ABSTRACT This article investigates how political discourse during the COVID-19 crisis discursively constructs temporalities as a means of legitimizing crisis management. Building on Critical Discourse Studies and the Discourse-Historical Approach, it explores how continuity – often overlooked in crisis research – is not only maintained but actively constructed in discourse. Drawing on 28 Belgian governmental press conferences (2020 to 2022), the study identifies six discourses of continuity that were mobilized to justify measures, manage expectations, and synchronize collective action. Continuity unfolds in six discourses of the crisis: (1) maintaining the essentials, (2) the creation of habits in crisis, (3) the permanence of effort, (4) waiting as a tool, (5) projection in and out of the crisis and (6) predicting and progressing. These six discourses contrast with a view of continuity as inertia, as the absence of action or change. Instead, they articulate continuity at times as the maintaining force of a certain order, and at others as a creative force normalizing newness. The article argues that continuity, far from being inert, becomes a response to disruption, sustaining governance and order. Thereby, it contributes to the understanding of temporality as a central vector of legitimization in contemporary crises.

We, the Editors and Publisher of the journal Critical Discourse Studies, have retracted the following article: Feng Liu (02 Jan 2026): Male Separatism: Discourse, Ideology, and Argumentation, Critical Discourse Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2025.2611251 After publication, concerns have been raised by a third party about the integrity of this book review. Further investigation conducted by the Journal and Publisher confirmed the book review contains factual inaccuracies and claims which are unsupported by the original source text. When approached for an explanation, the author has confirmed that the significant errors were introduced by the use of generative AI. This was not disclosed by the author at submission or during the peer review process. The author has also requested the retraction of the article. As the undisclosed use of AI is in breach of our editorial policies, and verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article. The corresponding author listed in this publication has been informed. The author agrees to retract the article. We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and the COPE guidelines. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.

ABSTRACT Not only have advances in social media technology accelerated the evolution of online language, they have also strengthened the retrieval capabilities of censors. Camouflaged forms of language have developed and survive on the fringes of the network. This paper examines the emergence and evolution of the Chinese cyberlanguage ‘Aminoac’ on the platform Bilibili as a carnival. Originating from a vulgar expression, Aminoac has been creatively transformed by netizens into a versatile term of critique and defiance against censorship. Data of online posts including Aminoac are classified into three patterns, followed by a discussion of its affordances and audience feedback. These multimodal online discourses demonstrate orchestrations of semiotic resources which are flexible, confrontational and playful, and yet they construct a virtual community with a distinct culture and identity through viral dissemination. This paper analyzes Aminoac and its related expressions as products of translanguaging, exploring how netizens negotiate, refine, and expand this online carnivalesque in a translanguaging space where they take up different roles and identities in relation to the addressees (i.e. trans-positioning).

ABSTRACT Responding to Tommy Curry’s contention that Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is a worthy theoretical exemplar for examining anti-Black racism, I draw on critical race theory and critical race discourse analysis to detail how Ye offers a model of what I call anti-Black postracialism. I argue that anti-Black postracialism extends our thinking about postracialism by examining the ways postracial ideals are discursively embedded in anti-Black racist discourse and ideology. Using radio show and televised interviews with Ye from 2013 and 2018, and his subsequent Twitter comments following his infamous 2018 TMZ Live appearance, this article traces the ways his talk evolves into a postracial ideal couched in contradictory critiques of anti-Black racism, and explores how anti-Black postracialism unfolds discursively through universalism, racial scapegoating, and racial nonracialism.

ABSTRACT In response to the rising obesity rate in China, the Chinese government has used the social media platform WeChat to encourage the public to lose weight. This article investigates the losing weight posts in 健康中国 [Healthy China], the official WeChat account of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. Taking a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, I identify the dominant discourses used to represent obesity and individuals related to obesity. One of the most prominent features of the discourses is a trend of responsibilizing weight management by three sub-discourses surrounding obesity, i.e. medical discourse (obesity as a disease), moral discourse (obesity as a self-management issue) and gendered discourse (obesity as a female and mothering issue). I explore how the responsibilization discourse might be understood in the context of China’s efforts in facilitating the making of health-conscious citizens, which echo neoliberal ideas that normalize individual responsibility for obesity. A special note is paid to women. Apart from the neoliberalism-underpinned responsibility, the posts also position women under the Confucian expectation of ‘responsible mothers’ in terms of childhood obesity. This may lead to dual-responsibilities for women and heighten the weight stigma women experience in the society.

ABSTRACT In recent years, the significant proliferation of hate speech in several facets of the public sphere has triggered the renewal of scholarly interest in the phenomenon across disciplinary areas. Within this picture, it is often observed that hate speech may nowadays be realised in real-life communication via more implicit or indirect forms, which do not meet the legal threshold. Theoretically, the introduction of the term ‘soft hate speech’ has been aimed at capturing all these cases of implicit, covert or indirect realisations of hate speech. Adopting a combination of critical perspectives from discourse and argumentation studies, the present special issue zooms in on the discursive strategies and lines of argumentation that end up subtly justifying discriminatory hatred within this remit.

ABSTRACT Irish Sign Language (ISL) became an officially recognised language in Ireland by means of the ISL Act 2017, which commenced in December 2020 after more than 30 years of campaigning by the Deaf community. While some work has investigated language ideologies behind the ISL recognition campaign, this study explores language ideologies in parliamentary discourse, specifically perspectives of languageness of ISL. This is crucial to the study of sign language recognition and policymaking, as previous research has identified a link between differing views on sign languages and deafness and policy outcomes. A corpus of parliamentary debates on ISL recognition (2013-2020) was compiled and analysed. A sociocognitive approach was adopted, alongside a framework for analysing how discourses establish legitimacy for social practices. Theoretically, categories of sign language ideologies were applied. A link between language, culture and identity is established by the legislators through their use of terms such as 'indigenous' and 'native' to describe ISL and the Deaf community. ISL is compared to Irish to further their argument and claims are made about the capability of ISL as a legitimate language. Finally, benefits of ISL to wider society are highlighted.

ABSTRACT This study examines the discursive structures and strategies used by Nigerian female blog users to legitimise gender inequality. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of 253 comments from five Nigerian-authored blogs, the study complicates celebratory approaches that conceptualise digital spaces as places for marginalised women to fight against sexism since they unravel ideological conceptions within female ‘counter-publics’ that rationalise un-equal gender relations. This refutes the belief that the struggle against gender discrimination only involves binary categories such as ‘men versus women’ or ‘women versus patriarchy’, spotlighting the self-limiting role of women in gender activism. The study demonstrates that understudying intra-group discrimination helps to understand and define inequality within specific contexts. Specifically, othering, classifying and categorising are inherent meaning-making traits that define intra-group dynamics and must be embraced and studied as contextual peculiarities that aid the understanding of given socio-cultural practices. This research underscores the usefulness of CDA in unpacking the intersections of culture, ideology, identity and language within multi-layered counter-public discourse, highlighting implications in social justice campaigns and the attainment of gender parity.