Browsing by Author "Coyle, Adrian"

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    Alternative ‘Lives Matter’ formulations in online discussions about Black Lives Matter: Use, support and resistance
    (Sage, 2022-08-26) Goodman, Simon; Tafi, Vanessa; Coyle, Adrian
    Throughout its history, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has elicited strong opposition that risks stifling anti-racist progress. This paper examines how support for BLM is argued about and challenged in online settings, focussing on the use of alternative ‘Lives Matter’ hashtags and slogans. BLM and anti-BLM material from 2020 was identified across six online platforms, which generated 1242 data items. Data were subjected to discourse analysis informed by critical discursive psychology. Arguments over the context of racism were a recurrent feature of responses to BLM-supporting posts. The analysis demonstrates the varying ways that alternative ‘Lives Matter’ formulations can be used to display opposition to and undermine BLM. Of these, ‘All Lives Matter’ was used most prominently but also ‘White Lives Matter’ and others. All alternatives to BLM function to obscure or deny the discrimination that Black people face, and so work to maintain the racist status quo.
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    “Arabic is the language of the Muslims - that’s how it was supposed to be”: exploring language and religious identity through reflective accounts from young British-born Asians.
    (Taylor and Francis, 2010) Jaspal, Rusi; Coyle, Adrian
    This study explores how a group of young British-born South Asians understood and defined their religious and linguistic identities, focusing upon the role played by heritage languages and liturgical languages and by religious socialisation. Twelve British-born South Asians were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Interview transcripts were subjected to interpretative pheno- menological analysis. Four superordinate themes are reported. These addressed participants’ meaning-making regarding ‘‘the sanctification of language’’ and the consequential suitability of ‘‘the liturgical language as a symbol of religious community’’; the themes of ‘‘ethnic pride versus religious identity’’ and ‘‘linguistic Otherness and religious alienation’’ concerned potential ethno-linguistic barriers to a positive religious identity. Findings are interpreted in terms of concepts drawn from relevant identity theories and tentative recommendations are offered concerning the facilitation of positive religious and ethnic identities.
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    Language and perceptions of identity threat
    (2009) Jaspal, Rusi; Coyle, Adrian
    This study explores how a group of British South Asians (BSA) understood, defined and evaluated languages associated with their ethnic and religious identities, focusing upon the role of language in the negotiation and construction of these identities and particularly upon strategies employed for coping with identity threat. Twelve BSA were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Transcripts were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis. Participants’ accounts were explored through the interpretive lens of identity process theory. Four superordinate themes are reported: “Maintaining a sense of distinctiveness through language use”, “Exclusion of others and personal claims of belonging”, “Deriving a sense of self-esteem from the knowledge of one’s threatening position” and “Two identities, two languages. Searching for psychological coherence”. While identity principles may be cross-culturally universal, coping strategies are fluid and dynamic. Individuals will act strategically to minimise identity threat. Some of the coping strategies manifested by participants are discussed.
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    “My language, my people”: language and ethnic identity among British-born South Asians
    (Taylor and Francis, 2010) Jaspal, Rusi; Coyle, Adrian
    This study explores how a group of second generation Asians (SGA) understood and defined language, focusing upon the role they perceived language to have played in their identity. Twelve SGA were interviewed and the data were subjected to qualitative thematic analysis. Four superordinate themes are reported, entitled ‘Mother tongue and self’, ‘A sense of ownership and affiliation’, ‘Negotiating linguistic identities in social space’ and ‘The quest for a positive linguistic identity’. Participants generally expressed a desire to maintain continuity of self- definition as Asian, primarily through the maintenance of the heritage language (HL). An imperfect knowledge of the HL was said to have a negative impact upon psychological well-being. There were ambivalent responses to the perception of language norms, and various strategies were reported for dealing with dilemmatic situations and identity threat arising from bilingualism. Recommendations are offered for interventions that might aid the ‘management’ of bilingualism among SGA.
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    Reconciling social psychology and socio-linguistics can have some benefits: language and identity among second generation British Asians
    (British Psychological Society, 2009) Jaspal, Rusi; Coyle, Adrian
    Given the pervasiveness of language in social life and the implications that language use can have for one’s individual and collective identities, attempts were made to explore the theoretical and empirical advantages in connecting social psychological theories of identity and sociolinguistics in order to explore language and identity among second generation British Asians. This paper features a brief overview of the sociological background of British Asians and a detailed consideration of two social psychological theories of identity, namely, self-aspects model of identity (Simon, 2004) and identity process theory (Breakwell, 1986, 1992). It is considered that these under-utilised social psychological theories lend themselves readily to the study of language and identity among this population. Moreover, this paper considers the substantive literature on language and identity. It is argued that an interdisciplinary (social psychological and sociolinguistic) approach is particularly well-suited to the exploration of language and identity. Furthermore, ‘theoretically active’ phenomenological approaches may be particularly useful for research in this domain.
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    Threat, Victimhood and Peace: Debating the 2011 Palestinian UN State Membership Bid
    (Wiley, 2013) Jaspal, Rusi; Coyle, Adrian
    The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been described as one of the most intractable in the world. This article firstly provides an overview of the socio-political events that led up to the Palestinian UN state membership bid in September 2011, and secondly as a case study, it examines how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was constructed in speeches delivered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the state membership bid to the UN General Assembly in September 2011. Despite their opposing agendas, there are some significant discursive similarities in the two speeches. The most salient shared discourses concern that of ingroup victimhood, on the one hand, and that of outgroup threat, on the other. It is argued that the speeches unwittingly dispel support for intergroup reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians by aggravating grievances on both sides and accentuating intergroup suspicion. This article highlights the importance of examining political speeches in order to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.