Comments on: Diversity made invisible in 2010 Australian federal election

By: William Steed (from Fully(sic))

William Steed (from Fully(sic)) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:24:17 +0000

Id be interested to know about the quality of the Chinese and Korean in the leaflets. Id be horrified if it were a glorified internet translation, especially given the multilingual resources right there in the electorate.

By: Khan

Khan — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:45:36 +0000

If politicans had known the way linguistics look at the reality/realities, they would have banned us. Your analysis is very appealing and convincing as it is based on semiotic evidences in the text and of course the talk around the text as well. However, I would like to comment very briefly on one lexical item in the text: “Protect” and Agency in the text. The word triggers many cognitive models in which there is someone more powerful, able and competent to save the sinking ship of community life. It also make us believe that there are adverse forces against which we have to save guard the community’s quality of life. By implicaiton, the community needs a protector, a saviour( with intese religious connotation) or else… ?

If we map the agency structure as to who does what to whom in the text world. It is in the hand of the people( who you have rightly pointed out) shown in the picture or were invited to tele talks. So, the text world and the practices reveal to us a different reality which does not conform to the slogons of multiculturalism or diversity. Buz words which carry no meaning for linguistis.

Thanks for such an interesting analysis of someting which is so current.

By: steven

steven — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:38:00 +0000

official immigration has been increasing and will continue to increase regardless of what both parties say…they need the consumers to provide growing markets for the large corporations they both support… what i find interesting is that while the media and everyone makes a big deal about 2000-3000 illegal immigrants who come by boat, nothing is said about the estimated 20,000 – 30,000 people from economically advanced countries such as the uk, europe, the us and canada who have overstayed their visas and are just as illegal as the others…

By: Soren

Soren — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:44:05 +0000

The main issue in this election is immigration. Everyone is talking about stopping the boats as if thousands of boats were close to Melbourne, Sydney, or Perth, and invading Australia. A few multilingual leaflets will not change the main policy of both parties which is concentrated on stopping immigration. Not only the liberals, who are traditionally anti-immigration are abusing migrants but also Labour with their coup de etat-style change of the PM, are trying to get some votes from the right.

The interesting thing is that they are leaving the traditional Labour/Union field and entering the centre-right field of Liberals. I am not sure if the few votes they will get from the right will compensate for the loss of votes from the left side of politics and from multicultural Australia. Eventually, everyone in this society will lose out with this pandering to racism.

It’s also interesting to note that both candidates for PM were born overseas and migrated to Australia – guess from where …