Posts tagged ‘discourse’

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25 June 2010

Wealthy and responsible. A shifting discursive terrain?

It seems there is change at hand. For a long time in Germany, the UK, etc. it has been considered quite laudable to use tax loopholes, and respectable to demand less tax for the wealthy.

Now, in Germany, the wealthiest themselves are demanding that they be allowed to contribute more to the current financial crisis. “We want to pay more”; fix those “ridiculous” tax loopholes; over half the top managers in a survey think top earners should pay more tax.

Change indeed. Now politics can use what Ranciére calls a “strategy of verification” to hold these words to deeds.

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20 June 2010

Das Undarstellbare der Politik

For German speakers: Das Undarstellbare der Politik: Zur Hegemonietheorie Ernesto Laclaus. (1998) is available as a downloadable pdf from the publishers Turia + Kant.

Edited by Oliver Marchart with texts from Judith Butler, Simon Critchley, Torben Bech Dyrberg, Ernesto Laclau, Thanos Lipowatz, Rado Riha, Anna-Marie Smith, Urs Stäheli, Yannis Stavrakakis, Jelica Šumić-Riha and Slavoj Žižek.

Im Mittelpunkt dieses Bandes steht ein Briefwechsel zwischen Judith Butler und Ernesto Laclau, der die gegenwärtige Renaissance der politischen Philosophie belegt und demnächst auch in Diacritics publiziert werden wird.

Politik kommt heute, nach dem Wegfall der Leitdifferenz Ost – West, zu Bewusstsein als das Wagnis einer Unternehmung ohne sicheren Ausgang. Nichts garantiert ihren Erfolg, ja es ist zweifelhaft, worin der Erfolg denn bestünde – etwa in der Erreichung des Ziels einer perfekt ausbalancierten, hegemonialen Gesellschaft befriedet-befriedigter Bürger? Zynisch resümierte man, dass dies eine Gesellschaft der Langeweile wäre, geschichtslos, leblos, aber gerecht, die Vorwegnahme des Todes.

Ein politischer Diskurs, der dem Politischen wieder Form geben will, muss den Prozess der Differenzierung wieder thematisieren, jenen kaum fasslichen Vorgang der Gesellschaft, in dem sich Politik situiert. Zu diesem Unternehmen, das Laclau und Butler ins Zentrum des Interesses stellen, bietet der Band auch eine Reihe weiterer Beiträge, von Slavoj Zizek bis zu Simon Critchley, sowie Texte von Ernesto Laclau und Judith Butler selbst.

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7 June 2010

J-culture

At the East Asian Institute @ Leipzig University:

Japan’s modernity has been formed in three different system-specific constellations and corresponding self- and hetero-descriptions, i.e. formations of identity discourses. For the Meiji-System they can be summarized as Japonisme or Nipponism (with the focus on an aestheticized high-culture), for the post-war system as Nihon/jin-ron (everyday and consumer goods), and the last 1 ½ decades can be labeled Cool Japan or J-culture.

Continuously, images of the “Self” have been constructed by internalizing the foreign/western perspective. At the same time, this heteronomy has always been a field consisting of three elements, that means, national identity has always been constructed via the ethnic triade “West-Japan-(East-) Asia”. There are, however, also striking differences between the J-culture discourse and the previous two discourse formations: first, the dominance of popular cultural elements, such as Manga, Anime, Games, pop music, fashion, food; and, secondly, the multitude and variety of actors engaged in this discourse, reaching from so-called “ordinary” people (not only youngsters !) up to political and other elites.

J–culture is fundamentally formed by the two semantic fields of cool and beautiful. [...more...]

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3 June 2010

Discursive agency and primary education

New project on primary schools combining discourse theory and critical educational studies at the University of Luxembourg: ProDIC-Discourse Structures and Dis-/Integration in Education: Promotion of Critical Discourse Competencies.

School as a social institution cannot be separated from its context; it is part of and influencing social reality (cf. New London School; Gee; Yurén). However, few schooling practices take into account this dimension of ‘agency’ of schools as institutions as well as of the implied individual actors, in the re-/co-/construction of social reality. The present project tries to cope with this lack by deconstructing institutionalised discursive constraints of agency in a Luxembourgish primary school, and by elaborating a critical concept of agency at the intersection of French discourse theory and critical educational research, that is adapted to the Luxembourgish socio-cultural context. It aims at finding ways to empower actors, in particular learners, to actively participate and take over responsibilities in the re-/co-/construction of the reality of school, classroom and learning activities, as well as of the individual life as social being and of society as a whole.

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11 May 2010

Laughter in discourse

…some findings on my recent search for research articles on the use of laughter in meetings…

Janet Holmes. (2006). Sharing a laugh: Pragmatic aspects of humor and gender in the workplace. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1): 26-50. (Abstract)

Humor serves a wide range of functions at work, one of which is to foster collegiality. An analysis of interactions in New Zealand workplaces showed that one of the most important functions of humor was the construction and maintenance of good relations with fellow workers. Such workplace collegiality is often constructed and maintained through extended sequences of humor. This paper examines some of the ways in which humor is used to construct collegial relations at work, with particular attention to the dimension of gender in the workplace.

Janet Holmes & Meredith Marra. (2002). Having a laugh at work: how humour contributes to workplace culture. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(12): 1683-1710. (Abstract)

Despite its frequency in everyday life, we know very little about the interactional characteristics of laughter. This paper explores some of the pragmatic features of laughter in conversation. Laughter is examined as: (1) a turn taking cue, (2) an instruction to hear, (3) a display of hearership, (4) an invitation to elaborate, and (5) a resource in affiliation.

Daniel C. O’Connell, Sabine Kowal. (2006). Laughter in the Film The Third Man. Pragmatics 16(2&3): 305-327 (pdf)

Daniel C. O’Connell, Sabine Kowal (2005). Laughter in Bill Clinton’s My Life (2004) Interviews. Pragmatics 15(2&3): 275-299 (pdf)

Daniel C. O’Connell, Sabine Kowal (2004). Hillary Clinton’s Laughter in Media Interviews. Pragmatics 14(4): 463-478 (pdf)

Nick O’Donnell-Trujillo & Katherine Adams. (1983). Heheh in conversation: Some coordinating accomplishments of laughter. Western Journal of Communication, 47(2): 175 – 191.

Complete abstract: Despite its frequency in everyday life, we know very little about the interactional characteristics of laughter. This paper explores some of the pragmatic features of laughter in conversation. Laughter is examined as: (1) a turn taking cue, (2) an instruction to hear, (3) a display of hearership, (4) an invitation to elaborate, and (5) a resource in affiliation.

…image thanks to composed volcano...

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12 April 2010

Schools, tests and human rights

A potentially very effective blend of discourses was seen earlier this week at the National Union of Teachers conference in England. Christine Blower, the NUT’s general secretary, condemed national tests for 10- and 11-year olds (“Sats”) by critically articulating their reduction of children to “little bundles of measurable outputs” with the UN convention on the rights of the child. Under the convention, children are entitled to an education which helps develop their “personalitites, talents and abilities to their fullest potential”.

Blower said: “The NUT says ‘yes’ to risk-taking and exciting approaches to learning and ‘no’ to children as little bundles of measurable outputs.” (Guardian, 7 April 2010)

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23 March 2010

Laclau and contingency

Ernesto Laclau talks to the Greek journal Intellectum about the uses of populism, why radical democracy has nothing to do with liberalism, and how lack of political competition benefits the far-Right.

…with thanks to Hanna for the link.

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25 February 2010

Entrepreneurial self on stage

The entrepreneurial self, flexibilisation, self-optimisation, authenticity, work, intrapreneurship, patchwork-biographies, lifelong learning… neo-liberal discourses of the flexible self…

For Berliners: Der flexible Mensch* is appearing in a very amusing and thought-provoking project Entgrenzung (by Frank Oberhäußer) at the Schaubühne’s Studio stage. Only two more shows: 13 and 14 March. Highly recomended.

*Der Flexible Mensch is the German title of Richard Sennett’s (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences Of Work In the New Capitalism.

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22 February 2010

Language use and ideology

Open source manuscripts! And not only uploaded by third parties, but by the authors themselves. Jef Verschueren‘s latest book, for instance, is currently available online in draft form. In it, he argues that a ‘permanent monitoring of ideological processes’ is ‘imperative’. And that pragmatics offers useful tools to do this.

The book deals with what for me is one of the most fascinating (and important) aspects of language use: commonsensicalness.

Once ways of thinking about relations between groups of people are felt to be ‘normal’, they may become powerful tools for legitimating attitudes, behavior, and policies, whatever the frequently negative consequences in terms of discrimination, patterns of dominance, and even violence.

And more specifically, he offers an interesting thesis on hegemony which promises to engage closely with language practices:

Thesis 1.1.1: The wider the society or community, and the wider the range of discourse genres in which a given pattern of meaning or frame of interpretation escapes questioning, the more ‘hegemonic’ it may be.

The manuscript, which provides a research tool to explore these issues: Engaging with Language Use and Ideology: Pragmatic guidelines for empirical ideology research.

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28 October 2009

Ethnographic discourse analysis

On a random google for others also working on “ethnographic discourse analysis”, I came across some interesting links.

Martin Müller’s book, Making great power identities in Russia: An ethnographic discourse analysis of education at a Russian elite university (Zürich:LIT). A university seminar in Vienna (Gabriela B. Christmann).Thomas Scheffer’s Research Report: Statements, Cases, and Criminal Cases. The Ethnographic Discourse Analysis of Legal Discourse Formations in FQS. And a job offer: Assist. Prof of Ethnographic Discourse Analysis at Georgetown (from 1995!).

A detailed review of Steinkuehler, C. (2005). Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Critical Approach shows how Steinkuehler explores MMOGs is not only as a discursive practice but also participating in a discourse. She’s primarily interested in learning, and analyses specific interactions and literacy practices. Draws on Geertz and Gee (Big ‘D’ discourses). The reviewer is clear that this is an important book for her research, and writes:

I also get my understanding of game play as situated in a multiplicity of discourses from Steinkuehler and while I have become leery of completely downplaying the digital physicality of virtual worlds I can’t deny the linguistic or at the very least literary nature of the interactions that I observe online. While incomplete her explanation of communities in MMOGs as both communities of discourse and communities of practice is a useful tool for understanding communities in online settings and if her vision of MMOGs as discourses can be somewhat monolithic I’m not prepared to completely abandon it because of that one flaw.

Now I’m wondering what happens if we take a larger definition of ‘discourse’ — akin to Laclau and Mouffe’s work, or the Essex school as they are now being called, or even Gee’s Big ‘D’ disocurses. If we understand discourse as not only language, but also a range of other practices and even physicality, does the separation of ‘community of discourse’ and ‘community of practice’ break down?

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