Franco Zappettini | Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma (original) (raw)

Videos by Franco Zappettini

This presentations focuses on CDA as a method of social enquiry that foregrounds language and com... more This presentations focuses on CDA as a method of social enquiry that foregrounds language and communication as paramount in the construction, maintenance and challenging of social dynamics and social realities. The presentation will discuss the key ontologies and methodologies associated with CDA as well as providing specific examples of their applications to the analysis of media and political discourses.

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Theoretical insights and pratical applications of the language of the British tabloid press

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Theoretical insights and practical applications of the language of the British tabloid press

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Theoretical insights and practical applications of the language of the British tabloid press

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Consistent with a populist script, evoking the people has been a nodal point in the discursive un... more Consistent with a populist script, evoking the people has been a nodal point in the discursive unfolding of Brexit and its legitimation. This paper focuses on the mediatization of the Brexit referendum campaign in a corpus of online British tabloids to address the critical question of how the people in whose name Brexit was (de)legitimised were discursively constructed and mobilized. The argument put forward is that the legitimation of Brexit was achieved through exclusionary definitions of the people and through strategies of fear, resentment and empowerment. This discursive framing points to the wider question of the instrumental role that a large section of the British tabloid press has had not simply in the contingency of referendum but also in the longer-term legitimation chain of Brexit and in its institutionalization and more generally in the historical priming of their readership with negative coverage of the UK/EU relationship.

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Starting with a brief introduction on the relation between language varieties and language attitu... more Starting with a brief introduction on the relation between language varieties and language attitudes and a brief historical view, this lecture focuses on the role of media, TV programme in particular, on reflecting and constructing language as an index of class, ethnicity and other identities.
We will be using successful comedy Little Britain introduces to discuss to what extent the characterisation of certain characters such as Vicky Pollard or Daffyd can de read as a demonisation of their social identities or post-PC satire.

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This is a recording of my presentation at CADAAD 2022 Bergamo

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Books by Franco Zappettini

Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis., 2023

Political branding responds to the need of parties to effectively differentiate themselves from o... more Political branding responds to the need of parties to effectively
differentiate themselves from others, and to produce suitable messages in a
roster of digital media, by drawing on data-driven insights (Susila et al. 2019;
Jungherr et al. 2020). For this reason, understanding how political brands
communicate and engage with audiences continues to be a core area of
research which calls for more insights into the use of artificial intelligence (AI)
in political marketing (Falkowski & Jablonska 2019). In this chapter, we
explore the impact of digital media on political branding by pursuing a big
data approach (O’Halloran et al. 2022- in press), involving the analysis of
linguistic resources in political parties’ official communication on Twitter. The
approach involves the integration of Critical Discursive approaches (e.g. van
Leeuwen 2005; Wodak & Meyer 2016) with computational tools and AI, by
building on the capabilities of Multimodal Analysis Platform (MAP), a cloudbased
platform for searching, storing, and analyzing online media texts (e.g.
social media, news media, and websites) (O’Halloran et al. 2021). Our
multidisciplinary approach, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses,
is demonstrated through a case-study that investigates how the Conservative
Party and the Labour Party in the UK branded Brexit during the debate over
the agreement and the implementation of a ‘deal’ with the European Union.
We highlight key discursive patterns through which the two parties strategically
differentiated themselves from each other while aligning Brexit with specific ideological visions. The study also highlights possible ways forward for largescale
analysis, combining discourse analytic with computational approaches.

This special issue continues the discussion of the role of emotion in discourse (see Russian Jour... more This special issue continues the discussion of the role of emotion in discourse (see Russian Journal of Linguistics 2015 (1) and 2018, 22 (1)) which, as testified by the burgeoning body of literature in the field, has become more prominent in different spheres and contexts of public life. This time we focus on emotionalisation of media discourse. We highlight the intensification of emotions in media and, showcasing contributions from international authors, critically reflect on constructions, functions and pragmatic purposes of emotions in media discourse. Our aim is to investigate emotions in the media from semiotic, pragmatic and discursive perspectives against the contemporary sociopolitical background in which traditional notions concerning the role of media are being noticeably changed. In this introductory article, we also put forward an agenda for further research by briefly outlining three main areas of exploration: the logics of media production and reception, the boundaries of media discourse, and the semiotic resources deployed to construct emotionality. We then present the articles in this issue and highlight their contributions to the study of linguistic representations of emotions. We then summarise the main results and suggest a brief avenue for further research.

European Identities in Discourse: A tranantional citizens' perspective, 2019

European Identities in Dsicourse: A transnational citizens perspective, 2019

European Identities is Disocurse: A transnational Perspective, 2019

European Identities in Discourse: A transnational citizens' perspective, 2019

European Journal of Communication, 2020

European Identities in Discourse: A Transnational Citizens' Perspective, 2019

Based on empirical research, this book closely analyses how European identities are discursively ... more Based on empirical research, this book closely analyses how European identities are discursively produced. It focuses on discourse from members of a civic association active in promoting democracy and attempting participation in the transnational public sphere.
Unlike previous books that have addressed the question of European identity from top-down stances or through methodological nationalism, this book engages with the multifaceted concept of transnationalism as a key to the negotiation of 'glocal' identities. Applying a discourse historical approach (DHA) through a transnational reading, it shows how grassroots actors/speakers construct their different cultural and political affiliations as both world and European citizens. They negotiate institutional identities and historical discourses of nationhood through new forms of mobility, cultural diversity and the imagination of Europe as a proxy for a cosmopolitan civil society. These discourses are ever more important in a fractured and polarised Europe falling prey to contrary discourses of nationhood and ethnic solidarity.
Highlighting how transnational narratives of solidarity and the de-territorialisation of civic participation can impact on the (re)imagination of the European community beyond tropes like 'Fortress Europe' or intragovernmental politics, this important book shows how identification processes must be read through historical and global as well as localised contexts.

Discourses of Brexit

This contribution focuses on internationalism as a key driver of discourses of Brexit. It examine... more This contribution focuses on internationalism as a key driver of discourses of Brexit. It examines a corpus of official documents published by the newly created Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) in which the British government sets out its vision for ‘a new partnership with the European Union’ and ‘a truly global Britain’. This data is analysed through argumentation theory (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012) to identify how specific representations of internationalism act as legitimizing tools of Brexit.
This contribution argues that the official vision of a new, global, and out-of-the-EU Britain imagined in the texts legitimises Brexit through shifting national, European, and global contexts as both rupture and continuity of liberal international narratives. On the one hand, the ideological approach to ‘global Britain’ and free trade perpetrates historical discourses informed by mercantile rationales and indulges in post-imperial nostalgia and a resurgent English nationalism. On the other hand, such vision rejects the EU’s transnational social and political project in favour of economic neoliberalism, which raises the ultimate question of who will benefit from Brexit and ‘global Britain’.

Transnationalism is a multi-faceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged, inte... more Transnationalism is a multi-faceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged, inter alia, the paradigm of national affiliations. The trasnationalisation of the European field has arguably contributed to a political arena where embryonic post-national identities and new forms of belonging are being negotiated, challenged and legitimised. By investigating the discourses of members of a transnational NGO of ‘active’ citizens, this chapter seeks to understand how current European identities are discursively constructed from bottom up in the public sphere. Appropriating CDA, this chapter offers insights into how discursive strategies and linguistic devices used by the speakers and predicated on the indexicality of transnational frames, construct Europe and patterns of belonging to it. This chapter suggests different conceptual dimensions of transnationalism enacted by members in discourse which are conveniently summarised as nation-centric, Euro-centric and cosmopolitan.

309 views

Theoretical insights and pratical applications of the language of the British tabloid press

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Theoretical insights and practical applications of the language of the British tabloid press

1 views

Theoretical insights and practical applications of the language of the British tabloid press

6 views

31 views

22 views

This is a recording of my presentation at CADAAD 2022 Bergamo

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Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis., 2023

European Identities in Discourse: A tranantional citizens' perspective, 2019

European Identities in Dsicourse: A transnational citizens perspective, 2019

European Identities is Disocurse: A transnational Perspective, 2019

European Identities in Discourse: A transnational citizens' perspective, 2019

European Journal of Communication, 2020

European Identities in Discourse: A Transnational Citizens' Perspective, 2019

Discourses of Brexit

International Journal of Strategic CCommunication, 2023

While several studies have explored strategic communication in relation to military intervention,... more While several studies have explored strategic communication in relation to military intervention, this study analyses communicative strategies in the context of military withdrawals and redeployments. We focus on the case study of the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan to analyse which (and how) strategic narratives were discursively mobilised by the US administration on Twitter (now known as X) to seek public support and legitimacy for its operations. Findings suggest that key narratives of securitisation, national interest and responsibility were deployed through macro strategies of transcendence, bolstering, blaming and mitigation. We claim that while early representations of the war in Afghanistan were depicted as an unavoidable mission, the overarching discourse has now shifted to portrayals of the war being unsustainable and no longer needed by the United States.

Journal of language and Politics, 2022

This paper investigates how Brexit was de/legitimised by different Labour actors in a corpus of t... more This paper investigates how Brexit was de/legitimised by different Labour actors in a corpus of texts published after the referendum (2016–2020). It thus contributes an intra-party perspective to understanding discursive dynamics of European (dis)integration by building on the notorious ‘European question’ historically debated inside Labour and on the polysemy of Brexit constructed by/reflected in such discourses. The analysis, conducted at lexical-semantic and discursive-pragmatic levels, points to distinct strategic, ideological and ambivalent forms of de/legitimation of Brexit in the discourses of Labour. While strategic and ambivalent de/legitimation point to the Brexit debate being mainly driven by political communication logics, ideological de/legitimation highlights a deeper struggle inside Labour over EU-rope, especially in relation to international vs. national conceptualisations of socialism. While EU-rope was de/legitimised (and Brexit legitimised) by advocates of ‘socialism in one country’, reverse stances tended to be adopted by supporters of ‘international socialism’.

This paper discusses how emotions were mobilised by the British tabloid press as discursive strat... more This paper discusses how emotions were mobilised by the British tabloid press as discursive strategies of persuasion during the public debate on the implementation of Brexit. Using the case study of the Sun's coverage of the alleged UK's 'humiliation' at the Salzburg meeting (2018) during the Brexit negotiations, the analysis addresses the questions of how and through which linguistic means actors and events were framed discursively in such an article. The findings suggest that The Sun elicited emotions of fear, frustration, pride, and freedom to frame Brexit along a longestablished narrative of domination and national heroism. The discourse was also sustained by a discursive prosody in keeping with a satirical genre and a populist register that have often characterised the British tabloid press. In particular the linguistic analysis has shown how antagonistic representations of the UK and the EU were driven by an allegory of 'incompetent' gangsterism and morally justified resistance. Emotionalisation in the article was thus aimed both at ridiculing the EU and at representing it as a criminal organisation. Such framing was instrumental in pushing the newspaper agenda as much as in legitimising and institutionalising 'harder' forms of Brexit with the tabloid's readership. Approaching journalist discourse at the intersection of affective, stylistic, and political dimensions of communication, this paper extends the body of literature on the instrumental use of emotive arguments and populist narratives and on the wider historical role of tabloid journalism in representing political relations. between the UK and the EU.

Journal of Contemporary European Research Volume 17, Issue 2 , 2021

This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle duri... more This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle during their campaigns for the European Parliament elections (January-May 2019). We focus on the Italian case as it is representative of a generalised shift in European public discourse towards an overt delegitimation of the European project and its re-imagination. In the Italian case, Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle, which were in a Government coalition for fourteen months, have been instrumental in Italy's shift from a strong Europhile country to one of the most Eurosceptic. However, while Lega has definitely aligned itself with a strong right-wing populist agenda, Movimento 5 Stelle has promoted a populist technocratic vision of democracy. Our analysis shows that the articulation of Eurosceptic discourses from both parties by and large reflects the two stances above with Lega's messages (primarily produced by its leader Matteo Salvini) characterised by a 'hyperled' style of communication and stronger nativist elements (for example the appeal to an ethno-centric and 'sovereign' idea of Italy) than those of Movimento 5 Stelle, which instead relied on a 'horizontal' communicative style. However, our data also shows that the delegitimation of Europe in both parties occur along a similar domestication of European affairs into the national political agenda and the call for a reformed Europe along nationalistic logics which both parties claimed to champion.

Journal of Language and Politics

Consistent with a populist script, evoking the people has been a nodal point in the discursive un... more Consistent with a populist script, evoking the people has been a nodal point in the discursive unfolding of Brexit and its legitimation. This paper focuses on the mediatisation of the Brexit referendum campaign in a corpus of online British tabloids to address the critical question of how the people in whose name Brexit was (de)legitimised were discursively constructed and mobilized. The argument put forward is that the legitimation of Brexit was achieved through exclusionary definitions of the people and through strategies of fear, resentment and empowerment. This discursive framing points to the wider question of the instrumental role that a large section of the British tabloid press has had not simply in the contingency of referendum but also in the longer-term legitimation chain of Brexit and in its institutionalisation and more generally in the historical priming of their readership with negative coverage of the UK/EU relationship.

Critical Discourse Studies, 2019

While the exact nature of Britain’s exit from the EU – or ‘Brexit’ as it has been popularised – i... more While the exact nature of Britain’s exit from the EU – or ‘Brexit’ as it has been popularised – is still as unclear as whether it will take place at all, the complex ontology, unfolding and impact of such an unprecedented event have been investigated widely in several aca- demic ﬁelds and especially in the sizeable body of work at the intersection of sociological, political and communicative dimensions (see for example, Clarke & Newman, 2017; Evans & Menon, 2017; Koller, Kopf, & Miglbauer, 2019; Ridge-Newman, Leon-Solis, & O’Donnell, 2018; Outhwaite, 2017; Wincott, Peterson, & Convery, 2017).
While our special issue joins the existent studies, it also diﬀers from such work by speciﬁcally taking a critical discursive perspective. In doing so, we rely on an interpretation of Brexit as a ‘critical juncture’ (see below) in which diﬀerent historical and contingent discursive nexuses and trajectories have been at play. Hence, we focus on the interplay between socio-political contexts as well as, therein, on various patterns of discursive work of both mediatisation and politicisation of Brexit, both before and after the UK 2016 EU Referendum. Through our focus, we explore a variety of context-dependent, ideologically-driven social, political and econ- omic imaginaries that were attached to the idea/concept of Brexit and related notions in the process of their discursive articulation and legitimation in the UK and internationally.
Our contribution has thus three interrelated aims. First, the articles in this special issue provide evidence of how the Brexit referendum debate and its immediate reactions were discursively framed and made sense of by a variety of social and political actors and through diﬀerent media. Second, we show how such discourses reﬂect the wider path-dependent historical and political processes which have been instrumental in deﬁning the discursive and mediatic contexts within which Brexit has been articulated. Third, we identify discursive trajectories at play in the ongoing process of Brexit putting forward an agenda for further analysis of such trajectories.

Critical Discourse Studies, 2019

This paper analyses the discourses produced on their websites by the two organisations that condu... more This paper analyses the discourses produced on their websites by the two organisations that conducted the official ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ campaigns in the Brexit referendum. The analysis, which adopts the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach in CDS, is aimed at illuminating the main discursive strategies, argumentative schemes and key representations of Britain in/and Europe that sustained the ideological (de)legitimation of Brexit on either side. Based on this analysis, this paper argues that the specific ideological articulation of two key discursive elements – namely trade and immigration – and the argumentative schemes deployed in the campaign engendered and legitimised a new toxic (inter)national logic of Brexit: by leaving the EU, Britain ‘takes back control’ to pursue mercantile policies whose benefits ‘outsiders’ should be excluded from.

Since their emergence, discourses of sustainability have been widely resemioticised in different ... more Since their emergence, discourses of sustainability have been widely resemioticised in different genres and have intertextually merged with other discourses and practices. This article examines the emergence of Integrated Reporting (IR) as a new hybrid genre in which, along with financial information, organisations may choose to report the social and environmental impacts of their activities in one single document. Specifically, this article analyses a selected sample of IRs produced by early adopters to explore how discourses of sustainability have been recontextualised into financial and economic macro discourses and how different intertextual/interdiscursive relations have played out in linguistic constructions of ‘sustainability’. We contend that, by and large, the term sustainability has been appropriated, mixed with other discourses and semantically ‘bent’ to construct the organisation itself as being financially sustainable, that is, viable and profitable and for the primary benefit of shareholders. From this stance, we argue that, through the hybridity of IR, most companies have primarily colonised discourses of sustainability for the rhetorical purpose of self-legitimation.

Transnationalism is a multifaceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged , inte... more Transnationalism is a multifaceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged , inter alia, the paradigm of national affiliations. The trasnationalisation of the EU-ropean field has arguably contributed to a political arena where embryonic post-national identities and new forms of belonging are being negotiated, challenged and legitimized. By investigating the discourses of members of a trans-national NGO of 'active' citizens, this paper seeks to understand how current European identities are discur-sively constructed from bottom up in the public sphere. Appropriating CDA this paper offers insights into how discursive strategies and linguistic devices used by the speakers, and predicated on the indexicality of transnational frames, construct Europe and patterns of belonging to it. This paper suggests different conceptual dimensions of transnationalism enacted by members in discourse which are conveniently summa-rised as: nation-centric, Euro-centric, and cosmopolitan.

Drawing on a study conducted with an association of citizens operating in the European public sph... more Drawing on a study conducted with an association of citizens operating in the European public sphere and applying the Discourse Historical Approach, this paper investigates how the organisation’s members construct their transnational citizenship and how they negotiate it vis-à-vis European, national, and local identities. The analysis reveals that informants often claim their transnational identities as membership of an expanded community of relevance, through the transportability of their civic engagement and through meta-narratives of spatiality and progress whereby cosmopolitan scenarios are often reterritorialised within the European space. These arguments are frequently realised through the metaphorical scenario of ‘spatial dynamics’ which makes sense of identities as emergent from unbounded social interaction, and through the indexicality of transnational narratives as specific discourses of socio-historical transformation of nationhood.

‘A badge of Europeanness’ Shaping identity through the European Union’s institutional discours... more ‘A badge of Europeanness’

Shaping identity through the European Union’s institutional discourse on multilingualism

Franco Zappettini
Royal Holloway, University of London
This paper contributes to the advancement of the established body of literature on language and identity by ascertaining how discursive representations of multilingualism at an institutional level have interplayed with the construction and the definition of European identities. Using the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak 2001), the analysis focuses on a corpus of official speeches given by the European Commissioner for Multilingualism to identify discursive strategies and linguistic devices and link them to wider socio-political and historic dynamics. Findings suggest that the institutional construction of Europeanness has primarily occurred through macro discourses predicated on cultural, civic and economic dimensions of multilingualism with some inherent tensions in contrasting representations of ‘diverse’ and multilingual EU-rope. It is suggested that through heterogeneous representations of multilingualism torn between identity politics and commodification, European identities emerge as hybrid and fragmented constructs in between national, post national and global dimensions. Keywords: European identities; multilingualism in EU discourses; institutional representations of language and identity; Discourse Historical Approach
In: Journal of Language and Politics 13:3. 2014. (pp. 375–403)

Social and Environmental Accountability Journal 34 (3) 172-186

This paper highlights the need to take materiality into account when analysing the absence of soc... more This paper highlights the need to take materiality into account when analysing the absence of social and/or environmental disclosures from organisational sustainability reports. It argues that materiality must be considered as a prerequisite when researchers seek to interpret lack of disclosures of specific social and/or environmental issues or incidents. Illustrating these arguments using an example from interpretation of absence from reporting in a recent award-winning paper, we contend that such interpretations can only be justified if organisational processes related to materiality are factored into the analysis of rhetorical or symbolic representations of sustainability within organisational reporting, a point that tends to be missed in studies of absence from sustainability reporting.

Journal of Language and Politics 12:2, 305-309

The contribution of this paper is primarily theoretical as it aims to advance new insights into d... more The contribution of this paper is primarily theoretical as it aims to advance new insights into discursive dynamics associated with ‘chains of legitimation’ negotiated between political and media discursive practices. I will offer empirical evidence of such dynamics from the mediatisation and institutionalisation of Brexit to show how the discursive nexuses of the ‘will of the people’ and ‘popular sovereignty’ have been instrumental in the (de)legitimation chain of Brexit and its construction as a ‘critical juncture’ (Zappettini & Krzyzanowski, 2019). More specifically I will focus on the role of the media and draw from a corpus of British tabloids to argue that Brexit was legitimised as a reaction to moral panics constructed around antagonistic representations of different ‘people’ and through strategies of fear which built on pre-legitimation strategies rooted in historical priming of the readership. This regulation of knowledge by the media provided the public with an imaginary sense of empowerment and control over issues perceived as external threats and crucially allowed such discourses to enter and escalate the institutional chain. This paper will thus call for an understanding of legitimation processes in discourse from multi-actor, diachronic and ‘chained’ perspectives.

The result of the Brexit referendum epitomised the momentum gained by populist ideologies that ha... more The result of the Brexit referendum epitomised the momentum gained by populist ideologies that have increasingly dominated the British and international political landscape. Building on Laclau's (1994) account of 'people' as a key 'floating signifier' in populist discourses, this paper focuses on the context of Brexit to examine how populist ideologies circulating in the public sphere were echoed in the British media and how, in most cases, provided the dominant discursive frame that legitimised the referendum 'in/out' binary choice. Adopting a critical discursive approach and linguistic methodologies, the textual analysis engages with the use of rhetorical and evaluative language in the representations of social actors and events and with the semantic relations constructed around the key term 'people' to address the following questions:

This article highlights the social importance of figurative language in discourse. Starting with ... more This article highlights the social importance of figurative language in discourse. Starting with a brief review of the literature on the socio-cognitive approach to discourse - understood in its amplest sense of ‘text in context’ - I stress that the notion of social semantics might help explain the inherent potential of the metaphor as both a tool of reproduction and of renewal of social structures.

This paper focuses on the discourses of members of a transnational grassroots political associati... more This paper focuses on the discourses of members of a transnational grassroots political association with particular regards to members’ linguistic constructions of ‘European space’ and the role of such metaphorical scenario in members’ self-perception as transnational citizens.
The analysis reveals that the definition of space in members’ discourses often emerged through meta-geographical representations of Europe predicated, inter alia, on the deconstruction of borders (as a symbol of nation states) and the de/re-territorialisation of Europe as a socio-political project. Moreover, representations of movement of people and culture as flows across glocal networks - rather than bounded by states and regions - contributed to a redefinition of European geopolitical dynamics in line with cosmopolitan views.
It is contended that these conceptualizations of the European space have important implications for the definition of members’ Europeanness, for their orientation to citizenship, their social locations, and the negotiation of binaries such as in/out; close/open; and core/periphery.

Critical Discourse Analysis: Concepts, Methods and Applications Transcript of the Presentation gi... more Critical Discourse Analysis: Concepts, Methods and Applications
Transcript of the Presentation given at the
Intensive Week Methods Training for Postgraduate Students
Open University, 13th – 17th July 2020

Dr. Franco Zappettini
Department of Communication & Media – University of Liverpool
Franco.Zappettini@liverpool.ac.uk
@frazapuk

Questo articolo offre uno studio comparativo delle forme di esclusione societaria nei confronti d... more Questo articolo offre uno studio comparativo delle forme di esclusione societaria nei confronti di persone LGBT nelle societa’ inglese ed italiana negli ultimi 30 anni. Vengono esaminati nello specifico una serie di testi e pubblicazioni e attraverso l’analisi critica del discorso si cerca di fare luce su come le diverse opinioni ed (eventuali) aperture societarie verso sessualita’ ‘non-standard’ abbiano interagito con la costruzione e realizzazione di identita’ LGBT.

MAPD 2020 CfP, 2019

MAPD 2020 Multidisciplinary Approaches to Political Discourse #3: Responding to new challenges 25... more MAPD 2020
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Political Discourse
#3: Responding to new challenges
25-26 June 2020
University of Liverpool

Following on from previous "Political Discourse-Multidisciplinary Approaches" conferences in London (2016) and Edinburgh (2018), we are pleased to announce MAPD 2020 (Multidisciplinary Approaches to Political Discourse) will take place in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool on 25-26 June 2020. The global political arena is changing at an unprecedented pace. We see the resurgence of authoritarianism, nativism/nationalism, sovereignism, populism and far-right movements driving major changes across societies against the backdrop of increasing global inequalities, left/right fragmentation, migration. In addition, we witness power plays between well-established and emerging global players resulting in re-militarization and 'trade wars'. Obvious manifestations of these turbulent times include phenomena such as Brexit; the rise of political actors like Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Salvini and discursive articulations around hate speech, incivility, Islamophobia and Euroscepticism.

At the same time, we see an increase in the mediatisation and (re)articulation of political discourses (both top-down and bottom-up) through the use of technology and digital platforms. Along with traditional broadcasting and reporting of politicians’ speeches, party political broadcasts, campaign advertisements and government statements, we increasingly experience the political daily in new popular media forms such as Facebook feeds, promotional videos, tweets and online mash ups. These transformations require us to think critically about issues of saturation, manipulation, relations of power, political correctness, interference, influence, counter-discourses, subversion, information bubbles and fake news, to name a few.
The theme for this year’s conference reflects our aim to bring together scholars from a variety of discursive and political approaches to critically examine the challenges we face in such a volatile landscape and the theoretical and analytical responses we can provide. We encourage contributions which explore any aspect of the conference theme of “responding to new challenges”. These may include (but are not limited to):
• The role of social media and/or popular culture in the production, distribution and consumption of political discourses
• New theoretical and analytical challenges to the analysis of legitimation processes in discourse
• The (dis)advantages of present approaches to political discourse (e.g. cognitive, historical, corpus-driven, interpretive policy analysis, cultural political economy, argumentation-based approaches, etc.)
• Mediatization of discourses of authoritarianism, nativism/nationalism, sovereignism, populism and far-right movements
• The politics of the environment, the body, etc.
• (Multimodal) counter-discourses; including the use of social media platforms and new formats such as memes as sites and means of protest, resistance and subversion of hegemonic discourse
• Metadiscourse about the state of public/political discourse and issues surrounding access/voice
• Theoretical challenges: How to address issues of saturation, manipulation, relations of power, interference, influence, information bubbles, fake news, and incivility of political discourse
• Case studies of new social/ political phenomena, top-down/bottom-up political actors and their discursive articulations
Keynote speakers
Prof Kay O’Halloran (University of Liverpool)
Prof Michał Krzyżanowski (Örebro University, Sweden)
• The conference language is English.
• We encourage single papers and theme specific panels
• Papers will be allocated 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and discussion
• Abstracts of 250-300 words (excluding bibliography) of single papers should be sent by email as a Word document attachment to MAPD2020@liverpool.ac.uk
• Please include name, affiliation, email address and paper title in the body of the email.
• Abstracts of panels (500 word maximum) must be submitted by the panel organiser(s) and should include a maximum of six contributions. Each panel paper must follow the criteria of the single papers outlined above.
• Abstracts will be subject to review by an international scientific committee.
Deadlines:
• 15th December 2019: Deadline for submission of panel proposals and individual abstracts
• 31st January 2020: Notification of panels/papers acceptance. Please note that if a panel is not accepted panel papers will be considered individually
Queries about the conference and abstracts should be sent to the conference organisers, Franco Zappettini and Lyndon Way at MAPD2020@liverpool.ac.uk.
Conference Fees (including lunches and refreshments, but excluding conference dinner):
Full fee: £ 200 - early bird (before 15 April 2020): £ 160
Post graduates: £ 100 – early bird (before 15 April 2020): £80
Single day fee: £ 150 – Post graduate Single Day fee: £60
Conference Dinner: £ 40 (to be booked separately)
There will be reasonably priced accommodation available on campus
Organising Committee
Ekaterina Balabanova, University of Liverpool, UK
Sam Bennett, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland
Massimiliano Demata, University of Turin, Italy
Isabela Fairclough, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Laura Filardo Llamas, University of Valladolid, Spain
Simona Guerra, University of Leicester, UK
Christopher Hart, University of Lancaster, UK
Darren Kelsey, University of Newcastle, UK
Veronika Koller, University of Lancaster, UK
Michael Kranert, University of Southampton, UK
Marzia Maccaferri, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Douglas Ponton, University of Catania, Italy
Melani Schroeter, University of Reading, UK
Contact
• @MAPD2020
• MAPD2020@liverpool.ac.u

Contributions are sought for the panel 'Legitimation processes in discourse: new theoretical and ... more Contributions are sought for the panel 'Legitimation processes in discourse: new theoretical and empirical insights' which is expected to be presented at the 23rd DiscourseNet Conference: Discourse, power and mind: between reason and emotion, held at the University of Bergamo, Italy 6-8 June 2019. The aim of the panel is to explore the different ways in which discourse (in its amplest meaning of 'language in use') is key in processes of legitimation across a variety of socio-political contexts. Whilst contributions can be theoretically focused or driven by empirical analysis, they are expected to build on the wealth of literature on the topic and to show how they contribute to the advancement of the knowledge in the field of Critical Discourse Studies from fresh perspectives. Possible suggested topics include (but are not limited to): The role of (new) media in legitimation processes Theoretical contributions to understanding the construction of 'legitimation chains' Legitimation crisis of the EU Naturalisation/Institutionalisation of extreme political discourses Legitimation through 'fake news' Deadlines A 500 words abstract in English should initially be submitted to franco.zappettini@liverpool.ac.uk no later than 7th October 2018 with: title of the paper, author's affiliation, topic, key theoretical/analytical approach and key contribution to the field. Acceptance to the panel will be notified to contributors by 10 th October. Authors of accepted contributions will be required to submit a shorter version of their abstract to the conference organisers following the instructions detailed on the conference website It is expected that papers successfully presented at the panel will be included in an edited publication. Further enquiries can be addressed to: franco.zappettini@liverpool.ac.uk

Since the IIRC was founded in 2010, its aims for Integrated Reporting have shifted from providing... more Since the IIRC was founded in 2010, its aims for Integrated Reporting have shifted from providing a report to a broad range of stakeholders offering an integrated holistic understanding of an entity’s social, environmental and economic sustainability, to a report providing financial investors with an understanding of the medium- and long-term economic sustainability of the entity. In this paper we refer to this shift as the economic turn in the IIRC’s version of, and vison for, Integrated Reporting (IR).
Through the theory and methods of Critical Discourse Analysis applied to a sample of IRs from UK companies, this paper assesses the extent to which the economic turn in the IIRC’s policies is reflected in an economic and shareholder focus in UK IR practice. Our analysis concentrates on the two key concepts from the IIRC’s 2013 International Integrated Reporting Framework: Value and Capital.
We find, consistent with the notion of an economic turn in IR policies, that discourses about value and capital are predominately related to economic conceptions of both value and capital from the perspective of shareholders. However, perhaps inconsistent with the notion of an economic turn in the IIRC’s vision for IR, we found that some discourses constructed value along contradictory macro narratives of sustainability and responsibility on the one hand and growth and performance on the other. We found the most conspicuous divergence in the use of the term value when comparing discourses between the financial statement and strategic review sections of IRs.
Our analysis also found that discourses of capital other than financial capital (and its increase and decrease) were notably absent from, or marginal in, the IRs of most companies. Only the small number of public service entities in our sample engaged in discussion of broader, non-financial, forms of capital.
While the relatively small incidence of discourses of value and capital that were not directly economic and shareholder focused in nature might be taken as evidence against the universality of a claimed economic turn in IIRC IR in practice, caution needs to be exercised in reaching such an interpretation. The IIRC Framework makes clear that providing some forms of value to stakeholders other than investors, and managing some forms of capital other than financial capital, can and do have an impact on the value of financial capital for shareholders. A further study would be necessary to ascertain whether, and/or to what extent, any non-economic IR discourses of value and capital of the type we found signpost any impact upon financial capital for investors – consistent with an economic turn in IR.

Critical Discourse Analysis: Concepts, Methods and Applications Transcript of the presentation gi... more Critical Discourse Analysis: Concepts, Methods and Applications
Transcript of the presentation given at the
Intensive Week Methods Training for Postgraduate Students
Open University, 13th – 17th July 2020

Dr. Franco Zappettini
Department of Communication & Media – University of Liverpool
Franco.Zappettini@liverpool.ac.uk
@frazapuk

This thesis examines the construction of ‘European identity’ in the discourses of members of Euro... more This thesis examines the construction of ‘European identity’ in the discourses of members of European Alternatives (EA), an association of citizens which characterizes itself as committed to the grassroots construction of a better society ‘beyond the nation-state’.
By taking bottom-up and transnational perspectives, this study intends to fill a gap in the field of Critical Discourse Studies that seems to have largely underestimated the value of social action and the need to move away from ‘methodological nationalism’ in conceiving of how Europeanness is transformed and enacted.
The study applies the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak 2001) to a corpus of data comprising of four focus groups and nine individual interviews with EA members from 10 different branches across Europe.
The results suggest a complex and very dynamic picture of how European identities are constructed, challenged and transformed by members who, typically, adopted strategies of dismantling of nationhood, and strategies of ‘imagining’ new communities, spaces and social orders.
Two key linguistic features conspicuously drive the members’ discourses of ‘belonging to Europe/being European’. One is the metaphorical scenario of spatial dynamics that, by and large, makes sense of the ‘European space’ as unbounded and interconnected with the world and whereby the European society is seen as progression and expansion of an ‘imagined’ community towards certain cosmopolitan ideals. The second element is the indexicality of transnationalism and Europe, two terms that members invested with a range of meanings including ideals of democracy, diversity, and equality but that were also constructed through the recontextualisation of historical discourses of nationhood.
This thesis thus suggests that, for EA members, the transformation of Europeanness is not a linear process (as for example some theories of the
4
‘Europeanisation’ of society would have it) but, rather a dialectic one which relates to one’s situatedness within temporal, spatial, and social dimensions and which is achieved via multiple and dynamic identification processes with different communities of relevance.

This is a research paper based on an ethnographic study conducted with an transnational NGO of 'a... more This is a research paper based on an ethnographic study conducted with an transnational NGO of 'active citizens' engaged with grassroots European politics.

Theresa May's speech: a flight of international escapism In the knowledge that it would be imposs... more Theresa May's speech: a flight of international escapism In the knowledge that it would be impossible for Britain to have its cake and eat it too (i.e. to fully control immigration whilst being part of the single market) the government has now made clear that they've opted for the hard Brexit solution so much favoured by David Davies, Liam Fox and other staunch Brexiteers. In her speech given at Lancaster House, Prime Minister Theresa May invoked internationalism as the future direction for the UK outside the EU. However, this was rhetorical escapism, a convenient way out of the Brexit empasse for, let's be clear, the kind of internationalism that Mrs. May is advocating is purely based on economic logics, it is driven by the most extreme discourses of the 'Leave' campaign and it has very little to do with the cosmopolitan ideal of the common humanity of peoples coming together as nations. To be sure, like many other political concepts, the notion of internationalism has been appropriated by many different political agendas and it has changed through history referring to different, sometimes opposed, ideologies. What Marx meant by internationalism – solidarity across borders that would unite workers under a common socialist cause – is different from say the American idea of internationalism (as opposed to isolationism) denoting involvement in world affairs in the name of democracy and justice ideals that has shaped much of America's postwar role. Again, the kind of internationalism that Italian politician and active promoter of the unification of Italy Giuseppe Mazzini had in mind in the 19 th century somewhat shares elements of classical liberals Ricardo and Adam Smith, namely that the organisation of statehood and the cooperation between states (whether through trade or political interests) would help the development of democratic institutions and ultimately benefit individuals as they prosper in a peaceful society. Whilst most of all these interpretations of internationalism engaged with some sense of cosmopolitan brotherhood, they did not have to account for questions of immigration nor did they emerge at a time of increased awareness of global issues and interconnectedness that characterizes our societies. The extent to which we are experiencing migration flows in the 21 st century is dramatically different from anything of the past and it has certainly a lot to do with the voices of the 'left behind' or the Syrian migrants that Europe has failed to listen to. Nevertheless, appealing to the traditional international order based on border and nation-centric visions of politics is rather problematic. Because, for all the rhetoric of Britain being a 'truly global' nation and Britain's history and culture " profoundly internationalist " (euphemism for colonialist), the grand internationalist vision of post-Brexit Britain that Mrs. May projected in her speech relies, on the one hand, on the idea that state-containers regulate immigration flows and, on the other, on striking 'deals' with other state-containers. It is important however to stress the weakness of the argument that out-of-the-EU deals are a type of cake that Britain will be able to have and eat too.

This chapter contributes to understanding the blurred boundaries of hate speech by focusing on 's... more This chapter contributes to understanding the blurred boundaries of hate speech by focusing on 'soft' hate speech in the context of Brexit. The discussion builds on the premise that, in many respects, stances for/against Brexit were mediatised in the public sphere as a quest for de/legitimising representations of Britishness vis-à-vis 'continental' Europe and that in a considerable section of the press such representations were predicated on Europhobia. I therefore initially refer to discrimination as a strategy of differentiation between us and them resting on irrational propaganda (Rawlinson, 2020). I will aim to demonstrate that a good proportion of discourses in the pre-legitimation and institutionalisation phases of Brexit (Zappettini, 2022) were articulated in the media along an implicit/explicit rationale of 'national discrimination'. I will discuss how the discriminatory orientation of such discourses was achieved via strategies of victimisation of the UK and, at the same time, of national pride that validated past and future 'British exceptionalism'. The analysis-which will initially trace historical roots of Europhobic discourse to focus on a more recent corpus of mainstream British newspapers-is carried out via a multimodal analysis of the key rhetorical and argumentative strategies deployed in news coverage and editorials of key Brexit related events and actors (Zappettini et al forthcoming; Serafis et al 2020). Drawing from the analysis, this study will argue that soft hate speech can also be understood as more or less subtle forms of media propaganda about the nation that, in the case of Brexit, were instrumental in the escalation, and normalisation/institutionalisation of certain discriminatory discourses.

Transnationalism is a multifaceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged, inter... more Transnationalism is a multifaceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged, inter alia, the paradigm of national affiliations. The trasnationalisation of the EU-ropean field has arguably contributed to a political arena where embryonic post-national identities and new forms of belonging are being negotiated, challenged and legitimized. By investigating the discourses of members of a transnational NGO of 'active' citizens, this paper seeks to understand how current European identities are discursively constructed from bottom up in the public sphere. Appropriating CDA, this paper offers insights into how discursive strategies and linguistic devices used by the speakers and predicated on the indexicality of transnational frames, construct Europe and patterns of belonging to it. This paper suggests different conceptual dimensions of transnationalism enacted by members in discourse which are conveniently summarised as: nation-centric, Euro-centric, and cosmopolitan.

Exploring Interconnectedness Closing conference in Aarhus November 28-30th 2019, University of Aarhus

Plenary Talks | Plenarvorträge European identities in discourse: conceptual frameworks and analyt... more Plenary Talks | Plenarvorträge
European identities in discourse: conceptual frameworks and analytical tools
Franco Zappettini (University of Liverpool)

The talk focuses on the discursive articulation/enactment of Europeanness and other identities and on the conceptual and analytical tools whereby we can make sense of these subject positions.

Following a general Critical Discourse Studies orientation, Zappettini will highlight the different linguistic, historical, cultural and socio-political frameworks that one needs to bring together when ‘searching’ for European identities. He will illustrate his approach to the exploration of identities in discourse by drawing from his recent monograph (Zappettini, 2019) based on an ethnographic study he conducted with members of a grassroots European civic association.

Zappettini will suggest that members’ identification with Europe as a political and cultural community of relevance is largely driven by spatial metaphors and topoi associated with transnational and even cosmopolitan views of society that do not necessarily reproduce institutional discourses or taken for granted categories of nationhood. In this sense, members often problematised and dismantled national identities while their relationality vis-à-vis Europeanness was reimagined along polycentric and ‘glocalised’ logics. This should invite us to consider the pitfalls of adopting ‘methodological nationalism’ when investigating European identities bottom-up.

Zappettini, F. (2019). European Identities in Discourse: A Transnational Citizens' Perspective. Bloomsbury: London

Workshop at the EAP Presessional Course 1/8-9/9 University of Portsmouth

Critical Discourse Studies, Mar 19, 2019

European Journal of Communication, Feb 1, 2020

Discourse & Communication, Aug 19, 2016

Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, Sep 2, 2014

European Journal of Communication, Sep 16, 2021

Communicating Brexit: what have we learnt? Reflecting the magnitude of the UK’s decision to leave... more Communicating Brexit: what have we learnt? Reflecting the magnitude of the UK’s decision to leave the EU, academic investigation on Brexit has been abundant in virtually all fields including that of Communication Studies where a wealth of work has analysed Brexit from different linguistic, political, social and media perspectives (see e.g. Zappettini and Krzyżanowski, 2021). The volumes by Charteris-Black and Rawlinson contribute to such body of work that aims to critically show how imaginaries associated with the signifier ‘Brexit’ were constructed and widely reverberated in the public sphere by the media. While both Charteris-Black and Rawlinson point to how the mediatisation of Brexit was instrumental in shaping and swaying public opinion, they do so from different theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches. Charteris-Black’s work is grounded in cognitive linguistics which explains the power of figurative language by focusing on the relationships between semiotic, rhetorical and psycho-emotional aspects of communication. By contrast, Rawlinson engages with a critique of the British right-wing press from the perspective of journalism studies arguing that the Brexit coverage was biased and deliberately misinformative as it was aimed at influencing and manipulating public opinion, in other words a form of political propaganda. An established scholar of Critical Linguistics, Charteris-Black’s view of figurative language (such as metaphorical expressions) is that it operates at a much deeper level than its literal meanings. How citizens talk about a particular concept (such as Brexit) has significant cognitive implications for how one conceives of and relates to the topic. Following from Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) seminal work – which explains metaphors as mapping a familiar experience onto an abstract field (such as representing nations as ‘families’) – Review Essay

Journal of Language and Politics, Feb 2, 2022

In this article we introduce our special issue of the Journal of Language & Politics on t... more In this article we introduce our special issue of the Journal of Language & Politics on the (de)legitimisation of Europe. We start by outlining the rationale and research that led us to the special issue. In Section 2 we set out the contextual framing of the contributions, i.e., the crisis of legitimacy that European institutions and indeed the entire European project, have faced for the last decade and a half; crises that have been brought about by different events and actors and have resulted in centrifugal and centripetal processes. Next, we outline our theoretical approach to legitimation, which combines politico-sociological perspectives with discursive and communicative ones. This is followed by Section 4, which introduces and weaves together the contributions to the special issue. Finally, in Section 5 we briefly discuss the findings with regard to the aims and goals of the issue and also suggest potential next research steps.

Journal of Language and Politics, Nov 10, 2020

Critical Discourse Studies, Mar 14, 2019

Journal of Language and Politics, Dec 11, 2014

This paper contributes to the advancement of the established body of literature on language and i... more This paper contributes to the advancement of the established body of literature on language and identity by ascertaining how discursive representations of multilingualism at an institutional level have interplayed with the construction and the definition of European identities. Using the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak 2001), the analysis focuses on a corpus of official speeches given by the European Commissioner for Multilingualism to identify discursive strategies and linguistic devices and link them to wider socio-political and historic dynamics. Findings suggest that the institutional construction of Europeanness has primarily occurred through macro discourses predicated on cultural, civic and economic dimensions of multilingualism with some inherent tensions in contrasting representations of ‘diverse’ and multilingual EU-rope. It is suggested that through heterogeneous representations of multilingualism torn between identity politics and commodification, European identities emerge as hybrid and fragmented constructs in between national, post national and global dimensions.

Routledge eBooks, Feb 12, 2019

Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics, 2017

Journal of Language and Politics, Aug 2, 2012

Russian journal of linguistics, Dec 15, 2021

DiscourseNet25 - Global Dispositives, 2020

Join us at 25th DiscourseNet international conference on Global Dispositives! (12-15.11.2020, Tyu... more Join us at 25th DiscourseNet international conference on Global Dispositives! (12-15.11.2020, Tyumen)

#DN25 invites you to discuss Global Dispositives – those complex figurations of discourses, technologies, and practices which are expected to reshape the world society in the coming decade: digital, cultural, political, economic, infrastructural and environmental entanglements on a global level. #DN25 includes (but is not restricted to) topics such as digital transformation and data cultures, the New Silk road, the rise of the Arctic region, global media changes, global value chain, policies on issues such as migration, inequality, environment and development.

The point of departure of #DN25 are studies and practices of discourse. For this reason, we invite scholars from various disciplines of humanities and social sciences (e.g. media and communication studies, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, cultural and political studies, philosophy, economy and law), but also activists, artists, journalists, policy makers and policy analysts to join this discussion. Our common goal is to re-conceptualise and/or to make sense of the global processes whose passive witnesses we do not accept to be.

This conference, hosted at Tyumen University will be carried out in cooperation with International DiscourseNet Association, Swiss University of Lugano and Beijing School of Government and Public Affairs.

You can read & download the CfP here

Covid19 disclaimer

We are well aware of the Covid19-pandemic. However, we hope and believe that by mid November the danger will be over. Also, we do not want to stop 'doing science'. In case of a different, unwanted, development, we will be able to offer alternatives concerning either the time or the format of the event (e.g. online). We therefore invite you to send in your paper, panel and poster proposals. We will take into account all the recommendations of the authorities and health experts.

Contributions are invited to an Open Access Special Issue of Societies which explores how EU-rope... more Contributions are invited to an Open Access Special Issue of Societies which explores how EU-rope has been mediatised in a variety of recent social contexts and how that has contributed to different forms of de/legitimation of (trans)national solidarity. We thus focus on how different meaning(s) of (trans)national identities have been constructed, negotiated and challenged not only amidst different ‘crises’ such as Brexit, austerity, Covid, but also in relation to new digital affordances and actors. We interrogate the production, circulation and consumption of top-down/bottom-up, institutional/public discourse of EU- rope in and by a variety of media to explain how these have related to de/legitimation processes.
Our aim is to contribute to the interdisciplinary literature at the intersection of Critical Discourse Studies, European studies, Political Communication, Journalism and Media Studies. Contributions in the form of research articles or conceptual papers are encouraged that tackle the question of the mediatisation of Europe(an identity) from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. A 500-word detailed abstract clearly stating topic, research questions, theoretical framework and methodology adopted as well as preliminary findings should be submitted to the Guest editor for initial evaluation by 30/6/2020.

CfP, 2020

Discourse Studies cover a growing field of interdisciplinary research on meaning making practices... more Discourse Studies cover a growing field of interdisciplinary research on meaning making practices, communicative activities and symbolic representations. Cultural studies, linguistics, media analysis, geography, and history, among others, highlight the role of texts, pictures and language in the constitution of truth and reality. Actor-oriented disciplines such as political science, sociology, pedagogy, psychology or economics and management studies are interested in the formation of subjectivities, identities and agencies. Focussing on the nexus of Discourses in Post-National Spaces this conference aims to bring different strands from the interdisciplinary field of Discourse Studies into dialogue. In the last few years, several developments show that the traditional world of nation states with its lingual characteristics, social structures and institutional orders is undergoing a transition period towards a new constellation of powers. Nation states only exist as "imagined communities" but not as institutional "container"-realities. The rise of China is changing traditional self-perceptions in the West, Brexit in UK shows that the nation state can no longer be the main frame of reference, Trumpism takes into question established liberal values, Russia celebrates a comeback as military and fossil power, and migrants from post-colonial Africa are massively moving to Europe. Different forms of nativism (as particular form of nationalism) are reactions to these developments. The emergence of illiberal democracies in Central and Eastern Europe can no longer be perceived as a domestic phenomenon of a particular nation-state. It is rather a challenge for the European unity in diversity. Migration becomes a politicised normality 1 2 6 th D is c o u rs e N e t C o n fe re n c e P o s t-N a t io n a l D is c o u r s e s : tr a n s n a ti o n a l c o m m u n ic a ti o n s , tr a n s v e rs a l s u b je c ti v it ie s a n d n e w fo rm s o f n a ti v is m in g lo b a li s e d s o c ie ti e s

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning by illuminatin... more The aim of this paper is to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning by illuminating discursive practices around the concept of 'authentic assessment' (University of Liverpool, C2021). More specifically, this study explores how authentic assessment has been conceptualised and applied by a selected sample of academics in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. From constructivist and discursive perspectives, this paper assesses how meanings of authenticity are constructed by interviewees (and perceived to be applied in their practice) and the extent to which such meanings recontextualise (Bernstein, 1972/2003) institutional discourses (as formalised in Curriculum 2021) and, more widely, general concepts associated with authenticity as discussed in the extant body of academic and professional literature on the subject. Findings suggest that while authenticity is to some extent reproduced drawing from institutional discourses, different stances existed among participants which do not necessarily overlap with institutional visions. Findings also suggest that, when engaging in discourses of authenticity and authentic assessment, interviewees tended to recontextualise and combine meanings of realness, practicality, and usefulness, highlighting the meaningfulness of different tasks to students. The term purposefulness is suggested here that could capture such key concepts.