Spirituality has been a part of nursing for many centuries and represents an essential value for people, including nurses and patients. Cumulative evidence points to the positive contribution of spiritually on health and wellbeing. However, there is little clarity about what spirituality means. The literature reveals that nurses have ascribed a diversity of interpretations to spirituality. However, no studies have investigated how registered nurses construct their understanding of spirituality using a critical discourse analysis approach. Therefore, the aim of this study (...) was to uncover how registered nurses construct their understanding of spirituality using a critical discourse analysis approach. Twenty registered nurses from a non‐denominational public hospital and a faith‐based private hospital were interviewed about their understanding of spirituality and practice of spiritual care. A critical discourse analysis approach was used in the examination of the interview texts to uncover underlying social and power features. Links were made between the linguistic features the registered nurses used in their interviews and the broader social context of the study. Three discourses emerged from the interview texts. These include constructing spirituality through personal religious beliefs discourse, holistic discourse and empathetic care discourse. The findings of this study have implications for nurse education and policy makers. (shrink)

Dialogue has its origins in joint activities, which it serves to coordinate. Joint activities, in turn, usually emerge in hierarchically nested projects and subprojects. We propose that participants use dialogue to coordinate two kinds of transitions in these joint projects: vertical transitions, or entering and exiting joint projects; and horizontal transitions, or continuing within joint projects. The participants help signal these transitions with project markers, words such as uh-huh, m-hm, yeah, okay, or all right. These words have been studied mainly (...) as signals of listener feedback (back-channel signals) or turn-taking devices (acknowledgment tokens). We present evidence from several types of well-defined tasks that they are also part of a system of contrasts specialized for navigating joint projects. Uh-huh, m-hm and yeah are used for horizontal transitions, and okay and all right for vertical transitions. (shrink)

A Curry paradox about truth is generated by the following sentence, written on the board in room 101:If the sentence on the board in room 101 is true then 1 ≠ 1.A Curry paradox about validity is generated by the following argument, written on the board in room 102:The argument on the board in room 102 is valid. Therefore, 1 ≠ 1.Though the sentence and the argument generate Curry paradoxes, they also generate more basic paradoxes, in a sense to be (...) made clear. I argue that if we solve these more basic paradoxes, we have solutions to both kinds of Curry paradox. The positive proposal is in part inspired by a brief remark of Gödel’s, that the paradoxes might appear “as something analogous to dividing by zero”—so that the concepts of truth and validity, for example, are everywhere applicable except for certain singular points or singularities. A second central claim is that 'true' and 'valid' are context-sensitive predicates. This contextual-singularity approach to the Curry paradoxes applies also to other paradoxes of truth, validity, denotation, and predicate-extension. So a more general aim of the paper is to provide a unified response to semantic paradox. (shrink)

This paper uses examples of conversational understandings, misunderstandings and non-understandings to explore the role of prototypes and schemata in conversational understanding. An investigation of the procedures by which we make sense of lexical items in utterances by fitting prototypes into schemata is followed by an examination of how schemata are instantiated across conversational sequences by means of topics. In interaction, conflicts over meaning illuminate the decisive role of social and cultural factors in understanding. Overall, understanding is seen to be critically (...) dependent on principles of categorisation and contrast, which form the basis of both cognitive and sociocultural means of organisation. (shrink)

The formation of the discourse of Neo-Confucianism 1 in the Song period was a result of the interactions between many social and cultural trends. In the development of the Neo-Confucian discourse, the Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi) played key roles with their charismatic thoughts and impelling personalities, while Zhu Xi pushed Neo-Confucian thought and discourse to a pinnacle with his broad knowledge and precise reasoning. In the warm discussions and debates between different schools and thoughts, the Neo-Confucian discourse (...) proceeded towards completion and perfection, and evolved as contemporary topics and thinking modes changed. The essay argues that “ ding xing 定性 (stilling the nature)” was an important Neo-Confucian topic during the Song period. The doctrine of “stilling the nature” involves much central Neo-Confucian discourse such as the definition of xing 性 (human nature), the interior and exterior aspects of human nature, nature and qing 情 (feelings, sentiments), nature and xin 心 (mind, heart), nature and ren 仁 (benevolence, humanity, humaneness) and yi 义 (righteousness), nature and shi 事 (affair) or wu 物 (thing, object), the practice of preservation and cultivation, etc. Therefore, an examination of the formation, development and evolution of Neo-Confucianism is of great importance to the study of its early history. (shrink)

The COVID pandemic has sparked fear among many people worldwide and has thus led to the emergence of a variety of conspiracy theories. Individuals believing in these theories come from various social and demographic backgrounds, some of them being mere skeptics, while others are more radical and extreme. The present paper investigates the use of language in a conspiratorial anti-COVID Facebook group with the aim of describing the linguistic features and strategies employed to share and spread conspiracy theories and to (...) form a common identity. The results show that the group uses features typical of extremist groups, such the ideological in- and out-group presentation, the use of agentless passives to create fear, and intertextual references. Further strategies detected in the data are the misrepresentation of scientific knowledge, the use of colloquial language, humor, and irony, among others, which are used to create a bond among the groups’ members and to set themselves apart from the government and the rest of the population, whom they perceive as enemies and oppressors. (shrink)

Since the 1980s Disney has opened a new overseas theme park every decade. After finding success in Tokyo in 1983, subsequent parks in Paris and Hong Kong have struggled to profit financially and connect culturally with locals. For Shanghai in 2016, Disney utilized a new discourse for the parkʼs development and configuration termed “authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese.” In this paper, Disneyʼs emotional branding strategy for Shanghai Disneyland is analyzed using a framework of five antecedents for creating affective attachment to brands. (...) In addition, the pragmatics of the dyadic phrase and the intertextuality of the parkʼs composition demonstrate that unlike previous international Disneylands, Disney blurred and removed cultural and contextual references to America from Shanghai in an effort to achieve resonance with Chinese visitors. The result is Chinaʼs Disneyland, not Disneyland in China. Though Shanghaiʼs revenue and attendance figures are good so far, Disney will likely face challenges to its new emotional branding strategy from within China and the US. (shrink)

In this article we argue that philosophy can facilitate improvement in cross-disciplinary science. In particular, we discuss in detail the Toolbox Project, an effort in applied epistemology that deploys philosophical analysis for the purpose of enhancing collaborative, cross-disciplinary scientific research through improvements in cross-disciplinary communication. We begin by sketching the scientific context within which the Toolbox Project operates, a context that features a growing interest in and commitment to cross-disciplinary research (CDR). We then develop an argument for the leading idea (...) behind this effort, namely, that philosophical dialogue can improve cross-disciplinary science by effecting epistemic changes that lead to better group communication. On the heels of this argument, we describe our approach and its output; in particular, we emphasize the Toolbox instrument that generates philosophical dialogue and the Toolbox workshop in which that dialogue takes place. Together, these constitute a philosophical intervention into the life of CDR teams. We conclude by considering the philosophical implications of this intervention. (shrink)

This article argues that late Heidegger’s analyses of the Fourfold can be used as a methodological starting point for discourse analyses. It argues that the Fourfold points out elements or foundations of discursive structures that orient us to differing, and to some extent opposing, directions that are at the same time mutually interdependent. A discursive analysis of how the Fourfold is at play in prevailing discursive exchanges and structures will thus be a matter of situating ourselves in a conceptual space (...) beyond existing practices and structures, from which we get a picture of their inadequacies. As such, the article contributes to a critical understanding of discourse analysis. It will be argued that through understanding the Fourfold, we can better understand the problems with various aspects of ‘measuring’, which are founded upon the (concealed) instability of elements of the Fourfold – which shapes practical discursive engagements. By foregrounding this structural instability we can approach it critically. I demonstrate how this approach might be used in an analysis of a debate between Greta Thunberg and Bjørn Lomborg. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to draw attention to the fact that the constructions of gender - frequently quantified in scientific research —are unstable across time and space. In this regard, we look at the genesis of the measures and definitions reflective of the social change and knowledge that has shaped views on the gender dimensions. Our analysis of gender measures shows that the majority are based on definitions that conceive of femininity and masculinity as stable personality traits and (...) that these measures are part of essentialist assumptions on gender roles and gender identity. We consider these measures to be strongly stereotypical and “outdated”. In the second part, we put forward evidence, from research findings, that indicates that perceptions of gender have not just changed over time. Different interpretations of masculinity and femininity exist within specific cultures, social categories and spaces. (shrink)

The large-scale, intensive production of meat and other animal products, also known as the animal-industrial complex, is our largest food system in terms of global land use and contribution to environmental degradation. Despite the environmental impact of the meat industry, in much of the policy literature on climate and environmental change, sustainability and food security, meat continues to be included as part of a sustainable food future. In this paper, I present outcomes of a discourse analysis undertaken on a selection (...) of key major international and Australian reports. After highlighting common themes in the ways that meat and animals are discussed, I draw on the animal studies literature to critically analyse the assumptions underpinning such policy documents. My analysis illustrates that animals are effectively de-animated and rendered invisible in these bodies of literature by being either aggregated—as livestock, units of production and resources, or materialised—as meat and protein. These discursive frames reflect implicit understandings of meat as necessary to human survival and animals as a natural human resource. A critical examination of these understandings illustrates their dual capacity to normalise and encourage the continuation of activities known to be seriously harming the environment, climate and human health, while at the same time obstructing and even denigrating alternative, less harmful approaches to food. In response, I offer some conceptual and analytical modifications that can be easily adopted by researchers on climate change, sustainability and food security with the aim of challenging dominant discourses on meat and animals. (shrink)

This paper will explore some of the implications of attending to the performative aspects of language for the sociological understanding of issues of risk and trust among lay communities. Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens have alerted us to the way that in late or reflexive modernity trust in authority cannot be taken for granted, but increasingly has to be actively earned and actively invested. For his part, Brian Wynne has pointed out that lay judgements are relational and hermeneutic, including as (...) they do judgements about the behaviour of relevant expert institutions, and about the risk to one's self-identity incurred by being caught up in relationships of dependency. Wynne has also argued that public avowals of trust can often mask deep private distrust, and thus be expressions more of fatalistic acceptance than of genuine trust. However, all of these analyses work from a basic model of ' trust ' as being the result of a cognitive process – as a judgement as to the trustworthiness of others. Yet trust is frequently 'active' in an even stronger sense than this. To take a posture of trust towards another can often be best understood not just as a cognitive judgement but as an attempt to bind the 'trusted' into a relationship and attitude of responsibility – and thus perhaps to alter their behaviour – through the taking up of a position in a social ritual. Speech act theory can help us be sensitive to this sort of use of the language of ' trust ', by reminding us that language can perform a number of different functions – not just that of describing the world, or of acting out ascribed roles and identities, but also that of trying to change the world. The analysis of public discourse about risk, trust and mistrust must thus be sensitive to the range of things that people might be attempting to do when they are saying things if it is to avoid drawing misleading conclusions about public attitudes to risk. (shrink)

The present article tells an intervention story where two collectives, from business and academia, came together to address a business problem through collaborative action research. Among other things, the project created new ways of learning and therefore, knowing about the "business problem." The author argues that in order to talk about an organizational intervention in a learning context, it was helpful to focus observation at the level of practice, in this case the different learning practices brought to the project by (...) the organization and the research group. The "scientific narrative" focuses on how the two practices interacted. The present story's plot revolves around the following questions: What happens when one collective - used to a particular style of learning - decides to engage with another collective with a different approach to learning and what are the consequences for organizational innovation? (shrink)

This paper comments on some of the different senses of the notion of discourse in the various relevant literatures and then overviews the basic features of a coherent discourse analytic programme in Psychology. Parker's approach is criticised for (a) its tendency to reify discourses as objects; (b) its undeveloped notion of analytic practice; (c) its vulnerability to common sense assumptions. It ends by exploring the virtues of 'interpretative repertoires' over 'discourses' as an analytic/theoretical notion.

This paper examines the ideas of Communication and Accountability in relation to professional discourse and the teaching of Professionals. Language does not merely express values, but embodies values, without which it could not function as a medium of communication — Grice''s Cooperative Principle. In practice communication and accountability have become separated, as have ethics and communication in the schools, and this is reflected in assumptions about science and scientific language which characterise professional discourses.The modern professions exist on a continuum between (...) two extremes of collegiate and corporate values, with a trend toward the latter. The place on this continuum determines what stance an organisation takes in its attempts to communicate with its publics. An analysis of the assumptions which underlie the discourses of academic economics and public relations shows how the dissociation of values and communication works in practice. (shrink)

It appears that we know surprisingly little about how judges frame linguistically the rationale behind their decisions and how such texts are structured. Using the concept of rhetorical moves, this paper adopts a genre-based approach to examine the rhetorical structure of legal justifications provided in the decisions of the Polish Constitutional Court. The goal of the study is to verify the claim that the way justifications are drafted is becoming more and more uniform and conventional. The results show that there (...) is a common core of rhetorical structure realized by means of recurrent functional segments of text. This paper proposes a prototypical move structure of a Constitutional Tribunal justification and it argues that that the way justifications are drafted are subject to very concrete, even if not explicitly stated constraints. (shrink)

In studies of Indian theories of meaning it has been standard procedure to examine their relevance to the ontological issues between Brahmin realism about universals and Buddhist nominalism. It is true that Kumārila makes efforts to secure the real existence of a generic property denoted by a word by criticizing Dignāga, who declares that the real world consists of absolutely unique individuals. The present paper, however, concentrates on the linguistic approaches Dignāga and Kumārila adopt to deny or to prove the (...) existence of universals. It turns out that in spite of adopting contrasting approaches they equally distinguish between the semantic denotation of a word and its pragmatic reference to a thing in the physical world. From a purely semantic viewpoint, Dignāga considers the exclusion of others by a word as the result of a conceptual accumulation of the sense-components accepted in the totality of worldly discourse. Among the three characteristics Dignāga held must be met by universals, Kumārila attaches special importance to their entire inherence in each individual. This is because he pragmatically pays attention to the use of a word in the discourse given in a particular context by analyzing a sentence into a topic and a comment. (shrink)

This paper presents findings from a linguistic and psychosocial analysis of nine design dialogues that sets out to investigate the interweaving of transactional and interpersonal threads in collaborative work. We sketch a model of the participants' positioning towards their own or their partner's design proposals, together with the conversational cues which indicate this positioning. Our aim is to integrate the role of interpersonal relationships into the study of cooperation, to stress the importance of this dimension for the quality of collective (...) work and to reflect on its potential for integration into the design of dialogue systems. (shrink)

This research explores the field dynamics that facilitated the emergence of a dominant understanding of business’ role in sustainable development (SD). Based on a study of the U.N. Earth Summits, we examine how actors meet every decade to battle for definitional control of what SD means for business, and what business means for SD. Through a discourse analysis of texts from business, policy, and civil society actors during each Summit, we illustrate how an ensuing discursive struggle shifts the role of (...) business in SD from being largely undefined in 1992, to being considered an SD partner in 2002, and finally to becoming a driver of SD by 2012. We contend that these shifts occurred largely due to two field dynamics: (a) rearranging of field boundaries and (2) forming of a discourse coalition. Accordingly, our study highlights how disparate actors coalesce around a shared-meaning system and collectively shape the role of business role in SD. However, we argue that despite the allure of a unified meaning-making process between once antagonistic actors, business–SD relations are underpinned by politicized interaction where certain actors come to dominate, and, in doing so, marginalize others. (shrink)