In this paper, I expand my upon earlier linguistic research (Lian, 2023), which delved into the genre of abstracts from Western philosophical papers. I engage with the philosophical ramifications emanating from the guidelines established for crafting philosophy paper abstracts (Lian, 2023) and underscore their significance in the domain of academic philosophical writing. A pivotal focus of this research is to navigate the intricate philosophical challenges posed by cross-disciplinary investigations bridging applied linguistic statistics with philosophical paper composition, specifically, the nuanced interpretation (...) of linguistic findings in a manner palatable to philosophers. My exploration probes into the dynamics of various concepts within Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), highlighting the complexities in reconciling semantic intuitions related to the notions of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". I delineate three philosophical stances: (1) deferring to scientific authority, (2) recognizing domain-specific terminologies, and (3) interrogating peripheral scientific theories. I posit that these stances significantly influence the ways philosophers engage with and resolve the cross-disciplinary semantic and theoretical contentions stemming from the rhetorical structures of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". This work proposes avenues to attain either "theoretical coherence" or "disciplinary synthesis", thereby fostering enhanced cross-disciplinary collaboration and fortifying academic discourse across diverse fields. -/- Keywords: Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), Applied linguistics, Philosophical writing, Genre Analysis, Rhetorical Moves . (shrink)

Clinician scientists have gained institutional support in the era of translational research, as the key solution to closing the ‘translational gap’ between biomedical research and medical practice. However, clinician scientists remain an ‘endangered species’ in search of a secure niche, while new grants and training programs attempt to counteract their measurable decline in numbers over the past decades. Our study asks how an occupational space for clinician scientists is currently situated between the politics of translation, professional dynamics, and the specialization (...) of academic disciplines. We interviewed clinician scientists, their adjacent professions—clinicians and biomedical researchers—, and contrast their views with expectations from the discourse on clinician scientists in the biomedical and policy literature. We identify professionalizable work and tasks that relate to, first, being able to speak the two languages of both clinic and research, second, translating patients’ needs and clinical experience for further research, and third, counteracting the trends towards specialization by providing an inclusive point of view. We find that clinician scientists are overburdened with fulfilling a hybrid role of simultaneously being clinicians and scientists. Based on these findings, we suggest a path for the future professional development of clinician scientists towards the role of a translator. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship is perceived as a legitimate and innovative solution to social problems. Yet, when one looks at the literature one finds that the social problems that the SE movement seeks to address and how these problems are identified and defined are not studied. This lack of attention to the defining of social problems in SE has implications for the domain for problems do not exist unless they are recognized and defined, and those that define problems have influence on how (...) these will eventually be addressed. Our paper presents an analysis of framing activities in SE done by the actors involved in the development and promotion of the SE movement. Our analysis reveals that these actors are concerned with creating an ecosystem to support social entrepreneurs. Critical analysis of discourses of these actors reveals a powerful mobilization discourse, one that supports social entrepreneurs as the agents of change. We also find that as the SE movement emerged at the beginning of a cycle of protest against capitalist systems, their framing of SE as system changing of these very systems therefore finds strong resonance with a wide variety of actors. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the rhetorical moves of article abstracts in Taiwanese Chinese philosophy journals. The most common theory for the discourse analysis of research abstracts is proposed by Hyland（2000）. Most of the research abstracts in the field of social sciences and natural sciences are composed of Hyland’s five rhetorical moves: introduction, purpose, method, results, and conclusion. Therefore, the question to be explored in this research is how to compose the rhetorical moves of abstracts of Chinese philosophy journal articles. (...) What is the frequency and order of each rhetorical move in the abstract of each paper? Do they reflect some particular type of distribution? Are there any rhetorical moves that occur exceptionally rarely? Does the abstract of research articles in Chinese philosophy journals apply the framework of the same five rhetorical moves? What are the conventions of the philosophy writing community reflected in the rhetorical moves of abstracts of academic journal articles in philosophy? -/- To answer the above questions, this research collected the abstracts of 18 papers from the representative Chinese philosophy journal "SOOCHOW JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES " in Taiwan in the past five years (2017-2021) and used the five moves of Hyland（2000） one by one to answer the above questions. The rhetorical moves of each abstract were analyzed and presented in tables to show the frequency, order, and type of each rhetorical move. -/- The results of this study found that "method (M)" and "conclusion (C)" are not the rhetorical moves that constitute the abstract of articles in Taiwanese philosophy journals, but the rhetorical move "purpose (P)" is "necessary" to appear. In the Purpose move, the subject is usually "this article"; the verbs are "argue" or "inquire." Although "introduction (I)" is a "conventional" move, the total number of words in the introduction is the highest in the whole abstract. This study also shows rhetorical move variation of the abstracts of philosophy journal articles, reflecting the writing culture and conventions of the academic philosophy community. -/- Finally, this study proposes three teaching guidelines for abstract writing of academic papers in philosophy, which will be useful for philosophy scholars and graduate students to consult when writing and submitting abstracts of philosophy in conference or journal papers. -/- Keywords: philosophy, journal article, abstract, discourse analysis, rhetorical move . (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and (...) ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed‐method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three‐step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results. (shrink)

Managing aggression in mental health hospitals is an important and challenging task for clinical nursing staff. A majority of studies focus on the perspective of clinicians, and research mainly depicts aggression by referring to patient-related factors. This qualitative study investigates how aggression is communicated in forensic mental health nursing records. The aim of the study was to gain insight into the discursive practices used by forensic mental health nursing staff when they record observed aggressive incidents. Textual accounts were extracted from (...) the Staff Observation Aggression Scale-Revised (SOAS-R), and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis was used to identify short narrative entries depicting patients and staffs in typical ways. The narratives contained descriptions of complex interactions between patient and staff that were linked to specific circumstances surrounding the patient. These antecedents, combined with the aggression incident itself, created stereotyping representations of forensic psychiatric patients as deviant, unpredictable and dangerous. Patient and staff identities were continually (re)produced by an automatic response from the staff that was solely focused on the patient’s behavior. Such response might impede implementation of new strategies for managing aggression. (shrink)

Drawing on feminist and sociocultural theories of emotion that focus on the social, political, and dynamic nature of emotions in history teachers’ pedagogical decision-making, this article presents findings from the analysis of interviews with two white teachers on the role of emotions in their teaching of history in comprehensive, urban high schools. While the teachers perceived that students’ emotional connection to historical content was a necessary step in learning history, each teacher negotiated different emotional rules in their classrooms, creating unique (...) learning experiences for their students. This study demonstrates the significance of emotions in history teaching, providing examples of the complexity of how teachers navigate dominant discourses about students and education and their own personal goals when it comes to teaching about the past. (shrink)

Research exists on how a corporation communicates during a crisis, the impact on its reputation, and how well it weathers that crisis. However, crisis communication research tends to view a company’s communication efforts from the standpoint of success or failure; looking at the communication critically to determine if the company’s power influences or silences potentially alternative voices and viewpoints is not currently part of the discussion. This article argues that critical discourse analysis techniques be added to the framework of crisis (...) communication theory in an effort to ensure that the corporation’s message or position of power does not unfairly marginalize or altogether silence alternative discourses. (shrink)

The pharmaceutical industry plays an increasingly dominant role in healthcare, raising concerns about “conflicts of interest” on the part of the medical professionals who interact with the industry. However, there is considerable disagreement over the extent to which COI is a problem and how it should be managed. Participants in debates about COI have become entrenched in their views, which is both unproductive and deeply confusing for the majority of medical professionals trying to work in an increasingly commercialized environment. We (...) used a modified meta-narrative review method to analyse debates about COI in the academic and grey literature. We found two Discourse Models: The Critical Discourse Model sees COI in health and biomedicine as a major problem that both can and should be addressed, while the Defensive Discourse Model argues that current efforts to control COIs are at best unnecessary and at worst harmful. Each model is underpinned by profoundly differing views about how society should be organized—in particular whether market forces should be encouraged or curtailed—and how the dangers associated with market forces should be managed. In order to make any headway, academics and policymakers must recognize that these debates are underpinned by profoundly differing worldviews. (shrink)

Background: Nurses and surgeons may experience intra-team conflict during decision making about the use of postoperative life-sustaining treatment in the intensive care unit due to their perceptions of professional roles and responsibilities. Nurses have a sense of advocacy—a responsibility to support the patient’s best interest; surgeons have a sense of agency—a responsibility to keep the patient alive. Objectives: The objectives were to (1) describe the discourse surrounding the responsibilities of nurses and surgeons, as “advocates” and “agents,” and (2) apply these (...) findings to determine how differences in role responsibilities could foster conflict during decision making about postoperative life-sustaining treatment in the intensive care unit. Research design: Articles, books, and professional documents were explored to obtain descriptions of nurses’ and surgeons’ responsibilities to their patients. Using discourse analysis, responsibilities were grouped into themes and then compared for potential for conflict. Ethical considerations: No data were collected from human participants and ethical review was not required. The texts were analyzed by a surgeon and a nurse to minimize profession-centric biases. Findings: Four themes in nursing discourse were identified: responsibility to support patient autonomy regarding treatment decisions, responsibility to protect the patient from the physician, responsibility to act as an intermediary between the physician and the patient, and the responsibility to support the well-being of the patient. Three themes in surgery discourse were identified personal responsibility for the patient’s outcome, commitment to patient survival, and the responsibility to prevent harm to the patient from surgery. Discussion: These responsibilities may contribute to conflict because each profession is working toward different goals and each believes they know what is best for the patient. It is not clear from the existing literature that either profession understands each other’s responsibilities. Conclusion: Interventions that improve understanding of each profession’s responsibilities may be helpful to reduce intra-team conflict in the intensive care unit. (shrink)

The study aims to investigate how prior experience of interlocutors interacts with actual situational context in intercultural interactions when the latter is represented by a well-known frame: getting acquainted with others. It attempts to demonstrate how the cultural frame of the target language is broken up and substituted with an emergent frame that is co-constructed from elements from prior experience with the target language, the first language and the actual situational experience. Getting acquainted with others is a closed social situation, (...) a cultural frame in which interlocutors usually have to follow a behavior pattern dictated by the requirements of the socio-cultural background in a given speech community. There is a ‘skeleton’ of these ‘getting to know you’ procedures that can be considered universal but is substantiated differently in every language. In each conversation in any language, ‘flesh’ is added to the ‘skeleton’ in a dynamic and co-constructed manner. However, there is a difference between how this happens in L1 and in intercultural interactions. While in L1 the ‘flesh’ on the skeleton is predetermined to a significant extent by requirements of core common ground in the given language, in intercultural encounters this ‘flesh building’ process in the target language is not set but is co-constructed by the interlocutors as emergent common ground relying on their prior experience with their own L1 culture, limited experience with the target culture and the assessment of the actual situational context. In this study the co-construction process, i.e. emergent common ground will be analyzed by examining the use of formulaic language and freely generated language in several discourse segments. (shrink)

Discourse analysis has been introduced into nursing research as an approach which has the potential to offer new perspectives and to pose new questions to taken‐for‐granted assumptions. However, critique has arisen that when applied to nursing studies, the epistemological foundation of the discourse analysis is often overlooked. It is furthermore claimed that the methodological inspiration does not lead to any new insights and that these studies can hardly be differentiated from more traditional studies. This study supports this critique, arguing that (...) the challenges of implementing discourse analysis in nursing research reflect a dominant pattern of thought in the discourse of the nursing profession that have held sway throughout the last century. We argue that this pattern of thought stems from the Western philosophy of consciousness and the conception of the sovereign subject. By applying a discourse analytical perspective to the discourse of the nursing profession itself, this study elucidates the challenges of applying discourse analysis in nursing research. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe most publicised rebellion during the so-called ‘Shareholder Spring’ of 2012 was at Barclays PLC. Using multi-modal and critical discourse analysis, this paper examines how three UK television channels with different public service obligations covered this story on 27 April 2012. It finds that broadcasters’ regulatory obligations do not obviously impact content and that, for example, simple reporting routines contain judgemental phrases. Generally, the multi-dimensional nature of executive pay is simplified and the real balance between private and individual shareholders is (...) obscured. Analysis also reveals that editing and the use of images can subtly construct discourses that may not reflect the reality of the dissent. The paper concludes that established criticisms that business journalism is indolent and that corporate discourses are privileged are not supported, but also that the coverage contributes little to promote wider understanding of executive pay debates. (shrink)

This study analyzes the content of 12th-grade mathematics textbooks and workbooks, based on their inclusion of mathematical discourse components. The mathematics textbooks and workbooks were used in a Saudi Arabian school, where students are transitioning from secondary education to university. The results revealed that Saudi Arabian school textbooks and workbooks did not appropriately include discourse components or discourse skills to help facilitate mathematical learning among students. Furthermore, these textbooks did not exceed level two of the four levels of inclusion. As (...) a result, the inclusion was insufficient in helping students meaningfully understand mathematical concepts, become active students, and develop successful community leadership. This implies that mathematics textbooks and workbooks should be revised to include mathematical discourse so that this inclusion is more student directed than teacher directed. (shrink)

Our literature review reveals a call for changes in business education to encourage responsible management. The Principles for Responsible Management Education were developed in 2007 under the coordination of the United Nations Global Compact, AACSB International, and other leading academic institutions for the purpose of promoting responsible management in education. Literature review shows that responsible management as such remains undefined. This gap in literature leads potentially to an absence of clarity in research, education, and management, regarding responsible management among scholars (...) and practitioners. The aim of this research is to develop a preliminary definition of responsible management, exploring the use of the term in literature and practice. Its objective is to define the main characteristics of responsible management aimed at creating a platform for discussion so as to help organizations clarify their own vision of responsible management. It builds on preliminary findings from literature review that responsible management remains undefined. As business school students are primary stakeholders in management education and are future management leaders, and as there have not been empirical studies to date that examine business school students’ understanding of responsible management, a qualitative study was conducted with European business school students concerning their understanding of the term. A framework summarizing perceptions of responsible management characteristics and broad approach of responsible management definition were created and used to introduce a draft theoretical platform for discussion on this topic. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a vexed topic in philosophy, with a long history. For my purposes, an aesthetic experience is a foundational affective response to an object, to which terms such as “ugly”, “beautiful”, “pretty” or “harmonious” are applied. These terms are derived from a Discourse of aesthetics; some remain constant, others change from generation to generation. Aesthetics and ethics have been linked in Western thought since the days of Plato and Aristotle. This essay examines what is happening to that link in (...) contemporary experience. It emphasises the ways in which the popular media exploit aesthetic appeal to penetrate their market, and to exploit and frame intuitive responses to current and past events. Production values, the artfulness of editors and the financial interests of producers and directors thus do much to determine contemporary aesthetic and ethical judgements. That which is beautifully presented invites the ethical involvement of the audience. Events whose images are beautifully presented constitute “hyperevidence”, a pre-judged, reinforced and amplified illusion of reality and participation. Understanding how aesthetic excellence draws audiences into ethical relationship with what is presented becomes an important part of education in ethics, including bioethics. (shrink)

As scholars have shown, acceptance is key to the success of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme. While many studies adopt a static cost-benefit perspective, few address the social process leading to acceptance. Drawing on Suchman (1995), this article examines the legitimacy process underlying the acceptance of a PES in agriculture. In particular, the role of collective action in the legitimisation process is analysed, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of discourse analysis. Data from an agro-environmental PES scheme (...) in France on water quality shows that acceptance depends on the normative and cognitive legitimacy that actors confer upon a public policy. (shrink)

The deadly attacks on a public meeting and on a Jewish citizen in Copenhagen in February 2015 have given rise to a vast amount of public discussion and interpretation of the events themselves, their background, their causes, their significance, and their repercussions. During these discussions, various conceptions of publicness and public space have been articulated. Indeed, one may view the killings as a ‘critical discourse moment’ in which a range of discourses have been employed to help interpret, understand, and deal (...) with what happened. In several of these discourses, conceptions of publicness play a central part. This article sets out to investigate the conceptions of publicness that were articulated in the Danish public spheres following the attacks. The article maps out some of the key different and partly contradictory notions of publicness that the reactions to the killings brought to the fore. The investigation thus focuses on the articulation of normative expectations and ideals of public spheres, on the limitations and restrictions that were acknowledged, and on the main societal problems and national contexts to which publicness was viewed as related. The analysis will cover national newspapers and center on the discursive resources of the media elite in early responses to the attacks, for example in editorials, or comments by writers, academics, debaters, and intellectuals. (shrink)

Following Alvesson and Kärreman's influential essay on the modes and interpretation of organizational discourse, this article reports on a longitudinal study of naturally occurring interactions that took place before, during, and after a meeting between representatives of Médecins sans Frontières, a well-known humanitarian organization, and representatives of local health centers in a region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This episode is used to exemplify the fruitfulness of adopting a view that incorporates two dimensions of discourse, that is, what Alvesson (...) and Kärreman identify as its transient and muscular nature. The longitudinal aspect of our study allows us to show what interactants accomplish in particular settings, while illustrating a crucial aspect of the trans-local dimension of their talk. As shown in this article, a given Discourse must be embodied, materialized or even incarnated in discourses, that is, tokens of text or talk, in order for it to be reproduced, sustained and transported from one point to another, that is, to become what Latour calls an immutable mobile. A given Discourse can thus maintain its shape across time and space only if a lot of interactive work is done to assure the stability of its associations in the ordinary day-to-day activity of the people who embody it. (shrink)

Academic writings– writings that take place in academic settings, from undergraduate essays to research monographs – are social practices and methods of knowledge enquiry. In virtue of being social and epistemic, they should be of concern to critical realists because of critical realism's stratified approach to reality. By critiquing approaches to academic writing that can flatten reality, I propose that if academic writings were understood as ontologically stratified social practices, they could afford writers the rational judgement to make textual choices. (...) Specifically, I show there is the possibility to produce discourse that is different from standardized ‘objective' and ‘transparent' academic prose, which, inter alia, also has colonial roots. If academic writings were understood ontologically and epistemologically as practices and methods of enquiry that require writers (i.e. agents) to rationally judge what form their texts should take, this could further academic writing’s educative and emancipatory purpose of advancing knowledge and justice. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWork on religious discourse is still limited and linguistic research on preaching scarce. The present study makes explicit the ways that pastors in the conservative Protestant Christian chu...

BackgroundAssessing and understanding the language that women use to express physical, emotional, and social concerns of breast cancer experiences can often be overlooked, even though there is evidence that effective communication between cancer patients and health care providers improves quality of life. This study aims to assess the use of metaphors in conceptualizing breast cancer experience lived by Saudi Arabian women.Materials and MethodsThis is an interpretative phenomenological qualitative study, a purposeful sample of 18 breast cancer patients at an oncology outpatient’s (...) clinic in Saudi Arabia were invited to engage in face-to-face interviews. Data was analyzed using Metaphor Identification Procedure.ResultsFour themes were constructed: dark hidden force, battling imminent death, dreaming and awakening calls, and inner and outer transformation.ConclusionIdentifying metaphors may be beneficial toward improving communication between health care providers and breast cancer patients, who often experience difficulties expressing their needs. (shrink)

The study used critical discourse analysis (CDA) to elucidate normative structures of ethical behavior in university research administration which may be useful for knowledge transference to future studies of research integrity. Research administration appears to support integrity in the research environment through four very strong normative domains: (1) respect for authority structures; (2) respect for institutional boundaries; (3) professionalism; and (4) a strong sense of virtue. The strong norm structure of research administration, however, appears to be threatened by the fifth (...) domain, (5) political power, which is inhabited by prestigious faculty with tenure, top-down authority misalignment, and the power for some institutional members to circumvent the system. The strong normative structure also appears threatened by the overall consequentiality of the regulatory environment, and shifting contexts that threaten personal virtue. In the end, the normative structure is fluid, politically acquiescent to power, and ambiguous. Although the professional core of the norm structure is strong, the strengths and weaknesses in the overall system can be connected to poorly constructed elements of the institutional environment. (shrink)

In the article, we elaborate an interdisciplinary methodological framework that enables us to study and prepare the grounds for the development of organizational practices through discourse perspectives. The framework differs from mainstream monological and complexity reducing tendencies within organizational studies in that it argues for an approach that takes in historical, broad, and situational power relations and discourses into consideration when we engage in ethical organizational development. We place the framework within organizational discourse studies (ODS) and discuss how the intersection (...) of Bakhtinian and Foucauldian ideas and concepts, as well as their diverse analytical strategies and focuses, contributes to the field. The combination entails taking a dissensus approach to organizational discursive phenomena that we view as dynamic features that are historically and locally (re)created through battles of unifying (centripetal) and diversifying (centrifugal) force relations. Following similar ideas of Deleuze and Bakhtin, we argue that dialogue and every (organizational) situation is seen as a plurivocal, open-ended, and unique time-space in which subjects have agency to change and transform the power relations and lines of subjectification that they are embedded in. We arrive at a methodological framework that bridges the gulf that often exists between discourse perspectives that tend to either focus on situated or more abstract and historical discursive dimensions. Furthermore, the frame involves an ethics of dispositif and dialogue that insists that organizational discourse scholars engage in organizational discourse activism furthering local change processes. (shrink)

ArgumentNineteenth-century Prussia was deeply entrenched in philhellenism, which affected the ideological framework of its public institutions. At Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelm University, philhellenism provided the rationale for a persistent elevation of the humanities over the burgeoning experimental life sciences. Despite this outspoken hierarchy, professor of physiology Emil du Bois-Reymond eventually managed to increase the prestige of his discipline considerably. We argue that du Bois-Reymond’s use of philhellenic repertoires in his expositions on physiology for the educated German public contributed to the rise (...) of physiology as a renowned scientific discipline. Du Bois-Reymond’s rhetorical strategies helped to disassociate experimental physiology from clinical medicine, legitimize experimental practices, and associate the emerging discipline with the more esteemed humanities and theoretical sciences. His appropriation of philhellenic rhetoric thus spurred the late nineteenth-century change in disciplinary hierarchies and helped to pave the way for the current hegemonic position of the life sciences. (shrink)

This article applies Bakhtinian dialogism and the idea of centripetal and centrifugal forces in struggle to critical discourse studies to analyse how powerful and marginalised discourses are brought into competition in political language to justify paradigm changes. I analyse German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende (‘watershed’) speech, which he gave as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, announcing a radical armament programme and change in foreign policy, paradigm shifts that had previously been unthinkable in German politics. Based on a (...) qualitative analysis using the Appraisal Theory strategies Attitude and Engagement, I identify how Scholz aligns himself with particular powerful discourses, centring some and marginalising others, to construct an existential threat for Germany and a ‘watershed’ moment, a new situation which casts his policies of armament as without alternative. I use a dialogic approach to analyse how the speech responds to and anticipates past (already-spoken) and future (not-yet-spoken) discourses, to position itself both in terms of the immediate and the historical function of a policy statement. The paper demonstrates the strength of Bakhtinian analysis of how utterances are shaped by past and envisaged future uses of particular discourses and of dialogically contractive and expansive strategies in critical discourse studies. (shrink)

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women, accompanied by greater psychological distress than other cancers. There is minimal but increasing awareness of the impact of lung cancer stigma (LCS) on patient outcomes. LCS is associated with increased symptom burden and decreased quality of life. The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of female long‐term lung cancer survivors in the context of LCS and examine how participants discursively adhere to or reject stigmatizing beliefs. Findings (...) situated within Cataldo and colleagues' theoretical model include: (1) addiction and tobacco marketing as possible precursors for LCS, (2) the possible role of expert providers as LCS enhancers, (3) response of overlapping complicated identity shifts, (4) simultaneous rejection and assumption of LCS, and (5) information control via advocacy activities as a LCS mitigation response. These findings expand the current understanding of LCS, and call for future conceptual exploration and theoretical revision, particularly with respect to the possibility of interaction between relevant/related stigma(s) and LCS. As the number of women living with lung cancer increases, with longer survival times, the effect of LCS and other experiences of discrimination on patient outcomes could be substantial. (shrink)

In research interviews, interviewees are usually well aware of why they were selected, and in their narratives they often construct ‘default identities’ in line with the interviewers’ expectations. Furthermore, narrators draw on shared cultural knowledge and master narratives that tend to form an implicit backdrop of their stories. Yet in this article we focus on how some of these master narratives may be mobilized explicitly when default identities are at stake. In particular, we investigate interviews with successful female professionals from (...) diverse geographical contexts. We found that the interviewees deal with challenges to their ‘successful professional’ identities by drawing on categorical narratives or categorical statements. As such, the interviewees talk into being a morally ordered gendered worldview, thus making explicit gendered master narratives about their societies and workplaces. In general, this article shows that categorical narratives and statements can bring master narratives to the surface and that these can thus contribute to the narrators’ identity work. (shrink)

This article reports a critical discourse analysis of the legitimation strategies used in two Chinese government white papers about trade frictions between China and the United States. Drawing on the legitimation framework advanced by van Leeuwen to political discourse, it shows how the white papers use four main legitimation strategies: authorization, moralization, rationalization, and integration. It argues that the Chinese government uses these strategies to legitimate its responses to US trade policy and delegitimate the US government’s motives for initiating/escalating tensions. (...) This article also discusses how the use of these legitimation strategies draws from certain traditional Chinese cultural values, such as Confucianism, the culture of face, and collectivism. This article is a part of a larger research project studying discursive strategies in trade friction discourse and hopes to shed light on the attributes and functions of this type of discourse. (shrink)

This paper explores three current notions of literacy, which underpin the theorisation and practice of teaching and learning for both children and adults in England. In so doing, it raises certain problems inherent in these approaches to literacy and literacy education and shows how Stanley Cavell's notions of reading, and especially his reading of Thoreau's Walden , help to construct a notion not of literacy, but of being literate. The paper takes four themes central to Cavell's work in his The (...) senses of Walden : awakening; estrangement and familiarity; conviction; and the obligation to read, and argues that these ideas offer an approach to language, and an understanding of reading in particular, that is different from current iterations of literacy. Such ideas, though alien to current - mainly empirical - work within literacy studies, have a resonance for literacy research and education today. (shrink)

This article considers conversations in and about education. To focus the discussion, it uses the scenario of a conversation between a trainee teacher and her mentor reflecting together on a lesson that the trainee has just taught. I begin by outlining the notion of reflective practice as popularised by Donald Schön, and show how, in the scenario, the reflective practice conversation leads to talk characterised by recourse to particular dominant discourses within education, and how this in turn can lead to (...) a certain voicelessness. I then consider what the possibilities for the reflective practice conversation might be, looking first at the Greek notion of parrhēsia and how this has been discussed in the work of Michel Foucault in contrast to other forms of talk such as rhetoric or chattering. I argue that, whilst the parrhēsiastic conversation may allow for the exploration of the relationships (between the mentor and the trainee, each participant and their words and a relationship of care for the self), such possibilities are fraught with difficulty. I then move to consider how such relationships might be developed through recognising the expressive aspects of language emphasised in Stanley Cavell's notion of passionate utterance. I first trace the development of Cavell's thought through John Austin's contrast in language between the constative and the performative. I then illustrate the idea of passionate utterance from the films Cavell describes as the ‘Hollywood comedies of remarriage’, and argue that the passionate utterance opens up opportunities for the kind of conversation in education that is itself educative. (shrink)

Social media is an endless source of texts and images about almost everything. Accordingly, the number of analyses based on this source increases daily. Among the numerous methods social media can be analysed by, our attention focusses on discourse analysis. DA is a complex approach which makes it possible to capture not only the linguistic characteristics of given texts, but also their socially constructive and socially constructed features. Therefore, we carried out a systematic examination of the articles at one of (...) the largest academic databases, EBSCO available in 2019 which used DA in social media research. Our investigation studies not only the geographical distribution of this corpus, but the different self-proclaimed DA approaches. Furthermore, we developed a three-level scale in order to capture the methodological complexity of the collected articles. At one end of the scale there are those research papers where discourse appears only as a label for the textual material gathered, without further indication of any DA theories or methodologies. The other end, however, refers to those research projects which applied DA both in their theoretical and methodological frameworks, providing complex discourse analytical investigations of social media texts. This way we were able to demonstrate the wide array of DA perspectives employed in social media research. (shrink)

Innovative teaching is sometimes perceived as opposite of traditional teaching, since it is regarded as student-centred and takes on the form of guided construction. This distinguishing feature led to an expectation that traditional teaching practices will be replaced with innovative ones for the purpose of fostering learning. The goal of the present research is to examine this issue by taking a closer look at teaching practices within an innovative learning environment, and their implications for teachers and teacher educators. Our qualitative (...) research was conducted in a secondary school which has implemented such a learning environment. The data analysis is based on sociolinguistic discourse analysis. The findings reveal a variety of teaching practices, which allows teachers to choose the most suitable one for a particular learning requirement. We conclude in proposing to adopt a more complex approach to teaching, and to relinquish the dichotomy between traditional and innovative teaching practi... (shrink)

Departing from the view that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action, this article explores the interconnectedness of genres and Discourses that transit generic boundaries. Situating the study in a local energy transition project in Denmark and exploring what happens in a series of citizen meetings without a narrowly defined agenda, I argue that the meetings may be seen as a nexus of genres constituted by a tissue of interwoven Discourses with a lifespan that extends beyond the (...) specific communicative moment. I understand a nexus of genres as a point where genres in a wider sense meet and interact. Relating the Discourses initiated by the participating citizens to the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions in systemic functional linguistics, I analyse topics made salient by actors participating in the citizen meetings. By following these topics intertextually across generic boundaries, I identify Discourses that are mutually entangled and genres that are taken up in the process. These include anticipatory Discourse, Discourse of legitimation, Discourse of motivation, Discourse about technology and Discourse about energy saving initiatives or in other words Discourses that exceed the boundaries of the specific genre in which they are realized. (shrink)

This paper describes how bilingual colleagues living in Hong Kong make small talk in instant messaging to achieve various business-oriented goals and construct multiple identities in the discursive process. Guided by James Paul Gee’s revised framework of discourse analysis, the analyses evidenced that, overall, colleagues use small talk in instant messages to maintain minimal ties with distant partners, fill in silence during computer work, affect informal decision-making at work, and to diffuse useful surrounding information into business talk. These instances interplay (...) with different affordances provided by the gadgets in the instant messenger interfaces. Such creative usage, together with the perceived nature of online interaction and instant messaging, results in multiple and turbulent identities circulating in the broader context of workplace discourse. The article concludes by arguing that computer-mediated communication has offered participants an emerging modus of interacting socially, beyond the physical and psychological constraints of time and space. (shrink)

One of the problems when students go to university is that they are faced with insufficient skills (reading, summarizing and writing). These skills are not just an option for students – they are a necessity. One of these skills is text summarizing. Summarizing strategies may be called the gist of the literary text. Different summarization strategies may be required for different text types and lengths. The ability to summarize well means your reading comprehension and writing skill should be excellent. Summarization (...) is a high-level comprehension strategy which is effective in improving reading achievement and text summary quality.Several approaches have been developed to analyse summarizing skills which are required to teach and learn English at all levels especially at university level. The research was conducted among students of the second year English department at University of Vlora. The summaries reflect the major differences among the strategies used by skilled and unskilled students. The skilled students produce coherent linguistic and syntactic structures. Skilled (high-proficiency) students use semantic and prepositional phrases more than unskilled students (low-proficiency). Thus, the skilled students do not distort ideas of the original text but distort subject-verb order. When they summarize, we can easily distinguish the way in which they combine idea units across two or more paragraphs. The summaries reflect that students write very long sentences. The margin of errors is considerable due to the mother tongue influence and their level of English. (shrink)

Narrative Representation Theory, an evolved framework of Verse Analysis, has come into existence with the mission of explaining the operation of macro-systemic structure that could be hardwired in the brain. Based on the analyses of creoles or archetypal human languages, the theory puts forward the premise stating that the fundamental design of the human language faculty possesses the computational system for internalized discourse. The theory preserves the principles of Quint-patterning, Idea-formatting, N-ary-branching and X-numbering, complying respectively with the hierarchical orderings of (...) constituency, the atomic elements of componentiality, the linear sequences of precedence and the specific measurement of terminal nodes. NRT tells that the macro-system of narrative superstructure must have emerged autonomously, yet links closely with the micro-system of phonology, morphology and syntax. This article explores for the first time scientific insights into the nature of human language, referring to recent research on the right cerebrum as well as on the prefrontal lobes of the brain, the relationship between mental disorders and their genetic deficiencies, and the investigations of human evolution during the period 200,000–40,000 years BP. All the converging evidence in biological sciences reinforces the hypothesis that the narrative superstructure of language faculty manifests as an inherent linguistic capacity in our mind. (shrink)

Early utopian notions of Internet-based community as enabling transcendence of earthly governments and cultural divides manifested in the massively multiplayer online nongame platform, Second Life. However, while platform users nearly unanimously chose governance regimes based on professional management rather than democratic self-governance, one of the few democratic experiments experienced deep conflict over precisely the utopian notions it held in common. This article examines a failed merger between two experimental democratic communities in the virtual world of Second Life as an example (...) of the general failure of internet utopianism and a specific failure to transcend distinctions in cultures of origin (the “failure of convivencia,” of the title, a term reflecting a historical model chosen by one of the communities) in a common online space. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article will analyze a distinction between radically different, and ultimately incommensurable, discourses around governance in the merged community amid the failure of participatory, democratic models of online governance. (shrink)

Since MacKinnon’s ground-breaking work in which she coined the term sexual harassment, there has been very little consensus as to what it actually is. Using callers’ stories of male sexual harassment taken from Kenyan talk radio, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the in situ production of an emic definition of sexual harassment. Further, using positioning theory as a methodology, this paper aims to make visible the gendered identity work that defining, or not defining, an event as male (...) sexual harassment occasions and to show how hegemonic masculinity is achieved through stories and their evaluation by the radio host and other callers who talk certain masculinities into being as normative and others as deviant. (shrink)

Teacher identity has evolved from a core, inner, fixed, linear construct to a dynamic, multifaceted, context-dependent, dialogical, and intrinsically related phenomenon. Since little research has provided an inclusive framework to study teacher identity construction, this article proposes a novel conceptual framework that includes the following components: mirrors of power, discourse, the imagination of reality, investment, emotioncy, and capital. The above core constituents have been discussed thoroughly to trigger significant insights about teacher identity development.

In vitro fertilization technology has been in use in Poland for over 25 years with success and social approval, but it is still not regulated under Polish law. The current debate over different non-medical aspects of reproductive technologies in Poland is extremely heated and highly politicized. Politicians on the right, Catholic clergy and some journalists use very radical language and criticize IVF as a technique that plays with the lives and deaths of thousands and thousands of children. The aim of (...) this article is to follow the Polish debate on IVF in the context of Poland’s transition, which is marked primarily by two events: the collapse of communism in 1989 and access to the European Union in 2004. The article shows that the IVF debate concerns not only moral choices or legal regulation, but also citizenship, nation, state, and the role of the Catholic Church within. Moreover, it creates new citizens: frozen embryos, which being independent persons, have the right to life, ‘dignity’ and care. The history of IVF in Poland reveals the different tensions in the Polish transition to liberal democracy and it can be used to view a ‘big’ history of the Polish transition. It is one of the micro-histories which make this big story about Poland after 1989. Analyses of both the abortion debate and the IVF debate in Poland show that the process of democratization is very much connected with limiting women’s reproductive rights, including the right to choose infertility treatment. (shrink)

Climate change is confronting African farmers with growing uncertainties. Advances in seasonal climate predictions offer potential for assisting farmers in dealing with climate risk. Experimental cases of forecast dissemination to African rural communities suggest that participatory approaches can facilitate understanding and use of uncertain climate information. But few of these studies integrate critical reflections on participation that have emerged in the last decade which reveal how participatory approaches can miss social dynamics of power at the community level and in the (...) broader context. Furthermore, neither climate application research nor theoretical critiques of participation fully examine the culturally constructed nature of participation. Drawing on sociolinguistic analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observation, this paper examines how Ugandan farmers engage in participation in the context of discussions of seasonal climate forecasts. Forecasts were presented to farmers groups whose members were then asked to discuss the forecast among themselves. In doing so, groups sought to develop a common understanding of the forecast and consensual plans for response strategies. Focusing on one particular group meeting as an example, we show how different cultural styles of participation affect the interpretation of the forecast and the formulation of response strategies. Group interaction is shown to be mostly structured around two styles of participation. On the one hand, there is the “Western” style advocated by NGOs and the government, which centers on ensuring that all individuals who are present have opportunities to speak during discussion and to vote on group decisions. On the other hand, a “Kiganda” style of participation emphasizes the importance of affirming ties to a collectivity, respect for social hierarchy, deployment of good manners, and consensus building. The case study illuminates how the performance of different styles of participation is grounded in localized frameworks of language and culture but also draw on political and policy discourses at the national level. Although a cultural high value on consensus may work in favor of prominent members, the availability of multiple styles of participation also enables group members to exercise their agency in positive ways. Attention to the interplay of different styles of participation throws light on the subtle social processes that shape how knowledge is assessed, which sources are trusted, which and whose interpretations prevail, what options are deemed viable, how costs and benefits are calculated, and whose resources are mobilized in the effort to reduce vulnerability to climate risk. These are key questions for an assessment of the role of boundary organizations, such as farmer associations, in the communication and application of climate forecasts in agriculture. (shrink)

La conectividad ha cambiado nuestra manera de recibir informaciones, transformando al consumir en receptor y a la vez emisor. Ese nuevo modelo facilita el acceso a datos antes restringidos tan sólo algunos grupos y también contribuye a dar voz a grupos sociales minoritarias y con poca representación. Pese a los aspectos positivos, la desinformación viene ganando espacio y ampliando espacios de manipulación en la ciudadanía. De ese modo la alfabetización se hace necesaria para el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico que permite (...) afrontar esa situación. Este estudio pretende arrojar luz sobre la situación de la educación en un contexto de crisis sanitaria en centros educativos de la comunidad de Madrid. (shrink)

Issues of race and class have long been at the center of discourses involving the American public education system. Although contemporary discourse regarding issues of race and power in American schools may be less overt in racist ideology than in previous decades, the impact of coded racist discourse can be equally powerful and dangerous. A need exists to identify racist and classist discourse in educational contexts so that the ideologies and practices these discourses reflect can be challenged. This paper uses (...) critical discourse analysis and Critical Race Theory to examine how the discourses of race, class, and power are enacted within a discussion of educational programing and child well-being in a predominantly White, upper-middle class suburban public school. (shrink)