Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T00:36:32.758Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Articulation in ‘Image Event’: The Media Discourse from the Perspective of Post-Marxism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2023

Lihui Wang Open the ORCID record for Lihui Wang [Opens in a new window]
Lihui Wang*
Affiliation:
Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 1166 Liutai Road, Chengdu 611131, People’s Republic of China.
*
Email: li-huiemail@163.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Media discourse is the main ideographic system in the world today. Post-Marxist discourse theory, represented by Laclau and Mouffe, argues that media discourse no longer merely conveys information but, more importantly, it has a powerful constructive and representational power over reality. Post-Marxist discourse theory has been gradually applied to social science research, and has also been further developed in the field of communication studies. ‘Articulation’ is a very significant rhetorical practice in the discursive generation mechanism of image events. The basic idea of articulation is to discover and activate the relationship between things and specific discourses. Many of the image events are disseminated through the deliberate appropriation of a series of established discourses, discovering a hidden interface between the topic and the established discourse, which not only enables the production and recreation of a new discourse, but also gives the event a legitimate discursive underpinning. This article aims to provide a post-Marxist analysis of the media discourse interface that exists in the image event in order to broaden theoretical and methodological horizons and create new perspectives for the study of media discourse.

Type
Article
Information
European Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , February 2024 , pp. 29 - 43
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academia Europaea Ltd

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alpatov, VM (2000) What is Marxism in linguistics? In Brandist, C and Tihanov, G (eds), Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory. Houndmills: Macmillan, pp. 173–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beam, C (2014) Under the knife: Why Chinese patients are turning against their doctors. The New Yorker, 18 August 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/under-the-knife Google Scholar
Bennett, T (2003) Formalism and Marxism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bi, FR (2019) Hegemony, discourse and politics: on Laclau and Mouffe’s Post Marxism. Philosophical Trends 3, 46–63.Google Scholar
Blair, JA (2004) The rhetoric of visual arguments. In Hill, CA and Helmers, M (eds), Defining Visual Rhetoric. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate, pp. 41–62.Google Scholar
Collins, C and Jones, PE (2006) Political analysis versus critical discourse analysis in the treatment of ideology: some implications for the study of communication. Atlantic Journal of Communication 14(1), 28–50.Google Scholar
Dalhberg, L and Phelan, S (2011) Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delicath, JW and Deluca, KM (2003) Image events. the public sphere, and argumentative practice: the case of radical environmental groups. Argumentation (3), 315–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deluca, KM (1999) Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism. Mahwah, NJ: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Deluca, KM and Brunner, E (2016) Activism in the wake of the events of China and social media: abandoning the domesticated rituals of democracy to explore the dangers of wild public screens. International Journal of Communication (10), pp. 321–339, p. 326.Google Scholar
Jones, PE (2004) Discourse and the materialist conception of history: critical comments on critical discourse analysis. Historical Materialism (12), 97–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, PE (2018) Karl Marx and the language sciences – critical encounters: introduction to the special issue. Language Sciences 70, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, ML, Kruger, DJ and Garcia, JR (2011) Understanding and enhancing the role of the mass media in evolutionary psychology education. Evolution: Education and Outreach (4), 75–82.Google Scholar
Laclau, E (1993) Politics and the limits of modernity. In Docherty, T (ed.), Postmodernism: A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Laclau, E (1977) Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Laclau, E and Mouffe, C (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Laclau, E and Mouffe, C (2003) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Translated by Guangshu, Yin and Chuanjin, Jian. Harbin: Heilongjiang People’s Press.Google Scholar
Li, XH (2019) Understanding nao: a Chinese ‘image event’. Communication and Critical-Cultural Studies 16(4), 370–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torfing, J (2004) Discourse theory: achievements, arguments, and challenges. In Howarth, D and Torfing, J (eds), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Xu, GQ and Chen, YM (2020) Media discourse in the view of post-Marxism: Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and its application in communication studies. Journalism & Communication 27(2), 42–57.Google Scholar