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This study aims to explore how organisations use institutional language in Green Bond reports to explain and justify their activities using language that describes and reflects narratives while simultaneously constructing and shaping ideology. The paper mobilises Wodak and Meyer’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine reports and related documentation relating to Green Bonds issued in France.

The study uses three legitimating discourses: technocratic, environmental and social and business performance to develop a linguistic perspective that permits contributions to existing knowledge in the area.

The analysis attempts to identify the discursive strategies used to legitimise Green Bond issuance via claims linked to environmental management improvements and business activities’ social impact.

The study contributes to the critical literature on organisational legitimation and responsibility, investigations of Green Bond narratives and an understanding of broader environmental reporting in the financial sector.

Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The authors argue that activist groups use different narrative strategies to construct and legitimise their discourse of protest to convey social meanings for social action practices. This study represents an attempt to explain how anti-tourism activist groups have the agency to build different paradigms of protest rooted in particular views of tourism.

As a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology drawn on four case studies in the field of anti-tourism protest. Case study is deemed adequate to explore a complex social phenomenon, how activist groups differ from each other, in a specific socio-economic context. A critical discourse analysis method is used to study primary (interviews) and secondary sources (reports, websites and online campaigns documents) of information, which express the activist group motivations and objectives to protest against tourism.

This study’s findings provide evidence in how discourse differs among the protest groups. Three narrative paradigms of protest are identified, which guide their agency: scepticism, based on a global and ecological approach; non-interventionist transformation, rooted in local community issues; and direct transformation, based on a sectoral problem-solving approach. These differences are interpreted as the consequences of the emergence and the development of different paths of protest according to specific social contexts and power relations in which anti-tourism groups are embedded.

This paper provides a contemporary approach to anti-tourism activism within the context of social movements. This case study may be of interest to practitioners and international destination managers interested in gaining a better understanding of anti-tourism protest strategies, new anti-tourism narratives following COVID-19 and the opportunities and challenges for opening a dialogue with those involved in activism and social urban movements as part of sustainable tourism governance. Our results can also help activists to rethink how they integrate differences and particular strategic positions to avoid hindering collective action. This knowledge is especially useful for managers and authorities seeking to develop more accurate collaborative governance practices with local activists, and especially those interested in fostering participative action without marginalising the diverse range of local community perspectives.

To present an analytical framework for conducting critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research to further democratisation, social change and empowering marginalised groups, and to reflect on its application in a Bangladeshi nongovernmental organisation's microfinance program.

The framework, synthesising prior CDAA theorising and agonistic-inspired action research, is described, followed by a discussion of the methodological challenges when applying this during a ten-year, ongoing intervention seeking greater voice for poor, female borrowers.

Six methodological issues emerged: investigating contested issues rather than organisation-centric research; identifying and engaging divergent discourses; engaging marginalised groups, activists and/or dominant powerholders; addressing power and power relations; building alliances for change; and evaluating and disseminating results. The authors discuss these issues and how the participatory action research methods and analytical tools used evolved in response to emergent challenges, and key lessons learned in a study of microfinance and women's empowerment.

The paper addresses calls within and beyond accounting to develop critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship adopting an agonistic research methodology. It uses a novel critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research approach. The reflexive examination of its application engaging NGOs, social activists, and poor women to challenge dominant discourses and practices, and build alliances for change, explores issues encountered. The paper concludes with reflective questions to aid researchers interested in undertaking similar studies in other contentious, power-laden areas concerning marginalised groups.

This research investigates the presence of communitarian philosophy within contemporary Scottish public library strategy, exploring links between philosophy, politics and practice.

The paper follows a qualitative research approach, combining content analysis and discourse analysis methodologies for the analysis of a corpus of Scottish public library trust documentation according to a thematic framework of communitarian values.

The analysis revealed strong links between trust strategy and communitarian values but also highlighted contradictions within this form of communitarianism which belied a deeper neoliberal philosophical foundation. The research therefore identified a communitarian strategic service shift which introduced benefits of social inclusion, community autonomy and common good but also brought concerns of an inherently weakened communal foundation and the survival of a neoliberal status quo.

The analysis is focused on strategy in Scotland only and thus can only claim to be representative of that country. However, the growth in communitarian strategies in the public sector is informed from the analysis undertaken.

The paper provides a novel analysis of public library strategy and thus contributes to the understanding of public library practice in the modern era.

The impacts of communitarian philosophy in the public sphere are under-researched and how these changes impact the mission of libraries needs to be better understood.

This is the first analysis to consider public library strategy from a communitarian point of view. As such, it provides novel insights into a growing area of public service development.

The aim of the study is threefold: understanding the interconnections amongst visual and verbal multimodal communication strategies used in food discourse; identifying the themes of celebrity chef's food discourse with respect to pro-environmental behaviour; and providing a methodological framework to visually analyse food-themed videos.

This study uses mise-en-scène and critical discourse and multimodal analyses to gain insights on food discourse from 20 videos shared by a Michelin starred chef on social media platforms.

Results show that a pro-environmental cooking philosophy challenges the normative discourse on food and educates general audiences and foodies alike. Mise-en-scène and discourse analyses of Instagram visual content reveal that leftovers are central to the ethical message and are intertwined – through the aesthetic of the videos-with concepts of inclusivity, diversity and nourishment.

Chefs, and restaurants, are encouraged to recognise their responsibility as role models, thus able to influence the societal production of food discourse.

The findings provide new insights into the role of a celebrity chef in promoting sustainable food preparation and consumption.

The objective of this study is to examine developments in the discursive practice of non-financial reporting in the public healthcare sector. In doing so, the authors investigate how the main reform foci of productivity and quality are represented, with a specific focus on the patient.

Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), the authors conduct a longitudinal study (2007–2018) of healthcare reporting foci across the five administrative regions responsible for public hospitals in Denmark. The study analyses sixty annual reports and draws on contemporary reform documents over this period. CDA enables a micro-textual analysis, combined with macro-insights and discussions on social practice.

The findings show complex webs of presentation strategies, but in particular two changes occur during the period. First, the patient is centred throughout but the framing changes from productivity and waiting lists to quality and dialogue. Second, in the first years, the regions present themselves as actively highlighting financial and quality concerns, which changes to a passive and indirect form of presentation steered by indicators and patient legislation enforced by central government. This enhances passivity and distance in healthcare regional non-financial reporting where the regions seek to conform to such demands. Simultaneously, however, the authors find a tendency to highlight very different local initiatives, which shows an attempt to go beyond a pure automatic mode of reporting found in earlier studies.

Responding to the literature on both healthcare and financial reporting, this study identifies novel links between micro-level texts and macro-level social practices, enabling insights into the potentially intertwined impacts of public-sector reporting. The authors offer insights into the complexity of the construction of non-financial reporting in the public sector, which has a wider impact and different intentions than private-sector reporting.

This chapter employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine three key policy documents related to international education in New Zealand: The International Student Wellbeing Strategy (ISW), The New Zealand’s International Education Strategy 2018–2020 (IES), and The New Zealand’s Strategic Recovery Plan (SRP) for the International Education Sector. It asks, “How are discourses of international student wellbeing deployed in New Zealand’s international education policy documents?” The findings suggest that the actual targets of wellbeing in New Zealand international education policies were less the international students than New Zealand itself. I argue that discourses of international student wellbeing are instrumentalized in policy discourses to position New Zealand as a progressive and inclusive society and feed the competitive market dynamics driving the global international education market.

The purpose of this study is to identify discourses of sustainability of community colleges and how they related to sustainability imaginaries.

This study used a combination of research strategies associated with corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis. Data included 57 issues of Community College Journal, a professional magazine published by the American Association of Community Colleges, and 2,972 abstracts of dissertations about community colleges. Publication dates ranged from 2010 to 2020.

Community college discourse of sustainability coheres around six themes: careers and fields of study; curriculum and credentialing; campus ecological sustainability; administrative roles and processes; external organizations, partnerships and processes; and fiscal sustainability. There is little evidence of a sustainable living imaginary found.

The analysis is limited to a specific set of professional and academic texts about community colleges. Future researchers should explore discourses of sustainability in other contexts.

There has been no research associated with critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to explore community college discourses of sustainability, specifically in the field of community college leadership. The findings of this study situate the community college within contests over sustainability competencies in the practice of community college leadership development.

Local cultures under the nation-states have evolved and produced new concepts. Migrations and cultural interactions have also influenced the language. Thus, different conceptualisations of migration have developed in the “Malay World.” Language is not only a product of ecological and geographical environment, but it is also a result of human mobilisations and cultural intercourses. The differences caused by various Malay World conceptualisations are also related to different interactions, histories and social realities. In the “Malay World,” Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia are threatened by English hegemony. At this juncture, demonstrating these interrelationships helps one to understand local cultural intercourses between culture and social reality.

This paper implements the critical discourse analysis, notably, the dialectical–relational approach to different conceptualisations in the “Malay World.” Thus, it aims to discuss the reasons behind the usage of migration-related terms in Indonesia and Malaysia. How migration terms mainly shape social forms, process and circulate in the social world is argued in this paper. The authors target to investigate the local meaning sets for migration concepts and explore self-reflectivity in and critique of the usage of established images between Bahasa Indonesia and Malay concepts, using a Critical Discourse Analysis framework. The discussion section attempts to analyse and explain dialectical relations between social norms and social elements.

Trade diasporas, culture and identities of immigrants, cultural richness and multi-ethnicity have continuously diversified the conceptualisations. These concepts also indicate cultural dominations and exclusions. Thus, the migration dynamics in Southeast Asia might be understood by scrutinising these boundaries and patterns. This study showed that migration conceptualisations in the Malay world are substantially locally determined. Local wisdom and cultural codifications prevail in the migration context. A deeper understanding of the local context is essential in evaluating the international refugee protection mechanisms in these countries as neither Indonesia nor Malaysia are parties to the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Definitions of various types of migration are referred to in multiple terminologies throughout the Nusantara. While in Bahasa Melayu, migrant refers to pendatang, nomadic refers to nomad; refugee refers to pelarian, to migrate refers to berhijrah; in Bahasa Indonesia, migrant refers to migran, nomadic or nomad refers pengembara, refugee refers to pengungsi and migrate, or migration refers migrasi. At the same time, in the Nusantara, many communities define themselves according to their geographical features, such as Orang Sungai, Orang Laut or Orang Kuala. In this context, defining leads to a significant impact on shaping the discourses and approaches.

Definitions determine the borders, flexibilities, plausibility and flows of terms. Critical Discourse Analysis especially placed emphasis on languages and their impacts on social reality. According to Critical Discourse Analysis, terms and their genealogies, transformations and limits are vital in order to comprehend social facts and truth. To understand the change and continuity of migration flow in Southeast Asia, scrutinising the migration-related terms is crucial. This study aims to examine those main terms, their connection with other words, and their transformation in the Malay world sociologically. This as such will shed more light on the social changes regarding genealogical relationships and their usage in daily life within the Critical Discourse Analysis.

This study aims to fulfil the gap between authentic concepts of migration literature in Nusantara. Although Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia have a strong connection and interaction, migration definitions in these languages are separated from each other. Cultural and social elements greatly influence migration-connected terms in Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia. Without this understanding and the absence of local context, any assessment of their refugee protection systems may be incomplete. This study deals with different cultural nuances and refinements and their migration conceptualisations and histories are based on the ground of their social realities.

This study explores the politics of ideology in the process of sensegiving and sensemaking at a Japanese retailer in Hong Kong. Studies on power and politics are scarce despite key role of power and politics in understanding the factors behind the conflict between the management's policy legitimization (sensegiving) and employees' policy interpretation (sensemaking). By using the three dimensions proposed in the critical sensemaking approach (discourse, rules and contexts), this paper explores the complex mechanism of power and politics in sensemaking and sensegiving.

Using 15 months of participant observation as a salesperson, this paper discusses how the Japan-centric customer service philosophy (dominant discourse), customer service policies and practices (organizational rules) and asymmetric power structure between the Japanese global headquarters and Hong Kong subsidiaries (formative contexts) are presented and perpetuated through the sensegiving–sensemaking process.

Dominant discourse was observed in the management's sensegiving, which placed the Japanese style of customer service over others. This ethnocentric dominant discourse informed the creation of customer service policies, although the realization of the discourse was determined by the employees' conflicting interpretations of the organizational rules. As a formative context, an asymmetric power structure was present that positioned the Hong Kong subsidiary as subservient to the global headquarters in Japan. This shows that the political process of sensegiving and sensemaking deeply implicates the dominant discourse, organizational rules and power structure as central forces that determine the level of perpetuating ideology.

This research illustrates the wider implications of power and politics in sensegiving–sensemaking studies and provides a complex picture of ethnocentric management.