Kaufer

The image bite
336
the media images are susceptible to continuous decontextualization
and re-contextualizaüon. Drawing from theories of feminist
critical discourse analysis and gender performance as well as scholarship on the
public/private divide, we examine the commentary of one U.S. television news
organization's (NBC) re-contextualization of the same stock footage of Hillary
Clinton over 10 newscasts spanning 20 months from August 1998 to June of
2000.

337
"the remaining 9 broadcasts feature decontextualized
visual imagery extracted from the memorial service and then recontextualized
over a twenty month interval to contribute to stories about Hillary Clinton's
response to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, her support of Bill Clinton during the
impeachment process, and her bid for a U.S. Senate seat (Parry-Giles 2000)."

"As one can see from Appendix 2, NBC recirculated or rebroadcast most frequently
(RC/RB score = 9) a zoomed-in facial profile of Hillary Clinton from the
memorial service."

338
"We show
that through much of its coverage NBC reifies the public/private divide in traditional
masculine terms, and reports poUing data that re-enforces similar dominant
interpretations. Nonetheless, during the period of her Senate run, the network also
attempts to depict Hillary Clinton as an agent troubling masculine stereotypes and,
in so doing, exercises its own agency to trouble them as well. Such challenges to
rigid binaries support what Holmes (2005,56) refers to as the "chipping away at the
parameters of what is considered acceptable behaviour" for women."

" This question assumes that the American viewers of these image bites could
share at least a tacit awareness of the public/private divide as reflected in the language
and images of the newscasts. To test this deeper assumption, we applied to
the news transcripts a lexical cohesion algorithm developed by Beigman Klebanov
et al. (2008), which extracts every word pair from a transcript of interest and measures
the associative strength (called lexical cohesion) of the pair in terms of their
occurrence in dictionaries (Miller 1990), in large corpora of texts (Deerwester et
al. 1990) and in word association databases compiled over hundreds of English
speakers in the U.S. (Nelson et al. 2004) and the U.K. (Kiss et al. 1973).

"Running
the 10 transcripts of the broadcasts through Beigman-Klebanov's algorithm, we
discovered two large non-interactive clusters of words; one cluster was centered on
"politics" (a public term) and the second on "marriage" (a private term).

339
"In the time period of the transcripts we analyzed, Clinton required a diverse
repertoire of performative strategies to jump in such a short time frame from her
role as a first lady and victim of adultery, to a counselor for her husband facing
impeachment, to a candidate for elective office. In response, NBC tracked the
changing accounts of Clinton's decision-making in changing institutional contexts
through the use of unchanging images." That is fascinating.

 "From Walsh (2001) we take the idea that
women burdened by dominant masculine framings are relegated to private aspects
of the public sphere. Gal (2002, 80ff) extends Walsh's conception of the private
within the public by explaining the capacity of language to redraw public/private
boundaries through "fractal" recalibration, which allows the boundary, like cell
division, infinitely to subdivide (see also Gal 1991, Gal and Kligman 2000). Public
spaces can spawn private ones and private spaces can spawn public ones."
 home - living room - whispers

"The (re)calibrations of the public/
private divide occur implicitly and with lightening speed making them "difficult
to discuss explicitly" and hard to contemplate (Gal 2002, 85). Why then does the
divide often seem so fixed and brittle? According to Gal, we tend to imagine the
pubhc/private divide within stereotypical binaries to secure our orientation in the
language with others. This oscillating attention on the binary as an unstable creative
construct of an individual agent or as a stable construct habituated by social
practice, accounts for the historical resilience of the distinction as well as its fluid
cognitive-linguistic instability.

340
"we cannot simply see NBC as a media giant regulating Clinton to a
privatized public sphere (though its coverage at times does exactly that). Rather,
we need to see NBC as doing its best to "make sense" of one woman's negotiation
of public/private spaces as she takes on ever new identities across a complex political
terrain. NBC's reliance on a stable set of 8 image bites of Hillary Clinton with
updated meanings provided an efficient way for the network to try to keep pace
with the many identity shifts that Clinton makes.

using her skills to save the presidency

341
"The words and images paint Clinton as the cold calculating professional able to help
a husband who is too emotionally broken to help himself. As Mitchell concludes the
story, however, a new private space opens from within the public space of a counselor
at arm's length from her client. This is not described as a marital reconciliation
(vdth the private space in control) but more as a distant professional relationship
where the ice has broken and professional competence blossoms into personal trust:
(4) And friends say because the Clintons are now each other's best council, if
anything, this crisis has brought them closer together."

342
 crying - decontextualized

"Whether MitcheU's choice or a producer's,
the profile image helps authenticate Mitchell's claim of Hillary's "public humiliation
and private pain."
Voice-over 5 contributes to a highly masculinized image bite of Hulary as a
woman scorned. But both the voice-over and the accompanying imagery change
dramatically. An image of BiU Clinton is shown walking from behind the presidential
limo with a frown on his face appropriate for a memorial service. The
frown is sustained for 9 seconds until he gets into the car. Yet, as he maintains this
frown, Mitchell now states:
(6) NBC News [has learned] she helped her husband prepare first to admit to
adultery to Ken Starr, the man they both view as a mortal enemy."

343
"The intonation of "How does she do it?" suggests incredulity as
well as admiration, as if to open a space to reflect on Hillary's ability to battle so
many public and private fronts at once.
The same broadcast contains more traditional redrawings of Hillary as a longsuffering
yet loyal wife. The redrawing is done by Jesse Jackson (political activist
and religious leader) who enters the newscast on screen with a character testimonial,
affirming the private Hillary's "unconditional love" for Bill and her understanding
that he is "not perfect.""

" Yet, it is our contention that NBC required all these constructions
to do full justice to the multiple and interdependent identities that Hillary
Clinton exhibited across the time frame of our analysis."
344
 private/ public
"marital relationship that can't be mended without forgiveness:
(10) The first lady has said through a spokesman that she forgives her husband.
The words "through a spokesman" open an odd public space within the privacy
of their relationship, underscoring the fact that the "president" and "first lady" are
offices as weU as individuals, and in this case, the "forgiveness" tendered has been
enacted institutionally, first lady to president, rather than personally, wife to husband.
Brokaw then concludes:
(11) For many days now, forgiveness is something that Mr. Clinton has been
asking for, not only of his wife, but of the nation.
In 11, the public/private has been redrawn anew. The words "but of the nation"
let us know that another public entity — the American public — is being invited
to forgive the president along with his wife."

345
" From Gal's
(2002) perspective, the salty details of the Clinton-Lewinsky once private and now
public affair could only strengthen the redrawing of Hillary as the private "long
suffering wife" who must now bear that burden in very public ways. Conventional
masculine readings of Hillary's predicament reach its peak at this point. Public
sympathy toward Hillary spikes.

346
This is sick:
"(14) And I'm very proud of the person I'm privileged to introduce, I'm proud of
his leadership; I'm proud of his commitment; I'm proud of what he gives our
country.
The "Hillary" that Pauley portrays becomes a poster for mascuhne readings, and
as Pauley reports, when bereft of political power, Hillary is beloveci:
(15) Once vilified for ambition and political overreaching when she took on
health care, now she's admired for being the faithful loving wife.
Helpless and in pain, Hillary is anointed a positive role model."

"But with the attending language of 17, the lack of intimacy in the image
is no longer used to signify marital strain. It is rather used to signify the emotional
distance and sober calctilation that have made them the über power couple for decades."

347
"And instead of seeking her help to salvage his oflice, she now seeks his
help to secure her own. On February 15, 1999, Brokaw declares the impeachment
trial "history" and opens up the "hot political buzz" of recent days, a buzz that
"got even louder today" when the president "spoke openly about the possibility" of
his wife's candidacy. Turning the report over to Andrea Mitchell, she reviews the
roles Hillary has played over the past: "loyal wife," "political victim," and "political
savior" and now through a disclosure ("friends say"), makes us aware that Hiflary
is "close to deciding on a new role for herself. Senator Hiflary Rodham Clinton.""


"As Mitchefl utters "clear the field," NBC once again shows the facial profile image
of Hillary at the memorial service. The image, so often used before to signify
isolation and weakness, seems out of place as a metaphor for Hiflary's new found
dominance. However, it does fit as a metaphor for Clinton's now newsworthy uncertainty
and mystery in terms of her Senate bid."

348

wow.
"Previous broadcasts had disclosed Hillary as a political partner, a betrayed wife,
and, most significantly, a loyal and loving vfiie. This broadcast, however, exposes
Hillary's predatory political ambitions. The cultural archetypes behind these role
shifts are polar opposites. A "loving wife" protects the boundaries of her family
at all costs against invaders. A carpetbagger invades territorial and familial livelihoods.
For a "loving wife," the private is admired when it comes into view. A
carpetbagger, like a conspirator, hides the private for self-protection as exposure
threatens censure and opprobrium. The "friends" of a "loving wife" drcle the wagons
to protect her. The "friends" of a "carpetbagger" are "accomplices" and "coconspirators"
who lurk in the shadows with the power of denial. Once, Hillary's
friends were salt-of-the-earth women offering hugs of support. Now, they are her
cronies who plot with her the taking of the Senate seat and worry that there won't
be enough political spoil for her. As Mitchell narrates in this broadcast:"

white house - public/ private space

349-350
" If Hillary has an image problem, the newscast suggests, the problem lies with the
U.S. public who, as Gregory notes, gave her undeserved credit in the 'Àctim role during
the Starr days, when the slightest display of "dignity, stamina, and strength [from
that role] sent her approval rating soaring." The public was not wrong, the broadcast
suggests, to admire Clinton's dignity, stamina and strength. The public was simply
wrong to base these positive attributions on the perception of her as a victim."

" Such insights are reminiscent of Bourdieu's (2001, 67) observation that when
women dare assert male dominance, they forfeit their "femininity" and create
backlash by challenging the "natural right" of men to positions of power.
The broadcast, "Hillary Clinton's turn in the spotlight, with Bill by her side,"
insinuates this assertion of power and the subsequent backlash. It first features
Hillary as the star of the family with Bill politically dead ("he's done...nobody
cares," asserts journalist Sally Ouinn during this report). But then re-enforcing
Bourdieu's predictions about male domination in the presence of female assertiveness,
NBC now turns a skeptical eye toward the rapidity of the marital power shift."
351
"that Bill now sees Hillary's political success
as "one of the most historic parts of his legacy." MitcheU suggests that the role
reversal has been fast, too fast, and, by implication, too transgressive from private
(presidential wife) to public (Senate candidate) spaces to be credible.
352
"The interplay of words and images, however, does not alone settle the meaning
of an image bite. Establishing the full contextual meaning further requires the
subjective background of the viewer. As Burnett (1995, 238) contends, "There is
an ambiguous link bet-veen the movement... from image to language and back"
that can only be connected by the viewer. As we saw in the pofling data, while
some female voters from New York resisted NBC's efforts to transform Hillary
from abused spouse to political candidate, another portion accepted this transformation,
suggesting guarded progress for public women who (public/ private)

353
"This case study thus also demonstrates the need to complicate feminist critical
discourse analyses through attention not only to the discourses used to frame women's
behavior but also to the performances of women as they seek to resist and/or accommodate
these framings. Such a performance-enriched critical approach punctuates
the complex interplay among texts, ideology, and human agency as agents
"(re)produce, resist, and oppose resistances to prevailing normative ideologies"
(Lazar, Politicizing, 2005, 21-22). Our aim in this paper has been to call attention
to this complex interplay across contexts where a major political figure was defined
and redefined several times anew through changing words rolling over unchanging
images."

Duncan

Duncan

Discourse-historical approach

“From a case study analyzing an

Associated Press article discussing Pakistani responses to U.S. drone attacks, we

observe negative (re)presentation of Indigenous peoples in Pakistan as authors

use rhetorical strategies to achieve erasure in subsequent revisions. I interpret

the authors as employing such strategies to legitimize United States' power under

the axiological guise of protecting "democracy."”

358

“December 2009, Obama both announced his strategy

in Afghanistan and Pakistan involving a surge of 30,000 troops and "authorized

an expansion of the C.I.A.'s drone program in Pakistan's [...] tribal areas" (Shane

2009, para. 4).”

while drones are violation….continue to be used.

“During meetings with

tribal leaders from the FATA and on a live interview with prominent female TV

anchors in Pakistan, Indigenous peoples in Pakistan, including women and tribal

leaders, expressed disapprobation for the U.S. using drones to attack Taliban and

al-Oaida, especially in South Waziristan.”

Robert Brns : “In this

article. Indigenous peoples in Pakistan from the Waziristan agencies receive prominent

voices as they actively expressed resentment toward U.S. military aggression”

359

“Nevertheless, in

an updated version of the article published at 11:52 a.m. EDT (=10:52 a.m. CT),

the author silences Indigenous voices by erasure (Gal and Irvine 1995). That is, the

update, which occupied the same spatial location and obscures the original text by

rendering it virtually irretrievable, deleted tribal peoples' concerns almost entirely.”

“Addition of novel content that replaces erased Indigenous voices instantiates new

intertextual and interdiscursive relationships that reveal ideological transformations

from the original article to its subsequent revision. AP released a total of

three "updated" versions within 24 hours, the final two published at 5:43 p.m. CT”

“In the example analyzed here,

we see U.S. power legitimized in discourse as Pakistani, Indigenous, and women's

power is de-legitimized (Reisigl and Wodak 2009, 89). The effects of these power

struggles between social actors directly impinge on Pakistani and Indigenous

sovereignty, and self-determination for tribal peoples in the FATA. Significantly,

Clinton's visit, and publication of Burns' AP article, occurred during a time when

American public opinion for the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan was waning,

and when America awaited Obama's strategic decisions regarding continued war

efforts in these nations.”

story as text  - story production

“However, since the notion of a "single text" becomes an abstraction through

neotextualization, we can highlight both process and product, or outcome, of the

text, along with social practices that relate to each.”

360

news discourse – homogenized – filters out what is not wanted

“To view how power is legitimized and de-legitimized in the AP article concerning

Pakistani responses to U.S. drone attacks, I follow the discourse-historical approach

(DHA) within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough and Wodak

1997; Reisigl and Wodak 2001; 2009). Both are interdisciplinary, as the focus is

not solely on examining linguistic units, but also complex social phenomena tied

to language. The assumption behind the approaches of CDA and DHA is that language

is a "social practice," and that "social power abuse, dominance, and inequality

are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political

context" (Fairclough 1992; Fairclough and Wodak 1997; Van Dijk 2003, 352).”

“1) its emphasis on the principle of triangulation, 2) its particular notion of context,

3) discursive strategies aimed at positive self- and negative other-presentation, and

4) its three "interconnected aspects" that compose a "complex concept of social

critique" based in critical theory (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 32). In what follows, I

briefly treat each of these as they pertain to this work.”

Triangulation

By integrating

this emphasis, DHA enables analysts to transcend the "purely linguistic dimension"

of data utilized in discourse-analytic approaches to account for, for example,

historical, political, and social dimensions of language use (Reisigl and Wodak

2001, 35). These elements are crucial, since discourse is embedded in social contexts.

361

Interplay between:

( 1 ) The text-internal co-text of each utterance or clause

(2) The extralinguistic (text-external) social variables and institutional frames of

a specific "context of situation"

(3) The broader socio-political and historical context of the speech event, which

discursive practices are embedded in and related to

(4) The intertextual and interdiscursive relationships of the respective speech

event to other relevant events

“Herein, I employ "text" or "discourse immanent

critique" to perform a hermeneutic exegesis of the AP article, paying special attention

to linguistic means and realizations used in rhetorical strategies of reference,

predication, and perspectivation (Resigl and Wodak 2001, 32, 44; 2009, 94). The

second critique type, "sociodiagnostic critique," moves beyond the textual realm

of analysis to address social practices performed in the text, such as manipulation

through erasure, power (de-)legitimization, and presentation of social actors in

accordance with particular goals (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 32-33).”

“To further account for my interpretational conclusions, and to achieve the salient

point of triangulation, I integrate the impact of Internet-based international

knowledge from new media studies (Beaudoin 2008), highlighting potential influence

of the AP article along with the contributions that updated versions make

to collective memory and consciousness. Additionally, I situate the article within

postcolonial critique (Said 1978; 1993; Young 2001; 2003) and Indigenous feminisms

(Ramirez 2007; Smith and Kauanui 2008; Hall 2008) to interpret ideologies

behind revisions and content discrepancies between neo-texts.”

“Such action is characterized

by positive self-presentation of the colonizer and negative other-presentation

of the colonized in addition to silencing those oppressed by the colonial power.

Indigenous feminisms assert that colonialism is "sexualized," and predicts that

Indigenous peoples, in particular women, are disproportionately recipients of violence,

oppression, and domination resulting in inequality (Barker 2008). The focus

of Indigenous feminisms is to promote Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.”

362

intextextualtiy – multiple revised versions

“For clarification, I am not discussing pre-publication revisions for which analysts

lack access, as they are not available in the "real world." Rather, the revisions

in mind occur to a released text that has entered into discourse. In our case, the

AP released the Internet article, producing a concrete text. Yet, when an author or

news source updates a text, the revision(s), which can differ substantially from the

initial article, occupies the same spatial location as did the original. This process

can recur, leading to the production of "texts" while simultaneously presenting

the illusion that a single text exists. So, ironically, four individuals can read separate

versions of the "same" article and still discuss, for example, "the AP article

on Pakistani responses to U.S. drone attacks." This occurs despite speakers' intentional

reference to a concrete text or neo-text.”

“1) perceived singularity,

and 2) distinct dissimilarities between revisions. Since the notion of a

"single" text in these unique instances is an abstraction that embodies multiple

"texts," we say that revisions are neo-texts that emanate from a single (i.e., original)

text. The process of revision and production of neo-texts is, therefore, one

of neotextualization.”

364

“Transfer of elements also may occur during

neotextualization (as in the present case), and this process resonates with that

of recontextualization, especially given its transformational properties (Wodak

and Fairclough 2010; Muntigl 2000). Nevertheless, recontextualization typically

occurs between texts in the concrete sense, and thus fails to capture the unique

ontology of texts and neo-texts that neotextualization demonstrates.”

“Context that is internal to the abstract text

becomes rather obscured, since the neo-texts can occupy the same space as the

original publication, giving the impression that only a single text exists. Also, intertextual

relationships, in light of the previous discussion, can be established in

three manners: between an abstract text with a concrete text, between two abstract

texts, or between concrete neo-texts and concrete texts. Due to the distinctive

characteristics of neotextualization, the scope of the analysis here is rather limited

in order to demonstrate these unique attributes. Further neotextual analyses —

for example, of different genres, organizations and topics — are necessary to both

determine its status and understand to what extent (and when) it operates, but at

minimum this grants us a more detailed typology of context, intertextuality, and

recontextualization.”

“This aspect is of key importance in neotexutalization,

since thematic or topic reference can occur despite alterations to LRs

within a given topic. In Figure 1,1 signify transfer of topics and LRs with doubledotted

arrows. As this example demonstrates, a topic may carry over to a neo-text,

but LRs can be replaced with either novel or modified utterances that treat the

same general theme. The discrepancy between (neo-)text-specific LRs instantiate

distinct discourses and, I argue, are significant sites of analysis wherein we observe

rhetorical strategies aimed at positive self- and negative other-presentation,

including erasure.”

365

“(1) How are persons, objects, phenomena/events, processes and actions named

and referred to linguistically?

(2) What characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to social actors,

objects, phenomena/events and processes?

(3) From what point of view are these namings and attributions expressed?”

(4) What linguistic realizations does the author include, modify, append, or

delete from text to neo-text, or from neo-text to neo-text?

(5) How is the overall structure of the (neo-)text manipulated to communicate

particular ideologies and points-of-view?

366

(visuals of neotexts)

369

“As data from the tables demonstrates, discrepancies between a text and its revisions/

neo-texts are unique to neotextualization. Differences among (neo-)texts

provide potentially relevant sites of analysis wherein omissions, additions, and

modifications exhibit text-specific LRs employed for positive self- and negative other-

presentation. Additionally, since content deletes, the notion of erasure is a core

element that, as I argue, relates directly to discursive strategies and socio-political

actions.”

372

tribal replaced

373 – language completely omitted

374

“Therefore, the focus of the neo-texts

is under the perspective of terrorist activity that kills "women and children." On

the other hand, civilian deaths by U.S. drone missiles, also including women and

children, are "trivialized, ignored, and censored" (Michael Yellow Bird, personal

communication, 2009).”

376

Fascinating…and sad

“However, combining the notions

that the Internet is increasingly prominent in developing knowledge with

Van Dijk's observation that "the news is imbued with ideologies," we note that the

news are negatively poised as outlets for manipulation, power (de-)legitmization,

and self- and other-presentation (Van Dijk 2009, 202). Neotextualizations, when

they occur, offer analysts insight to some means by which authors, editors, and

producers of Internet news, as social actors, preserve homogeneity and the status

quo. Internet news, then, can serve to propagate colonial norms, especially with

regard to Indigenous peoples. Instead of increasing knowledge, Internet media

can be used to support, for example, national interests, and therefore discursively

(re)produce a limited range of epistemologies. Furthermore, neotextualization

complicates knowledge people have regarding individual "texts" given the unique

intertextual and interdiscursive relations that are subsumed under an abstract singular

concept. These considerations are extremely important with regard to the

AP article on Pakistani responses to U.S. drones given the international reach of

the organization. AP boasts that "[o]n a given day, more than half the world's

population sees news from the AP" (FAQs 2009).”

377

“The United States, under postcolonial theory, is currently the

most dominant colonial power, though it does not possess a "traditional" colonial

legacy (Osterhammel 2005). As such, U.S. military aggression can be considered

expansionist, though not exclusively in a geographical sense, and supportive of national

interests, such as the spread of "democracy" and controlling relations with

a nuclear-armed nation. Historically, Indigenous peoples have been and still are

overwhelming recipients of violence and violation of sovereignty. Not surprisingly

then, we see these events transpiring in the FATA of Pakistan, especially with U.S.

drone attacks in tribal lands. Moreover, due to at least superficial similarities in

U.S. attacks in tribal agencies in Pakistan and continued domination of Indigenous

peoples within the U.S., future research should seek to understand the explicit discursive

means that transcend spatial and temporal boundaries in order to link past

and the present both in the U.S. and in tribal areas in Pakistan (see SiUiman 2008).”

378

“Finally, when viewing these theoretical frameworks in conjunction with DHA,

there exists a common theme of defending human rights and promoting social

justice and equality. Each seeks to transform society by integrating knowledge

into practical application. This case study provides a hypothesis that instances of

neotextualization can involve ideological transformations, which can be utilized

by media producers to manipulate knowledge. By explicitly revealing discursive

strategies aimed at manipulation and power (de-)legitimization in Internet news,

we encourage transparency and clarify the means by which Indigenous sovereignty

and self-determination is obscured by efforts to advance the national interests

of colonial/imperial powers. Thus, neotextual analysis can support efforts toward

realizing Indigenous sovereignty. StiU, by narrowing on one example of neotextualization,

this analysis could be critiqued as erasing Indigenous voices in a way

that other methods, such as ethnography, might not. Nevertheless, at present I

merely seek to raise awareness and to supplement present and future scholarship

that "values the transformative power of indigenous, subjugated knowledges"

(Denzin and Lincoln 2008, 2).”

What is “indigineous”? Deeper culture that we don’t understand

Fairclough; marketization of public universities

 Interest in linking the macro and the micro

conversational analysis - context - taken out - look at data (bottom up)

136
Analysis involves
both the detailed moment-by-moment explication of how participants
produce and interpret texts, which conversation analysis and pragmatics
excel at, and analysis which focuses upon the relationship of the discursive
event to the order of discourse, and upon the question of which discursive

137
practices are being drawn upon and in what combinations. My main
interest, and main concern in this paper, is the latter. 3