[SlawKaus] Thielemann & Berrocal / #Turow – Debating the Mine on Twitter: National and Transcultural Discourses on Social Media (virtual lecture) / ReDiCo Digital Interculturality

[Ruprecht von Waldenfels]

Liebe Kolleginnen,

wir möchten Sie herzlich einladen zu unserem Vortrag im Rahmen der 
virtuellen Ringvorlesung des Team ReDiCo zum Thema Digitale 
Interkulturalität<https://redico.eu/de/projekt-digitale-interkulturalitaet/ringvorlesung-digitale-interkulturalitaet/>.

Martina Berrocal (Friedrich Schiller Universität, Jena) & Nadine 
Thielemann (WU Wien)

#Turow – Debating the Mine on Twitter: National and Transcultural 
Discourses on Social Media

8.12.2023, 12 bis 13.30 h (MEZ)

Ein Zoomlink kann angefordert werden bei 
contact at redico.eu<mailto:contact at redico.eu>

Abstract


Much public debate today is carried out on Twitter (now X), an arena 
where, in order to get their ideas across, participants have developed a 
range of resources. Disentangling these into clear and understandable 
structures and patterns presents a fresh challenge for discourse 
pragmatics. The first aim of the present article is to contribute 
methodologically to meeting it. We therefore examine various methods 
previously used to identify and classify pragmatic patterns within 
discourses, our conclusion being that none is fully satisfactory and 
that a new system of coding contributions is desirable. We then outline 
such a scheme based on a posting’s primary pragmatic function 
(informing, appealing, or expressing emotivity), but also taking into 
account subsidiary functions. Moving on to address our second aim – to 
enhance understanding of communication within the digital realm – we 
apply our scheme to a particular case of online debate. This is the 
discussion on Twitter of the Turów lignite mine, in Poland, and its 
damaging impact on areas located across the border in Czechia, and of 
attempts by the Czech and European authorities to prevent or mitigate 
this impact. The discussion takes place essentially in three languages – 
Polish, Czech, and English – and our analysis uses separate samples of 
tweets drawn from each of them. It enables us to identify three distinct 
discourses, each associated with one of the languages and each 
characterized by a particular interpretation of the topic and a 
particular distribution of pragmatic patterns. Thus, while the English 
sample is characterized by a transnational discourse of appeal in 
support of the broad decarbonization agenda, the other samples view the 
Turów case overwhelmingly as a national political issue. Their 
discourses are oppositional and rely heavily on emotivity directed, in 
the Polish case, primarily against the country’s ruling party, and in 
the Czech one against the deal eventually reached with Poland to 
mitigate the problems. These findings suggest that our function-related 
coding scheme does indeed offer useful insights into online discourses.





Herzlich,

Nadine Thielemann


=================================================================
Univ. Prof. Dr. Nadine Thielemann

Head of
Institute for Slavic Languages
Department for Business Communication

WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business
Welthandelsplatz 1, Gebäude D2, Eingang D, Büro 3.194
1020 Wien/Vienna, Austria
Tel.: +43-1-31336-5427
Fax: +43-1-31336-907044
e-mail: nadine.thielemann at wu.ac.at<mailto:nadine.thielemann at wu.ac.at>
homepage: https://research.wu.ac.at/de/persons/nadine-thielemann-8

New publications:
Thielemann & Weiss (eds.) (2023): Remedies against the Pandemic. How 
politicians communicate their crisis management. Amsterdam / 
Philadelphia: Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.102

Thielemann & Berrocal (2023): Framing the Energy Transition: The Case of 
Polands Turów Lignite Mine. International Journal of Strategic 
Communication https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2023.2234881