“Be a Better Version of You!”: A corpus-driven critical discourse analysis of MOOC platforms' marketing communication

Date

2022-02-01

Author

Mısır, Hülya
Işık Güler, Hale

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

257
views

0
downloads

This study examines the representation, reconstruction, and promotion of the 'ideal subject' of the job market in the promotional materials of the online/life-long learning platforms known as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). We take a corpus-driven critical discourse analysis to investigate the marketing language in the subscription e-mails and websites of six English-medium MOOC platforms. The analysis shows that the platforms use an array of promotional persuasion strategies, including advice-giving, autonomization and responsibilization of individuals and reinforce a self-betterment discourse to create marketable employees. Through the use of a distinct blend of higher education, marketing, and self-help discourses, the skills-oriented language explicitly references job insecurity and urges the individual to (re)build oneself tirelessly to remain demandable/marketable, neglecting an intellectual advancement angle. This ideology legitimizes the neoliberal demands for the enterprising-self and employability and feeds into one's fear of failure, ranking individuals in the society based on a value-adding/detracting practice.

Subject Keywords

Massive Open Online Courses, Enterprising-self, Higher education discourse, Job market discourse, Self-help discourse, Corpus-driven critical discourse analysis

URI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2022.101021
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/96176

Journal

LINGUISTICS AND EDUCATION

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2022.101021

Collections

Department of Foreign Language Education, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

A multi-dimensional analysis of English-medium massive open online courses (MOOCs) video lectures in China Yu, Xiaoli (2022-01-01) Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have widely transformed teaching and learning of higher education worldwide. Based on Biber's (1988) multi-dimensional analysis framework, this study uncovers linguistic features of English-medium MOOC video lectures in China and reveals lin-guistic variation across different disciplinary areas. The results suggest that the video lecture language in English-medium MOOCs provided by Chinese universities tends to be highly infor-mational, non-narrative, explicitly referenti...
Investigating faculty technology mentoring as a university-wide professional development model Baran, Evrim (2016-04-01) A growing and increasingly important area of research in higher education is the investigation of how different forms of support and training programs facilitate faculty adoption of technology into pedagogical practices. This study explored the implementation of a faculty technology mentoring (FTM) program as a university-wide professional development model, focusing on the success factors and critical strategies that encourage technology adoption in faculty teaching practices. The goal of this effort is to...
Barriers and enablers of technology integration into instruction in the Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University Muhametjanova, Gulshat; Çağıltay, Kürşat; Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology (2014) The purpose of this study was to determine the barriers and enablers of technology integration according to students and instructors, investigate how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are used by instructors and students in education in the Kyrgyzstan-Turkey Manas University. Mixed-method research was used by collecting data via questionnaires from 477 students and 57 instructors, and interviews with 11 students and 9 instructors. The results show that there is still deficiency of laboratorie...
Educational analytics on the online open courseware of an academic speaking skills course Balbay, Seher (null; 2018-05-13) Analytics as one of the recent fields in technology-based learning offers many benefits to educators, instructors, and administrators to improve the efficiency and quality of alternative educational materials through tracking and storing students’ log data on web platforms over an extended period of time. This descriptive, quantitative study investigates students’ log data retrieved from the open courseware specifically launched for a required academic English speaking skills course offered at Middle East T...
An examination of presage, process and product dimensions in massive open online courses Çelik, Berkan; Çağıltay, Kürşat; Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology (2020-10-26) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have made a great progress around the world in the recent years. Bilgeİş Online Learning Portal (bilgeis.net) is one of the most comprehensive MOOC portals providing pdMOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses for Professional Development) for any learner who would like to enroll in an online course in Turkey. This study provides overall understanding and exploration of presage, process, and product variables and the relationships between these variables using a variety of data ...

Citation Formats

H. Mısır and H. Işık Güler, ““Be a Better Version of You!”: A corpus-driven critical discourse analysis of MOOC platforms’ marketing communication,” LINGUISTICS AND EDUCATION, vol. 69, pp. 1–12, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2022.101021.