Account Of Discourse Research Articles

Affective Profit

Affective Profit

Taking account of discourses, literacy practices and uses of texts in ethnographic research on educational inclusion: insights from two studies in Brazil

Abstract This article examines policy change in special education in Brazil, with regard to educational provision for learners with special needs. There has been a far-reaching policy shift from educational provision for such learners in special schools to provision in mainstream schools. The focus of the research reported here was on particular educational settings, schools and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Brazil. The research provided insights into the different discourses about inclusion that circulated in these settings and into the limited nature of capacity-building for teachers. It also showed that some teachers and educational practitioners (e.g. peripatetic support staff) were devising inclusive pedagogic practice by drawing on different textual and multimodal resources, thereby demonstrating individual agency and reflexivity. At the same time, they were constrained by the paperwork demands associated with the management and monitoring of policy change. These managerial constraints are illustrated here, with reference to the institutional practices, the particular literacy events, and the power asymmetries involved in the production of student evaluations. The article highlights the value of taking account of situated literacy practices and the uses of particular kinds of texts and genres in ethnographic research into educational policy processes, as well as analyzing policy discourses.

Disciplining creativity: tensions between discourses of ‘creative environments’ and discourses of surveillance/normalisation in a school institution

ABSTRACT To understand patterns of co-option and tension between discourses of creativity on the one hand, and discourses of school management and administration on the other, it is important to bring these discourses into contact with each other. This paper considers ideas of risk-taking, autonomy, novelty and flexibility, all of which are frequently cited in describing environments conducive to creativity in schools, alongside the experiences of four teachers working in a particular school site. It engages with interview data, as well as Foucault’s writings on disciplinary power, to argue that some priorities of school administration, such as the steering effects of comparative assessments and parents’ expectations, are difficult to align with ideas of autonomy and risk in school settings. The analysis presented here offers a situated account of discourses of creative environments in the context of wider power relations that traverse the school.

Raikel, E.and Garrot, W. (eds) Addiction Trajectories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2013. 360pp. £16.99 ISBN: 978‐0‐8223‐5364‐5

This book is a somewhat eclectic edited collection, based on a series of conference papers, pulled together by an overarching introduction and conclusion. What unites the papers is an anthropological understanding of addiction; previously such papers were contained overwhelmingly in monographs or journal articles, and this is a welcome addition to the addiction literature. The book aims to discuss addiction trajectories in three broad senses. First, changing concepts of addiction over time, relating to cultural and political views of addiction, and how this impacts on policies within criminal justice and public health. Second, how addicts and treatment interact, by providing details of the lived experiences of addicts who undergo treatment for a broad range of addiction both as inpatients and within the community. Third, how those who are addicted experience their lives, including their family and personal circumstances, and how this impacts on their addiction. Whilst the volume does not provide broad coverage of these areas, this is in no way a criticism. In fact, many of the chapters provide data and commentary which address all three issues. The chapters are discrete and focus on in-depth case studies which used a range of ethnographic approaches. Throughout the volume, the authors provide rich descriptions of what it means to be addicted. For example, chapter 1 opens with a highly engaging account of one heroin addict's near death from overdose, beginning when she is abandoned outside the emergency department of a hospital and then describing her previous and subsequent treatment episodes. Throughout these chapters, detailing the experiences of individuals, I can feel the pain of the loss of a sister (chapter 1), a son (chapter 7) and the disappointment of a mother when all six of her children are addicts (chapter 2). Social circumstances, including poverty, education and employment trajectories are also detailed within the narratives of addicts' lives. Alongside this, rich descriptions of the field provide readers with details of the often monotonous day-to-day routines of the participants. Thus, this volume firmly links the social circumstances of the addict to their addiction. As well as the detailed experiences of those who are addicted, or who receive treatment, chapter 4 is an engaging account of the differences between faith-based and pharma-based treatments in the USA, which is solidly informed by theory. This is accompanied by an account of discourses used in addiction therapies (chapter 6). Although this chapter is a more challenging read, it provides a thorough critique of Motivational Interviewing, a counselling based approach often used in addiction treatment, which is well worth a read. What is central to each chapter in this volume, is an in-depth understanding of a population of addicts within a defined geographical area, ranging from one addict living in urban New Mexico, USA to a group of Russian travellers living in Marseille, France, with Russian alcoholics living in St Petersburg and an older woman living in Las Vegas, USA also included in the volume. This approach is not mirrored by other recent academic books, which focus on the biological, psychological and sociological accounts of addiction into evidence based theories of addiction (see for example West and Brown 2013), or proposing ways to treat addiction. However, this ethnographic and theoretically driven approach has been seen within the peer reviewed literature, including my own work on smoking cessation services (Grant et al. 2014), and inclusion of research focusing specifically on tobacco, arguably the most damaging addiction worldwide, would have been a welcome addition to the volume. I very much enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it to qualitative researchers embarking on research in addiction, doctoral students and healthcare professionals working in the field of addiction but also more widely as engaging examples of ethnographic research which has been well conducted. Two of the chapters (chapter 1 – heroin addiction; chapter 8 – metha-mphetamine addiction) would be suitable for undergraduate teaching. To conclude, Addiction Trajectories was an easy and interesting read, covering a wide range of topics on addiction through a series of ethnographic case studies. The volume is a very welcome addition to the literature on addiction.

Procedural pragmatics and the study of discourse

The term discourse is generally used either as a technical equivalent for ‘verbal communication’ or as referring to a particular scientific notion, where discourses are spans of texts or of utterances obeying specific principles of organisation. The aim of this paper is to suggest that an account of discourse is possible, in both cases, only through a theory of utterance-meaning construction. If discourse stands for verbal communication, then it can be explained only with regard to speaker’s intended meaning. If discourse stands for organised spans of texts or utterances, then they must be meaningful spans of texts or meaningful utterances. Yet it is argued that a pragmatic explanation of meaning provides all the elements that discourse analysis describes. In the end, the paper claims that a theory of context combined with a theory on the semantic-pragmatic interface should prove sufficient to explain discourse, in whichever sense, along the idea that discourse should be viewed as a process, not as a whole, following the claims of a number of scholars in the field. A possibility to tackle this process is proposed in terms of procedures through the approach of procedural pragmatics.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT: FEMINIST THEOLOGY AND DISCOURSE

This essay expands the capacity of feminist theology to interpret the working of Christian traditions in the lives of non-feminist women. It disputes the narrow focus on the semantics, the assumptions that language reflects reality, and that biblical texts have fixed meanings found in much feminist theology. A poststruc turalist account of discourse is used to examine the practices of women whose explicit views are patriarchal—first generation women ministers of the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. Displaying a range of signifying—the bodied, performed and oral—and the instability of biblical texts uncovers resistance in their submissive stances, interpreting them as responses to conditions of oppres sion unique to their working class marginalization. The pioneer Pentecostal women ministers of the Church of God are experts at the rhetoric of self-denigration and submission to men. 'I am nothing, nothing, nothing ... ' is a favourite refrain. The language of autonomy and independence is probably the most underdeveloped part of their vocabulary. Feminists? Not on your life! 'I always respect man ministers as my superiors' as Sister Staples puts it—that is, unless a man gets in her way when it comes to preaching the gospel. Then she stands fast, claiming God alone as her authority. Women like Sister Staples began as preachers in the early 1930's and 40's in the US. Mosdy poor and working class, they preached in the street in strange cities, founded churches, travelled all over the country to hold tent meetings.1 Sister Staple's loyalties to God (like those of many Pentecostal woman ministen like her) authorize world travel as well as resistance to any male opposition that comes her way. In striking contrast to such postures of submission and self-denigration, feminist theologians take critical aim at the religion of patriarchy and its support for female subordination. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, among others, speak for many of us when they employ the feminist critical principle of promotion of the full humanity of women as the litmus test for revelation. On the basis of this principle they deny the revelatory status of androcentric and sexist biblical texts, designations that © Oxford University Press 1996 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.91 on Wed, 27 Jul 2016 05:24:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 132 CHANGING THE SUBJECT have come to stand for the dominance of male agents, male imagery for the divine, and of images and practices that subordinate women in Christian

Conversation and knowledge in bureaucratic settings

An account of discourse and bureaucratic process must of necessity confront the question of linkages between the macrostructures of a social order and the microstructures of any communicative act. Focusing on theoretical and analytic issues, this paper discusses how the concept of index can be used to provide a capacious yet coherent account of communicative context, one which can be integrated into the more general characterization of social relations provided by the study of institutional ideologies. The argument is illustrated with materials taken from educational studies. It concentrates on ability grouping and prescriptivism, analyzing both as ideologies which engender a structuring practice with demonstrable effects on the organization of face‐to‐face communication as well as on the general form of bureaucratic institutions.