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This book fills a significant gap in the field by addressing the topic of absence in discourse. It presents a range of proposals as to how we can identify and analyse what is absent, and promotes the empirical study of absence and silence in discourse. The authors argue that these phenomena should hold a more central position in the field of discourse, and discuss these two topics at length in this innovative edited collection. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis.

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1 Introduction

Melani Schröter and Charlotte Taylor

Part I Comparison as Means to Identify Silence and Absence

2 Not for Twitter: Migration as a Silenced Topic in the Spanish General Election

Manuel Alcántara-Plá and Ana Ruiz-Sánchez

3 Absence in Visual Narratives: The Story of Iran and Pakistan across Time

Sameera Durrani

4 Intimations of ´Spring´? What Got Said and What Didn´t Get Said about the Start of the Middle Eastern/North African Uprisings: A Corpus-assisted Discourse Study of a Historical Event
Alan Partington

5 Cross-media Studies as a Method to Uncover Patterns of Silence and Linguistic Discrimination of Sexual Minorities in Ugandan Print Media

Cecilia Strand

6 Critically Illuminating Relevant Absences in Public Sphere Arguments via Digital Mining of Their Weblinks: A Software-based Pedagogy

Kieran O´Halloran

7 Silence and Absence in Chinese Smog Discourses

Jiayi Wang and Dániel Z. Kádár

Part II Exploring Means that Produce Silence and Absence
8 Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Identifying Meaningful Absences in Discourse

Patricia von Münchow

9 What´s Not in a Frame? Analysis of Media Representations of the Environmental Refugee

Nina Venkataraman
10 A Discourse Analysis of Absence in Nigerian News Media

Taiwo Oluwaseun Ehineni

Part III Analysing Surface Indicators of Silence and Absence

11 What the f#@$!: Policing and Performing the Unmentionable in the News
Crispin Thurlow and Jamie Moshin

12 The Use of No Comment by Suspects in Police Interviews

Joanna Garbutt

13 Conspicuous by Presence: The Empty Signifier ´Interdisciplinarity´ and the Representation of Absence

Dorte Madsen

Index

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Melani Schröter is Associate Professor in German Linguistics at the University of Reading, UK, and the author of Silence and Concealment in Political Discourse (2013). Her research interests include political discourse analysis, silence and absence in discourse and communication, comparative analyses of European migration discourses, and discourses of resistance. Charlotte Taylor is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sussex, UK, and Editor of CADAAD Journal. Her research specialisms include impoliteness implicatures, and discourses of migration, and she has a longstanding interest in methodological issues.

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