(Critical) Discourse Studies and the (new?) normal

1. Introduction

Norms, normalities, and normativities have undoubtedly been disrupted in recent years. Though ‘normal’ is a local, subjective, and fluid concept, norms are fundamental to collective endeavour and social practices and have important implications for ideology, power, and, of course, the construction of meaning in discourse. Indeed, as we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, when ‘normal’ social functioning is disrupted or superseded, new norms (e.g. wearing face masks, social isolation, changing dynamics of everyday social practices, such as eating, travelling, working, education, healthcare, dying, etc.) have been variously adopted, adapted, and developed in response. Equally, the destabilisation or disruption of norms gives rise to contestation over shared social values and normativities, as well as opportunities to galvanise new ways of being. A range of recent international protests that span the political spectrum, such as Black Lives Matter, the Hong Kong protests, gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests, and various environmental protests, each in their own local ways aim for emancipation from some perceived external imposition: from adaptation to a ‘new world order’, for the maintenance of old norms, or to advocate for new ways of being. Moreover, alongside the worldwide adoption of the internet has come the proliferation of online tools – with their own attendant norms and expectations – that have important social consequences. How does a shift online by government institutions affect those without internet access? Does remote work decentralise power for workers and make a freer life possible? Or does it create class divisions for those who are able to work remotely with those who are not? How do moderation practices (or lack of them) influence online debate and interactions? What risks do AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies pose to human societies?

Such changes carried out by different social, political and economic actors seem to orchestrate some of the most important discursive changes (cf. Krzyżanowski 2013, 2018; 2020b) which are apparently embedded in a broader transnational pattern of discursive change (cf. Fairclough 1992) highlighting the larger social, political and economic discourses that: (a) frame and drive the different context-specific changes; (b) give them legitimate force; and (c) reinforce their narrative and rhetorical aptitude.

This volume brings together a selection of papers presented at the 9^th Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines conference held in 2022 (CADAAD2022) and jointly organised by the university of Bergamo and (Italy) and Birmingham City University (UK) which invited work responding to the theme of (Critical) Discourse Analysis and the (new?) normal. In doing so, this volume – like the conference – seeks to add to the ongoing conversation around the complex relationships between norms and discourse in Discourse Studies, and to draw attention to the topically and methodologically pluralistic work that explores these relationships. As Krzyżanowski (2020a: 431) aptly suggests, research in Discourse Studies on norms has been

pivotal in pointing to path-dependencies of normalization processes, to the centrality of classification, distinction and stigmatization or to the role of pre-/legitimation and legitimation via social imaginaries as those which characterise the introduction and communication of new norms and normativites in the public domain. Crucially, many of those features of normalization are often both sustained and nested in context-dependent formats of normalization discourse. The latter […] effectively enables the orchestration of new discursive shifts in public discourse as well as the introduction and pre-/legitimation of new or recontextualised norms and perceptions of what is, and what is not, acceptable and unacceptable in politics, media, institutions and beyond.

For discourse analysts, processes of normalisation may be seen as the exploitation of a series of discursive strategies to gradually introduce, maintain, and/or transform in public discourse ‘acceptable’ ways of being, which have implications for social structures, social practices, and social events (and their representations). These discursive strategies are initiated and re-contextualised as part of a broader social, political and economic action that aims not only to change the norms of social behaviour, but also to gain legitimacy from such change and the introduction of an associated “new” normative order (Krzyżanowski 2020a).

As such, this type of discourse, therefore, not only emphasises and legitimises (van Leeuwen 2007; Reyes 2011), but also pre-/legitimises (Krzyżanowski 2014) new norms. Fairclough (1992), indeed, indicates that this form of normalisation of new discourses is a naturalization process whereby, in order of discourses that are hierarchically organised as ‘dominant’ and ‘dominated’, common-sense ideas are generated from ideological positions to dominate the public mindset: by discarding non dominate discourses that, in the long run, are so perceived as obsolete, the newly constructed dominant discourse “comes to be seen as natural, and legitimate because it is simply the way of conducting oneself” (Fairclough 1989: 91).

This volume attempts to draw further attention to these normalisation processes through bringing together work that examines – from various discourse-analytic perspectives – the constructions and contestations of norms across numerous social domains.

2. Sections of the volume

The volume is divided into five sections, each of them offering a different perspective as to the normalisation processes of ‘new normalities’ in discourse: Exploring new normalities in political discourse, Exploring new normalities in newspaper discourse, Exploring new normalities in promotional discourse, Exploring new normalities in blog discourse, and Exploring new normalities in gender discourse.

The first section, Exploring new normalities in political discourse, begins with Antonio Reyes’ chapter, “Epic narratives in far-right wing populism: Heroes, villains, and feats in Donald Trump and Santiago Abascal’s political communication”. The study examines and contextualises the discursive construction of self and others, threats and actions, and the past to trace the ideological positioning of far-right populist politicians Donald J. Trump and Santiago Abascal as political actors in relation to other actors, actions. By addressing some critical questions and issues (What image of self does each politician present? In what ways do the politicians present the “other”? What kinds of dangers does the “other” present? What kind of proposals do the politicians make in each case? How do politicians harness and process the past?) and applying the discourse-historical approach (Wodak 2012) and the theoretical concepts of “indexicality” (Chilton 2004; Silverstein 1976) and “retrotopia” (Bauman 2017), Reyes’s conclusions suggest that political communication is reminiscent of epic narratives in which self-made heroes recount their own fate and deeds and create a legend around themselves, and in which the threat of internal and external “bad guys” – political elites and migrants – justifies their call to take the political lead. Trump and Abascal, as epic heroes, inspire an ethos capable of accomplishing impossible tasks such as saving America and Spain, alluding to a mythologised past and completing what others were unable to do due to their incapacity.

The chapter “(De-)metaphorisation and ideology in political discourse: A critical framing analysis of ‘Gene’ in Chinese and English contexts” by Qijun Song offers a different political context. It explores how the “gene” metaphor can be understood and justified in Chinese and English political contexts. The meaning of the phrase “Ji Yin” (gene) in Chinese political speech has been the subject of several studies, although its metaphorical import and ideological roots in political discourse have received comparatively little attention. In this study, a corpus analysis and a critical framing analysis are used to show that the term “gene” was mostly used metaphorically in Chinese political discourse to frame China’s revolutionary experiences and spirits to justify its dictatorship. In the English political context, the term has been de-metaphorised and reframed to evoke a sense of threat and apprehension (establishing a surface frame) and to legitimise a moral defence against the perceived immoral (establishing a deep frame). The research shows that demetaphorisation can be a useful tool for (re)framing. Our understanding of the strategic use of (de)metaphorisation and (re)framing for ideological infusion and legitimisation in political communication is thereby enhanced.

Cristina Arizzi’s investigation, “Between entertainment and politics”, is part of a larger corpus-based research on commencement addresses (hereafter CAs) and their function in American presidential discourse (Arizzi 2017). The case of commencement addresses as forms of presidential discourse focuses on a critical examination of a sample of Commencement Addresses (CA) delivered at graduation ceremonies by US presidents in office between 1992 and 2021 (see the American Presidency Projects website) to determine whether there are relationships between the two main categories of graduates – those from US universities and those from US military academies. The research is particularly concerned with the contexts and circumstances revealed by the corpus, drawing on Goffman’s (1959) conception of everyday social interactions as performances in which people act as actors on a stage. In particular, it focuses on analysing the presidents’ performances as speakers, including appearance, demeanour and gestures. Multimodal techniques are used to examine the performative components of CA (Baldry/Thibault 2006; Kress 2010). The paper concludes with some reflections on how political and non-political genres are often combined, embedding covert political messages in texts with different functions and forcing politicians to balance their institutional roles with a more entertaining performance – a development that seems to confirm what has been called the fictionalisation of politics or the politicisation of fiction (Wodak 2009; Wodak/Forchtner 2018).

The political scene from the perspective of media discourse is the main topic of the section Exploring new normalities in newspaper discourse, which comprises two chapters. The first chapter, “The dichotomy of peace and violence in the framing of the 2019 Algerian Hirak by Al-Jazeera English (AJE) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)” by Imane Bahri, aims to examine the online news discourses of Al-Jazeera English (AJE) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in relation to their portrayal of the 2019 Algerian Hirak (2019 AH) during its first sixteen days (22 February to 9 March 2019). To achieve this overarching objective, the study examines the main similarities and differences between the two media outlets in terms of their portrayal of the event and attempts to decipher their hidden ideologies in relation to this portrayal. The study also seeks to find out to what extent AJE and the BBC could subscribe to a peace journalism perspective in their coverage of 2019 AH. The study therefore draws on the two frameworks of critical discourse studies (CDS) and peace/war journalism (P/WJ). It analyses Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001) use of nomination and predication with particular attention to transitivity (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), as well as to van Leeuwen’s (2008) socio-semantic inventory. The study also proposes theoretical adaptations of Galtung’s (2006) P/WJ model and makes an explicit connection to the linguistic categories of the CDS. The analysis reveals striking asymmetries between AJE and the BBC in terms of their representation of the 2019 AH. AJE’s perspective seems closer to PJ than the BBC’s. The former might reflect certain pro-democracy attitudes by portraying the protesters positively, as if they were in control of their protests and their movement as mostly peaceful. Conversely, the BBC’s stance could reflect certain orientalist attitudes expressed through a negative portrayal of the demonstrators and their protests as violent.