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'Toward a global knowledge enterprise': University websites as portals to the ongoing marketization of higher education

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Abstract

Using a critical ‘hypermodal approach’ informed by social semiotics, this paper investigates the changing discourses of marketization found on the website of the National University of Singapore over a 14-year period. Analysis of visual-spatial features and action potentials of progressive versions of the site reveals changes in the website functions, first from providing information about resources and expertise to addressing potential students as consumers of goods and of products offered by the university. Later we find the website pointing not so much to education as a process of learning and mentoring but as a type of lifestyle, experience, and abstracted personal transformation and journey. Here the university positions itself increasingly in a global as opposed to national community, where students are to be fine-tuned to the new kinds of marketized demands this will bring.

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... Studies on EdTech discourses have highlighted the role of consumerist ideologies [5,49,55], the figuration of the teacher [19], instrumental versus deterministic views of technology in education [28], the displacement of technology from object to subject in educational settings [1], metaphors used to describe the roles of technology in education , and the relationship between the concept of "new" and technologies [3]. ...
... Research also shows that there has been a surge in the "marketization" of the educational sector in the past decades, reframing education as an enterprise [27,55]. Along with this movement, a "techno business" culture penetrated the educational environment, triggering a "fetishization" of educational technology [19] placing technology as the main agent of educational change [1]. ...
... The overall discussion in the reports seems to drift away from pedagogical needs and best teaching and learning practices toward finances, customers' wishes, and how to better serve the industry. These findings are consistent with previous scholarly works which describe the recent surge in the marketization of education [27,55]. Nevertheless, as anticipated, the technology theme permeates the topics presented in the report. ...
Article
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Educational landscape reports have historically contributed to advocating for changes that would benefit learners, including recommendations for digital technologies and their use. The COVID-19 pandemic has considerably affected education, pushing institutions to quickly adapt to the emergency through the use of technology. This scenario has impacted the discourse on educational technologies and their implementation. Seeking to better understand this discourse and its potential impact on education, drawing from a range of scholarly literature-including discourse analysis, critical discourse studies, and studies on educational technology and change-this study focuses on how technology has been presented in a major yearly publication in 2020, 2021, and 2022. This study adds to the literature by presenting findings that show that technology corporations can play a crucial role in shaping educational technology discourses in landscape reports, including how technology should be adopted and the very future of higher education. Additionally, it reinforces the need for critical awareness of how different publications may push corporate agendas disguised as impartial expert guidance.
... As universities face increased competition and reduced public funding, they are reevaluating their promotional materials to align with market demands (Zhang and O'Halloran 2013). This transformation is turning academic institutions into knowledge enterprises, rebranding them as global service providers, and altering the identity and status of major stakeholders (Dholakia and Acciardo 2014). ...
... Recent shifts in discourse have transformed the social function of higher education (Molesworth, Nixon, and Scullion 2009). This has resulted in a new identity and social order for all stakeholders involved (Atai and Asadnia 2016) where students seek to "have a degree" rather than to "be learners" (Zhang and O'Halloran 2013). ...
... It can be observed through the data (Refer to Appendix 1) that white and blue are dominating colors in university prospectuses. Blue conveys security, loyalty, peace and timelessness (Zhang and O'Halloran 2013) while white suggests cleanliness, freshness and purity (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2020). The use of colors is more frequent in both the private sector and post-70s universities. ...
... They also allow for new ways of designing educational experiences through the collection and exploitation of user-generated data for "measurement, assessment, management, and identity formation" [31] in the name of "personalized learning experiences" [29]. These trends reflect a movement towards "marketizing" the educational sector, conceptually and strategically reframing education as a "global knowledge enterprise" ( [32]). Such discourse pictures an unstable, constantly changing, and competitive world, which engenders insecurity and fear. ...
... Education has been reframed as "personal transformation" [32] by selling the notion of "self-fulfillment" as part of a growth lifestyle (p. 478). ...
Article
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Large corporations active in the field of educational technology shape needs, perceptions, attitudes, expectations, and values related to technology use in education. In order to better understand how these corporations frame the role of technology in educational settings, it is crucial to critically analyze how they present and promote their products and services. Through a discourse analysis approach, this study examined the homepages of two of the major players in educational technology, namely Google for Education and Microsoft Education. Findings show that the discourse put forth by these companies positions technology as a transformative agent that can revitalize a stagnant educational system. In this picture, teachers and students are presented as incomplete and lost beings on the path towards an alarmingly indeterminate future, which can be only overcome by the technologies and services offered by these corporations. The potential of these technologies is presented as limitless, low-cost, for everyone, and available anywhere and anytime. In this deterministic “technology as a solution” framework, technology is depicted as an inevitable choice for the advancement of people and society. This study shows that, by critically approaching and analyzing corporate discourse, students, teachers, and other stakeholders can develop an outlook that cuts through marketing strategies and the hype surrounding learning technologies. In turn, this can promote reflective practices, support decision-making processes, and redefine expectations related to the role of technology in education and society.
... Low angle pictures are preferred over high angle ones when university architectures are presented, because the former tend to create an imposing and remarkable impression and make an authoritative and noble university image (Tu, 2016). The colour and design of university websites seem to have multiple promotional functions, including interpersonally denoting the institutional identity, directing visitors' attention, and creating a welcome feeling and atmosphere (Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013). ...
... Apart from the cross-country and cross-tier comparisons, there were also diachronic studies that compared the promotional texts produced at different historical periods, though this research did not focus specifically on Attitude markers (e.g., Fairclough, 1993;Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013). These studies uncovered a historical shift in the objectives and functions of promotional texts shaped by the broader social setting of accelerated marketisation of higher education: a progressive transition from communicating ideational information to tactically manipulating the information for promotional purposes. ...
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This study explored the marketisation process of top-tier Chinese universities by scrutinising their self-promotional strategies over the past two decades. Drawing on Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, we identified all attitudinal markers in the About Us texts posted by 35 top-tier Chinese universities on their official websites at two time-points: the turn of the century and the year of 2021. The 35 universities were drawn from China’s “Double First Class” Initiative that prioritises the development of a select group of elite universities in China. Close textual analyses focussing on the attitudinal markers with reference to their contexts were conducted to identify the themes evaluated in the About Us texts; Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were run to quantitatively compare the relative frequencies of the attitudinal markers between the two phases, which was then supplemented by diachronic qualitative comparisons on the fine-grained linguistic features surrounding the markers. The study identified seven major themes positively appraised by the universities at both time-points. It also revealed diachronic differences in the use of attitudinal markers, reflecting a mediated change of promotional strategies over the past 20 years or so in the Chinese higher education context. These findings point to the influence of market, government, and tradition on Chinese top-tier universities’ promoting strategies and the role of social cognition in shaping student choice. They also suggest the emergence of a higher education system with Chinese characteristics that features a reconciliation of market and government forces.
... While several scholars have highlighted the increasingly marketized nature of university websites (e.g., Jayadeva et al., 2021;Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013), this study focused on the visual nature of identity profiles on university homepages. Instead of critiquing the corporate, customer-centric approaches to education, it aimed to analyze the meaning exchange between the university and the participants of discourse on the homepage, seen as a medium for organizational identity communication. ...
Article
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This article explores how universities construe organizational identities and engage digital audiences through images on web homepages. Combining visual content analysis and a discourse-analytic approach informed by social semiotics, I interpret the discourses of identity in 400 images from organizational homepages of four top-tier public universities in Sydney, Australia – University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney, and Macquarie University. Based on the social semiotic interpretation of images, I identify eight identity icons, each deploying a combination of semiotic resources to represent a specific organizational identity. The analysis suggests that universities prioritize featuring people, which results in an augmented sense of social presence on the homepage. Lastly, four identified strategies for digital audience engagement in images – proximation, alignment, equalization, and subjectivation – point to how these are instrumental in representing university life as both individual and shared experiences.
... In his analysis, Lazetic (2019) underpins Fairclough's (1993) findings on "personal" language use and the student-consumer persona. Zhang and O'Halloran (2013) examined the website of the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a critical discourse analysis-based approach focusing on the ongoing marketisation of HE discourse. In connection with students' discursive construction, they emphasise that "students are virtually and discursively constructed as potential consumers on the NUS' journey toward a global knowledge enterprise" (2013, p. 482). ...
Article
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Purpose This study aims to investigate how highly ranked business schools portray ideal students in terms of their attributes and their agency. Understanding how these higher education institutions (HEIs) discursively construct their present and prospective students also shed light on the institutions’ self-representation, the portrayal of the student–institution relationship and eventually the discursive construction of higher education’s (HE) role. Design/methodology/approach To understand this dynamic interrelationship, this study uses mixed methodological textual analysis first quantitatively identifying different modes of language use and then qualitatively analysing them. Findings With this approach, this study identified six language use groups. While the portrayal of the business schools and that of the students are always co-constructed, these groups differ in the extent of student and organisational agency displayed as well as the role and purpose of the institution. Business schools are always active agents in these discourses, but their roles and the students’ agency vary greatly across these six groups. Practical implications These findings can help practitioners determine how students are currently portrayed in their organisational texts, how their peers and competitors talk and where they want to position themselves in relation to them. Originality/value Previous studies discussed the ideal HE students from the perspective of the students or their educators. Other analyses on HE discourse focused on HEIs’ discursive construction and social role This study, however, unveils how the highly ranked business schools in their external organisational communication discursively construct their ideals and expectations for both their students and the general public.
... Dolaskom novih načina konstituiranja identiteta obrazovnih institucija koje u novim, tržišno orijentiranim društvenim okolnostima nastoje biti privlačne studentima promijenile su se i forma i sadržaj vodiča kroz studij. Naime, nakon godina istoga ili sličnoga predstavljanja Sveučilišta u Splitu (2004.-2013 pojavio se vodič koji nije bogatiji informacijama koje se tiču studija, postignuća Sveučilišta ili znanstvenika. ...
Article
In this paper, we wanted to establish whether the higher education discourse in Croatia has shifted from the practice of self-presenting and foregrounding the quality of universities and positioning them within society, to new discursive practices with language devices used in marketing or advertising industries targeted at prospective students, with a view of persuading them to buy a certain service. As stated in Osman, the role of a university used to be educating and forming knowledgeable people and thinkers who would help change the world. However, this role started to change towards the end of the 20th century, especially in Western countries, as their governments gradually reduced financing for public universities, which forced these institutions to find other sources of income. Therefore, a different approach toward prospective students was required. This research and its results have demonstrated that, over the years, the University of Split has changed not only the mode of presenting information but also the mode of self-promotion in order to shape its public role and to attract students and, in so doing, increase its financial means. Its academic merits, its roles in setting scientific or artistic standards, or in providing a critique of social, economic or political processes were disregarded or ignored, in favour of a new identity as a service provider packaging education with new life experiences. At both levels, the verbal and the visual, the University was no longer represented as an academic institution which controlled processes and people. The results also showed that it had turned to a more pronounced use of a promotional discourse and the discursive practice of marketing, while simultaneously reducing the informativeness of its prospectuses. However, we cannot say that the University in question was engaged in serious marketization, especially when we compare our study with the results obtained by other researchers, who have elaborated on various significant promotional discursive practices at the universities they studied, some of which even function as enterprises. However, the trend is noticeable. Fairclough’s claim that discourse and society are inextricably intertwined is here confirmed, as social change has been reflected in the semiotic representations of academic institutions. These discourse shifts, which are interdiscursive examples of promotional activities, could impact on the professional role of universities in society and mark the beginning of a more extensive higher education marketization and consequently, of the use of market-oriented discursive practices.
... Different disciplines have studied these aspects of content and/or navigation of web pages in relation to functionality and usability (Astani 2013;Yerlikaya and Durdu 2017), (cross-)cultural expression (Estera and Shahjahan 2019;Pauwels 2005), design (Kress 2005;Martinec and van Leeuwen 2009), and so on. Social semiotic studies on web pages have addressed the issues of hypermodal genre (Askehave and Nielsen 2005;Djonov 2007), marketised discourses (O'Halloran, Wignell, and Tan 2015;Zhang and O'Halloran 2013), and student representation (Tomášková 2015; Zhang and Tu 2019; Zhang et al. 2020). Some studies have focused particularly on Australia, one of the top higher education providers for the international market, including Zhang and Tu (2019) on the representation of international students, and Gottschall and Saltmarsh (2017) on promotional videos. ...
Chapter
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This chapter applies a multimodal social semiotic approach to examine the organizational identity design of three key iterations of a university web homepage. It considers organizational identity communication as a complex social semiotic practice across four interrelated dimensions: the site of production, the site of the virtual artifact, the site of the medium, and the site of audiencing, focusing predominantly on the site of the virtual artifact (i.e., a text presented for interaction and consumption). Addressing the subtle shifts in the form and function of a web homepage, the chapter provides systematic insights into the multimodal construction of organizational identity. It demonstrates how subtle changes in the design elements translate into a palpable shift from representing the university as a legitimate education provider that lists available study options and research opportunities to communicating an appealing image of the university to the imagined audience while presenting the informative function of details about the university’s workings in a more implicit, covert way. It concludes with implications of such shifts for the university web brand practitioners and broader scholarly community and contributes to the continuing synergy between organization studies and multimodality studies.
... The impact of the market on HE has been a key focus in the field of linguistics, especially by researchers who adopt a critical point of view. Various data sources have been examined when it comes to the marketisation of (higher) education such as policy documents (Mulderrig 2011(Mulderrig , 2012Wodak and Fairclough 2010), election manifestos (Pearce 2004), online corpora , prospectuses Askehave 2007;Teo 2007), university strategy documents , websites Zhang and O'Halloran 2013), memos, presentations and interview data , and job advertisements Xiong 2012;Kheovichai 2014). Similar to the methodology chosen for this book, some of these studies use CDA Pearce 2004;Askehave 2007 [with genre theory]; Zhang and O'Halloran 2013 [with critical 'hypermodal approach']), and corpus-based CDA (Mautner, , b, 2010Mulderrig 2011Mulderrig , 2012Kheovichai 2014). ...
Chapter
This chapter begins with an introduction of some of the key notions that regularly inform critical linguistic analyses. It starts with a discussion on power, ideology, and hegemony. There then follows an examination of expertise which is one of the key concepts relating to the careers services’ professional power within the HE context. The first part of the chapter closes with the introduction of discourse and its link with the construction of realities. It then moves on to review the literature and present the synergy of the theoretical and methodological background that informs this book, namely critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.
... The impact of the market on HE has been a key focus in the field of linguistics, especially by researchers who adopt a critical point of view. Various data sources have been examined when it comes to the marketisation of (higher) education such as policy documents (Mulderrig 2011(Mulderrig , 2012Wodak and Fairclough 2010), election manifestos (Pearce 2004), online corpora , prospectuses Askehave 2007;Teo 2007), university strategy documents , websites Zhang and O'Halloran 2013), memos, presentations and interview data , and job advertisements Xiong 2012;Kheovichai 2014). Similar to the methodology chosen for this book, some of these studies use CDA Pearce 2004;Askehave 2007 [with genre theory]; Zhang and O'Halloran 2013 [with critical 'hypermodal approach']), and corpus-based CDA (Mautner, , b, 2010Mulderrig 2011Mulderrig , 2012Kheovichai 2014). ...
Chapter
This chapter identifies similarities and differences in the language used by Russell Group and post-1992 universities. As HE is expected to bring a return, usually in the form of (highly-paid) employment, competition between universities, whether these are ‘new’ or ‘old’, has risen since the introduction of tuition fees and the establishment of neoliberal ideas and agendas, such as the notion of employability. The analysis thus begins with a comparison of the Russell Group and Post-1992 sub-corpora. This chapter adds a comparative angle and re-visits the main topics discussed in the previous analytical chapters.
... The impact of the market on HE has been a key focus in the field of linguistics, especially by researchers who adopt a critical point of view. Various data sources have been examined when it comes to the marketisation of (higher) education such as policy documents (Mulderrig 2011(Mulderrig , 2012Wodak and Fairclough 2010), election manifestos (Pearce 2004), online corpora , prospectuses Askehave 2007;Teo 2007), university strategy documents , websites Zhang and O'Halloran 2013), memos, presentations and interview data , and job advertisements Xiong 2012;Kheovichai 2014). Similar to the methodology chosen for this book, some of these studies use CDA Pearce 2004;Askehave 2007 [with genre theory]; Zhang and O'Halloran 2013 [with critical 'hypermodal approach']), and corpus-based CDA (Mautner, , b, 2010Mulderrig 2011Mulderrig , 2012Kheovichai 2014). ...
Chapter
This chapter explores the self-representation of careers services in on UK universities’ websites as a social actor. The majority of the findings in this chapter express the careers services’ efforts in promoting their services to the student users. Hence, the centre of attention for this analytical part is mainly the careers services’ consulting role aimed at students. The linguistic analysis focuses on four main topics, namely the careers services’ professional roles, the services, resources, and tools offered to students, the careers services’ ‘helping’ nature, and the promotion of a therapeutic culture and discourse.
... From a data comparison perspective, and given that institutional websites largely seek to create a distinctive identity and are more promotional in nature than informative (see e.g. Zhang 2017; Zhang and O'Halloran 2013), comparisons with the project proposal or the research interview should be treated with caution. Nevertheless, what is particularly noticeable is how the multilingual objective which was clearly stated and recurrently mentioned in the UNA EUROPA proposal (23 instances) is totally absent in the website data. ...
Article
In an increasing context of internationalisation, the European Commission announced in 2019 the creation of the first seventeen 'European Universities' (EUnis), a Pan-European consortium of higher education institutions designed to promote European values, cooperation and identity. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the ways in which these newly created EUnis construct their views of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. The research used as a case study the example of UNA EUROPA, an alliance of eight leading universities with eight different languages. Drawing mainly on content analysis combined with a discourse analysis approach, three data sources-the project proposal for the EU Commission, the UNA EUROPA website documents, and a research interview with one of its representatives-were examined to look into the ways in which languages and multilingualism are conceptualised. Findings reveal that linguistic diversity and multilingualism are given different degrees of visibility in the three sets of data examined and that utilitarian objectives seem to predominate over identity ones. It is expected that these findings will help unveil the ways in which language issues are problematised or not in the agenda of these newly created transnational universities. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Universities are no exceptions to this and are increasingly using websites and social media to connect to students, employees, industry, alumni and society who they consider as their stakeholders. Many studies reverberated the same thoughts (Carrillo-Duran and Garcia, 2020; Corcoles et al., 2011;Utulu and Okoye, 2010;Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013). This endorses the researcher's argument of accessibility of information by the interested groups. ...
... Many studies have been conducted on reporting of information in the university accounting system and through websites with the objective of making universities more flexible, transparent, competitive, comparable and accountable. (Corcoles et al., 2011;Leitner, 2004;Sanchez et al., 2013;Sanchez and Elena, 2006;Utulu and Okoye, 2010;Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013). These studies validate that providing relevant information to the stakeholders of the university can go a long way in creating goodwill and a strong relational capital base. ...
Article
Authors propose a research framework that human capital of universities enhances performance through the mediating mechanisms of relational capital. Against the backdrop of the report issued by the National Knowledge Commission set up by the Indian government with a vision to transform India into a global knowledge hub, this study explores how universities can contribute in contriving a knowledge economy. Data collected from 13 north Indian universities has been tested empirically using structural equation modelling (SEM). Findings reveal that human capital has a significant influence on a university's performance and rela-tional capital partially mediates that effect. The results of this study will be of paramount importance for planners in the Indian higher education sector to achieve the goals that have been laid down in the report. Furthermore, it will help administrators and policy makers at universities to take cognizance of the global shift towards the knowledge economy and leverage human and relational capital in the process.
... The genre analysis on HEI websites showed that the websites were manipulating their linguistic choices and navigation styles to foreground a specific identity of the institutions that is sellable to students (Zhang and O'Halloran, 2012). Zhang and O'Halloran (2013) also demonstrated that HEI websites were changing their functions from providing information about institutions to primarily addressing potential students as consumers of goods offered by universities. Thus, the HEI websites have become 'new hybrid, partly promotional genres' (Fairclough, 1993, p. 139) with their distinct rhetorical action to highlight selling qualities of the universities and convince prospective students to choose the institution. ...
Article
This study examined the disability support offices (DSOs) websites of twelve US higher education institutions (HEIs) anchored in multimodal discourse analysis and genre analysis to examine how semiotic resources are deployed to describe DSO services on their websites and to determine the discursive functions of advertisement they perform. The DSO websites were within four clicks from HEI homepages but had inconsistent navigation paths, making it difficult to reach DSO websites. DSO websites were foregrounding promoting and branding the institutions rather than presenting the information about the services offered. This is achieved by using multimodal promotional rhetoric such as: (a) situating accessibility as central commodifiable attribute, (b) promoting the value of accessibility, (c) establishing the superiority of the institution, (d) constructing images of students with disabilities as empowered but dependent upon the DSO, and (e) situating students within a college community. Implications for DSO websites functioning as advertisements are also discussed.
... Fairclough's (1993) analysis of UK higher education discourses identifies the construction of entrepreneurial identities that position universities within the broader social processes of marketisation and commodification. Similar studies on East Asian contexts indicate that this is part of a wider global trend of higher education aligning itself with free market values (Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013;Xiong, 2012). Of further relevance is the application of discursive approaches to studies of the Knowledgebased Economy (KBE). ...
Article
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This article explains the value of discourse analysis for interpreting the construction and resolution of policy dilemmas in the field of international education. Its case material is drawn from official documents relating to international education policy, published by global bodies such as the United Nations and World Bank from 2000 to 2018, explored with two purposes in mind. The first is empirical, the analysis revealing how a dominant ‘liberal’ model governing international education was discursively constructed as a grand narrative about the purpose and intended outcomes in international education. This is achieved by applying an interpretive discourse analytical approach, customised for this particular policy puzzle, to the international education corpus. The article’s second purpose is methodological, to reflect on the various criticisms and supposed limitations of using discourse analysis as a tool of public policy analysis. This part of the article argues that the discourse approach can equip analysts with a reliable tool-kit for carrying out research into the subtle and often unrecognised ways in which ideas and beliefs inform global education policy practices. A systematic discourse analysis reveals the tensions and sometimes conflicting meanings that elite decision-makers possess about international education. Ultimately, it is argued that the discourse approach can offer both empirical insights and a range of policy recommendations from a discourse analysis that destabilises the dominant ‘liberal’ narrative about international education in the relevant documents.
... Universities are no exceptions to this and are increasingly using websites and social media to connect to students, employees, industry, alumni and society who they consider as their stakeholders. Many studies reverberated the same thoughts (Carrillo-Duran and Garcia, 2020; Corcoles et al., 2011;Utulu and Okoye, 2010;Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013). This endorses the researcher's argument of accessibility of information by the interested groups. ...
... The issue has since been a growing concern, with similar results reported in subsequent investigations in other cultures and societies in genres encompassing prospectus (Askehave 2007), brochure (Osman 2008), university webpages (Y. Zhang and O'Halloran 2013;T. Zhang 2017), graduation ceremony (Han 2014), advertisements for academic posts and others (Feng 2019;Xiong 2012). ...
Article
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This article highlights the pivotal role of genre in text production and identity construction by an analysis of three high-stakes genres of public communication by presidents of the top universities in China, Peking University (PKU) and Tsinghua University (THU). A brief review of the Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) research on identity indicates that the current approach did not take into account the role of text structure as an important means of identity construction, which can be attributed to flaws in the SFL theorization of genre. In view of this, the Genre as a Nexus of meaning making (GaN) model is proposed, followed by a reinforced analytical framework of text analysis encompassing Halliday (and Matthiessen)’s functional grammar and Martin (and Rose)’s discourse semantics, which is subsequently deployed to study the texts of concern from an SFL vantage point. The results indicate that not only are different aspects of the university represented in the different genres, but the generic structure of the texts is indispensable in the university’s identity construction. Moreover, the comparison of the genres with those in other culture and of the results with previous research underscores culture’s powerful impact on genre and the universities at the forefront of globalization.
... It can be observed through the data that white, blue and green are dominating colors in logos. In this regard, blue conveys security, loyalty, peace and timelessness (Zhang and O'Halloran, 2013). For Mutz (2016), the blue color involves intelligence. ...
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Branding of higher education has become a common phenomenon nowadays. The universities are adopting various branding strategies to distinguish themselves in the competitive environment. This study, therefore, aims to examine the identity construction of universities through logos and mottos. The researcher divided the Pakistani universities into three major groups i.e. five pre-70 public sector universities, five post-70 public sector universities and five private sector universities to find variations in university logos, mottos and slogans due to their diverse background. Incorporating Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with Kress and van Leeuwen's (2004) model, the researcher analyzed how the universities represent a corporate identity through innovative logos, mottos and slogans to get recognized instantly. The logos use a combination of various geometric shapes, mottos and colors to be more attractive, unique and memorable. The researcher also found that the universities provide direction and invoke a promise of change through their logos and mottos. It is also observed that the public sector universities promote an Islamic ideology by taking their mottos from the Holy Quran and the Hadith while majority of the private sector universities either don't provide them or invent their own slogans.
Article
Despite the emerging scholarship on efforts of (semi)peripheral countries to take up internationalization of higher education (HE), little attention has been paid to how these universities market international education to prospective students on their websites. These websites are a multimodal space marketing internationalization that has been rarely investigated from a diachronic perspective. This study focuses on a Chinese university and uses a multimodal semiotic approach to unpack (dis)similarities of its present website from its other earlier websites to uncover how internationalization of HE has been integrated from a comparative point of view. The research also investigates how internationalization discourses, ideologies and practices are mobilized and disseminated through website design. It reveals that the university under scrutiny has kept utilizing the same salient modes in its layout, video, text, and image to communicate to potential students. The (dis)similarities were supported by an increase in branding and marketing, which shapes internationalization of HE in China and beyond. This paper ends by discussing the practical implications for countries seeking to claim greater competitiveness in international HE.
Article
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To survive amid fierce competition and reduced government funding, educational institutions struggle at various levels, from launching programs to publicizing them. Consequently, the promotional content they produce has changed over the years in many countries. This study investigated whether these neo-liberal trends have impacted the discourse of Pakistani universities' promotional content, especially the interpersonal relationship between the prospective students and the university. Incorporating Halliday's Functional Grammar with a Critical Discourse Analytical perspective, the textual analysis of the interpersonal meta-function of language reveals that the universities predominantly employ declarative to realize the speech function of a statement; thus, conveying information without generating an imagined dialogue with the students. Following this, imperatives are used to perform the illocutionary function of offer and in rare cases conditional, optative and question statements. The results also established that the universities employ modalities and modulations sparingly which accounts for the text producers' preference for conveying their propositions in the form of facts, hence leaving no scope for the reader to form his/her opinion. The infrequent use of pronouns in Pakistani universities leads to a lack of liveliness and affinity in writing. The textual analysis reveals that the universities uphold a manifest distance from potential students. ARTICLE HISTORY
Article
Applying a Multimodal Discourse Analysis framework, this study focuses on university websites to explore how organizational legitimacy is constructed through discursive strategies. Our findings show that under authoritative administrative logic and market logic, universities construct two organizational identities: policy followers and product/service suppliers, and use exemplification and authorization strategies respectively through visual discourse to legitimate the identities. To avoid potential conflicts between the legitimacy claims associated with these two identities, universities apply a decoupling strategy to isolate the two identities, along with both explicit and implicit expressions, through the intertextuality between visual and verbal discourses. The constitutive characteristics of universities’ website discourse reveal the complexity of Chinese institutional context in higher education field and the constitutive influence of the institutional background on organizational discourse and legitimation strategies.
Book
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This thesis explores the language of Higher Education (HE) in the UK, with a particular focus on "the student experience". Whilst research on the language of HE is plentiful, most of these studies have a discourse-oriented approach, which lacks an engagement with socio-historical and material contexts. The aim of this research is to investigate what the language surrounding "the student experience" reveals and conceals about HE and society. To this end, my thesis unravels the different dimensions of this concept to understand how it is conceptualised across three domains: a diverse group of students from a university in the south of England; the policies and observed practices of this institution; and relevant policies on HE promulgated by the UK government. With these objectives in mind, the research draws on three theoretical constructs-language, (higher) education, and critical exploration-bolstered by the work of Volosinov and Bakhtin, Ambedkar and Gramsci, and Marx and Engels. A key finding of this research is that the notion of "the student experience" encapsulates differing views on the role and purpose of HE. These differing views relate to the social positions of the text creators and reveal the social and economic relations between the addressers and their intended audience.
Chapter
This chapter summarises the discourses, including the key discursive strategies, which characterise the field of learning & teaching policy. Such appealing visions of best practice, and the way that policy ideas are recontextualised, obscure the negative messages and ideological basis of such discourse. The value of student and lecturer interviews for providing insights into practices in universities and the value of Bernstein’s notion of the pedagogic device for the study are discussed. The chapter reflects on learning & teaching in universities in terms of academic development and the notion of learning design. The link between policy and practice and the subsequent implications for equity and social justice are outlined. The chapter finishes with suggestions for ways forward including the need for a more critical approach to ideas presented as ‘best practice’ and the need to hear about the experiences of students and academics in specific university contexts.KeywordsAcademic developmentDiscursive strategiesEquity; field of learning & teachingLearning designRecontextualisationSocial justice
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This chapter introduces the employability agenda pursued by UK governments and promoted by Higher Education Institutions and their careers services. It also presents previous research on the marketization of HE and the notion of employability, the aim and position of this study, the research questions, and the overview of the book.
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Critical (multimodal) discourse studies of marketing or corporate documents of universities have shown the rapid neoliberalization of higher education and academia around the world. However, little attention has been paid to promotional materials for academic events. This chapter examines posters advertising invited lectures, colloquiums and conferences displayed on the campus of a “top” university in Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The study draws on multimodal discourse studies and social theories of branding to analyze how different discursive components and semiotic placements of the posters create particular social meanings and values for the academic events and/or institutions. It identifies several dominant “tropes of branding” emerging from the displayed posters such as global connection and leadership, hierarchical internationalization with local advantage and interdisciplinarity. It shows how these tropes manifest or resonate with HKU’s more general self-branding enterprise of building itself into “Asia’s Global University”. The chapter concludes by discussing how its findings can deepen our understanding of institutionality in the areas of higher education and academia under the conditions of neoliberalism and globalization.
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Australian higher education has its roots deep in the soil of colonisation and European imperialism. Therefore, it has developed as a system that is exclusive rather than inclusive of social and cultural diversity. The poor levels of higher education participation and outcomes for Indigenous students and students with a disability indicate the need to examine current practices and their impact on Indigenous people with a disability. This study aimed to explore how the higher education sector can mitigate barriers faced by Indigenous students with a disability and scaffold their successful engagement with and outcomes in higher education. Founded on Indigenous Standpoint Theory, as presented by Gilroy (2009a), the methodology of this research foregrounds the central role of Indigenous people with lived experience of disability—in the study design, its implementation and in the validation of the results. This research applied a mixed methods convergent parallel design. As described by Creswell and Plano Clark (2011), the study involved collecting and analysing two distinct datasets. The Quantitative Track comprised an audit of Australian university websites and a review of Disability Action Plans to ascertain the nature of service delivery. The Qualitative Track comprised listening to the stories and truthtelling of five Indigenous people with a disability who had undertaken higher education in Australia. Following the collection and analysis of the unique datasets, a process of comparison and identifying relationships between the two Tracks was undertaken. The study revealed the following six key findings: 1. Systemic barriers for Indigenous students with a disability were created by variable and bureaucratic institutional processes. Examples include the widespread requirement for medical diagnosis of a disability before the provision of assistance and lack of flexibility in course design, delivery and assessment. 2. The Indigenous perspective of on disability was found to be a dual consideration with Indigenous students not presenting for disability support and Indigenous staff not accessing disability services and supports for their students. 3. Institutional supports for Indigenous students and students with a disability were siloed into different areas, creating a lack of clarity for Indigenous students regarding where to go for help and placing them at risk of missing out on services and supports available to non-Indigenous students. 4. Systems were not cognisant of the additional barriers faced by students who were both Indigenous and had a disability. 5. The ineffective transition from higher education to employment was a major frustration. Participants found themselves in a continuous loop of attempting further qualifications to improve their life opportunities. 6. There was a desire for and appreciation of supportive and respectful communications from support services. Further, a spirit of resilience, determination and the desire to succeed was observed in participants. This study has identified a need for both public and private providers in the higher education sector to effectively coordinate their support services for Indigenous students with a disability. Within the current institutional funding model, this cohort may be better served by ensuring the following: • Services are coordinated and easy to navigate within the institution. • Students can present for supports without requiring supporting documentation to verify disability. • All staff are committed to the principles of person-centredness to ensure that individual student needs are recognised and supported. • Materials are produced following the principles of Universal Design of Learning to mitigate the need for students to declare that they have a disability. • There is institutional commitment to cultural safety to ensure that knowledge of and respect for Indigenous culture, community and knowledge is embedded throughout all facets of the institution. This thesis presents a framework to provide a pathway for institutions to achieve these desired outcomes and embed the processes in their Disability Action Plans.
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This study approaches the question of how text generic structure acts as semiotic instantiations of evaluative stance, particularly in the online context. In this respect, it explores the generic structure of online reportage stories with its multitude modes, distinctive rhetorical structure and layout with a view to differentiating them from their printed counterparts and extending the theoretical tools in this area by introducing slight modifications to Iedema, Feez and White’s (1994) model for hard news generic structure. Doing so, the study employs Mann and Thompson’s (1988) approach to genre so as to determine reportage nuclearity and Thompson and Hunston’s (2000) model of evaluation to relate evaluation to text organisational structure. It takes a case study of one of New York Times online reportage stories criticising Egypt’s sugar crisis (2017) to trace how the schematic structure of this story influences and multiplies the evaluative stance. The delicate modifications intend to help in digging deep into the embedded evaluative stance of the online news reportage stories. The study concludes that online reportage can be recognized as a macro genre that includes two interrelated yet independent sub-genres with two nucleus-satellites unites. As for the underlying evaluative stance, the analysis reveals how the NYT reportage story under discussion evaluates the Egyptian sugar crisis along with negatively attributing it to the current government.
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This research paper analyzes the huge change teenagers currently undergo as they watch content that affects the way they think in the present time as well as in the upcoming future. A clear example is the American streaming service of Netflix which plays an important role in influencing teenagers’ perceptions of social relationships. In light of this, the study presents and discusses the findings of the effect of Netflix on teenagers' perceptions of social relationships regarding families, friends and gender at large. It also examines the negative and positive aspects of Netflix. The study thus focuses on two theoretical frameworks; Social Learning Theory and Third Person Theory. Methodologically, the research relies on quantitative and qualitative data, as it conducts an in-depth interview with 25 parents and holds a questionnaire with 110 teenagers. The results reveal that teenagers are influenced by the content Netflix presents, as it has a significant impact not only on how they think, but also on their attitudes, social experiences, habits and cultural experiences.
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This paper investigates the communication strategies of schools to engage linguistically diverse parents through enrollment information on their websites. The importance of the study is due to the known educational disadvantage experienced by migrant children as well as the known positive influence of parental engagement on educational achievement. Against this background, we ask whether English-speaking and non-English-speaking parents have equal opportunities to support the education of their children through accessible high-quality enrollment information provided by their local school. To this end, we analyze language choice, multilingual information architecture, and references to linguistic diversity on the websites of 30 highly linguistically diverse Australian primary schools. English was found to be the exclusive medium of communication, even in schools where up to 98% of students speak another language at home. Where automated translation options or hyperlinks to external translated information are available, these follow a monolingual logic and are listed by language names in English rather than targeting the specific languages of the school community. References to linguistic diversity are rare but serve to normalize monolingual practices while regulating and otherizing linguistic diversity. The study thus demonstrates that accessible enrollment information in languages other than English is virtually non-existent. We close with implications for more inclusive design and professional development to foster greater parental engagement in linguistically diverse societies.
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Japanese college students’ akogare (meaning “longing”) for an idealized West has conventionally been researched and discussed under the assumption that the West is synonymous with Anglophone countries and that an encounter with the West is categorically an international experience. The present study provides new insights by exploring Japanese college students’ longing for an idealized France through a content analysis of blogs and reflective entries written by students during or after participating in a French study abroad program. The analysis reveals that Japanese students from prestigious universities display a high level of satisfaction irrespective of how well they are able to use French. This finding, which is intertwined with the nature of fun-oriented study abroad programs, is also related to the widespread use of English in Europe. The linguistic discovery reminds students of the overriding global status of English vis-à-vis French as a regional language. The study provides future research directions and pedagogical implication in light of (1) increasingly fierce competition for the securement of language course takers, which drives the institutional reproduction of language ideologies and the implementation of fun study abroad programs, and (2) the long-term effectiveness of such ideology-driven survival strategies amid the changing popularity of foreign languages in Japan and elsewhere.
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Favoring individual entrepreneurial freedom and free-market competition, neoliberalism has reshaped the social and discursive practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. In this paper, I draw on methods from critical multimodal discourse studies and an analytic concept from linguistic anthropology to examine several sets of student service materials circulating on the campus of a Hong Kong university between 2016 and 2017. While these materials are purportedly designed with student welfare in mind, I demonstrate how they effectively position students as (1) consumers of tailored services or experiences provided by the university; and (2) entrepreneurial selves, that is, socio-economically competitive and self-managed young individuals. I conclude by arguing that these service materials are shaped by and espouse a neoliberal governmentality that (re)orients HEIs and their students towards an all-pervasive marketization, competitiveness, and assertion of class privilege in a globalizing, particularly Westernized late capitalist society in Asia.
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Universities utilize language as a powerful tool to influence people’s perceptions. By employing language as a means of information and representation, electronic websites are becoming increasingly important for both universities and students. There are unanswered questions related to the portrayal of Saudi universities through the use of linguistic representation on their websites and the contribution of these websites to understanding the overlapping factors that reinforce academic practices within the Saudi social structure. This study compares and analyses the various discourses that are used to represent Saudi universities on their websites in terms of social constructs (e.g., gender and race). To that end, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is utilized to describe, analyse, and interpret the textual and visual representations of five Saudi university websites at the local, institutional and societal levels. The results indicate that the universities use a common systematic promotional discourse to represent themselves, emphasizing prestige and uniqueness. This finding means that universities are in control of the informational message with which their viewers interact. Moreover, terms such as “leaders”, “Vision 2030”, “distinguished education” and “competent” frequently appear without further explanations, thus triggering uncertainty. The findings also suggest that the websites lack diversity in their representation of gender, race and economic status. The descriptive analysis reveals limited textual content providing viewers with cursory information about important topics such as registration, academic majors, campus and financial aid. Furthermore, the acknowledgement of underrepresented individuals is highly asserted by embracing and promoting diversity. This study recommends that these institutions should focus on the quality level of information and areas of strength rather than quantity. Furthermore, they need to employ their mission statements to generate realistic directions and purposes that are tailored to society’s needs.
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The debate on the marketization of discourse in higher education has sparked and sustained interest among researchers in discourse and education studies across a diversity of contexts. While most research in this line has focused on marketized discourses such as advertisements, little attention has been paid to promotional discourse in public institutions such as the About us texts on Chinese university websites. The goal of the present study is twofold: first, to describe the generic features of the university About us texts in China; and second, to analyze how promotional discourse is interdiscursively incorporated in the discourse by referring to the broader socio-political context. Findings have indicated five main moves: giving an overview, stressing historical status, displaying strengths, pledging political and ideological allegiance , and communicating goals and visions . Move 3, displaying strengths , has the greatest amount of information and can be further divided into six sub-moves which presents information on campus facilities, faculty team, talent cultivation, disciplinary fields construction, academic research , and international exchange . The main linguistic and rhetorical strategies used in these moves are analyzed and discussed.
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This paper examines the language used by careers services in UK universities. Using a combination of critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics methods and tools, the analysis of 2.6 million words collected from 58 UK university websites shows that the services highlight the quantity and variety of resources and assistance offered to Higher Education (HE) students. In addition, the close analysis of linguistic data brings to light a commonly used semantic pattern where the services act as the enablers of the students’ self-beneficiary actions. The main idea communicated in these webpages is that if HE students want to succeed in the graduate job market they need to prepare for the world of work, follow instructions and develop their employability. This course of action is presented by UK universities as natural or common sense. The interpretation and evaluation of linguistic patterns that emerge from the corpus-based analysis challenges the notion of employability and its association with the idea of ‘empowering’ young people to successfully compete in the graduate job market.
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The study explores the relationship among relational capital and performance of universities in North India. In the first phase, the study identified the major contributors of relational capital by grounding of literature. University-industry collaboration, information disclosure and marketization emerged as major contributors which were also established empirically in the course of the study. Confirmatory factor analysis measurement model established the factor structure of the measurement items. Next, the researchers investigated the relative importance of each contributor in explaining relational capital and its association with university performance. Findings suggest that relational capital has a significant influence on university performance. A collaborative approach, relationship of reciprocity with stakeholders, disclosing relevant information, maintaining transparency and marketization of the institution are the underpinnings of university performance. The study has meaningful implications for policy makers at universities to enable them to strategize around practices conducive to the creation of relational capital and enhance performance.
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This article focuses on the discursive self-promotion of universities. It aims to investigate how universities make evaluations through linguistic resources that modulate the degree of attitudinal and experiential meaning expression in discourse. The study compares the use of Graduation resources (Martin and White, 2005) in the About Us texts of 160 top- and second-tier universities in China and America. Cross-country and cross-tier comparisons are made by determining the frequencies of the Graduation resources and performing a close analysis of the functions and features of these resources. Findings show that all 160 universities frequently use upscaled Graduation resources to amplify the positivity projected by existing attitudes and to invoke positive evaluations to realize the universities' pragmatic intent of self-promotion. While the top-tier Chinese universities forge the most authoritative institutional image and most distant relationship with readers, the second-tier American universities establish the least authoritative institutional image and closest relationship with their readers. These findings are discussed in light of various factors that co-constitute the ecologies of higher education.
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Drawing upon Appraisal Theory as the analytical tool, the study attempts to provide evidence for the marketization of tertiary education by showing how universities in Hong Kong achieve a positive self-presentation with appraisal resources in constructing their responses to quality audit evaluations. The study reveals that a positive self-presentation could materialize through the universities’ use of appraisal resources in pursuing four possible strategies, depending on the favourability of the evaluations: (1) highlighting and emphasizing the audit panels’ positive evaluations, (2) making positive self-evaluation through reformulating the panels’ positive evaluations, (3) including positive evaluations made by a third party, and (4) making positive self-evaluation of their current and future practices and plans. The study discusses the way appraisal resources can be used to achieve the marketization of tertiary education through positive self-evaluation and sheds light on the construction and interpretation of a high-stake but relatively little-researched written genre.
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This paper proposes a model for the structure and content of a university World Wide Web site, by a process of: (1)identifying who the site is serving and the information needs of these individuals or groups; (2)identifying institutional information needs; (3)relating this data to the content provided; (4)presenting the content in a manner suited to the characteristics and information needs of the target user groups. Through an analysis of existing UK higher education institution (HEI) Web sites and an extensive literature review, a case is made for a non-static approach to Web design which identifies users and makes extensive use of themes to promote currently relevant information at the top level. The authors propose a link-rich environment which does not rely on user categorisation and exploration of long sequences of links and is not constrained by traditional boundaries between departments. The authors contend that such an approach is yet to be adopted in UK HEIs, but is beginning to occur at HEIs in the USA.
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This paper focuses on the discursive practice of higher education in Singapore. Specifically, it compares and contrasts how the pressures of globalisation and increasing competition have shaped the discursive practices of two universities in Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University, as they endeavour to 'market' themselves through their respective prospectuses targeted at potential students. The theoretical framework and analytic approach adopted in this study relate to what is known broadly as 'Critical Discourse Analysis', which delves into the dialectical relationship between discursive and social structures, to show that discourse is not only socially constituted but socially constitutive (Fairclough 1989; van Dijk 1993). The analysis, which focuses on the construction of interpersonal meanings through both visual and verbal means, shows how one prospectus maintains a relatively university-centred and authoritative voice while the other adopts a more student-centred stance and assumes a more egalitarian relationship between students and the university. Both, however, are seen to succumb to the pressures of 'globalisation' and 'marketisation' (Fairclough 1993), which force the universities to operate as if they were 'ordinary businesses competing to sell their products to consumers' (Fairclough 1993: 141). The implications for higher education are discussed. The focus of this paper is on higher education and how the pressures of globalisation and increasing competition have shaped the discursive practices of two universities in Singapore. Specifically, the paper compares and contrasts how a more established university, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and a relatively new player in the field, the Singapore Management University (SMU), 'market' themselves through their respective prospectuses targeted at potential students. By examining the two university prospectuses, my aim is not only to show how socioeconomic pressures have shaped their discursive structures but also how they can in turn shape social structure through the identities and relationships the universities have constructed in relation to their potential students and the public at large. This dialogic relationship between discourse and society can therefore be construed in dialectical terms, in which one supports and is supported by the other. This paper is divided into four sections. The first provides a background of the two universities and situates the current prospectuses being examined within the broader discourse of higher education in Singapore. The second section then sketches the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis or CDA within which this study is situated. This provides the necessary contextual frame for a comparative analysis of the discursive structures, including both verbal and overall semiotic patterns, of the
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This study explores college and university Web sites to determine the extent institutions utilize the Web to accomplish public relations goals. A sample of the 129 best national universities in the United States compiled by the US News and World Report was used for analysis. Results show that schools with a small-medium level of student recruitment and alumni giving are more likely to actively utilize the Web. In this light, schools behind in school excellence strive to use the Web as an important public relations tool to overcome their inferiority to superior schools.
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In this paper we express concerns that the marketisation of British higher education that has accompanied its expansion has resulted in some sections becoming pedagogically limited. We draw from Fromm's humanist philosophy based on having to argue that the current higher education (HE) market discourse promotes a mode of existence, where students seek to ‘have a degree’ rather than ‘be learners’. This connects pedagogic theory to a critique of consumer culture. We argue that a ‘market-led’ university responds to consumer calls by focusing on the content students want at a market rate. It may decrease intellectual complexity if this is not in demand, and increase connections with the workplace if this is desired. Once, under the guidance of the academic, the undergraduate had the potential to be transformed into a scholar, someone who thinks critically, but in our consumer society such ‘transformation’ is denied and ‘confirmation’ of the student as consumer is favoured. We further argue that there is a danger that the new HE's link to business through the expansion of vocational courses in business, marketing and related offerings, inevitably embeds expanded HE in a culture of having. This erodes other possible roles for education because a consumer society is unlikely to support a widened HE sector that may work to undermine its core ideology.
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This article presents a brief review of several approaches of 'grammar', as the basis for a discussion of culturally produced regularities in the uses of colour; that is, the possibility of extending the use of 'grammar' to colour as a communicational resource. Colour is discussed as a semiotic resource - a mode, which, like other modes, is multifunctional in its uses in the culturally located making of signs. The authors make some use of the Jakobson/Halle theory of 'distinctive features', highlighting as signifier- resources those of differentiation, saturation, purity, modulation, value and hue. These are treated as features of a grammar of colour rather than as features of colour itself. The article demonstrates its theoretical points through the analysis of several examples and links notions of 'colour schemes' and 'colour harmony' into the social and cultural concept of grammar in the more traditional sense.
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This paper sets out the author's view of discourse analysis and illustrates the approach with an analysis of discursive aspects of marketization of public discourse in contemporary Britain, specifically in higher education. It includes a condensed theoretical account of critical discourse analysis, a framework for analysing discursive events, and a discussion of discursive practices (including their marketization) in late capitalist society, as well as analysis of samples of the discourse of higher education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research, and as a resource for social struggle.
Conference Paper
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Through a study of web site design practice, we observed that designers employ multiple representations of web sites as they progress through the design process, and that these representations allow them to focus on different aspects of the design. Designers also employ multiple tools during the course of a project, including graphic design, web development, presentation, and word processing software, as well as pen and paper. Sketching on paper is especially important during the design exploration phase of a project, when designers wish to explore many design possibilities quickly without focusing on low-level details. Web site design tools intended to support the early phases of the design process should employ informal interaction techniques, should support multiple site representations, and should integrate well with other applications that designers use regularly.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to account for the genre characteristics of non‐linear, multi‐modal, web‐mediated documents. It involves a two‐dimensional view on genres that allows one to account for the fact that digital genres act not only as text but also as medium. Design/methodology/approach The theoretical framework of the article is the Swalesian genre theory used in academic settings all over the world to investigate the relationship between discourse and social practice and to teach genre conventions to students of language and communication. Up till now most genre research has focused on the characteristics of “printed” texts, whereas less has been done to apply the genre theory to digital genres. Findings The article discusses the characteristics of digital genres, notably the media constraints that have a significant effect on the production and reception of digital genres and suggests an extension of the Swalesian genre model that takes the digital characteristics into account. Research limitations/implications The suggestion for a revised genre model is not based on an extensive empirical study of various types of web sites. The observation is restricted to a limited number of commercial web sites. Originality/value The article proposes new insights into the concept of genre adapting traditional models of genre theory to web‐mediated texts. A revised two‐dimensional genre model incorporating media elements into the concept of genre thus takes account of the particular characteristics of the navigation and reading elements of web‐mediated genres.
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Marketing needs to recognise the changing priority of consumption. The belief that markets are secure because consumers will continue to be motivated to have an ever-greater array and quantity of goods and services is a shortsighted and erroneous assumption. Consumers are increasingly looking to the market to provide resources and technologies that will enable them to achieve rewarding and sustainable states of 'being'. Drawing on the humanist philosophy of Erich Fromm, this paper advances the case for a 'Marketing of Being', based on a detailed discussion of the changing nature of consumer identity and identification behaviour.
Book
The first systematic, corpus-based and theoretically rigorous approach to the description and analysis of multimodal documents. Drawing on academic research and the experience of designers and production teams, Bateman uses linguistically-based analysis to show how different modes of expression together make up a document with a recognisable genre.
Book
https://network23.org/freeunisheff/files/2015/07/Mike-Molesworth-Richard-Scullion-Elizabeth-Nixon-The-Marketisation-of-Higher-Education-and-the-Student-as-Consumer-book.pdf
Book
Building on Bernstein's concept of recontextualization, Foucault's theory of discourse, Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics and Martin's theory of activity sequences, this book defines discourses as frameworks for the interpretation of reality and presents detailed and explicit methods for reconstructing these frameworks through text analysis. There are methods for analyzing the representation of social action, social actors and the timings and spatial locations of social practices as well as methods for analyzing how the purposes, legitimations and moral evaluations of social practices can be, and are, constructed in discourse. Discourse analytical categories are linked to sociological theories to bring out their relevance for the purpose of critical discourse analysis, and a variety of examples demonstrate how they can be used to this end. The final chapters apply aspects of the book's methodological framework to the analysis of multimodal texts such as visual images and children's toys.
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Universities in 2011 find that they must justify their existence in economic terms, not intellectual ones. To this end, mission statements locate the university in an environment of increasing competitiveness and commodification. In this paper, we take a sample of 10 mission statements from the UK research-intensive Russell Group and the business-focused University Alliance. We use appraisal analysis to explore how the evaluative language used in the statement embodies the value of the universities. In the statements examined, we find that differences between the mission groups are realised most notably through appraisal markers of judgement and appreciation. We find a greater emphasis on markers of value in the University Alliance statements. We suggest that these newer universities are required to discursively echo the government's call for universities to ‘add value’ to graduates. The Russell Group, encoding greater use of markers of appreciation: reaction, is perhaps more influenced by the call to demonstrate ‘impact’.
Book
This introductory text explains the use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a research methodology. Beginning with an explanation of the key words and theories behind CDA and how these can be used in research, Terry Locke proceeds to provide a lucid demonstration of the application of these series to both interpretation of print text and the analysis of conversations. The book is an essential guide for students encountering critical discourse analysis for the first time.textgreater
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This paper adopts a social semiotic perspective to investigate how hypermodal resources (e.g., text, image, hyperlinks) integrate on two university homepages to simultaneously create an official gateway and an institutional identity. In the first case, the homepage of National University of Singapore foregrounds and promotes its identity as a vibrant community that is global and welcoming by appealing images, interpersonally-orientated linguistic choices, rich navigation content, and various navigation styles. Tsinghua University in China, on the other hand, adopts a university-centric position in its homepage design by presenting its identity as a traditional and authoritative institution that keeps its distance from society at large through the impersonal nature of the images and linguistic texts, and the repetitive hierarchical navigation styles. These semiotic choices are interpreted from a socio-cultural perspective and the universities' involvement in marketization. The present study builds upon and extends multimodal approaches to hypermedia by considering the relations between hypermodal analytics and higher-level cultural and ideological meanings.
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Viewed through the lens of the dialogic theory of public relations, this study examines if universities use new media tools and how the world's top universities use Facebook as an interactive forum that give voice to key stakeholders. With the declining economy and limited access to resources, it is important to know how organizations utilize Web-based tools to build and maintain relationships at national and global levels. Because prior research found that users had negative feelings about lack of dialogue on college websites, it is also important to know whether universities are tapping into the dialogic potential. The content analyses of the websites and Facebook platforms show that more than half of the universities have Facebook pages. The results also show that users cannot post content or photos, or participate in discussions and wall posts. In essence, the voices of key stakeholders are being silenced via a media that is intended to provide open forums for dialogue.
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This article is a contribution to the existing debate about the marketization of higher education and offers a detailed study of the way the practices of marketization manifest themselves at the level of discourse in higher education. Taking its point of departure in Critical Discourse Analysis and using a text-driven procedure for genre analysis, the article describes and analyses the international student prospectus as an instance of a highly promotional genre which clearly reflects the values and forces of the free market. The article contains two analyses. The first analysis compares four instances of the international student prospectus genre from Finland, Scotland, Australia and Japan and tries to establish genre membership and genre characteristics by considering the overall text structure, and by looking for similarities in content and `rhetorical moves'. The second analysis is an in-depth analysis of the language use in the international student prospectus from the University of Stirling, Scotland. This analysis pays particular attention to the way the rhetorical moves and visual and lexico-grammatical features in the text are used to represent the two main participants in the text: the university and its (potential) students. Both analyses show that the student prospectus is trying to construct an image of the University of Stirling and its students which goes hand in hand with the new trend in higher education — namely that of offering innovative products to `demanding' clients on the look-out for the best possible `university experience'.
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This article considers notions of the market in UK higher education. It is argued that the economic market commoditises higher education as the accreditations earned at higher education institutions. The author suggests that, if this is the consequence of the market, then the notion is inadequate to represent the achievements of higher level learners. In its place the author conceives of a mechanism that is built on higher education being a conversation by respectful and involved colleagues, who seek to develop educational relationships rather than transactional deals between traders.
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Professional communication scholars have defined the decorative narrowly and subordinated it to informational text. Yet, current psychological research indicates that decorative elements elicit emotion-laden reactions that may precede cognitive awareness and influence interpretation of images. We conceive the decorative in design, and specifically color, as a complex rhetorical phenomenon. Applying decorative and color theory and analyzing design examples illustrating aesthetic, ethical, and logical appeals, we present a range of potential uses for color in electronic media.
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The growing orientation of public universities towards the corporate sector has had a significant impact on higher education governance, management, and discourse. The rhetoric of the free market, manifested most tangibly in business-related lexis, is now firmly established in the discursive repertoire employed by academic leaders, politicians, and the media, as well as parts of higher education research. Within this rhetoric, enterprise and enterprising, as well as entrepreneur and entrepreneurial, stand out as keywords carrying significant ideological loads that reflect the colonisation of academia by the market. The organisational and policy-making implications of academic enterprise have received considerable attention from higher education researchers, while discourse analysts have identified general discursive features of the ‘marketised’ higher education landscape. What the present paper adds to the existing debate is an in-depth study of a set of keywords in which processes of adaptation and appropriation crystallise, thus showing how macro-level social phenomena are mirrored, on the micro- level of linguistic detail, in the collocational behaviour of individual lexical items. The textual data that this paper is based on, gleaned mostly from the Internet, show that entrepreneur, entrepreneurial, enterprise, and enterprising are ambiguous in denotation and rich in connotation, making them susceptible to processes of semantic appropriation to suit particular agendas. Prevailing motifs and representations are identified through a combination of the computer-supported survey of Web-based material and the qualitative analysis of sample texts.
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This article presents a generalized system of image-text relations which applies to different genres of multimodal discourse in which images and texts co-occur. It combines two kinds of relations - the relative status of images and text, and how they relate to one another in terms of logico-semantics. Every instance of an image-text combination in the data sample is described by a selection of features from the system. The units of images and text between which the relations obtain are identified and the realizations of the logico-semantic and status relations are specified, both for the human analyst and a machine. Two application scenarios are discussed. The system should be useful for distinguishing between image-text relations for (genuinely) new and old media.
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This study compares samples of corporate homepages gathered in 1996 and 1997 with homepages of the same sites gathered in 2006. Based on the example of the evolution of typography following the invention of the printing press, it is hypothesized that homepages of 2006 will be more homogenous with each other than the earlier samples and will thus exhibit the development of standardization. The study finds increased standardization in the 2006 homepages in the categories of homepage length, primary navigation orientation, primary navigation style, focal point, and search engine presence and location.
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This paper discusses some principles of critical discourse analysis, such as the explicit sociopolitical stance of discourse analysts, and a focus on dominance relations by elite groups and institutions as they are being enacted, legitimated or otherwise reproduced by text and talk. One of the crucial elements of this analysis of the relations between power and discourse is the patterns of access to (public) discourse for different social groups. Theoretically it is shown that in order to be able to relate power and discourse in an explicit way, we need the `cognitive interface' of models, knowledge, attitudes and ideologies and other social representations of the social mind, which also relate the individual and the social, and the micro- and the macro-levels of social structure. Finally, the argument is illustrated with an analysis of parliamentary debates about ethnic affairs.
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In 2000, Jakob Nielsen, the world's leading expert on Web usability, published a book that changed how people think about the Web-Designing Web Usability (New Riders). Many applauded. A few jeered. But everyone listened. The best-selling usability guru is back and has revisited his classic guide, joined forces with Web usability consultant Hoa Loranger, and created an updated companion book that covers the essential changes to the Web and usability today. Prioritizing Web Usability is the guide for anyone who wants to take their Web site(s) to next level and make usability a priority! Through the authors' wisdom, experience, and hundreds of real-world user tests and contemporary Web site critiques, you'll learn about site design, user experience and usability testing, navigation and search capabilities, old guidelines and prioritizing usability issues, page design and layout, content design, and more!
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In recent years government policy in the UK has encouraged an expansion of Higher Education to increase participation with the express aim of creating a more educated workforce, capable of competing in international 'knowledge-based' economies. This expansion has led to competition between Higher Education Institutions, where students are increasingly positioned as consumers and institutions are working to improve the extent to which they meet 'consumer demands'.A business mind-set is now in charge in UK Higher Education, forcing institutions to reassess the way they are managed and promoted to ensure maximum efficiency, sales and profits. Students view the opportunity to gain a degree as a right, and a service which they have paid for, demanding a greater level of accountability, and cost-effective approaches. Changes in higher education have been rapid, and there has been little critical research into the implications. This volume brings together internationally comparative academic perspectives, critical accounts and empirical research to fully explore the issues and experiences of education as a commodity, examining:The new purpose of university 'mission statements'The implications of University branding and promotionStudents as 'active consumers' in the co-creation of valueLeague tables and student surveys vs. quality of educationThe higher education market and distance learningChanging student demands and focusWith contributions from many of the leading names involved in UK Higher Education including Ron Barnett, Frank Furedi, Lewis Elton, Roger Brown and even Laurie Taylor in his journalistic Times Higher guise as an academic at the University of Poppleton, this book will be essential reading for all involved in higher education. The Marketisation of Higher Education offers a groundbreaking insight into the effects of government policy on the structure and operation of universities.
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We examined the home pages of the 50 US states over the years 1997–2002 to discover the dimensions underlying people's perceptions of state government home pages, to observe how those dimensions have changed over the years, to identify different types of state home pages, and to see how these types have changed. We found that three primary dimensions explain the variation in perceptions of home pages. These are the layout of the page, its navigation support, and its information density. Over the years, variation in navigation support declined and variation in information density increased. We discovered that four types of state government home page have existed continuously from 1997 to 2001. These are the ‘Long List of Text Links’, the ‘Simple Rectangle’, the ‘Short L’, and the ‘High Density/Long L’. To this taxonomy, two other page types can be added: the ‘Portal’ page and the ‘Boxes’ page. The taxonomy we have identified allows for a better understanding of the design of US state home pages, and may generalize to other categories of home pages.
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In common with other Newly Industrialized Economies in Asia, Singapore is moving toward a knowledge-based strategy for growth. Increasing prominence has been given to the role of Singapore’s universities in stimulating economic growth through industrially relevant research, technology commercialization, high-tech spin-offs, attracting foreign talent, and inculcating entrepreneurial mindsets. The National University of Singapore (NUS) is examined as a case study of how East Asian universities are responding to the globalization of the knowledge economy. It is argued that a shift toward an “entrepreneurial university” model [Etzkowitz, H., Webster, A., Gebhart, C., & Terra, B. R. C. (2000). The future of the university and the university of the future: Evolution of ivory tower to entreprenenurial paradigm. Research Policy, 29(2), 313–330] is critical for NUS to contribute effectively to Singapore’s transition to a knowledge-based economy.
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Advertising is often used to illustrate popular and academic debates about cultural and economic life. This book reviews cultural and sociological approaches to advertising and, using historical evidence, demonstrates that a rethink of the analysis of advertising is long overdue. Liz McFall surveys dominant and problematic tendencies within the current discourse. This book offers a thorough review of the literature and also introduces fresh empirical evidence. Advertising: A Cultural Economy uses a historical study of advertising to regain a sense of how it has been patterned, not by the epoch', but by the interaction of institutional, organisational and technological forces.
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We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 financial crisis. In addition to widely used VaR and ES models, we also study the behavior of conditional and unconditional extreme value (EV) models to generate 99 percent confidence level estimates as well as developing a new loss function that relates tail losses to ES forecasts. Backtesting results show that only our proposed new hybrid and Extreme Value (EV)-based VaR models provide adequate protection in both developed and emerging markets, but that the hybrid approach does this at a significantly lower cost in capital reserves. In ES estimation the hybrid model yields the smallest error statistics surpassing even the EV models, especially in the developed markets.