Legitimate Discourse Research Articles

The Disunity of Consensus

Using the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development as a case study, this paper challenges standard approaches to understanding political consensus. Neither cognitive, social, nor strategic, consensus can be rethought as a metaphor for ‘getting along’ within a structured disunity. Structure derives from commitment to a socio-technical network, while disunity arises from the interpretive flexibility and varied practices contained within this network. The Cairo Consensus is then explored through a central site of production: international demographic surveys. These surveys help to build a stable network, and thus facilitate consensus, by helping to establish epistemic communities, producing standard representations of Third World fertility, and standardizing political discourses of legitimacy and accountability.

With a Little class

This article seeks to illuminate the political and ideological implications of identity politics based on racial/ethnic labels currently used in the United States. The salience of politically constructed racial and ethnic identities, and the exclusion of class from legitimate political discourse and common sense understanding of how society works, have undermined the ability of most Americans to understand the root causes of their problems. The solution lies, the author argues, in a conceptualization of identity that is grounded both in cultural difference and common locations in the structures of inequality.

Poor Women's Discourses of Legitimacy, Poverty, and Health

In this study, we sought a better understanding of how poor women made meaning of their poverty and health. Twenty research participants used varied, multiple, and at times contradictory discourses that shaped their identities as both legitimate and powerful and illegitimate and powerless. We identified four discourses in the women's talk—illegitimate dependencies, legitimate dependencies, overwhelming odds, and critique and collectivism. These four discourses revealed complexes of meanings and networks of interpretation that subverted, accommodated, and reinterpreted dominant discourses of poverty and health. This examination is relevant for feminist researchers attempting to understand the impact of dominant discourses in the lives of socially marginalized women who continually struggle to establish and strengthen claims to legitimacy and moral worth.

The Unanticipated Explosion: Private Higher Education’s Global Surge

The massive global growth of private sectors transforms higher education. It naturally sparks great interest and debate. But analysis lags far behind, as does cross-national documentation. Promoters glorify roles (e.g., access), while critics demonize roles (e.g., moneymaking). Policy makers tend to hold simple views of what private higher education does or what they want it to do, while participants tend to generalize from their own institution. Public discussion thus often revolves around narrow and misleading declarations. The gap is large between self-serving or ill-informed views and more complex reality. Private higher education is least understood where it has just recently become prominent—and that is in much of the world. A few decades ago, private higher education was absent or marginal in most countries. Today, it captures a major or fast-increasing portion of enrollments in Eastern and Central Europe, the Middle East and northern and sub-Saharan Africa, East and South Asia, and Latin America. Furthermore, new forms of private

Situated legitimacy: Deliberative arenas and the new rural governance

Rural governance in the UK and elsewhere has undergone far-reaching changes, as partnerships and other collaborative approaches have emerged to address the challenges of rural sustainable development. The legitimacy of this ‘new rural governance’ is purportedly grounded in deliberation between stakeholders, but this is problematic—it is not clear how ‘legitimacy’ is to be understood now that the criteria of legitimacy appropriate to representative democratic government are not obviously applicable. Here we propose an analysis of legitimacy as situated—that is, given meanings by actors in specific contexts—and continuously constructed through discursive processes, where it also plays a reciprocal, highly political role in shaping those processes. We use this framework to analyse decision making in three distinctive deliberative arenas for sustainable transport policy making in the Peak District National Park in England. Legitimacy claims were found to be significant elements in each arena, but no single, overriding legitimacy discourse was successfully established. Instead, each arena's legitimacy was a hybrid, justified through a complex mix of competing rationales. While no single conclusion can be drawn about the legitimacy of ‘the new rural governance’, the strongest legitimising principles remained those grounded in representative democracy. In contrast, the ‘new’ approaches rely on deliberative norms accepted only by (some of) the relatively limited circle of stakeholders directly involved. More generally, if such norms are to become accepted principles for legitimate rural governance, then more work is needed to discursively establish their acceptability both in networks of governance and with the wider population.

Literacy, sexuality and the literary in the self-inscription of Muammad Shukrī

This essay considers the intersection between the construction of self and the acquisition of literacy in the three autobiographical novels of the Moroccan writer Muammad Shukrī (1935–2003), who became literate in his 20s. The article examines not only how Shukrī's texts reveal the relationship between literacy and the experience and textual construction of self, but also how the power associated with literacy is circumscribed by both the inability to achieve stable, unmediated expression and notions of legitimate Arabic literary discourse. The three works present different senses of self, yet each of them is tied to distinct aspects of literacy and literariness, and in each of them legitimation, or a lack thereof, either shores up or, more often than not, wears away at the sense of self of the autobiographical ‘I’. Furthermore, Shukrī's three autobiographical texts all attempt to counter delegitimation through the expression of an explicit, corporeal masculinity.

Using Critical Discourse Analysis to Understand and Facilitate Identification Processes of Bilingual Adults Becoming Teachers

Our research focuses on bilingual adults enrolled in the Teachers for English Language Learners (TELL) program. TELL is a scholarship program whose goal is to increase the number of critically-minded bilingual educators in the state of Georgia in the United States. In this paper, we use critical discourse analysis to inform theoretical and practical implications in language education research. First, we examine how TELL scholars address linguistic and social inequities through discourses of competency and legitimacy, using critical discourse analysis to interpret social tensions in a group of these adults. Our analysis combines close discourse analysis of focus group interview data with the macro-theoretical approach of Foucault to understand the relationship between systemic influences (e.g., standardized, corporate testing) and the life world (e.g., having conversations in and about multiple languages) as these bilingual adults become bilingual teachers in Georgia.

Diary of a Film Reviewer

Diary of a Film Reviewer

D4. RALPH NADER, LETTER TO ANTI- DEFAMATION LEAGUE DIRECTOR ABRAHAM FOXMAN CONCERNING U.S. POLICY IN THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT, WASHINGTON, DC, 5 AUGUST 2004.

In a 28 June 2004 talk on the Muslim vote in the 2004 elections, Ralph Nader stated, ““It is time for the U.S. government to stand up and think for itself. What has been happening over the years is a predicable routine from the head of the Israeli government. The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue and meets with the puppets in Congress, and then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show. In that, we will enhance the freedom and security of the Palestinian and Israeli people, peoples around the world, and the American people here and abroad.””These remarks, delivered at the Rayburn House Office Building, elicited a letter from Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which stated, ““[T]here is a line between thoughtful, reasoned, constructive disagreements and offensive hyperbole. Indeed, one may disagree with America's Middle East approach, but to assert that U.S. policy in such a complex and volatile region is the product of wholesale manipulation by a foreign government fails to take into account important U.S. interests that are involved. Moreover, the image of the Jewish state as a ““puppeteer”” controlling the powerful U.S. Congress feeds into many age-old stereotypes which have no place in legitimate public discourse.””The following is Nader's reply to Mr. Foxman. It is available online at www.votenader.com.

Talking trash: the cultural politics of daytime TV talk shows

1 Talk Shows, Public Discourse, and Cultural Politics 2 The Business of Talk 3 Talk Shows and Everyday Life 4 Making Sense of the Shows: Discerning Legitimate Discourse 5 The Lure of the Show: Talk Shows as Entertainment 6 Utopian Hauntings?

Corps de ballet: the case of the injured ballet dancer.

This paper contributes to debate on social constructionism in the sociology of health and illness through a study of injury among ballet dancers. In this empirical study of classical ballet dancers, we outline a phenomenology of the injured and ageing body in terms of a critical commentary on constructionism. We explore dancers' experiences of embodiment to illustrate our critique of recent interpretations of dance as a textual practice. Those forms of social constructionism that define the body as a text provide a forceful attack on discourses of authority and legitimation, but we argue that they are problematic as epistemologies and ontologies of embodiment. Through a phenomenological understanding of the experiences of embodiment, we observe how injury and ageing disrupt the practical accomplishments that underpin the ballet habitus and the dancer's identity. Although ballet injuries can terminate a dancing career, they are accepted as an inevitable part of the vocation of ballet. Our aim is to understand the interaction between injuries, dancers' experiences of discomfort and the social support that emerges from the ballet dancers as a social group. We draw on the concepts of social solidarity and collective consciousness in Emile Durkheim to show that injury is mediated through the social bonding of dancers into a professional ballet company, where injury is accepted as a sign of vocational commitment, and suggest that this 'collective effervescence' gives a novel meaning to the idea of a corps de ballet.

Postmemory Envy?

Our mother-daughter collaboration on an English edition of Nanda Herbermann's The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for Women raised a series of questions for us about the relationships among our personal histories, political affiliations, generational and intellectual stances, and scholarly work. These questions emerged from our negotiations over our very different responses to this complicated concentration camp memoir by a German, Catholic woman, imprisoned for resistance to the Nazis, who is also a distant relative of ours. By reexamining the context of our collaboration here, we address the value of positionality and postmemory for studies of gender, National Socialism, and the Holocaust, and seek to problematize discourses of authenticity and legitimacy in Holocaust Studies today. (EB and HB)

Relative importance of stakeholders: analysing speech acts in a layoff

AbstractGrounded in a participant observation study of a ski resort, this paper explores the (re)production of legitimate discourses through speech acts pertaining to an organizational event, a layoff. Manager's justifications and employees' reactions and critiques put sanctioned discourses into play. And while the stated organizational values include shareholder, customer, and employee concerns, the relative importance of these stakeholders is only made clear through the conversation of the speech acts and their reception. The shape of the conversation, in locution, illocution and perlocution, shifts the relations between managers and the employees and creates longer term consequences for the organization. This focus on language use serves as a micro‐foundation for the study of legitimation processes and its consequences within organizations. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘Enough is Enough’: an ethnography of the struggle against impunity in Burkina Faso

This article analyses the ways in which socio-political opposition is expressed by looking into the morally loaded discourse of political legitimacy in Burkina Faso that emerged after the assassination of the journalist Norbert Zongo in December 1998. Through the analysis of different political statements, newspapers and various comments from the ‘street’, it locates the struggle against impunity in a social and political undercurrent in Burkinabe society. In this context, notions of the public space are central, because the public space defines both the boundaries of public debate and the behaviour of key political actors. Two recurrent themes in Burkinabe political discourse, namely ideas of truth and courage, and the legitimacy of White people, illustrate the various ways in which socio-political opposition seeks to define the public space within which politics is to be practised and the behaviour to be observed by those acting there. But the struggle against impunity also takes place on a symbolic level at which key symbols are appropriated, interpreted and incorporated into political discourse.

Changing legitimate discourse: a case study

This study is concerned with the explanations that managers give to various company stakeholders, in the case of factory closures for example. More generally, the paper examines the way justifications of managerial action are produced and “consumed”, and how the “legitimacy” on which they are based can change over time. With the help of a longitudinal case study the paper describes and seeks to explain the legitimisation processes involved in the major organisational transformations that the case firm has had to face due to radical market changes (joining EU) and organisational changes. It is argued that managers may become prisoners of their context. This may mean that even if they made “correct” decisions, they may still justify these actions “incorrectly” relative to the new cultural and market environment, and thus do not acquire legitimacy. In the reported case almost the whole executive board of the firm was fired—the first time such a thing had happened in the history of Finnish corporate life. It is also shown that the justification of managerial action may be deliberately manipulated in public discourse. One powerful legitimative device in such discourse is to invoke financial distress, or the idea of such distress, which may be needed for triggering genuine changes.

Three tenors in perfect harmony: “close readings" of the joint letter by the heads of aluminium giants alcan , pechiney, and Alusuisse announcing their mega-merger plan

Speeches, shareholders’ letters and other utterances by business leaders help shape what is accepted as legitimate discourse in organizations and society. This paper focuses on the joint letter, issued by the CEOs of three global aluminium companies, announcing a proposed unique three-way merger. That letter is read and analysed closely, both in terms of content and context. The themes of ideology, audience and metaphor are employed with the intent to make the cognitive world of the three leaders at least partially visible, and to sustain needed counter-discourse. The analysis of the joint letter reveals an elitist, exclusionary text based upon assumptions that are consistent with the extreme rhetoric of the allegedly “free" market.

Corporatising Character

Corporatising Character

Logos or Mythos: (De) Legitimation Strategies in Confrontational Discourses of Sociocultural Ethos

Within the broader framework of critical discourse analysis this article incorporates Bourdieu's (1991) concept of `field' and `habitus' into Bernstein's (1990) concept of `voice' to show how the shifting articulation of agents and habituses correlates with confrontational coding orientations in oped articles that appeared in two Turkish newspapers with diametrically opposed ideological orientations at a moment of legitimacy crisis. In order to specify how the boundaries between the voices, which we label as logos and mythos, are created, maintained and reproduced, this article studies the discursive formulation of the op-ed articles as instances of legitimation discourse at three levels: (i) pragmatic, various strategies of (de)legitimation of controversial actions; (ii) semantic, the way discourse processes the representation of events in the experiential world into ideological packages congruent with the audience demand; and (iii) sociocultural and political, the way each newspaper self-legitimates its orientation to the world and delegitimates alternative discourses. Taking rationality as a reference point in understanding the difference between the coding orientations, a detailed examination of discursive structures is also presented in order to test the newspapers' compliance with the critical standard of reasonableness.

Affirmative Action and Education in Fiji: Legitimation, Contestation, and Colonial Discourse

In this article, Carmen M. White analyzes the debate about affirmative action policies in education in Fiji and explores the impact of colonial discourses on the debates. She asserts that, much like in the United States, affirmative action policies in Fiji have been intended to correct past injustices to minority and underprivileged groups. She shows how proponents of affirmative action use a colonial discourse that undercuts the power of their argument and yet paradoxically fails to acknowledge the historical roots of the lower educational attainment of the Fijian population. In considering similarities of debate on this issue between the United States and Fiji, White offers an additional perspective from which to understand the affirmative action debate. (pp. 240–268)

After Ontology: Literary Theory and Modernist Poetics (review)

Reviewed by: After Ontology: Literary Theory and Modernist Poetics Donald G. Marshall William D. Melaney. After Ontology: Literary Theory and Modernist Poetics. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 2001. x + 260 pp. Melaney’s line of thought places the modern, modernism, and post-modernism in complex relation. A postmodern critique of the modern in philosophy prepares the way for both an interpretation of modernism as a general cultural phenomenon and a way of reading specific modernist texts. Modern philosophy began when Descartes founded knowing and being on the certainty of the subject’s self-reflection. Kant’s “Copernican revolution” confirmed while reversing Descartes, making subjectivity not the foundation but the limit of possible experience. Kant’s critical philosophy made meaningless the Cartesian opposition of subject vs. object, thinking substance vs. extended substance. But it generates a fresh split between theoretical and ethical, pure and practical reason, knowledge and ethics. When he discovered a third form of a priori in the reflective judgment of beauty in art and teleology in nature, he thought he had found a bridge between pure and practical reason. But this also required restricting the experience of the beautiful to a harmony among the subject’s interior faculties, so that the artwork’s autonomy deprived it of its cognitive claim to truth. To recover the artwork’s claim to truth, Hans-Georg Gadamer argued, the artwork must be reconnected to being through its subject matter, its Sache. But this reconnection could not be effected through the old concept of mimesis. Instead, it is effected by the infinite mediation of language. The self that experiences the artwork is not a subject, whether understood as foundation or as limit. It exists in time and belongs to a world that exists in time, that is, the world borne to us as tradition. This line of thought explicitly follows Heidegger to replace subjectivity with a responsive and therefore dialogical self and to recover the truth claim of the work of art inherent in its temporality. Truth and Method concludes with an analysis of the radiance of beauty. Melaney notes Gianni Vattimo’s claim that Gadamer thus reverts to a unified ontology, abandoning Heidegger’s rift between earth and world—an objection I find unconvincing. Jacques Derrida deconstructs Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment but also Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art,” on which Gadamer relies. Focusing on the concept of frame, Derrida argues in “Parerga” that Kant cannot resolve the opposition of inner and outer, the autonomy of the aesthetic and the demands of practical reason. In Derrida’s analysis, Kant cannot establish the unity of subjectivity through aesthetics even by recourse to the sublime or the symbol. Discursivity and temporality—différance—intervene. Confronting Meyer Scha-piro’s response to Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art,” Derrida dissolves the unity of art and world under the concept of truth. Into this gap steps the figure of the artist, not as a unified subject nor as a source of truth, but as a site where temporality and the trace of the other weave a text rather than establish a work. This is the territory of the ethical, as Derrida understands it. Melaney absorbs not only these results but also the double reading through which Derrida reaches them. He pursues the ethical and connects it with language and the discourse of legitimacy through Nietzsche, Lacan, Lyotard, and Foucault. Returning to [End Page 193] Derrida, Melaney uses the concepts of undecidability, trace, and différance to disclose both a modern and a postmodern moment in the (inherently aporetic) modernist text. The modernist artist thus opens a rupture between the modern and the postmodern, but the modernist text must also be recontextualized in a general quest for justice. Melaney understands this to require analyzing the response of a group of modernist texts to a common intertext. He therefore proceeds to examine Eliot’s and Pound’s differing uses of Hamlet, Dante, and Ulysses, concluding with Yeats’ recovery of history and community, but in a way that asks us to “remain at home in the unanswerable” (167). In Eliot, the intertext disrupts the relation of author to work by...