Culturonyms as Ideological Markers in English-Language Political Discourse: A Media-Based Linguistic Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69760/portuni.0110017Keywords:
culturonyms, political discourse, ideological square, Critical Discourse AnalysisAbstract
This article investigates the ideological function of culturonyms in English-language political and media discourse, focusing on their role as culturally marked lexical units that mediate identity, power, and evaluation. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and cultural linguistics, the study develops a theoretical model of semantic stratification to explain how culturonyms transition from culturally descriptive terms to ideologically operational markers. The framework is empirically validated through three case studies examining immigration discourse, lifestyle-based political critique, and symbolic marginalization through omission in mainstream media. Using lexical-semantic analysis, collocation analysis, and frequency mapping, the findings demonstrate that culturonyms systematically contribute to negative other-presentation, polarization within the Us vs. Them dichotomy, and the regulation of cultural visibility. The study further shows that ideological control is exercised not only through explicit evaluative labeling but also through strategic absence, which minimizes the cultural capital of marginalized groups. By integrating empirical corpus analysis with socio-cognitive and discursive theory, the article positions culturonyms as micro-level agents of ideological control and offers a replicable methodological model for analyzing culturally coded political language in contemporary media.
References
Adler, N. J. (2002). International dimensions of organizational behavior (4th ed.). South-Western College Publishing.
Bowker, L. (2002). Computer-aided translation technology: A practical introduction. University of Ottawa Press.
Brill. (n.d.). The pragmatics of political discourse (Chapter 8). https://brill.com/display/book/9789004540231/BP000017.xml
Cambridge, J. (1999). Information loss in consecutive interpretation: A systems approach. The Translator, 5(1), 17–37.
Discourse Analyzer. (n.d.). Collocations in discourse analysis. https://discourseanalyzer.com/collocations-in-discourse-analysis/
Discourses.org. (n.d.). Ideological discourse analysis. https://discourses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Teun-A.-van-Dijk-1995-Ideological-discourse-analysis.pdf
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Longman.
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Gile, D. (1995). Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture. Anchor Books.
Hodge, R. (2011). Ideology, identity, interaction: Contradictions and challenges for critical discourse analysis. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 5, 1–15. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/journals/cadaad/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Volume-5_Hodge.pdf
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kelly, D. (2005). A handbook for translator trainers. St. Jerome Publishing.
Khudaverdiyeva, T. (2025). The role of specialized translation in enhancing cross-cultural legal and medical communication. Acta Globalis Humanitatis et Linguarum, 2(5), 7–19.
Konopelkina, O. (n.d.). Linguistic and cognitive features of English-language political discourse. Studies in Media and Communication. https://redfame.com/journal/index.php/smc/article/view/5840
Lai, M. (2017). Collocation analysis of news discourse and its ideological implications. Pragmatics, 27(4). https://benjamins.com/online/prag/articles/prag.17028.lai
Language Log. (n.d.). Political nouniness. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=24276
Medium. (n.d.). Language and ideology: Critical applied linguistics. https://medium.com/@adecressac/language-and-ideology-2f8b116813ed
Moser-Mercer, B. (2002). Remote interpreting: Issues and challenges. The Translator, 8(2), 161–180.
Munday, J. (2016). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications (4th ed.). Routledge.
Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a science of translating: With special reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translating. E. J. Brill.
Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). Frequency. https://www.oed.com/information/understanding-entries/frequency/
Phelan, S. (n.d.). Critical discourse analysis and media studies. Massey Research Online. https://mro.massey.ac.nz/
Pöchhacker, F. (2004). Introducing interpreting studies. Routledge.
Seidova, E. R. (n.d.). Lexical-semantic features of musical culturonyms. Acta Globalis Humanitatis et Linguarum. https://egarp.lt/index.php/aghel/article/download/383/377
Seidova, E. R. (n.d.). Lexical-semantic features of musical culturonyms. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395707542_Lexical-Semantic_Features_of_Musical_Culturonyms
Van Dijk, T. A. (1995). Ideological discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 6(4), 45–77.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2002). Political discourse and political cognition. In C. A. R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis (pp. 209–224). Routledge.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2012). Ideology and discourse. Discourses.org. https://discourses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Teun-A.-van-Dijk-2012-Ideology-And-Discourse.pdf
Vereshchagin, E. M., & Kostomarov, V. G. (1999). Language and culture. Indrik.
Vorobyov, V. V. (1997). Linguoculturology. Moscow State University Publishing House.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Porta Universorum
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
License Terms
All articles published in Porta Universorum are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license permits:
-
Sharing (copying and redistributing the material in any medium or format),
-
Adapting (remixing, transforming, and building upon the material),
-
for non-commercial purposes only,
-
with proper attribution to the original author(s) and source.
Commercial use of the material is not permitted without prior written permission from the publisher.
