The Politics of Military Force uses discourse theory to examine the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that (...) result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally. (shrink)

Language and politics go hand in hand and learning and comprehending political genre is to learn a language created for codifying, extending and transmitting political discourse in any text/talk. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s CDA and Rhetoric, the current study aims at investigating Donald Trump’s First Speech, from the point of frequency and functions of some rhetorical strategies (Parallelism, Anaphora and the Power of Three, Antithesis and Expletive, etc.), Nominalization, Passivization, We-groups and Modality as well as Lexical and (...) Textual Analysis, presented to the UN delivered on Sep. 19, 2017. Specifically, the study seeks to determine: (1) how President Trump succeeded in conveying his notions and assumptions to his intended audience, and in convincing and negotiating, (2) how he attempted to explicitly and implicitly pass his attitudes on his targets, and (3) how those orientations, intended notions and assumptions were seamlessly presented to his addressees in discoursal and lexico-grammatical levels; (4) and finally in this underlying trend how he achieved his own ends. The results of the study hope to enhance reading comprehension and writing in academic registers for EFL/ESL students. (shrink)

In the light of Halliday's Ideational Grammatical Metaphor, Rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis, the major objectives of this study are to investigate and analyze Barack Obama's 2012 five speeches, which amount to 19383 words, from the point of frequency and functions of Nominalization, Rhetorical strategies, Passivization and Modality, in which we can grasp the effective and dominant principles and tropes utilized in political discourse. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis frameworks based on a Hallidayan perspective are used to depict the orator’s deft (...) and clever use of these strategies in the speeches which are bound up with his overall political purposes. The results represent that nominalization, parallelism, unification strategies and modality have dominated in his speeches. There are some antithesis, expletive devices as well as passive voices in these texts. Accordingly, in terms of nominalization, some implications are drawn for political writing and reading, for translators and instructors entailed in reading and writing pedagogy. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how different discourses on frugal innovation are articulated, and how the dynamics between these different discourses have led to a certain dominant understanding of frugal innovation today. We analyse the dynamic interactions between three discourses on frugal innovation: innovations for the poor, grassroots innovations by the poor, and more recently co-creating frugal innovations with the poor. We argue that this latter discourse is articulated as a hegemonic project as it is designed to accommodate demands from (...) both business and poor communities. We draw on Laclau and Mouffe’s concepts of ‘chain of difference’, ‘empty signifier’ and ‘floating signifier’ to explain the advent of the hegemonic discourse on co-creating innovations with the poor. We show how a floating signifier with radical potential, frugal innovation, has been hijacked and co-opted in a hegemonic project that has leveraged powerful ambiguous signifiers, with co-creation acting as an empty signifier. To clarify what is problematic in this hegemonic intervention, we expose how contemporary frugal innovation discourse contributes to a project of governing and exploiting rather than helping the poor, in ways that benefit formal economic actors while further worsening global inequalities. (shrink)

This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit (...) masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence. (shrink)

This article is a discursive examination of children’s status as knowledgeable moral agents within the Swedish child welfare system and in the widely used assessment framework BBIC. Departing from Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice, three discursive positions of children’s moral status are identified: amoral, im/moral and dis/loyal. The findings show the undoubtedly moral child as largely missing and children’s agency as diminished, deviant or rendered ambiguous. Epistemic injustice applies particularly to disadvantaged children with difficult experiences who run the risk of (...) being othered, or positioned as reproducing or accommodating to the very same social problems they may be victimised by. (shrink)

The current thesis discusses how tools for analysing power are developed predominately for adults, and thus remain underdeveloped in terms of understanding injustices related to age, ethnicity/race and gender in childhoods. The overall aim of this dissertation is to inscribe a discourse of intersecting social injustices as relevant for childhoods and child welfare, and by interlinking postcolonial, feminist, and critical childhood studies. The dissertation is set empirically within the policy and practice of Swedish child welfare, here exemplified by the assessment (...) framework Barns Behov i Centrum. It aims to explore how Swedish child welfare, as a field of knowledge, modes of knowing and knowing subjects, constitutes an arena for claims and responses to intersecting social justice issues. The material consists of BBIC primers and selected samples from, a total of 283 case reports from a Swedish social service agency. The case reports address assessments of children. This dissertation is based on four qualitative studies using discourse analysis, as well as analysis inspired by thematic and case-study methodology. Two studies focus on child welfare discourses in BBIC documents involving social problems and violence, and two studies are based on child welfare case reports. Studies I­­-II address child welfare policy and practice by analysing the conditions required for children to participate, in terms of children’s moral status and in terms of status of ‘evidencing’ needs for protection. Studies III­­-IV explore this further from the perspective of intersecting and embodied social injustices in childhoods. Together, the studies interconnect child welfare as a field of knowledge, modes of knowing and knowers with child welfare as a moral arena for claims to rights, recognition, and social justice. The synthesised findings point to child biowelfare, in which justice discourses are largely absent. Biowelfare is informed by a mode of knowing and ‘evidencing’ risks to children’s health and development, which are confined to scientific predicting-believing, seeing-believing by professionals and a moral economy of care, all of which constrain the idea that injustices are structural and intersecting. Biowelfare primarily responds to children as ‘speaking’ biological bodies, rather than as voices of justice. In this sense, injustices of an epistemological nature are interconnected with social injustices. When issues of justice are mobilised in case reports and policy, they come across as rather ‘unjust’, primarily confined to the sphere of the family home of racialised children and not connected to ‘general’ children. In addition to intersections of age, ethnicity/race and gender, class and health are fundamental to recognition and protection in biowelfare. Finally, the dissertation indicates the need for a moral economy which responds to intersecting social injustices such as racial, gender-based and ageist violence in childhoods, and violations of children’s bodily integrity. (shrink)

Poststructuralist discourse theory is enjoying increasing recognition for its potential to contribute to the study of institutional change and continuity. Yet the most fruitful approach to realizing this potential has hitherto not been found. The main proposition so far has been to operationalize DT’s insights and concepts by adopting them into the framework of discursive institutionalism. However, an ongoing debate about the compatibility of the ontologies underlying DT and DI has cast doubts over whether such a combination is theoretically feasible. (...) The critical literature review in the first part of this article indeed finds insurmountable ontological differences between the discourse-theoretical and the discursive-institutionalist traditions, as their clashing notions of what is understood as a ‘discourse’ result in diverging views on power, agency, and subjectivity. Instead of merging DT into DI, I suggest to empower the former as a self-sufficient paradigm for institutional analysis. To achieve this, the second part of this article re-articulates the ‘logics framework’ proposed by Jason Glynos and David Howarth into a middle-range theory for the study of institutionalization and politicization in a discourse-theoretical fashion. The purpose of this re-articulation is to dispel various arguments against the viability of an autonomous poststructuralist approach to institutions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAn unresolved aspect of the Logics Approach within Poststructuralist Discourse Theory is how to operationalize its abstract theoretical concepts – of social, political and fantasmatic logics – for concrete textual analysis, especially of policy documents. Policies often institute new understandings, procedures or practices, something the logics, as originally articulated, fall somewhat short of capturing. To overcome these methodological challenges this article constructs a framework for poststructuralist policy analysis that brings together the Logics Approach with more textually oriented tools developed within (...) Critical Discourse Analysis, namely assumptions and genre chains. For empirical illustration it draws on a case study of the European Union's adaptation policy in response to climate change. The resulting framework offers a means through which more implicit social and political logics can be examined, and contributes new insights to methodological debates around the use of the Logics Approach, specifically in relation to critical policy analysis. The article concludes with seven observations of relevance for future studies and suggests avenues for further empirical and conceptual exploration. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRevisiting the trend of identifying populism with extreme right parties, in this paper we aim to problematize such associations within the context of today’s Europe. Drawing on examples from relevant parties in France and the Netherlands, and applying a discourse-theoretical methodology, we test the hypothesis that such parties are better categorized primarily as nationalist and only secondarily – and reluctantly – as ‘populist’. Our hypothesis follows the remarks of scholars who have stressed that the central theme in the discourse of (...) such parties is not the staging of an antagonism between a ‘people’ and an ‘elite’, but rather the opposition of an ethnic community with its alleged dangerous ‘others’. In this context, we propose a discursive methodology able to differentiate between ‘populist’ and ‘nationalist’ discourses by locating the core signifiers in each discourse in relation to peripheral ones, as well as by clarifying the nature of the axial antagonisms put forth. (shrink)

We argue the need for academics to resist and challenge the hegemonic discourse of sustainable development within the corporate context. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory provides a useful framework for recognizing the complex nature of sustainable development and a way of conceptualizing counter-hegemonies. Published empirical research that analyzes sustainable development discourse within corporate reports is examined to consider how the hegemonic discourse is constructed. Embedded assumptions within the hegemonic construction are identified including sustainable development as primarily about economic development, progress, (...) growth, profitability, and “responsibly” managed levels of resource depletion. We call for multiple voices in the discursive field to debate and to resist closure and highlight the possibilities for academic researchers to actively resist the hegemonic construction. Specifically, we advocate vigilance and awareness, critical and reflective analyses, challenge and resistance based on other frames of reference, and strategies for communicating both within and outside the academy. (shrink)

Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research areas such as brand equity, structuralist semiotics, textual semiotics, visual and film (...) semiotics, multimodal rhetoric, film theory, psychoanalysis. The proposed connectionist conceptual model of the brand trajectory of signification is operationalized through a methodological framework that encompasses a structuralist semiotic interpretative approach to the textual formation of brand equity, supported by quantitative content analysis with the aid of the software Atlas.ti and the application of multivariate mapping techniques. (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)

The article presents the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD). SKAD, which has been in the process of development since the middle of the 1990s, is now a widely used framework among social scientists in discourse research in the German-speaking area. It links arguments from the social constructionist tradition, following Berger and Luckmann, with assumptions based in symbolic interactionism, hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, and the concepts of Michel Foucault. It argues thereby for a consistent theoretical and methodological grounding of (...) a genuine social sciences perspective on discourse interested in the social production, circulation and transformation of knowledge, that is in social relations and politics of knowledge in the so-called ‘knowledge societies’. Distancing itself from Critical Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, Ethnomethodology inspired discourse analysis and the Analysis of Hegemonies, following Laclau and Mouffe, SKAD’s framework has been built up around research questions and concerns located in the social sciences, referring to public discourse and arenas as well as to more specific fields of (scientific, religious, etc.) discursive struggles and controversies around problematizations (Foucault). (shrink)

Critical Discourse Analysis, or more popularly known as CDA, reflects the trend on the investigation of ideology and power struggle that is implied in the text and sound of discourse and language. With Norman Fairclough and the group in Lancaster University as the leading theorists of this discipline, this paper deals on extracting the very foundation of its theoretical claims in hope of unearthing the rich philosophical ideations and nuances that may have contributed towards its creation and formation through the (...) years. In this way, this would not only expose its philosophical framework but also would provide its readers and its practitioners a theoretical base and scope of related disciplines for the furthering of their interests and practices. This diachronic sketch legitimizes the claims of CDA as it rests on the more popular and stable conceptual skeleton of the major prominent thinkers of critical theory, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) and other forms of discourse analysis are regularly used to study identity, but rarely do researchers systematically compare and contrast them with other theories to identify exactly what a discursive approach contributes. In this paper, we take the example of a particular identity – the older worker – and systematically compare the contribution of CDA with other approaches, including economics, labour market research, gerontology and cultural studies. In so doing, we show the kinds of research questions (...) that CDA can address, which other theories grappling with identity cannot. In this way, we hope to delineate more clearly what CDA is, to identify specifically how it contributes to the study of identity, and to show what it can do, compared to other theories. (shrink)

Drawing on a documentary analysis of two socioeconomic policy programs, one Flemish (“Vlaanderen in Actie”), the other Walloon (“Marshall Plans”), and a discourse analysis of how these programs are received in one Flemish and one Francophone quality newspaper, this article illustrates how Flanders and Wallonia both seek to become top-performing knowledge-based economies (KBEs). The article discerns a number of discursive repertoires, such as “Catching up,” which policy actors draw on to legitimize or question the transformation of Flanders and Wallonia into (...) KBEs. The “Catching up” repertoire places Flanders resolutely ahead of Wallonia in the global race toward knowledge, excellence, and growth, but suggests that Wallonia may, in due course, overtake Flanders as a top competitive region. Given the expectations and fears that “Catching up” evokes among Flemish and Walloon policy actors, the repertoire serves these actors as a flexible discursive resource to make sense of, and shape, their collective futures and their regional identities. The article’s findings underline the simultaneity of, and the interplay between, globalizing forces and particularizing tendencies, as Flanders and Wallonia develop with a global KBE in region-specific ways. (shrink)

Recent publications have argued that practical wisdom is increasingly important for medical practices, particularly in complex contexts, to stay focused on giving good care in a moral sense to each individual patient. Our empirical investigation into an ordinary medical practice was aimed at exploring whether the practice would reveal practical wisdom, or, instead, adherence to conventional frames such as guidelines, routines and the dominant professional discourse. We performed a thematic analysis both of the medical files of a complex patient and (...) her daughter’s diary. We did find practical wisdom, but only sporadically, whereas it has proved to be essential for professional care. This deficit appeared to result from several factors like: the organization of the practice; established routines; a hierarchical culture; and a traditional medical discourse. Moreover, we discerned various negative consequences. More empirical research into practical wisdom in everyday medical practices is needed for the benefit of professional and morally good care for every patient. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines discursive change in Australia from 1950 to 2010 through the lens of critical whiteness studies. Using textbooks as records of dominant narratives, I evaluate discourses of whiteness and Aboriginality in Australian history textbooks over this period of substantial social change. I show that overt discourses of white exceptionalism and Aboriginal deficiency are only present in the earliest decades of my sample. However, these discourses persist in later decades in ‘polite’ forms, maintaining the racial status quo while enabling (...) whites to be positioned favourably. I argue that discursive change only becomes embedded in textbooks if it bolsters the status of whites, evidencing Bell’s thesis of interest-convergence. (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 investigates how specific notions of gender and ethnicity are integrated into diversity discourses presented on 241 top European company websites. Large European companies increasingly disclose equality and diversity policies in statements on websites. Such statements may be used to promote an ethical image of the company in terms of how well it manages diversity and guards against discrimination. In this paper, we argue that diversity statement discourses are important as they play a key part in socially constructing how (...) diversity should be regarded in the company by minority and majority groups, as well as indicating corporate values to external stakeholders. Sometimes, the notions of gender or ethnic diversity are positioned as a liability in need of protection, whilst in others, as a source of competitive advantage. We find evidence of use of discursive tools such as problematisation, rationalisation, fixation, reframing and naturalisation of the notions of gender and ethnic diversity, reinforced by use of symbols, such as statistics, photographs, membership badges and awards. Few statements directly associate gender and ethnic diversity with enhanced corporate performance. We found that diversity statements sometimes appear to reinforce existing business stereotypes of women and people from ethnic minorities, and in a few discourses, create new ones, particularly evident in photographs illustrating the diversity web pages. (shrink)

In the mid-2000s, rising gas prices, political instability, pollution, and fossil fuel depletion brought renewable domestic energy production onto the policy agenda. Biofuels, or fuels made from plant materials, came to be seen as America’s hope for energy security, environmental conservation, and rural economic revitalization. Yet even as the actual environmental, economic, and energy contributions of a biofuels boom remained debatable, support for biofuels swelled and became a prominent driver of not only US energy policy but of US farm policy (...) as well. This paper asks why biofuels became such a powerful force in farm policy debates, and draws on policy windows theory and discourse analysis to analyze biofuels’ contributions to the passage of the 2008 farm bill. It finds that budgetary and political factors combined with a particular set of patriotic biofuels-oriented discourses to carry energy policy debates into farm policy. It also comments on the implications of biofuels policies for conservation and sustainable land use in 2008 and beyond. (shrink)

This paper looks at discourses related to animal farming in a popular South African farming magazine. The paper analyzes four ar ticles using a form of Critical Discourse Analysis . Despite varying widely in content and style, all articles draw from the discourses of production and science; two also show a minor discourse of achievement. With further work, it is possible to discern a fourth, deeply embedded discourse: that of enslavement. This also was present in all the articles. These discourses (...) objectify nonhuman animals and support a world-view of teleological anthropocentrism that fits well with present capitalist practices. (shrink)

Spatial planning policies are fundamental blocks for the implementation of sustainable development goals. Still, despite the growing adoption of environmental proxies, as it is nature-based solutions, the study of their institutionalization in policy and spatial planning is in the early stages. Simultaneously, the use of discursive and interpretative methods to unfold the social structures related to environmental issues is growing, nonetheless, their application is more common to supranational narratives. This article proposes a conceptual and methodological approach to using critical discourse (...) analysis for studying the institutionalization and conceptualization of nature-related issues in policy and spatial planning at national and local levels. This is done by discussing the ontological relations between the discursive institutionalist theory and critical discourse analysis as a methodology. It contains four main stages: clarifying the analytical focus; mapping policy and planning documents; analyzing macro discourse, which includes critical textual analysis, text-type analysis, and intertextuality analysis, and, at last, the fourth phase, interpretation within the institutional context. It provides a tool for researchers less familiar with linguistics but interested in performing discourse analysis to understand the integration of environmental narratives within policy and spatial planning. (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)

In this article, we frame men’s club football as an “extremely gendered” organization to explain the underrepresentation of women leaders within the industry. By analyzing women’s leadership work over a 30-year period, we find that women’s inclusion has been confined to a limited number of occupational areas. These areas are removed, in terms of influence and proximity, from the male players and the playing of football. These findings reveal a gendered substructure within club football that maintains masculine dominance in core (...) football leadership roles and relegates women to a position of peripheral inclusion in leadership roles. Through a discourse analysis of gender pay gap reports, we show that men’s football clubs legitimize women’s peripheral inclusion by naturalizing male dominance at the organizational core. These findings are significant because they demonstrate that men’s football clubs, as masculinity-conferring organizations, have excluded women from core roles to maintain their masculine character while superficially accepting women into roles that do not challenge the association of football with hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, organizational change may be possible only if women are granted greater access to core organizational roles. Here, we offer a new theoretical framework for “extremely gendered” organizations that can be applied to other sporting and male-dominated contexts to analyze women’s access to core leadership roles. (shrink)

An ongoing study examining the discursive negotiation of ethnic and gendered embodied identities of adolescent girls in Japan with Japanese and `white' mixed-parentage is extended to also investigate and compare boys. This study draws on Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis which views women and girls as `simultaneously positioned as relatively powerless within a range of dominant discourses on gender, but as relatively powerful within alternative and competing social discourses'. Here, this is taken further by also giving voice to boys. Furthermore, ethnic (...) discourses are examined alongside of gender discourses. Not only girls constructed the `idealized Other', within discourses of femininity, but boys similarly viewed their bodies against a model of idealized masculinity within discourses of masculinities. The boys revealed a feminized, narcissistic body consciousness where they struggled to resist a `discourse of foreign grotesqueness' and instead worked to embody themselves within a positive `discourse of foreign attractiveness', as did the girls. (shrink)

The Philosophical Underpinnings of Social Constructionist Discourse Analysis Although discourse analysis emerges as a multi-faceted research method reflecting various schools of thought, disciplines and approaches, it is possible to pinpoint some meta-theoretical issues or fundamental assumptions common for most of them. This article aims to investigate different philosophical aspects and theoretical foundations that inform discourse analysis, such as the interplay between epistemological and ontological dimensions or the definition of language itself. Because space does not allow an in-depth discussion of all (...) the theoretical orientations collectively contributing to the development of social constructionist discourse analysis, this paper focuses on poststructuralist, constructivist, and social realist positions, and also attempts to trace the roots of social constructionism in linguistic philosophy, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Hopefully, this article will provide the opportunity to develop meta-theoretical reflections on discourse analysis, thus striking the balance between the philosophy, methodology and practice. (shrink)

This paper uses discourse analysis to examine the free/libre and open source movements. It analyses how they fix elements within the order of discourse of computer code production. It attempts to uncover the key signifiers in their discourses and trace linkages between the sedimented discourses of wider society. Using discourse theory and critical discourse analysis, the theoretical foundations underpinning each of the movements are critically examined and the effect on the wider developer and Internet community is discussed. Additionally, this paper (...) seeks to recommend discursive strategies that could be employed to avoid the threat of colonization by neoliberal discourse and the consequent challenge this has for the ideas of freedom, liberty and community within the developer communities' own discourses. (shrink)

By analyzing session exchanges and questionnaires administered to family therapy clients, this article examines questioning as conversational practice grounded in institutional goals that are therapist-directed and therapist-conceived. In their manifestation in talk and text, therapeutic questions function to replace client accounts with the nosological accounts of institutional psychiatry. The analysis illuminates three ways in which questioning works in the session and then locates these in therapy's professional and institutional logic. A critical reflection on psychotherapy's questioning practices in a social context (...) concludes the article. (shrink)

Governments are widely viewed by academics and practitioners as the key societal actors who are capable of compelling businesses to practice corporate social responsibility. Arguably, such government involvement could be seen as a technocratic device for encouraging ethical business behaviour. In this paper, we offer a more politicised interpretation of government engagement with CSR where “CSR” is not a desired form of business conduct but an element of discourse that governments can deploy in structuring their relationships with other social actors. (...) We build our argument through a historical analysis of government CSR discourse in the Russian Federation. Laclau and Mouffe's social theory of hegemony underpins our research. We find that “CSR” in the Russian government’s discourse served to legitimise its power over large businesses. Using this case, we contribute to wider academic debates by providing fresh empirical evidence that allows the development of critical evaluation tools in relation to governments’ engagement with “CSR”. We find that governments are capable of hijacking CSR for their own self-interested gain. We close the paper by reflecting on the merit of exploring the case of the Russian Federation. As a “non-core”, non-western exemplar, it provides a useful “mirror” with which to reflect on the more widely used test-bed of Western industrial democracies when scrutinising CSR. Based on our findings, we invite other scholars to adopt a more critical, politicised stance when researching the role of governments in relation to CSR in other parts of the world. (shrink)

This article looks at the ways in which political representation is used as a symbolic resource of legitimacy by those acting as intermediaries between the private and the public sectors- professional lobbyists. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Michael Saward, the article puts forward an analysis of whether, how and in relation to whom, lobbyists claim to be representatives so as to acquire a recognized position in the policy-making process. Representative claim-making by lobbyists matters, we argue, because it is an (...) indicator of the status afforded by the public to private actors in politics. In the Czech and Polish cases, even though the invisible character of lobbying practices seems to limit the range of roles lobbyists can adopt in front of the general public, lobbyists mobilize representation as a resource both directly and indirectly when having to justify their involvement in public decision-making. (shrink)

This article draws attention to struggles inherent in discourse about the meaning of participation in a Flemish participatory technology assessment (pTA) on nanotechnologies. It explores how, at the project’s outset, key actors (e.g., nanotechnologists and pTA researchers) frame elements of the process like ‘the public’ and draw on interpretive repertoires to fit their perspective. The examples call into question normative commitments to cooperation, consensus building, and common action that conventionally guide pTA approaches. It is argued that pTA itself must reflect (...) an awareness of competing interests and perspectives inherent in the discourse associated with the meaning of ‘participation’ if it is to incite action beyond vested interests and ensure genuine mutual learning. (shrink)

Relations between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and companies have been the subject of a sharply increasing amount of publications in recent years within academic business journals. In this article, we critically assess this fast-developing body of literature, which we treat as forming a ‘business and society discourse’ on NGO–business relations. Drawing on discourse theory, we examine 199 academic articles in 11 business and society, international business, and management journals. Focusing on the dominant articulations on the NGO–business relationship and key signifiers they (...) rely on, we analyze the problem-settings of articles in order to reveal the statements that are acceptable and appropriate within this field. Our threefold aim is to (1) identify dominant articulations of NGO–business relations in business and society discourse, (2) expose those articulations that are silenced or suppressed by these dominant articulations, and (3) critically assess possible power effects of these discursive dynamics in the field of discursivity. While business and society discourse on NGO–business relations overall remains open to many different articulations, we also find that those articulations that focus on NGO–business partnerships and governance initiatives tend to privilege collaborative and deliberative ways of engaging and marginalize more adversarial subject positions. We call for more recognition of the potentially constructive role that can be played by conflict. (shrink)

Abstract This article explores interview data from a study of 50 Norwegian generalist nurses' focus group accounts of caring for dying patients in the hospital and care home. An eclectic discourse analytic approach was applied to nurses' accounts of the patient and three discursive contexts of reference to the patient were identified: the 'taken as read' patient, the patient paired with particular characteristics and the patient as psychologically present. Talk about the patient falls mainly into the first two contexts, which (...) position the patient in relation to three closely related discursive processes: individualization, anonymization and objectification. The third context presents the patient as a person with a particular identity. The analysis is discussed in a broader philosophical and sociological context in which we return to some of the theoretical work on death and dying of the 1990s and the topic of sequestration. We suggest that nurses' talk about the patient can be heard to participate in a continuing sequestration of the dying patient in healthcare institutions focused on 'result-oriented' care. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Norwegian government implemented a comprehensive welfare reform in 2012 to better manage an increasingly care-demanding patient demography while meeting budgetary constraints. This article discusses interdiscursive relationships between policy strategies and language use among rehabilitation professionals. It is based on a synthesis of textual analyses of policy documents and of transcribed interviews to produce complex insights into current rehabilitation discourse. The synthetic product is expressed in the form of two nodal discourses which subsume and articulate in particular ways the constituent (...) discourses of the policies and interviews. One nodal discourse approaches rehabilitation as a clinical practice; the other concerns rehabilitation as a management practice. These discourses serve different purposes. One is based in traditional medical science as a means for political action and relates to the body as an object of government policies and practices. The other relies on the individual... (shrink)

One of the challenges to studying the media in non-‘Western’ locations is to decide on appropriate and relevant theoretical framings for such work. Moreover in African contexts there is a call for African scholarship. In this paper I propose that two very different sets of theories are relevant to theorising the media in a southern African context. First I draw on Foucauldian understandings of governmentality and subjectivities, in spite of the fact that Foucault and his commentators make frequent reference to (...) the ‘Western’ world and the ‘Western subject’. In addition to Foucauldian insights, I also draw on African scholar, Mamdani's theories. He argues that colonial power was effected through indirect rule to constitute people as either ‘citizen’ or ‘subject’. The bifurcated nature of the state thus proposed different sets of identities and has resulted in a particular ‘history of the present’. From a position that argues that Foucault's and Mamdani's insights are fundamental to understanding this postcolonial context and the media constructions that result, I relate them empirically to a case study of the coverage and the accompanying popular responses in the South African press of the controversial rape trial of former South African deputy president, Jacob Zuma.1 If a rights-based discourse informed much of the reporting, it did this by constituting the discourse of ethnicity as other. At the same time both patriarchal and gender rights discourses were in unequal contestation. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the ‘patterning’ of the ways discourse markers such as okay, right and yeah are used in academic lectures by native speaker lecturers. It presents an analysis of a) what the lecturers thought they would say and b) what they actually say in comparison to what the lecturers actually do say. In other words, it focuses on the differences between expectations of what would be said and speech, that is, what is actually said.The data comprise verbatim lecture transcriptions (...) of four native speaker lecturers of different disciplines, analysed using a discourse analytical approach. The findings and discussions exhibit the reasons for the differences between the ‘anticipated’ and ‘real’ meanings of the use of these discourse markers.They also reflect upon the significance of non-verbal features in determining the actual functions of these markers. In short, this article highlights the reality use of okay, right and yeah as interactive conversational markers in academic lectures. (shrink)

Through this paper, we convey a comparative analysis of how Google Inc. and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) discursively construct and contest Android, a dominant mobile operating system. Methodologically, we use political discourse theory to engage in the textual analysis; identify and compare key signifiers and nodal points across the exemplary texts from the two actors, and interpret their meaning vis à vis contextual insights about the political economy of Android’s production. Albeit being marketed as ‘the first truly open (...) platform’ for mobiles, through our analysis we find Google’s definition of open source practices strictly conditional. We argue that Google’s usage of compatibility rhetorically as well as techno-legally justifies the conglomerate’s control over the platform. By contrast, the discursive moment by free software activists, through a campaign ‘Free Your Android’ deconstructs the discourse on open source and attempts to politicize the access to code in the mobile domain. This is done by extending from the well-known developer’s four freedoms onto users’ privacy, due to personal character of mobile devices. Such articulation of free software in relation to privacy of user data is a new development and arguably has a potential to contribute to widening support to the movement. (shrink)

This paper unpacks ambiguities in the field of interdisciplinarity studies, explores where they come from and how they inhibit consolidation of the field. The paper takes its point of departure in two central fault lines in the literature: the relationship between interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity and the question of whether integration is a necessary prerequisite for interdisciplinarity. Opposite positions on the fault lines are drawn out to identify sources of ambiguities, and to examine whether the positions are irreconcilable - or disagreements (...) that may continue to coexist in a consolidated field. It is argued that if we envisage a consolidated field of IDS, there is a need to develop common ground which calls for scholars of ID to be more explicit about the meanings they ascribe to ID than we see today when the sliding between the epistemological and political dimensions of the field may go unnoticed. It is suggested that whereas ambiguity may be unwanted in the epistemological dimension, it may be quite useful in the political dimension. A systematic comparison of opposite positions offers a common frame of reference for a more productive dialogue between different positions. The analysis shows that as to integration, the difference between opposite positions can be reconciled, whereas in the relation between interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity, the positions are antagonistic and logically exclude each other. The analysis suggests that it is the premise of integration that creates the conditions of possibility for “relabelling” interdisciplinarity and for using the “silo” for disciplines. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article takes part in the discussion of the post-politicization of climate change by studying how consensus and disagreement were articulated in the coverage of four UN climate summits in the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. From the perspective of discourse theory and an agonistic theory of democracy, the article argues that the hegemonic articulation of consensual politics, solving the problem of climate change, and establishing an international treaty on emission reductions to a chain of equivalence have reduced the field of (...) disagreement to a choice between solving and not solving climate change. While such a form of hegemony represses more radical forms of political discourse, it is often considered helpful in building the consensus that is seen as a prerequisite for decisive action on climate change. This article argues that in building a durable relationship regarding climate change, political conflicts should be embraced in the name of democratic politics rather that suppressed in the name of generating and sustaining consensus. (shrink)

This study explores the discourse of social entrepreneurs and their audiences in pitch situations. Adopting a practice perspective on social entrepreneurship, we videotaped 49 pitches by social entrepreneurs at five different events in two incubators in Germany and Switzerland. Our analysis of the start-ups’ pitches and the audience’s questions and comments as well as of interview data elucidates the nuances of social and business discourse that social entrepreneurs and their audiences draw upon. Our analysis shows how many social entrepreneurs mobilize (...) a discursive repertoire that is familiar to their business-oriented audience while others predominantly draw on a social discourse. We identify separating, mixing, and combining as key strategies that allow social entrepreneurs to dance between the two. We discuss how the intertextual reproduction of concepts, objects, and subject positions contains both enabling and constraining elements, which results in an ethical dilemma for social entrepreneurs: Should they re-package their social impact story in a business discourse to connect with their audience? (shrink)

This paper analyses the myth of the Blitz spirit in British newspaper discourses of the City and economy after the London bombings on 7 July 2005. The Blitz spirit is a popular story of Britain during the Second World War, uniting together with defiance and resilience to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. Through Barthes’ model of myth, this paper discusses the myth of the Blitz spirit in memories of wartime London. A critical discourse analysis then explores the (...) ideological impact of Blitz spirit discourses in hyperbolised coverage of City traders and the economy in 2005. I argue that the ideological complexities of Western economics and the free market were suppressed by a myth that sought to bind social classes together through evocations of British, wartime solidarity and defiance. But, this paper also argues that Blitz spirit evocations among City traders were contradicted by discourses that discussed British citizens as consumers through anxieties about the economy after the bombings. (shrink)