“Not Just the Levees Broke”: Jazz Vernacular and the Rhetoric of the Dispossessed in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke

This essay proposes the notion of the “jazz vernacular” as a tool specific to the Creole culture in New Orleans for understanding racial discourses of disposability both geographically and historically. We argue that the jazz vernacular is a discourse structured by musical repertoire. The jazz vernacular provides a channel for the historical pain of the black diaspora by playing in the background, both literally and figuratively, of communication in and about New Orleans. This essay considers Spike Lee's documentary When The Levees Broke to understand how the jazz vernacular frames hurricane Katrina as well as how it frames Lee's film as an intervention into “neoliberal” racial discourses. We argue that Lee's film utilizes the jazz vernacular as a metadiscourse to reinforce the ways in which residents used jazz to restructure cultural memory around the rhetoric of the dispossessed in New Orleans after Katrina. When the Levees Broke uses testimonials and affective communication to structure the narrative of Katrina through elements of the jazz vernacular like: displacement, embodiment, brashness, and improvisation to connect contemporary Creole New Orleanians to a long history of structural oppression and violence. By harnessing performative elements, Lee's film performs a jazz intervention into neoliberal discourses about freedom, defense, safety, and heroism that contrasts these discourses with the despair and the resistance of black America. Consequently, Lee's use of the jazz vernacular relies on native musical culture to recontextualize what neoliberalism had erased.     

The 2008 Presidential Election, 2.0: A Content Analysis of User-Generated Political Facebook Groups

Although Facebook is primarily known for building and maintaining relationships, the 2008 presidential election highlighted this social networking website as a viable tool for political communication. In fact, during primary season until Election Day in 2008, Facebook users created more than 1,000 Facebook group pages that focused on Barack Obama and John McCain. Using quantitative content analysis, the primary purpose of this study was to assess how both John McCain and Barack Obama were portrayed across these Facebook groups. Results indicated that group membership and activity levels were higher for Barack Obama than for John McCain. Overall, Barack Obama was portrayed more positively across Facebook groups than John McCain. In addition, profanity, racial, religious, and age-related language were also coded for and varied with regard to how each candidate was portrayed. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

“Save our students”: contesting discourses of racist attacks against Indians down under

This paper seeks to understand the dominant civic discourses of accusation of racism leveled against the Australians as expressed by the victims of racist attacks and Indian Government officials in the Times of India and Outlook India news magazines. The aim of the paper is to understand how the logics of the discourses have constituted the racially motivated attacks on the Indian diaspora in Australia, and how the nationalistic sentiments are fostered among the diasporic Indians and the Indians in India. The paper argues that there is a mutual production of diasporic and homeland nationalism in the face of a crisis that hits the Indian diaspora in Australia. This analysis also brings to fore the ideology of multiculturalism in Australia.     

Communicating a “New” Environmental Vernacular: A Sense of Relations-in-Place

This study focuses on communication as a lens and tool for reinvigorating and empowering marginalized cultural environmental relations. We use a community-based cultural approach to identify a core Hispanic premise of a sense of relations-in-place. This premise constitutes nature as a socially integrated space that provides the grounding for human relations, and differs from dominant Western discourses that constitute nature as an entity separate from humans. The study's interpretation of a more integrated orientation to environment has the potential to inform wider alternative ecocultural discourses and applications that are more inclusive, and perhaps more sustainable.     

Politics and race in American historical popular music: contextualized access and minstrel music archives

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama, an African-American man was elected as the 44th President of the United States. The election of a man of Obama??s racial and ethnic background is an event of monumental social and political significance. Many Americans, both black and white, stated openly that they would never have imagined that such an election result could take place in their lifetimes, or during the lives of their children or even grandchildren. Such is the awareness of the legacy of racial hatred and injustice toward African-Americans in the United States. Ever present, that legacy was apparent in a myriad of expressions of racism throughout Obama??s presidential campaign and still continues since his election. Knowledge of the social and political dynamics that emerged from the demise of African-American slavery is essential to understanding race relations in twenty-first century America. Many of the economic and social ills that have plagued the nation for generations can be traced back to the struggle for and resistance to racial equality and fair treatment. Now accessible in digitized sheet music collections of blackface minstrel music on the internet, a record of nineteenth and early twentieth century perspectives is uniquely captured through the popular music of past generations. Illuminating the political and social attitudes that led to commonly held beliefs and practices regarding African-Americans, this music has the power to help make sense of current racial dynamics and contributes to understanding the connection between meaning and context in how cultural knowledge is developed and represented.     

Make no exception,save one: American exceptionalism,the American presidency,and the age of Obama

This paper explores the circumstances under which U.S. presidents have invoked American exceptionalism in major speeches and how this concept has culminated in the Obama presidency. We find that U.S. presidents have increased their invocations of American exceptionalism since the Second World War and that they have relied heavily on this concept in times of national crises. Moreover, we demonstrate the overwhelming propensity of President Obama, relative to his predecessors, to emphasize American exceptionalism. We argue that this is due to the double-crisis nature of his presidency – two major wars and a recession – in addition to the racial bind that he has endured throughout his presidency. We reflect on the implications for other minority politicians and the broader American public.     

The vortex of multiculturalism in South Korea: a critical discourse analysis of the characterization of “multicultural children” in three newspapers

This study investigates how multicultural children have been portrayed by the Korean media, where the term is typically used to mean a child of an underprivileged Korean man and a female marriage migrant from a less industrialized neighboring country. Adopting the theoretical lens of critical discourse analysis, I examine news articles published from 2009 to 2013 in the Hankyoreh, the Hankook Ilbo, and the Chosun Ilbo: three daily newspapers representing a full range of progressive, moderate, and conservative political perspectives within society. Analysis reveals that multicultural children have been characterized as a marginalized group, as a threat to the future Korean society, or as global human resources. Given that these discourses are manifestations of underlying ideology, I also explore how these three discourses are conjoined with three competing ideologies in Korea; namely, democracy, nationalism, and neoliberalism. This study concludes by discussing how multiculturalism serves as a discursive framework through which democratic, nationalist, and neoliberal ideas gain their effectiveness.     

Visualizing the Rhetorical Presidency: Barack Obama in the Situation Room

On the night of May 1, 2011, almost 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, President Obama announced on live television that Osama bin Laden was dead. The next day, the Situation Room photograph was released, revealing a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how tense it was at the White House while the mission was underway. Building on previous scholarship about the rhetorical presidency and visual rhetoric, this essay analyzes how the photograph, combined with the context of Obama's speech the night of the raid, contributes to the increasingly visual aspect of the rhetorical presidency and creates an image of Obama as a strong commander in chief.     

The SANU Memorandum: Intellectual Authority and the Constitution of an Exclusive Serbian “People”

Through this essay, I assert that the intellectual authority of prominent cultural intellectuals can affect a form of “cultural pedagogy” that can essentially re-educate an audience through constitutive discourses that can re-articulate that audience's identity, cultural framework, and historical references, and in so doing can normalize mass violence. Serbian intellectuals and cultural elites played a prominent role in initializing the extreme nationalist mindset that increasingly polarized Yugoslavia throughout the 1980s. In 1986, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) drafted a Memorandum, the publication of which in the Serbian newspaper Vjecernje Novosti is retrospectively the precipitating event that awakened Serbian national consciousness. This essay critiques the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences with regard to its role in constructing an exclusive and politically charged Serbian identity. Beginning with an examination of the Memorandum's central claims, this essay asserts that the dominant mythic themes that emerge in the document were part of a deliberate teleological reordering of historical events that provided the foundation for the constitutive rhetoric of Serbian intellectuals-turned-politicians. This essay allows for a deeper understanding of the effects of constitutive discourses, rooted in a mythos of victimization, on the emergent nationalism and mass violence in the former Yugoslavia.     

Nothing but the Facts?

This paper seeks to understand how journalists deal with storytelling and truth-seeking in their daily news practice. While storytelling is usually studied through texts, we approached it from a practice perspective, combining data from three ethnographic studies in which 36 beat reporters and 13 journalistic storytelling experts were extensively interviewed. Because of the emphasis journalists place on “finding out the truth” in public discourses, it is tempting for academics to present them as naive truth-seekers. However, by means of an interpretative repertoire analysis of their “practice” discourses, we seek to enlarge the discursive space to talk about the supposed tension between story and reality. Although departing from the idea that all news making is storytelling, the interviewed journalists consider news making and storytelling as distinct—and sometimes opposing—practices. These professional practices serve as the framework around which five storytelling repertoires are organized.     

Mediating Frida: Negotiating Discourses of Latina/o Authenticity in Global Media Representations of Ethnic Identity

This article analyzes the discourses of Latina/o identity embedded in the movie Frida, the Latino news coverage about the film, and an on-line chat stream about the film. Comparing the identity discourses circulated by the movie's producers, Latina/o journalists, and Latina/o audiences when discussing the film shows how different communities negotiate the meanings of ethnic identity. The study concludes that the discourses of ethnic identity circulated through the movie, news coverage, and chat stream disrupt notions of Latina/o ethnic identity as a stable and commodifiable demographic category.     

The Subtleties of Blatant Sexism

This essay examines The Man Show as a contemporary example of blatant sexism. A growing body of feminist criticism documents the emergence of subtle forms of sexism in popular culture. Such forms may be characterized as an accommodation or hegemonic negotiation in which dominant discourses must become flexible in the face of pressure from oppressed groups. Yet blatant sexism abounds in contemporary culture. I argue that The Man Show provides viewers with rhetorical resources to imagine their viewing practices as an act of protest against an imagined dominant female authority, and that those resources potentially allow viewers to accept the sexism of the program at face value.     

In/discernible bodies: the politics of passing in dominant and marginal media

This essay explores news media coverage of two types of alleged “passing”: passing across racial lines from Black to White and across sex lines from female to male. Textual analysis of dominant print media and print media discourses produced by and/or addressed to Blacks and queers reveals prominent frames through which news consumers are invited to perceive these events. In particular, the analysis demonstrates that both dominant and marginal social groups express the desire to fix the identities of passers in a single, discrete category, although these groups wish to do so for disparate reasons. In addition, marginal groups frame passing events within broad cultural and historical contexts in contrast to the narrow contexts framed by dominant media. Comparison of race and sex passing exposes the similarities–including community consternation about the passer–and differences–including disparate focus on civil rights rather than identity issues–between Black and queer coverage of these events. Comparison of race and sex passing also exposes the way in which dominant media correlate race passing with class passing, while sex passing is correlated to sexuality passing (that is, queer passing for heterosexual).     

Conditional Autonomy

Current developments in the Swedish news business have resulted in clashes between the professional stands of journalists and the incentives of their managers, or—from a theoretical perspective—a confrontation between discourses of journalistic professionalism and managerialism. While professionalism includes values of autonomy, self-regulation and public interest, managerialism on the other hand promotes business ideals, standardisation and organisational efficiency. Above all, it promotes a centralised management model of line control at the cost of collegial decision-making and peer review. But what does this mean in practice? In what situations does the negotiation between those discourses arise in everyday news work and how does it affect the autonomy of journalists?

This paper aims to answer those questions by focusing on the experiences of Swedish journalists working in the tension field between professional and managerial discourses. This empirical study includes observation studies as well as interviews with journalists and their managers in four Swedish daily newspapers.

The results clearly reveal a conditioned journalistic autonomy, and shows how professional ideals are tarnished. The economistic view of journalistic activities is forcefully and successfully implemented by management.     

Feeling bad can be good?: audience research on Korean reality makeover shows,Get It Beauty and The Body Show

This paper investigates the feelings of individuals who have been exposed to the continuous demands for managing and beautifying the body. Through audience research on Korean reality shows about body/beauty, Get It Beauty and The Body Show, we attempt to understand how the discourses of body care work at the individual level. Our interviewees’ feelings of being stressed, burdened, and annoyed about the discourses in the shows signify their (un)conscious acknowledgment of the false promises of the self-care rhetoric. However, the discourses of willpower and the embedded voyeuristic pleasure of watching the shows make it difficult to place such feelings in the public domain. We conclude that individuals’ feelings lose their potential as resistant voices when “feeling bad” is discounted as personal, while a feeling of individual achievement is excessively celebrated.     

Competing News Frames and Hegemonic Discourses in the Construction of Contemporary Immigration and Immigrants in the United States

Using content analysis of the New York Times and USA Today, this study investigates the framing of immigration in two policy debates: on the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437) in 2006 and on the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act or Arizona Senate Bill (S.B.) 1070 in 2010. The bills crystallized various discourses on immigration in American society. Drawing on literature on media discourses, news frames, and framing processes, the article examines the attempt of mainstream mass media to reduce the complexity of immigration into palatable talking points. The findings demonstrate that through framing, the media create diametrically opposed representations of immigration and contemporary immigrants but at the same time normalize dominant ways of thinking and talking about immigration that sustain and consolidate power relationships.     

Taking Care of Authenticity on the CBC’s Randy’s Vinyl Tap

This essay explores the radio program Randy’s Vinyl Tap, which is hosted by Randy Bachman and airs on CBC Radio 1 (2005-present). I argue that the show’s complex reception can be explained, in part, by the fact that it transgresses dominant conceptions of authenticity in both rock music and public broadcasting discourses. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I explore ways in which Bachman evokes a “carnivalesque” approach to public communication.     

Exploring Family Discourses About Purity Pledges: Connecting Relationships and Popular Culture

This study explores connections between popular culture and family interaction. Multiadic interview data were collected from families who enacted purity pledges. Using contrapuntal analysis, results indicate how competing familial discourses about popular culture serve as both centrifugal and centripetal forces. Fathers rejected many sexual values in popular culture texts, but they also appreciated that popular culture makes purity rings intelligible to others. Mothers expressed frustration at portrayals of teenage pregnancy on television. Children indicated that their parents did not understand how they saw popular culture, in competition with the aforementioned parental discourses, but appreciated that their parents cared. They also articulated parental disapproval of a current generation's popular culture choices as ongoing ritual, thus allowing the competing discourses to operate in a centripetal fashion. Overall, it is apparent that distal popular culture discourses inform proximal, constitutive family discourses about sex and sexuality.