Abstract This study investigates Canadian media representations of Amber Heard’s testimony during the defamation trial against Johnny Depp. We analyse the varied (and sometimes biased) discursive strategies the media used to represent Heard’s voice, with a particular focus on reported speech ( Caldas-Coulthard 1993 ) and naming strategies ( Clark 1992 ). Our analysis shows social gender ideologies are inserted through reported speech in the media. The naming strategies and images also point to a tendency to portray Heard as an emotional source, thus associating her emotional display with insincere acting ( Matoesian 2001 ). We argue that the media’s non-neutral portrayal of Heard’s testimony as well as its emotional nature impedes on her sincerity as a victim and credibility as a witness. We argue that our analysis illustrates a well-established tendency in the media to discredit women’s experiences of gender violence.
Abstract This study explores the selection and representation of expert voices in the coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict by mapping the linguistic and stylistic choices editors make when soliciting the opinions of academic, professional or independent sources. It uses a representative dataset of articles from a range of elite English-language opinion-making news outlets (the BBC, CNN, Euronews, the Independent, the Irish Times, the National Post, and Newsweek), sourced between February 2022 and June 2024. It identifies salient patterns of how (not so diverse) experts on the war in Ukraine are introduced as sources of credible information and newsworthy opinion. It illustrates how both credibility and newsworthiness (realized mainly through linguistic markers of eliteness) are discursively constructed through a range of strategies of naming and characterizing the sources and representing their speech directly or via editorializing. In the opinion-making news media, these linguistic patterns of source and voice representation have a bearing on the sense of validity of argumentation, the projection of neutrality, and the creation of audience engagement.
Intense argumentation characterised the 2020 U.S. presidential debate. This study investigates the turn-taking strategies employed by Donald Trump and Joe Biden to build their arguments during the debate. The analysis draws on Stenstr & ouml;m's (2014) framework of turn-taking and Toulmin's (2003) model of argumentation. A qualitative method is used, with data consisting of selected utterances from the first and second rounds of presidential debate videos obtained from C-SPAN. The findings indicate that "taking the turn" and its various subcategories are employed predominantly and assertively. Trump uses them to dominate the floor, while Biden adopts a more measured and structured approach. Trump's arguments are characterised by assertive claims, specific backing, and repetition; Biden, by contrast, structures his arguments through data and warrants. Both candidates make use of distinct sub-strategies of "holding the turn" as they organise and deliver their logical arguments.
This paper examines Virginia Woolf's distinctive English and the challenges of translating it into Russian. To this end, it provides an analysis of Woolf's essay On Being Ill, considering the stylistic features which define her language. This includes separating subjects and predicates with multiple subordinate clauses, parataxis, and mixing direct and indirect discourse. Woolf's prose rhythm is created through alternating long and short sentences, repeating syntactic structures, pairing homogeneous elements, anaphora, inversion, and parenthesis. She also uses words similar in sound and rhythm. Moreover, translating Woolf's work involves not just linguistic but also cultural transference, as her texts contain hidden quotations. All its features are a challenge for the translator who has chosen a style-sensitive approach.
This article positions audio description (AD) as a critical site for assessing the cross-linguistic transportability of Netflix's Inclusion Strategy - a commitment to embedding an inclusion lens in hiring, commissioning, and storytelling. It examines how this inclusionary imaginary is re-articulated when AD is tasked with verbalizing a diverse storyworld, particularly when produced in languages other than that of the original audiovisual text. Using Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story as a test case, the study offers a comparative micro-analysis of four AD tracks (British English, Metropolitan French, Peninsular Spanish, and Latin American Spanish) for the dialogue-free opening of the first episode, where the series' racial desegregation ("the Great Experiment") is established. The analysis shows that diversity is unevenly verbalized across languages in the selected excerpts. This suggests that Netflix assumes its U.S.-centric inclusionary imaginary circulates transnationally and cross-linguistically as universally intelligible, and thus requires no explicit articulation in its guidelines, despite the cultural and linguistic specificity of the issues it encodes. As a result, the task of rendering these ideological commitments is effectively displaced onto largely un(der)credited localization workflows, where, in the absence of clear guidance, they are variably interpreted, reformulated, or muted.
