My main field of research is the sociolinguistic analysis of military discourse. Within that genre I examine/engage with a myriad of things: power, ideology, hegemony, textual analysis, critical narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis.
Current Project (Dissertation):
Working Title:
Discursive Strategies Across the Military-Civilian Divide: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Interaction in a Government Research and Development Organization
Most recent past projects:
The Veteran Dialect: Navigating the Discursive Space between Military Identity and the Post-Service Self
Abstract:
The language of the United States military is a unique warrior code and operational lynchpin in the missions of the tri-services. As the military is an “intermediate total institution”, characterized by a hierarchical role structure with bounded ideology and closed social scripts (Davies 1989), it requires that members’ identities and language practices are woven into the very fabric of the organization; indeed creating and sustaining the ideological structures and power-driven relations inherent to the military institutional domain. As a result of intense ideological inculcation, this entrenched semiotic/linguistic repertoire remains strongly influential even after service termination – as veterans socially navigate the civilian sector. Tasked with the re-alignment of their discursive identity practices to compete in the civilian world while still remaining vestigially tethered to the ideological and linguistic domain of the military, the veteran identity is neither fully civilian nor any longer fully military and therefore embodies elements of a social and discursive third space (Bhabha 1994; Bhatt 2008). This study examines this un-theorized but critical space to understand how veterans construct and communicate their post-service identities through the use of a veteran dialect which combines elements of military training/experience with civilian social practices and demands. Fifteen online surveys and three semi-structured interviews, examined through the lens of Critical Narrative Analysis (Souto-Manning 2014), revealed a corpus of both reoccurring and divergent linguistic diacritics, themes and nuances of the veteran identity repertoire that revealed varied instances/experiences of both discursive creativity and ideological tension. Ultimately, this exploratory study of a veteran dialect contributes both unique knowledge to the field of sociolinguistics and new awareness of how veterans form and express their complex identities in the space between (military and civil) institutions.
‘Tench Hut! Power, Discourse and Ideology in the Survival of the United States Air Force
Abstract:
This study presents a critical analysis of the linguistic production of the institutional ideology of the United States Air Force (USAF) and demonstrates how that discourse production creates and maintains the power and ideology of the institution. Analysis of these doctrinally reflective discursive conduits offers unique insights into how power is exercised and accepted within a rigid hierarchical framework and how it maintains the integrity of all institutional ideals. The methodology used in this study involves a qualitative survey of comprehensive USAF regulations governing life in the organization, followed by a quantitative survey and thematic analysis of fourteen Airman-authored articles on the topic of leadership. A critical discourse-theoretic analysis showcases the functional power of the institutional doctrine by showing a discursive relationship between organizational level written discourse and individual level discourse. I argue that the ideology of the USAF survives and thrives through this inextricable relationship and by the invocation of organizational written regulations and doctrine in member produced discourse. This study demonstrates the discourse-power nexus in the scarcely explored military domain and highlights the role of power dynamics that institutional members discursively access to organize and structure their social and linguistic behavior.
Other projects in progress:
And now for something completely different…I like power so much and hip hop, that I have branched out into looking at power themes and relations in American hip-hop. Its a work in progress as its a TOTALLY different playing field than the military domain, as you can imagine. But, variety is the spice of life right?
Lyrical Resistance: Spanish Code-Switching as Covert Political Defiance in American Hip-Hop