Table Of ContentPosthumanism and
Deconstructing Arguments
Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments: Corpora and Digitally-
driven Critical Analysis presents a new and practical approach in Critical
Discourse Studies. Providing a data-driven and ethically-based method for
the examination of arguments in the public sphere, this ground-breaking
book:
• Highlights how the reader can evaluate arguments from points of view
other than their own;
• Demonstrates how digital tools can be used to generate ‘ethical
subjectivities’ from large numbers of dissenting voices on the world-
wide-web;
• Draws on ideas from posthumanist philosophy as well as from Jacques
Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for theorising these
subjectivities;
• Showcases a critical deconstructive approach, using different corpus
linguistic programs such as AntConc, WMatrix and Sketchengine.
Posthumanism and Deconstructing Arguments is essential reading for
lecturers and researchers with an interest in critical discourse studies, critical
thinking, corpus linguistics and digital humanities.
Kieran O’Halloran is Reader in Applied Linguistics in the School of
Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London, UK.
Posthumanism and
Deconstructing
Arguments
Corpora and Digit ally-d riven
Crit ical Analysis
Kieran O’Halloran
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa busi ness
© 2017 Kieran O’Halloran
The right of Kieran O’Halloran to be iden ti fied as author of this work
has been asser ted by him in accorda nce with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprin ted or
repro duced or util ised in any form or by any elec tronic,
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Trademark notice: Product or corpor ate names may be trade marks
or registered trade marks, and are used only for iden ti fic a tion and
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British Library Cataloguing- in-Publication Data
A cata logue record for this book is avail able from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Names: O’Halloran, Kieran, author.Title: Posthumanism and
deconstructing arguments : corpora and digitally-driven critical analysis
/ Kieran O’Halloran. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New
York, NY : Routledge, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and
index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016045305 | ISBN 9780415708777
(hardback) | ISBN 9781315622705 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Critical
discourse analysis—Methodology. | Discourse analysis, Literary—Data
processing. | Corpora (Linguistics)—Data processing. | Functionalism
(Linguistics) Classification: LCC P302.5 .O523 2017 | DDC 401/.41—
dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045305
ISBN: 978-0-415-70877-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62270-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
To Catherine
Make a rhizome. But you don’t know what you can make a rhizome
with, you don’t know which subter ranean stem is effect ively going to
make a rhizome, or enter a becomi ng, people your desert. So experi ment.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
The notion of the non- human, in- human, or post- human emerges as the
defin ing trait of nomadic ethical subjectiv ity.
Rosi Braidotti
Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables xii
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xvi
1 Introduction 1
PART I
Preparing the ground 11
2 Critical thinki ng and pedago gical crit ical discourse analysis 13
3 Deconstruction and Jacques Derrida’s philo sophy of language 44
4 Corpus linguist ics and digital text analysis 68
PART II
Using big ready- made corpora to genera te
discurs ive subjectiv it ies 99
5 Discursive subjectivi ty 101
6 Bypassing chal lenges of recon struct ion 126
PART III
Making corpora to gener ate ethical subjectiv it ies 151
7 Ethical subjectivi ty gener ated with lemmas 153
8 Ethical subjectiv ity gener ated with keywords 187
9 Ethical subjectiv ity gener ated rhizo mat ica lly 219
viii Contents
PART IV
Reflection: posthu man subjectiv it ies and
crit ical reading 249
10 Methodology 251
11 Deterritorialisations 284
Glossary 306
Appendix 310
Bibliography 312
Index 324
Figures
2.1 The rela tion ship between text and d/Discourse in CDA 26
2.2 Fairclough’s CDA frame work (adapted from Fairclough,
2010: 133) 28
2.3 Thirty-s even concord ance lines for ‘east(ern) Europe(an(s))’
from The Sun’s news texts published six weeks before
1 May 2004 34
2.4 Cohesive chains in the Tony Blair speech frag ment 40
3.1 The paradigm for animate skin perfor at ors (‘X’) in rela tion
to the syntagm ‘The X bit the man’ 54
3.2 Two ways of under stand ing the supplem ent 59
4.1 Voyant graphic repres ent a tions of ‘yes’ in chapter 18
of Ulysses using Sinclair and Rockwell (2015) 73
4.2 Magnified word cloud for chapter 18 of Ulysses using
Sinclair and Rockwell (2015) 74
4.3 Thirty randomly gener ated concord ance lines showing
colloc a tion between ‘rife’ and ‘spec ul a tion’ from the
UKWaC corpus 77
4.4 Key semantic field cloud for chapter 18 of Ulysses;
gener ated using WMatrix (Rayson, 2009) 88
5.1 Deconstruction of cohes ive struc ture due to normal
colloc a tion deficit/surplus 103
5.2 Tracing of some cohes ive chains in the pro-GM argu ment 109
5.3 Coherence prob lems around ‘bene fits’ and ‘(GM)
corpor ate power’ 110
5.4 Coherence prob lems as a result of the colloc ate surplus
‘envir on ment’ 112
5.5 Deconstruction of cohe sion due to normal colloc a tion
surplus of the ellip ted ‘global’ in ‘demon strable global
bene fits’ 114
5.6 Cohesion across the argu ment via ‘science’ and ‘tech no logy’ 115
5.7 Deconstruction of cohe sion across the argu ment via
‘science’ and ‘techn o logy’ 116
