Articulatory Practice Research Articles

The Populist Divide in Far-Right Political Discourse in Sweden: Anti-Immigration Claims in the Swedish Socially Conservative Online Newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2022

In this article, I aim to show how populism can be used as an analytical category to make sense of how anti-immigration claims are articulated in far-right political discourse. I will do this by giving examples of and drawing attention to how the anti-immigration claims are articulated via the populist divide, namely anti-elitism and people-centrism, and delve into the issue of which people are mobilised against which elite in articulatory practice. I use narrative analysis to link individual newspaper texts to dominant storylines of the nation (master narratives) in the continuous construction of national identity. The material is based on 169 articles published in the socially conservative online newspaper Samtiden between 2016 and 2022 on national identity. The results from the narrative analysis indicate that far-right populist discourse conveys nostalgia for a golden age and a cohesive and homogenous collective national identity, combining ideals of cultural conformism and socio-economic fairness against the fragmentary political agenda of different elites, spelling out a message that everything was better before.

Shaping Political Subjectivity through Media and Information Literacy

This article calls for an investigation of the way media and information literacy (MIL) projects construct and (de)legitimize particular forms of political subjectivity. The authors argue that the field of critical discourse studies (CDS) offers useful approaches to develop this line of inquiry. They demonstrate this point in a case study of the MIL project of the European Association for Viewers Interests (EAVI). The authors work with a concept of discourse understood as a performative articulatory practice, grounded in linguistic pragmatics and poststructuralist discourse theory. The article provides a qualitative discourse analysis of the way EAVI articulates MIL signifiers with specific concepts of critique and citizenship. The analysis shows that EAVI’s discourse promotes a holistic transformation of the self into an informed, reflexive and critical entity, as well as a type of society that is inclusive, cohesive and participatory. EAVI is also decidedly pro-EU and opposed to nationalist projects.

O DISCURSO NEOCONSERVADOR: ANTAGONISMO E DISPUTAS

No presente artigo analisamos o discurso do campo neconservador, à luz do conceito de hegemonia de Laclau e Mouffe, no seio do debate da relação entre educação e movimentos sociais. No referido campo, destacam-se o Escola Sem Partido e o Movimento Brasil Livre, os quais não consideramos como movimentos sociais, mas como uma prática articulatória em torno desse discurso conservador e que é antagônica ao campo que, historicamente, constitui-se como “movimentos sociais”. Na dinâmicas das relações de hegemonia, esse neoconservadorismo se organiza em oposição às conquistas obtidas nas políticas educacionais, ao longo dos governos petistas. Essa articulação inclui a elaboração de propostas para o campo educacional. Por outro lado, registra-se também a reorganização do campo dos movimentos sociais.

A Discourse Analysis of News Media Articles on the Polish ‘Rule of Law Crisis’

Abstract The article identifies the discursive characteristics of news media texts covering Poland’s ‘constitutional crisis’. Following the conception of discourse presented in Laclau and Mouffe (1985), i.e. as an articulatory practice that conveys meaning through a structured system of positions and differences, the article highlights some features of English-language news media texts (e.g. from the Guardian, Telegraph, Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post) that can be described as typical. The following features are identified: a lecturing tone, the use of structural oppositions, immediate rebuttals, misrepresentation, appeals to expertise, and the sovereignty taboo. These features are diagnosed as contributing to the narrow discursive range covered by news articles. To shed light on this narrow range, the article presents three conflicting positions from Polish legal theory that address the issues of constitutional courts, the rule of law and national sovereignty: Ryszard Piotrowki’s legal constitutionalism, Paweł Bała and Adam Wielomski’s Schmitt-inspired position, and Adam Sulikowski’s reading of the constitutional courts as an instrument of hegemonic discourse. In the conclusion it is suggested that news media discourse would benefit from demonstrating a greater awareness of other discourses, and from developing a more generous, balanced approach to presenting and addressing their claims.

Metáfora tópica y prácticas sociales: hacia una crítica de la práctica articulatoria de Laclau

En el presente trabajo especificamos el tratamiento que Ernesto Laclau y Chantal Mouffe ofrecen del concepto práctica articulatoria en Hegemonía y Estrategia Socialista a partir de una relectura de la tópica marxista. Para esto, partimos de que la contradicción señalada en Hegemonía y Estrategia Socialista entre la determinación en última instancia y el concepto de sobredeterminación se presenta en el momento en el cual se identifica práctica articulatoria con articulación discursiva. En este sentido, pretendemos insertar el concepto de práctica en la metáfora tópica, siguiendo la formulación propuesta por Louis Althusser. Se ha señalado reiteradamente que el abandono de Laclau y Mouffe de la tradición marxista implica una concepción que reduce lo social al discurso. En este trabajo nos interesa explorar la hipótesis según la cual este movimiento lleva implícita una salida de la tópica en la cual una práctica tiene primacía sobre del conjunto de las prácticas sociales.

Методичні засади формального аналізу політичного дискурсу.

Within the framework of the article the possibility and advisability of using the formal method as a basis for discourse-analytical research. The main problems arising the preparation and conducting of such kind of research are identified. A number of necessary requirements for the sources of analysis have been formulated both in theoretical and methodological and purely practical dimensions. Possibilities of selection of different kinds of such sources are offered in order to indicate the expediency and relevance of the task. The application of the poststructuralist theory of E. Laklo and Sh. Muff as a basic methodological basis in the context of the necessary theoretical and practical requirements of the applied method is substantiated. In view of the tasks and methods of empirical search, which include the following in view of the tasks and methods of empirical search, which include the following categories: point, position, equivalence / difference chain a categorical apparatus has been formed and supplemented. The definition of a complex and multidimensional concept of discourse from the point of view of post-structuralist theory is presented, thus the is presented as a relatively stable relational system of values formed around nodal points, which defines everything that can be said and thought within a functioning structure. In addition, the epistemological foundations of a study based on this approach are outlined. As part of the work, the author proposes ways of eliminating the subject of cognition, according to the position of post-structuralist theory. The main stages of the formal analysis of political are defined: their peculiarities, in the context of application to the existing methodological base. In addition, the necessity of creating an algorithm for automatic detection of the structure of articulatory practice with specifying the features of such an algorithm and ways of their solution is substantiated.

The Politics of Land Grabbing: State and corporate power and the (trans)nationalization of resistance in Cameroon

AbstractApproaching land grabbing as a site of politics wherein power functions in the challenge and/or stabilization of agrarian socioecological injustices, we capture agrarian relations in Cameroon in 2 fundamental ways. Drawing on Laclauian insights, we discuss power as a “counter‐hegemonic” practice, to characterize the resistance strategies of local NGOs, in terms of their articulated discourses around the socioecological effects of land grabs, on the one hand, and the political possibilities that this articulatory practice opens, in terms of (trans)nationalizing resistance across social identities and space, on the other hand. Here, the analysis adopts a Foucauldian‐inspired critique with strong commitments towards agrarian socioecological justice, in a context where policies to protect democratic access to land are absent. Second, framed as a hegemonic/governmental “form of rule,” we capture how state and diplomatic actors sought to override dissent and stabilize the contentious land deal. We also show how a moment of presidential “nondecision,” characterized by a hyper‐centralized bureaucracy conjoined with these hegemonic forces to disempower local administrative and judicial leverage, thereby fostering corporate power. The article thus contributes to debates on state and corporate powers, as well as the strategies of, or possibilities and constraints for resistance “from below” to irradiate and structure into a compelling force.

Lexical frequency co-determines the speed-curvature relation in articulation

The relation between speed and curvature provides a characterization of the spatio-temporal orchestration of kinematic movements. For hand movements, this relation has been reported to follow a power law with exponent -1/3. The same power law has been claimed to govern articulatory movements. We studied the functional form of speed as predicted by curvature using electromagnetic articulography, focusing on three sensors: the tongue tip, the tongue body, and the lower lip. Of specific interest to us was the question of whether the speed-curvature relation is modified by articulatory practice, gauged with words’ frequencies of occurrence. Although analyses imposing linearity a priori indeed supported a power law, relaxation of this linearity assumption revealed that the effect of curvature on speed levels off substantially for lower values of curvature. A modification of the power law is proposed that takes this curvature into account. Furthermore, controlling statistically for number of phones and word duration, we observed that the speed-curvature function was further modulated by an interaction of lexical frequency by curvature, such that for increasing frequency, speed decreased slightly for low curvatures while it increased slightly for high curvatures. The modulation of the balance between speed and curvature by lexical frequency provides further evidence that the skill of articulation improves with practice on a word-to-word basis, and challenges theories of speech production.

Marx, discourse theory and political analysis: negotiating an ambiguous legacy

ABSTRACTThis article argues that ‘post-Marxist’ or ‘poststructuralist discourse theory’ represents a complex deconstruction of the Marxist tradition of social and political theory. Focussing on three ontological positions in Marx’s texts – the ontologies of human alienation, praxis, and production – the article shows how this approach repeats and transforms the rich tradition of Marxist thinking so as to elaborate a novel approach to social and political analysis. This claim is built around the idea that discourse is best conceptualized as an ‘articulatory practice’, whose elements are both linguistic and non-linguistic in character, and whose products are finite relational orders, including social institutions and economic processes. The result is (1) a shift away from economic determinism and class reductionism to a relational account of social and political forms; (2) the development of an anti-essentialist and anti-reductionist account of political identities, which emerge in a dialectical tension with incomplete processes of identification, and (3) a particular understanding of the subject and agency in political theory, which grounds a different account of political practices. The article also (4) sets out the methodological implications of post-Marxist discourse theory, which is focussed on the articulation of different logics of critical explanation, before (5) exploring the role of critique and normativity in this approach, which are conceptualized as continuous, immanent and complex.

Asserting racism’s relativity: an interpretive and functional discourse analysis of Flemish nationalist re-articulations of the problematic of racism

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on a controversial nationalist discourse that asserts that racism is [a] relative [concept]. It provides a discourse analysis of the functions these assertions and surrounding claims on racism perform in relation to the definitions of racism used, the interpretive repertoires and logics in which they are embedded, and the political project they support. Racism-is-relative discourse reserves the signifier of racism for discrimination on the basis of race and/or descent. It blocks off and delegitimizes critical anti-racist repertoires and notions such as structural racism, racism as ideology, entitlement racism or racism as white privilege. It serves as a shield against accusations of racism. It is integrated with the interpretive repertoire of new realism and with widespread neoliberal and culturalist logics. These patterns do not only characterize discourse on racism’s relativity in Flanders but can be found across Europe in contexts marked by low degrees of political awareness regarding racism’s many faces. The analysis is based on an interpretive and functional heuristic for doing discourse analysis based on a notion of discourse understood as articulatory practice.

Politics of Edibility: Reconceptualizing Ecological Relationality

ABSTRACTTaking the Infinity Burial Project (IBP) as its inspiration, this essay theorizes a politics of edibility by way of decomposing the discursive boundaries erected between human bodies and environments. In particular, this essay reads the IBP as a deconstruction of another dualism—eater/eaten—that permeates and informs cultural practices from birth to burial. Mobilizing a rhetoric of carnality, the IBP decomposes the human body's relation to its environments, merging its statuses as eater and eaten. At the same time, this rhetoric of carnality also emphasizes the irreducibly productive nature of consumption as an articulatory practice in its own right. As this essay argues, a politics of edibility not only recognizes the superficiality of the body/environment and eater/eaten dichotomies but it also respects the relations generated in the wake of their deconstruction.

Diskursetnologi

How have ethnologists applied discourse theory? This text introduces the special issue of Kulturella Perspektiv called “Discourse ethnology”, in which nine Swedish ethnologists present their work with applying discourse theory. The introductory text briefly outlines the ontology of discourse theory and discusses articulatory practice as a way of thinking the move from ontology to application.

Beyond phonotactic frequency: Presentation frequency effects word productions in specific language impairment

Phonotactic frequency effects on word production are thought to reflect accumulated experience with a language. Here we demonstrate that frequency effects can also be obtained through short-term manipulations of the input to children. We presented children with nonwords in an experiment that systematically manipulated English phonotactic frequency and the frequency of presentation within the experiment. Both of these manipulations affected the accuracy and time-to-response for nonword production both for typically developing and children with specific language impairment. Children with SLI were less accurate in their productions overall, but still exhibited an effect of the short-term frequency manipulation. Children with SLI differed significantly from their typical peers in terms of time-to-response only when both English and Experimental frequency were low. The results indicate that simple manipulations of the input can affect children's representation of word forms, and this can facilitate word production without the need for long term exposure or articulatory practice. Learning outcomes: The reader will learn that sound frequency affects the production of new words. This includes not only the frequency with which sound sequences are represented in the speaker's native language, but the frequency with which they are heard within a single session.

Power, discourse, and policy: articulating a hegemony approach to critical policy studies

In this article, I argue that power and hegemony are vital for critically explaining a range of policymaking practices. Developing the basic assumptions of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's poststructuralist discourse theory, in which discourse is understood as an articulatory practice, I first elaborate the concept of power in relation to the work of Michel Foucault, Steven Lukes, and others. Power in this picture consists of radical acts of decision and institution, which involve the drawing of political frontiers via the creation of multiple lines of inclusion and exclusion. The exercise of power thus constitutes and produces practices, policies, and regimes. But power is also evident in the sedimentation of social relations via various techniques of political management, and through the elaboration of ideologies and fantasies, where the function of the latter is to conceal the radical contingency of social relations and to naturalize relations of domination. In elaborating this conception of power, I draw upon a neo-Gramscian concept of hegemony, which speaks to the construction and deconstruction of political coalitions, as well as the stabilization of practices and policy regimes into partially fixed historical blocs and formations. I conclude by setting out a five step approach that articulates the concepts of power and hegemony into a method of conducting critical policy studies.

Freedom and autonomy in the university enterprise

PurposeThis paper seeks to explore notions of enterprise as an instance of organizational change within university business schools, using a theoretical approach drawn from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their concept of articulatory practice is useful for examining the management of knowledge workers across multiple levels of discourse, including policy, practice and processes of identification. Specifically, the paper aims to investigate the articulation of enterprise within government policy on higher education, management practices of directing, funding, measuring and regulating the activities of faculty in ways that seek to promote enterprise, as well as demonstrating how agents can resist attempts at top‐down managerial control through processes of self‐identification.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical study consisting of an analysis of government reports on higher education along with 65 interviews conducted at six UK research‐led business schools.FindingsAt the level of government policy, the university is recast as an enterprise within a competitive marketplace where the “entrepreneurial academic” who commercializes research becomes the role model. However, management practices and identity processes amongst faculty reveal inconsistencies within the articulation of the university enterprise, to the extent that this idealised identity is marginalised within research‐led business schools in the UK.Originality/valueThe theoretical approach captures the dynamism of hegemonic projects across multiple levels, from policymaking to management practice and the constitution of identity. Laclau and Mouffe's conception of hegemony highlights mechanisms of control, while their assumption of radical contingency illuminates dynamics of resistance.

Representação social e ideologia: conceitos intercambiáveis?

O objeto deste artigo é a Teoria das Representações Sociais. Seu objetivo constitui também sua hipótese: a possibilidade de aliar a leitura psicossocial a uma leitura sociológica do conceito de Moscovici, articulando-o com os conceitos de ideologia e hegemonia de Althusser e Gramsci, e estabelecendo diálogo com o conceito de prática articulatória de Laclau e Mouffe. A problemática que envolve essa discussão se refere à restrição do conceito moscoviciano ao momento da interação e sua insuficiência para abranger o âmbito do conflito e das relações de poder. Aos conceitos de ideologia e hegemonia, por sua vez, faltaria espaço para o reconhecimento de que muitas idéias, valores e teorias implícitas no mundo vivido não estão necessariamente ligados a relações históricas de dominação, tampouco à luta de classes. A autora defende que tais conceitos podem ser eficientemente articulados, desde que o conceito de representação social seja ampliado em seu caráter cognitivo e psicossocial, e os conceitos de ideologia e hegemonia sejam revistos em seu essencialismo e determinismo. A ponte entre o conceito de representação social de Moscovici e os demais é feita através das noções de "ideologia geral" de Althusser, de "teorias do senso comum" de Gramsci e do resgaste do conceito gramsciano de hegemonia como prática discursiva na abordagem pós-estruturalista de Laclau e Mouffe.

A positron emission tomography study of silent and oral single word reading in stuttering and nonstuttering adults.

Over the last decade positron emission tomography (PET) has been used extensively for the study of language and other cognitive and sensorimotor processes in healthy and diseased individuals. In the present study, [15O]H2O PET scanning was used to investigate the lateralization and functional distribution of cortical and subcortical activity involved in single word reading in stuttering and nonstuttering individuals. Ten right-handed male stuttering adults and matched nonstuttering individuals were instructed to read individually presented single words either silently or out loud. Subtraction of functional brain images obtained during each of the two reading tasks, and during a non-linguistic baseline task, was used to calculate within-group and between-group differences in regional cerebral blood flow by means of statistical parametric mapping. Increased activation in the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was observed during silent reading in the stuttering speakers but not in the nonstuttering group. Because of the hypothesized role of the ACC in selective attention and covert articulatory practice, it is suggested that the observed increased ACC activation in the stuttering individuals reflects the presence of cognitive anticipatory reactions related to stuttering. During the oral reading task, within-group comparisons showed bilateral cortical and subcortical activation in both the stuttering and the nonstuttering speakers. Between-group comparisons showed a proportionally greater left hemisphere activation in the nonstuttering speakers, and a proportionally greater right hemisphere activation in the stuttering individuals. The results of the present study provide qualified support for the hypothesis that stuttering adults show atypical lateralization of language processes.