Research
My research takes a critical approach to the study of language and communicative practices in social, cultural and political life. My primary sites of study involve the domains of politics and mass media where I examine how public discourse builds shared cultural narratives, represents issues of ‘truth’, and constructs identities. Through my focus on the construction of meaning, I aim to illuminate the way language use shapes and influences sociopolitical reality.
My major contributions in this endeavor have involved several projects that examine political and media discourse.
- My edited volume, Discourse, War and Terrorism (2007), brings together contributions from linguistics as well as communication, media, cultural and political studies to explore the discursive responses to 9/11 in the United States and around the world. The book arose out of a panel I organized for the 2004 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association; and a paperback version was released in 2009.
- My chapter in the edited volume, “The Narrative Construction of Identity,’” examines the role presidential rhetoric plays in defining the enemy in times of war.
- In an article published in Social Semiotics in 2007, “The Political Economy of Truth in the ‘War on Terror' Discourse,” I analyze how the struggle over the ‘truth’ in politics unfolds during the discursive interaction of a television interview.
- In an article published in Discourse & Society in 2008, “The Politics of Recontextualization,” I examine the way prior discourse is recontextualized within the context of the political press conference to forward and contest controversial political claims.
- In a forthcoming chapter in a volume on language and globalization, I explore the dialogic connections involved in the global interchange of ideas about war and terror.
My interest in understanding the connection between micro-level discursive action and macro-level cultural understandings led me to develop an intertextual framework for analyzing the ‘war on terror’ discourse. The framework draws from the Bakhtin Circle’s notion of dialogism and ideas on intertextuality forwarded by literary theorists, linguistic anthropologists, and discourse scholars. I develop this framework in several conference papers, my 2008 article in Discourse & Society, and, most notably, in my doctoral dissertation.
My dissertation, The ‘War on Terror’ Narrative: The (Inter)Textual Construction and Contestation of Sociopolitical Reality, analyzes three types of data—presidential speeches, U.S. media discourse, and focus group interviews—to provide a longitudinal and holistic study of the formation, circulation, and contestation of what I term the Bush ‘war on terror’ narrative (BWoTN). The narrative, which forwards a powerful set of assumptions and explanations about America’s response to terrorism since September 11, 2001, acts as a type of discursive formation that sustains, in Foucault’s (1980) terms, a ‘regime of truth.’ It places boundaries around what can meaningfully be said and understood about the subject. As I illustrate in the dissertation, even as social actors resist the narrative and the policy it entails, they appropriate its language to be listened to and understood. While this often works to reproduce and strengthen the narrative, discourse is inevitably reshaped as it enters into new contexts. This recontextualization, therefore, leaves open the possibility for the introduction of new meanings; and therein rests the potential for resistance and social transformation. Thus, I place a large emphasis on the intertextual process whereby prior discourse is re-presented—i.e. reanimated and reshaped—across different settings. As I argue, applying ideas on intertextuality to the analysis of political discourse is central to understanding the way micro-level discursive action contributes to the circulation—and even the contestation—of macro-level cultural narratives like the BWoTN.
Currently, I am preparing a manuscript that draws from my dissertation research to provide a comprehensive look at the Bush administration’s discourse about terrorism now that the rhetorical landscape has shifted with the new Obama administration. In addition, I am in the conceptual and early writing stages for a book on language and politics based on a course I am teaching on the subject at Stanford.