My research draws from a number of subfields within sociocultural linguistics—namely, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and socially oriented forms of discourse analysis.  In addition, I pull from ideas provided by a number of related disciplines engaged in critical language studies, including communication studies, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy, and literary studies.  In my view, studying the social life of language is fundamentally an interdisciplinary project, and I endeavor to bring together theories and methods offered by these different traditions in a way that enhances our understanding of them as complementary rather than competing. 

In my research, I take a critical approach to the study of language and communicative practices in social and cultural 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 and the role of language in relations of power, I aim to illuminate the way discourse 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,” draws from the model of identity formation forwarded by Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall (2004, inter alia) to examine 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 forthcoming chapter, “Discursive Constructions of Global War and Terror,” in Nikolas Coupland’s (ed.) Handbook of Language and Globalization, explores 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 political discourse.  The framework draws from the Bakhtin Circle’s notion of dialogism and ideas on intertextuality forwarded by linguistic anthropologists, discourse scholars, and poststructuralist theorists.  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.

A monograph based on my dissertation research is currently in production with Oxford University Press. The book, set to appear in 2011, provides a comprehensive look at the Bush administration’s discourse about terrorism now that the rhetorical landscape has shifted with the new Obama administration.

© Adam Hodges