples of what the author defines as a discourse of universal progress on English. This discourse frames the hegemony of English as a simple and largely unproblematic fact of the global order while celebrating its allegedly intrinsic progressive tendencies and capabilities. Among these are English's superiority as a purveyor of “objective” reality, its ability to facilitate individual and collective (economic) success, its capacity to advance the production and exchange of knowledge and information, and its status as a bestower of universal (global) voice and unity. The author challenges some of the assumptions that underlie this discourse, contending that, at the highest levels of abstraction, the discourse of universal progress strips English and language of their rootedness in culture and various forms of social identity and struggle.
Sociology Compass, Aug 1, 2011
This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and glob... more This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and globalization of culture perspectives in global communication and media studies. At an extreme, cultural imperialism is cast as the international extension of the long-discredited hypodermic needle theory which views cultural consumers as passive automatons. At the other end of the extreme, the globalization of culture perspective is cast as a wildly postmodern standpoint in which free-floating individuals are said to be able to make an infinite set of localized meanings from cultural products. There has been a growing trend among many global communication and media scholars to locate a productive middle ground between cultural imperialism and globalization of culture. In this author's view, the most effective melding of the two perspectives would situate local, creative appropriation of cultural objects against the backdrop of larger, hegemonic regional and global macro-forces. This approach ought also to acknowledge the many complexities that characterize the intersections among globalization, culture, and media, including the ways in which the local, national, regional, and global constitute one another and the ways in which resistance to local hegemony can paradoxically fuel national or global hegemony. The sheer scale and complexity of the empirical reality of global connectivity is something which defies attempts to encompass it: it is something we can only grasp by cutting it in various ways. (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 1999, 17)
Journal of Communication Inquiry, Apr 1, 2007
How is English in the global context constructed in the print media discourse of American-owned p... more How is English in the global context constructed in the print media discourse of American-owned prestige press newspapers? The author zeroes in on examples of explicit reflection on the American "situation" vis-à-vis the global hegemony of English. These were drawn from a 275-text data pool generated for the author's recently published doctoral dissertation. A number of different themes emerged in the texts and excerpts analyzed here, most prominently that of English monolingualism as potentially compromising American national security and economic competitiveness. Several texts also focused on a great paradox: tremendous American linguistic diversity and widespread English monolingualism in the United States. Perhaps the most interesting theme that emerged was what the author terms wistful regret: Americans reflecting with considerable melancholy on how they saw the hegemony of English as inhibiting their incentive and opportunity to become multilingual.
Journal of Communication Inquiry
This paper argues that rather than proving that foreign-language films have somehow finally “arri... more This paper argues that rather than proving that foreign-language films have somehow finally “arrived” in the United States that an historic win by the South Korean film Parasite in the best picture category at the 92nd Academy Awards proves precisely the opposite: The general rule vis-à-vis non-English-language films in the U.S. is that they continue to languish, and continue to be marginalized, just as they have for the better part of the past 100 years. I use Parasite's historic, exception-to-the-rule win of best picture to illustrate the validity and utility of a larger theory called American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC). According to ACIC, compared to most people in most other countries, large numbers of Americans tend to consume much more of their own cultural media products and much fewer cultural media products produced in other countries than people in other countries typically do.
The Communication Review, 2020
The geography of digital distribution by Ramon Lobato (2019) and Locked out: Regional restriction... more The geography of digital distribution by Ramon Lobato (2019) and Locked out: Regional restrictions in digital entertainment culture by Evan Elkins (2019) provide fascinating views on the ways in wh...
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2020
This paper highlights an instructive case of cultural insularity in the center (CIC) and illustra... more This paper highlights an instructive case of cultural insularity in the center (CIC) and illustrates the potential theoretical and analytical utility of a theory of CIC. CIC refers to a tendency among many American cultural consumers toward comparative inwardness in their cultural consumption orientations. This insular tendency is particularly pronounced vis-a-vis “language heavy” cultural goods such as popular music. I critically engage the notion of CIC via a textual analysis of the written discourse of 86 American undergraduates produced via an assignment completed in four international communication classes. This assignment asked students to investigate popular music on Spotify sung in languages other than English and to write about their process. I use this analysis of undergraduate written reflection vis-à-vis their exploration of non-English language pop music to reflect on the general explanatory utility of CIC. Ultimately, a CIC model encourages us to critically explore the...
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2020
If you want to read a historically and theoretically grounded volume that also grounds alternativ... more If you want to read a historically and theoretically grounded volume that also grounds alternative media scholarship in contemporary empirical study and brings you quickly up to date on scholarship and debates within the arena of alternative media studies, Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics: Activist Nation Rising is a great book to read. Edited by Joshua D. Atkinson and Linda Jean Kenix, the volume-which contains 10 empirically grounded chapters by more than a dozen authors, Alternative Media brings into clear view, among other things, debates within media studies about what alternative media are, the complex and fascinating interplay between so-called alternative media and mainstream or traditional media, and a decided empirical, and arguably political and ideological, tilt toward study and investigation of left leaning alternative media over right leaning alternative media. Each chapter in this volume offers an interesting and unique window in on various dimensions of alternative media with chapters clustered together logically by the editors into several different parts. To me, the most interesting chapters-and this probably reflects my own biases more than anything-were those that examined, and reflected upon, the ways in which research and scholarship on alternative media has tended to focus heavily on left leaning alt-media as opposed to right leaning alt-media. These chapters are clustered in Part I of the book, which is entitled "Entertainment Alternative Media and Political Parties." For me, one of the key questions that the left bias in scholarship and research on alternative media brings up is: Given the radical differences between many left alternative media and right alternative media-among these, the ways in which left alternative media largely seek to challenge and deconstruct, for example, white dominant norms and racism and
World Englishes, 2008
ABSTRACT: An extensive body of scholarship exists on the complex ways in which various peoples, ... more ABSTRACT: An extensive body of scholarship exists on the complex ways in which various peoples, states, and regions outside core English‐speaking countries are being affected by, and view themselves as being affected by, the global rise of English. However the different ways in which core country elites understand and represent their unique sociolinguistic position vis‐à‐vis the global ascendancy of English has received much less attention. This paper, as does the study whose results it summarizes, pays special attention to what Schiller (2000) has described as “the American situation” with respect to the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of critical interpretation of more than 200 accounts of the global spread of English published from January 1, 1991 to May 1, 2003 in five American‐owned prestige press publications: the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Its overall conclusion is t...
International Communication Gazette, 2008
/ A condensed chapter from a recently completed dissertation, this article critically examines se... more / A condensed chapter from a recently completed dissertation, this article critically examines selected texts taken from a pool of 275 accounts of the global rise of English published from 1991 to 2003 in five American-owned prestige press publications — the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In particular, it interrogates representations that declare the death of cultural imperialism. The article deconstructs and problematizes these representations along a number of theoretical and analytical lines. The author notes, and challenges, a powerful propensity toward conceiving globalization through the lens of cultural consumption, contending that to focus on cultural consumption and creative appropriation, and to loosely use the catchphrase `cultural flow', is to lose sight of the specific, and considerable, cultural production and distribution inequities that characterize the contemporary global social order. The author also challenges a valorization of individual agency in the texts, as well as a bottom-up view of globalization that implies the disintegration of global power differentials.
The Communication Review, 2009
This article zeroes in on "the American situation" with respect to the global hegemony of English... more This article zeroes in on "the American situation" with respect to the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of textual analysis of a number of articles taken from a pool of 275 American prestige press accounts of the global spread of English. Drawing parallels between prestige press and some academic accounts of culture and globalization, the article critically engages instances of a pervasive populist individualist ideology expressed via what the author calls the discourse of populism.
Sociology Compass, 2011
This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and glob... more This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and globalization of culture perspectives in global communication and media studies. At an extreme, cultural imperialism is cast as the international extension of the long-discredited hypodermic needle theory which views cultural consumers as passive automatons. At the other end of the extreme, the globalization of culture perspective is cast as a wildly postmodern standpoint in which free-floating individuals are said to be able to make an infinite set of localized meanings from cultural products. There has been a growing trend among many global communication and media scholars to locate a productive middle ground between cultural imperialism and globalization of culture. In this author's view, the most effective melding of the two perspectives would situate local, creative appropriation of cultural objects against the backdrop of larger, hegemonic regional and global macro-forces. This approach ought also to acknowledge the many complexities that characterize the intersections among globalization, culture, and media, including the ways in which the local, national, regional, and global constitute one another and the ways in which resistance to local hegemony can paradoxically fuel national or global hegemony. The sheer scale and complexity of the empirical reality of global connectivity is something which defies attempts to encompass it: it is something we can only grasp by cutting it in various ways. (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 1999, 17)
New Media & Society, 2004
Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioecono... more Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, this article examines the discursive structure of the digital divide debate as it is articulated among contemporary online users and non-users in the United States. The article argues that the discourse of individualism serves as a filter that shapes and distorts all private and public conversations about the digital divide and thus limits public debate on the subject. Some challenges to the dominance of individualism emerge when people discuss the digital divide in relation to the specific, lived situations of economic disadvantage. Yet we conclude that the potential political power of this critique is muted as it echoes rather than challenges the contradictions inherent to the promise of the digital era that are found at the heart of both corporate advertising and current social policies.
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2011
is an interesting collection of studies of language in the news in multiple national contexts. It... more is an interesting collection of studies of language in the news in multiple national contexts. It contains 11 chapters, with the first chapter laying out 'linguistic approaches to the analysis of journalistic discourse', and subsequent chapters generally applying the framework outlined there to case study analyses of newspaper coverage in specific national contexts ranging from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia to Finland, Spain and Greece. Many of these have garnered comparatively little attention in Englishlanguage scholarship devoted to news analysis. Communicating Conflict thus makes an important empirical contribution to media and language-in-the-media research. The volume also stands as a useful methodological how-to, providing readers with a concrete, case-study-by-case-study guide that illustrates the application of appraisal theory analysis. Additionally, Communicating Conflict seeks to tackle a number of largely unexamined issues, most notably the question of the relation between particular languages and basic news-media formats such as 'reporter voice' and hard-news structures such as the 'inverted pyramid'. Generally, the volume finds that regardless of the language in which a hardnews story is written, there is a tendency toward 'reporter voice' style, or 'objective' narratives and an orbital story structure in which the body of the story consistently refers back to the lead and headline. Perhaps in part because it is so concerned with the variable of language and, even more, with illustrating the utility, one might even say, applicability, of appraisal theory, the connection between authors' findings and what might be termed the bigger social, political and intellectual picture is often not made. This reviewer was disappointed that some of the authors fail to reflect on questions such as, How does this research matter, to whom, in what ways?, and, What are some of the potential implications of this research in terms of the field of news analysis, in terms of the particular socio-political context examined, and in terms of potential future directions for research? Thomson and White devote much of Chapter 1 to an introduction and overview of appraisal theory. Appraisal theory trains its analytical lens on attitude valuations made by journalists in terms of affect (emotional evaluation),
Studies in Language and …, 2007
A given hegemonic order (re)produces itself in part by appeals to its apparent inevitability. Thi... more A given hegemonic order (re)produces itself in part by appeals to its apparent inevitability. This paper critically examines instances of precisely these sorts of appeals visa -vis the global hegemony of English. A condensed chapter from a recently completed dissertation, this paper critically examines selected texts taken from a pool of 275 accounts of the global rise of English published from Jan. 1, 1991 to May 1, 2003 in five American-owned prestige press publications. It focuses in particular on examples of the discursive construction of English as an unstoppable global juggernaut. It aims to draw attention to the valorization of English hegemony and to bring to critical light some of the paradoxical and often darker aspects of this global social phenomenon. The paper also aims to contribute to critical theoretical thought more generally. Change, linguistic and otherwise, is inevitable. However, the specific form it assumes is not inevitable. Thus, it is contended that the global rise of English must be critically identified as a particular, socially produced, and not-at-all 'natural' change. Studies in Language & Capitalism is a peer-reviewed online journal that seeks to promote and freely distribute interdisciplinary The construction of English as inevitable in these core 4 English country publications is part of what de Swaan (2001) has called the "self-fulfilling prophecy" of English. According to de Swaan-whose work is premised upon a rational-choice notion of the global rise of English that this paper seeks to problematize-the more people who "choose" to learn English and use it for various local, national, and international purposes, the more powerful its tug critical inquiries into the language and meaning of contemporary capitalism and the links between economic, social and linguistic change in the world around us.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2010
Abstract This paper is about an international electronic forum set up among university students i... more Abstract This paper is about an international electronic forum set up among university students in the United States, Australia, and Slovenia. It seeks to (a) develop a richer understanding of how Americans view themselves in relation to a globalizing world, (b) examine how American, Slovenian and Australian university students use an interactive online context to advance and challenge particular points of view within, and across, domestic boundaries, and (c) reflect on the ways in which the participants, in particular the American participants, might be said to have been moved, or not moved, to reassess their (national) views on various issues of global significance.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2008
Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative un... more Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative universality. It does so primarily by way of the analysis of discourses on the global hegemony of English in five American-owned prestige press publications—the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. It also draws parallels between broader contemporary and historical examples of what the author defines as a discourse of universal progress on English. This discourse frames the hegemony of English as a simple and largely unproblematic fact of the global order while celebrating its allegedly intrinsic progressive tendencies and capabilities. Among these are English's superiority as a purveyor of “objective” reality, its ability to facilitate individual and collective (economic) success, its capacity to advance the production and exchange of knowledge and information, and its status as a bestower of universal (global) voice and unity. The author challenges some of the assumptions that underlie this discourse, contending that, at the highest levels of abstraction, the discourse of universal progress strips English and language of their rootedness in culture and various forms of social identity and struggle.
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2005
This article engages the intersection of language, national identity, nation state, English and d... more This article engages the intersection of language, national identity, nation state, English and discourses of (global) modernization, progress, and the transcendence of the national vis-à-vis an instructive case: Switzerland. It examines the rise of English in multilingual Switzerland and its potential impact on Swiss collective (national) identity. It reflects, as well, on the ways in which English’s spread might influence the ethic of multilingual reciprocity in the Swiss and global contexts. It is contended that despite significant shortcomings, multilingualism has survived and, to a large extent, even thrived in Switzerland precisely because that nation state has legally and normatively codified the protection of linguistic particularism and established multilingualism as a basic component of its national identity. Yet even state-sanctioned and officially codified multilingualisms deeply embedded in national mythology, such as in Switzerland, are potentially threatened by an inc...
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, May 1, 2008
Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative un... more Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative universality. It does so primarily by way of the analysis of discourses on the global hegemony of English in five American-owned prestige press publications—the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. It also draws parallels between broader contemporary and historical examples of what the author defines as a discourse of universal progress on English. This discourse frames the hegemony of English as a simple and largely unproblematic fact of the global order while celebrating its allegedly intrinsic progressive tendencies and capabilities. Among these are English's superiority as a purveyor of “objective” reality, its ability to facilitate individual and collective (economic) success, its capacity to advance the production and exchange of knowledge and information, and its status as a bestower of universal (global) voice and unity. The author challenges some of the assumptions that underlie this discourse, contending that, at the highest levels of abstraction, the discourse of universal progress strips English and language of their rootedness in culture and various forms of social identity and struggle.
Sociology Compass, Aug 1, 2011
This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and glob... more This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and globalization of culture perspectives in global communication and media studies. At an extreme, cultural imperialism is cast as the international extension of the long-discredited hypodermic needle theory which views cultural consumers as passive automatons. At the other end of the extreme, the globalization of culture perspective is cast as a wildly postmodern standpoint in which free-floating individuals are said to be able to make an infinite set of localized meanings from cultural products. There has been a growing trend among many global communication and media scholars to locate a productive middle ground between cultural imperialism and globalization of culture. In this author's view, the most effective melding of the two perspectives would situate local, creative appropriation of cultural objects against the backdrop of larger, hegemonic regional and global macro-forces. This approach ought also to acknowledge the many complexities that characterize the intersections among globalization, culture, and media, including the ways in which the local, national, regional, and global constitute one another and the ways in which resistance to local hegemony can paradoxically fuel national or global hegemony. The sheer scale and complexity of the empirical reality of global connectivity is something which defies attempts to encompass it: it is something we can only grasp by cutting it in various ways. (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 1999, 17)
Journal of Communication Inquiry, Apr 1, 2007
How is English in the global context constructed in the print media discourse of American-owned p... more How is English in the global context constructed in the print media discourse of American-owned prestige press newspapers? The author zeroes in on examples of explicit reflection on the American "situation" vis-à-vis the global hegemony of English. These were drawn from a 275-text data pool generated for the author's recently published doctoral dissertation. A number of different themes emerged in the texts and excerpts analyzed here, most prominently that of English monolingualism as potentially compromising American national security and economic competitiveness. Several texts also focused on a great paradox: tremendous American linguistic diversity and widespread English monolingualism in the United States. Perhaps the most interesting theme that emerged was what the author terms wistful regret: Americans reflecting with considerable melancholy on how they saw the hegemony of English as inhibiting their incentive and opportunity to become multilingual.
Journal of Communication Inquiry
This paper argues that rather than proving that foreign-language films have somehow finally “arri... more This paper argues that rather than proving that foreign-language films have somehow finally “arrived” in the United States that an historic win by the South Korean film Parasite in the best picture category at the 92nd Academy Awards proves precisely the opposite: The general rule vis-à-vis non-English-language films in the U.S. is that they continue to languish, and continue to be marginalized, just as they have for the better part of the past 100 years. I use Parasite's historic, exception-to-the-rule win of best picture to illustrate the validity and utility of a larger theory called American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC). According to ACIC, compared to most people in most other countries, large numbers of Americans tend to consume much more of their own cultural media products and much fewer cultural media products produced in other countries than people in other countries typically do.
The Communication Review, 2020
The geography of digital distribution by Ramon Lobato (2019) and Locked out: Regional restriction... more The geography of digital distribution by Ramon Lobato (2019) and Locked out: Regional restrictions in digital entertainment culture by Evan Elkins (2019) provide fascinating views on the ways in wh...
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2020
This paper highlights an instructive case of cultural insularity in the center (CIC) and illustra... more This paper highlights an instructive case of cultural insularity in the center (CIC) and illustrates the potential theoretical and analytical utility of a theory of CIC. CIC refers to a tendency among many American cultural consumers toward comparative inwardness in their cultural consumption orientations. This insular tendency is particularly pronounced vis-a-vis “language heavy” cultural goods such as popular music. I critically engage the notion of CIC via a textual analysis of the written discourse of 86 American undergraduates produced via an assignment completed in four international communication classes. This assignment asked students to investigate popular music on Spotify sung in languages other than English and to write about their process. I use this analysis of undergraduate written reflection vis-à-vis their exploration of non-English language pop music to reflect on the general explanatory utility of CIC. Ultimately, a CIC model encourages us to critically explore the...
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2020
If you want to read a historically and theoretically grounded volume that also grounds alternativ... more If you want to read a historically and theoretically grounded volume that also grounds alternative media scholarship in contemporary empirical study and brings you quickly up to date on scholarship and debates within the arena of alternative media studies, Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics: Activist Nation Rising is a great book to read. Edited by Joshua D. Atkinson and Linda Jean Kenix, the volume-which contains 10 empirically grounded chapters by more than a dozen authors, Alternative Media brings into clear view, among other things, debates within media studies about what alternative media are, the complex and fascinating interplay between so-called alternative media and mainstream or traditional media, and a decided empirical, and arguably political and ideological, tilt toward study and investigation of left leaning alternative media over right leaning alternative media. Each chapter in this volume offers an interesting and unique window in on various dimensions of alternative media with chapters clustered together logically by the editors into several different parts. To me, the most interesting chapters-and this probably reflects my own biases more than anything-were those that examined, and reflected upon, the ways in which research and scholarship on alternative media has tended to focus heavily on left leaning alt-media as opposed to right leaning alt-media. These chapters are clustered in Part I of the book, which is entitled "Entertainment Alternative Media and Political Parties." For me, one of the key questions that the left bias in scholarship and research on alternative media brings up is: Given the radical differences between many left alternative media and right alternative media-among these, the ways in which left alternative media largely seek to challenge and deconstruct, for example, white dominant norms and racism and
World Englishes, 2008
ABSTRACT: An extensive body of scholarship exists on the complex ways in which various peoples, ... more ABSTRACT: An extensive body of scholarship exists on the complex ways in which various peoples, states, and regions outside core English‐speaking countries are being affected by, and view themselves as being affected by, the global rise of English. However the different ways in which core country elites understand and represent their unique sociolinguistic position vis‐à‐vis the global ascendancy of English has received much less attention. This paper, as does the study whose results it summarizes, pays special attention to what Schiller (2000) has described as “the American situation” with respect to the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of critical interpretation of more than 200 accounts of the global spread of English published from January 1, 1991 to May 1, 2003 in five American‐owned prestige press publications: the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Its overall conclusion is t...
International Communication Gazette, 2008
/ A condensed chapter from a recently completed dissertation, this article critically examines se... more / A condensed chapter from a recently completed dissertation, this article critically examines selected texts taken from a pool of 275 accounts of the global rise of English published from 1991 to 2003 in five American-owned prestige press publications — the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In particular, it interrogates representations that declare the death of cultural imperialism. The article deconstructs and problematizes these representations along a number of theoretical and analytical lines. The author notes, and challenges, a powerful propensity toward conceiving globalization through the lens of cultural consumption, contending that to focus on cultural consumption and creative appropriation, and to loosely use the catchphrase `cultural flow', is to lose sight of the specific, and considerable, cultural production and distribution inequities that characterize the contemporary global social order. The author also challenges a valorization of individual agency in the texts, as well as a bottom-up view of globalization that implies the disintegration of global power differentials.
The Communication Review, 2009
This article zeroes in on "the American situation" with respect to the global hegemony of English... more This article zeroes in on "the American situation" with respect to the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of textual analysis of a number of articles taken from a pool of 275 American prestige press accounts of the global spread of English. Drawing parallels between prestige press and some academic accounts of culture and globalization, the article critically engages instances of a pervasive populist individualist ideology expressed via what the author calls the discourse of populism.
Sociology Compass, 2011
This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and glob... more This article discusses and analyzes the dialectic between so-called cultural imperialism and globalization of culture perspectives in global communication and media studies. At an extreme, cultural imperialism is cast as the international extension of the long-discredited hypodermic needle theory which views cultural consumers as passive automatons. At the other end of the extreme, the globalization of culture perspective is cast as a wildly postmodern standpoint in which free-floating individuals are said to be able to make an infinite set of localized meanings from cultural products. There has been a growing trend among many global communication and media scholars to locate a productive middle ground between cultural imperialism and globalization of culture. In this author's view, the most effective melding of the two perspectives would situate local, creative appropriation of cultural objects against the backdrop of larger, hegemonic regional and global macro-forces. This approach ought also to acknowledge the many complexities that characterize the intersections among globalization, culture, and media, including the ways in which the local, national, regional, and global constitute one another and the ways in which resistance to local hegemony can paradoxically fuel national or global hegemony. The sheer scale and complexity of the empirical reality of global connectivity is something which defies attempts to encompass it: it is something we can only grasp by cutting it in various ways. (Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture 1999, 17)
New Media & Society, 2004
Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioecono... more Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, this article examines the discursive structure of the digital divide debate as it is articulated among contemporary online users and non-users in the United States. The article argues that the discourse of individualism serves as a filter that shapes and distorts all private and public conversations about the digital divide and thus limits public debate on the subject. Some challenges to the dominance of individualism emerge when people discuss the digital divide in relation to the specific, lived situations of economic disadvantage. Yet we conclude that the potential political power of this critique is muted as it echoes rather than challenges the contradictions inherent to the promise of the digital era that are found at the heart of both corporate advertising and current social policies.
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2011
is an interesting collection of studies of language in the news in multiple national contexts. It... more is an interesting collection of studies of language in the news in multiple national contexts. It contains 11 chapters, with the first chapter laying out 'linguistic approaches to the analysis of journalistic discourse', and subsequent chapters generally applying the framework outlined there to case study analyses of newspaper coverage in specific national contexts ranging from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia to Finland, Spain and Greece. Many of these have garnered comparatively little attention in Englishlanguage scholarship devoted to news analysis. Communicating Conflict thus makes an important empirical contribution to media and language-in-the-media research. The volume also stands as a useful methodological how-to, providing readers with a concrete, case-study-by-case-study guide that illustrates the application of appraisal theory analysis. Additionally, Communicating Conflict seeks to tackle a number of largely unexamined issues, most notably the question of the relation between particular languages and basic news-media formats such as 'reporter voice' and hard-news structures such as the 'inverted pyramid'. Generally, the volume finds that regardless of the language in which a hardnews story is written, there is a tendency toward 'reporter voice' style, or 'objective' narratives and an orbital story structure in which the body of the story consistently refers back to the lead and headline. Perhaps in part because it is so concerned with the variable of language and, even more, with illustrating the utility, one might even say, applicability, of appraisal theory, the connection between authors' findings and what might be termed the bigger social, political and intellectual picture is often not made. This reviewer was disappointed that some of the authors fail to reflect on questions such as, How does this research matter, to whom, in what ways?, and, What are some of the potential implications of this research in terms of the field of news analysis, in terms of the particular socio-political context examined, and in terms of potential future directions for research? Thomson and White devote much of Chapter 1 to an introduction and overview of appraisal theory. Appraisal theory trains its analytical lens on attitude valuations made by journalists in terms of affect (emotional evaluation),
Studies in Language and …, 2007
A given hegemonic order (re)produces itself in part by appeals to its apparent inevitability. Thi... more A given hegemonic order (re)produces itself in part by appeals to its apparent inevitability. This paper critically examines instances of precisely these sorts of appeals visa -vis the global hegemony of English. A condensed chapter from a recently completed dissertation, this paper critically examines selected texts taken from a pool of 275 accounts of the global rise of English published from Jan. 1, 1991 to May 1, 2003 in five American-owned prestige press publications. It focuses in particular on examples of the discursive construction of English as an unstoppable global juggernaut. It aims to draw attention to the valorization of English hegemony and to bring to critical light some of the paradoxical and often darker aspects of this global social phenomenon. The paper also aims to contribute to critical theoretical thought more generally. Change, linguistic and otherwise, is inevitable. However, the specific form it assumes is not inevitable. Thus, it is contended that the global rise of English must be critically identified as a particular, socially produced, and not-at-all 'natural' change. Studies in Language & Capitalism is a peer-reviewed online journal that seeks to promote and freely distribute interdisciplinary The construction of English as inevitable in these core 4 English country publications is part of what de Swaan (2001) has called the "self-fulfilling prophecy" of English. According to de Swaan-whose work is premised upon a rational-choice notion of the global rise of English that this paper seeks to problematize-the more people who "choose" to learn English and use it for various local, national, and international purposes, the more powerful its tug critical inquiries into the language and meaning of contemporary capitalism and the links between economic, social and linguistic change in the world around us.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2010
Abstract This paper is about an international electronic forum set up among university students i... more Abstract This paper is about an international electronic forum set up among university students in the United States, Australia, and Slovenia. It seeks to (a) develop a richer understanding of how Americans view themselves in relation to a globalizing world, (b) examine how American, Slovenian and Australian university students use an interactive online context to advance and challenge particular points of view within, and across, domestic boundaries, and (c) reflect on the ways in which the participants, in particular the American participants, might be said to have been moved, or not moved, to reassess their (national) views on various issues of global significance.
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2008
Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative un... more Abstract This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative universality. It does so primarily by way of the analysis of discourses on the global hegemony of English in five American-owned prestige press publications—the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. It also draws parallels between broader contemporary and historical examples of what the author defines as a discourse of universal progress on English. This discourse frames the hegemony of English as a simple and largely unproblematic fact of the global order while celebrating its allegedly intrinsic progressive tendencies and capabilities. Among these are English's superiority as a purveyor of “objective” reality, its ability to facilitate individual and collective (economic) success, its capacity to advance the production and exchange of knowledge and information, and its status as a bestower of universal (global) voice and unity. The author challenges some of the assumptions that underlie this discourse, contending that, at the highest levels of abstraction, the discourse of universal progress strips English and language of their rootedness in culture and various forms of social identity and struggle.
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2005
This article engages the intersection of language, national identity, nation state, English and d... more This article engages the intersection of language, national identity, nation state, English and discourses of (global) modernization, progress, and the transcendence of the national vis-à-vis an instructive case: Switzerland. It examines the rise of English in multilingual Switzerland and its potential impact on Swiss collective (national) identity. It reflects, as well, on the ways in which English’s spread might influence the ethic of multilingual reciprocity in the Swiss and global contexts. It is contended that despite significant shortcomings, multilingualism has survived and, to a large extent, even thrived in Switzerland precisely because that nation state has legally and normatively codified the protection of linguistic particularism and established multilingualism as a basic component of its national identity. Yet even state-sanctioned and officially codified multilingualisms deeply embedded in national mythology, such as in Switzerland, are potentially threatened by an inc...