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Speaking on behalf of oneself and others : Negotiating speaker identities in journalistic discourse on refugee activism in Sweden

Persson, Gustav LU (2018) In Discourse & Society 30(2). p.188-204
Abstract
Journalism has an important role in making political participation visible to the public. In representing the voices of the public, journalism produces discourses on democratic engagement that tell us a great deal about the norms of how these discourses conceive of practices of political engagement. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which speaker identities are given to and taken by migrant activists participating in Swedish radio interviews. Employing Goffman’s concept of footing, this article shows that there are conflicting speaker identities that the activists are adopting and are given by the framework of the radio interviews. The main conflict in how the speaker identities are made up is based on the negotiations around... (More)
Journalism has an important role in making political participation visible to the public. In representing the voices of the public, journalism produces discourses on democratic engagement that tell us a great deal about the norms of how these discourses conceive of practices of political engagement. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which speaker identities are given to and taken by migrant activists participating in Swedish radio interviews. Employing Goffman’s concept of footing, this article shows that there are conflicting speaker identities that the activists are adopting and are given by the framework of the radio interviews. The main conflict in how the speaker identities are made up is based on the negotiations around how the activists are talking about themselves or about others. The article further shows how talking about others in a public discourse such as journalism requires speakers to make difficult choices in how to represent oneself as a speaker, and that such choices might stand in conflict with a news discourse’s preferred authentic and experiential identity of its sources. (Less)
Abstract (Swedish)
Journalism has an important role in making political participation visible to the public. In representing the voices of the public, journalism produces discourses on democratic engagement that tell us a great deal about the norms of how these discourses conceive of practices of political engagement. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which speaker identities are given to and taken by migrant activists participating in Swedish radio interviews. Employing Goffman’s concept of footing, this article shows that there are conflicting speaker identities that the activists are adopting and are given by the framework of the radio interviews. The main conflict in how the speaker identities are made up is based on the negotiations around... (More)
Journalism has an important role in making political participation visible to the public. In representing the voices of the public, journalism produces discourses on democratic engagement that tell us a great deal about the norms of how these discourses conceive of practices of political engagement. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which speaker identities are given to and taken by migrant activists participating in Swedish radio interviews. Employing Goffman’s concept of footing, this article shows that there are conflicting speaker identities that the activists are adopting and are given by the framework of the radio interviews. The main conflict in how the speaker identities are made up is based on the negotiations around how the activists are talking about themselves or about others. The article further shows how talking about others in a public discourse such as journalism requires speakers to make difficult choices in how to represent oneself as a speaker, and that such choices might stand in conflict with a news discourse’s preferred authentic and experiential identity of its sources. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
Discourse & Society
volume
30
issue
2
pages
17 pages
publisher
SAGE Publications
external identifiers
  • scopus:85058938756
ISSN
1460-3624
DOI
10.1177/0957926518816198
language
English
LU publication?
no
id
459dcc28-2caa-4ead-87cd-d2689fdbba71
date added to LUP
2019-12-20 12:31:19
date last changed
2022-04-18 19:54:30
@article{459dcc28-2caa-4ead-87cd-d2689fdbba71,
  abstract     = {{Journalism has an important role in making political participation visible to the public. In representing the voices of the public, journalism produces discourses on democratic engagement that tell us a great deal about the norms of how these discourses conceive of practices of political engagement. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which speaker identities are given to and taken by migrant activists participating in Swedish radio interviews. Employing Goffman’s concept of footing, this article shows that there are conflicting speaker identities that the activists are adopting and are given by the framework of the radio interviews. The main conflict in how the speaker identities are made up is based on the negotiations around how the activists are talking about themselves or about others. The article further shows how talking about others in a public discourse such as journalism requires speakers to make difficult choices in how to represent oneself as a speaker, and that such choices might stand in conflict with a news discourse’s preferred authentic and experiential identity of its sources.}},
  author       = {{Persson, Gustav}},
  issn         = {{1460-3624}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{12}},
  number       = {{2}},
  pages        = {{188--204}},
  publisher    = {{SAGE Publications}},
  series       = {{Discourse & Society}},
  title        = {{Speaking on behalf of oneself and others : Negotiating speaker identities in journalistic discourse on refugee activism in Sweden}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926518816198}},
  doi          = {{10.1177/0957926518816198}},
  volume       = {{30}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}