Discursive Activity Research Articles

Expansive conceptualisation of the impact of continuous learning programmes: An analysis of research-based workshops in higher vocational education and training

Finnish higher education institutions offer continuous learning opportunities, including professional specialisation education programmes for the health and social sector. This article focuses on the conceptualisation of the impact of these programmes, which was the topic of discussion by education and working-life actors in research-based workshops. Drawing on the cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) approach, the study seeks to answer the following research questions: What are the main themes through which the participants conceptualise the impact of education? How do the themes expand the conceptualisation of the impact of education? A qualitative study analysed data from the multi-professional discussions facilitated by researcher-developers in online workshops during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings describe the impact-related discussion themes and analyse their expansive potential. Participants’ discursive actions in research-based online workshops manifest expansive conceptuali-sation on multiple dimensions, but also reveal dilemmatic impact-related questions that reflect the underlying contradictions of continuous learning programmes in the health and social sector.

Counter-forensics and the geographies of images

Counter-forensics emerged in order to deploy scientific investigative techniques usually wielded by the state against the state. In this article, we theorize how a counter-forensic approach can inform geographical approaches to the study of images. Our counter-forensic approach centers the material and semantic instability of images and highlights the indeterminacy of meaning and thus, the importance of the discursive activity of articulating the relationship between images and political claims. The article offers two case studies that deploy this approach. The first engages with cell phone images made by migrants at sea, showing how they can be read as evidence of the broader spatial politics of Europe’s external borders. The second case study examines the materiality of ultrasound technologies in relation to the changing legal terrain of abortion politics in the United States. Both studies use images as openings to intervene in contested politics that are part of the production of uneven geographies of state domination and control.

The Discursive Evolution of Human Rights Law: Empirical Insights from a Computational Analysis of 180,000 UN Recommendations

Abstract Building on an independent database of 180,000 UN recommendations and a novel computational method, we present the most comprehensive study of human rights (HR) debates to date. We develop a unique empirical model that measures topical density of discourse. This innovative instrument measures the discursive activity of UN HR bodies through a machine-learning textual analysis of their outputs, offering a dynamic map of evolving trends in human rights, both over time (diachronically) and across different mechanisms (synchronically) within the UN HR ecosystem. Leveraging this comprehensive dataset and sophisticated computational methodologies, we identify which protected groups are central to different mechanisms’ attention and highlight the major human rights issues that have witnessed significant changes in attention. Our research presents significant findings on the density of UN HR discourse and its implications for two major debates in the field of HR law—HR proliferation and the structural critique of UN HR bodies.

When private meets public: young people and political consumerism in the name of environmental activism

ABSTRACT This paper explores how Australian youth climate activists experiencing ecoanxiety overcome obstacles and frustrations in their climate action initiatives by exercising meaningful political agency in the marketplace. It briefly outlines how their concerns about climate change inaction galvanised and continue to drive their engagement in climate politics, reflecting fears and anxieties about their own and the planet’s future. Despite this growing interest and engagement in climate politics, however, the efficacy of political consumerism as a strategy, particularly among young people, remains largely unexplored [Micheletti, M. 2010. Political Virtue and Shopping Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action. New York: Palgrave Macmillan], with limited research on their consumption habits and behaviours [Kyroglou, G., and M. Henn. 2022. “Young Political Consumers between the Individual and the Collective: Evidence from the UK and Greece.” Journal of Youth Studies 25 (6): 833–853. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2021.2012139]. Thus, this paper investigates how young activists in the study, despite their vulnerabilities and experiences of ecoanxiety, endeavour to address structural imbalances linked to climate change through political consumerist initiatives. Utilising in-depth interviews and a photo-elicitation exercise with ten participants aged 18–35, the 2022 Australian study examines youth activism and the interplay between political consumption, views on hope and sustainable lifestyle choices. It reveals that environmentally conscious consumption patterns such as buycotting, boycotting, engaging in discursive actions, and embracing lifestyle politics that young activists engage in serve as a source of hope for them.

The Discursive Boundary Work of Recontextualizing Science for Policy: Opening the Black Box of an Organization’s Genre System and Intermediary Genre Sets

Governments the world over require scientific knowledge to inform policy makers’ decision-making processes. The recontextualization of this information for nonscientific audiences has received much attention, though it has primarily focused on publicly available texts. Little is known about the discursive nature of how science is transformed and repurposed and the confidential writing performed by boundary organizations that are working between science and policy. This ethnographic study explores the collaborative discursive activity involved in efforts by a boundary organization—the Council of Canadian Academies—to recontextualize science for policy makers. The analysis opens the discursive black box of the genre system and intermediary genre sets involved in one project, which led to the publication and distribution of the boundary object of an advisory report, Older Canadians on the Move. I claim that the discursive boundary work involves a complex genre system containing several sequential genred activities through which science is transformed and a boundary object created.

Non-dispensing pharmacists integrated into general practices as a new interprofessional model: a qualitative evaluation of general practitioners’ experiences and views

BackgroundA new interprofessional model incorporating non-dispensing pharmacists in general practice teams can improve the quality of pharmaceutical care. However, results of the model are dependent on the context. Understanding when, why and how the model works may increase chances of successful broader implementation in other general practices. Earlier theories suggested that the results of the model are achieved by bringing pharmacotherapeutic knowledge into general practices. This mechanism may not be enough for successful implementation of the model. We wanted to understand better how establishing new interprofessional models in existing healthcare organisations takes place.MethodsAn interview study, with a realist informed evaluation was conducted. This qualitative study was part of the Pharmacotherapy Optimisation through Integration of a Non-dispensing pharmacist in primary care Teams (POINT) project. We invited the general practitioners of the 9 general practices who (had) worked closely with a non-dispensing pharmacist for an interview. Interview data were analysed through discussions about the coding with the research team where themes were developed over time.ResultsWe interviewed 2 general practitioners in each general practice (18 interviews in total). In a context where general practitioners acknowledge the need for improvement and are willing to work with a non-dispensing pharmacist as a new team member, the following mechanisms are triggered. Non-dispensing pharmacists add new knowledge to current general practice. Through everyday talk (discursive actions) both general practitioners and non-dispensing pharmacists evolve in what they consider appropriate, legitimate and imaginable in their work situations. They align their professional identities.ConclusionsNot only the addition of new knowledge of non-dispensing pharmacist to the general practice team is crucial for the success of this interprofessional healthcare model, but also alignment of the general practitioners’ and non-dispensing pharmacists’ professional identities. This is essentially different from traditional pharmaceutical care models, in which pharmacists and GPs work in separate organisations. To induce the process of identity alignment, general practitioners need to acknowledge the need to improve the quality of pharmaceutical care interprofessionally. By acknowledging the aspect of interprofessionality, both general practitioners and non-dispensing pharmacists will explore and reflect on what they consider appropriate, legitimate and imaginable in carrying out their professional roles.Trial registrationThe POINT project was pre-registered in The Netherlands National Trial Register, with Trial registration number NTR-4389.

From war to crime rhetoric

Abstract In October 2019, Chile witnessed an unprecedented social uprising, with millions of citizens rising against social inequalities and injustice. The government employed various strategies to end demonstrations, including the speeches delivered by President Piñera. This study aims to explore the representation of protests and their actors in the presidential discourse and how it evolved over the course of events. Our analysis of themes, discursive actions, and attitudinal appraisals, coupled with a temporal framework, reveals that the initial framing of the uprising as a war shifted to crime rhetoric, possibly in response to negative reactions from the audience. Despite the President adopting a seemingly softer rhetoric later on, our study suggests that violence and division remained prominent themes in his speeches. Examining discourse shifts and fluctuations throughout the timeline of the social upheaval provides a comprehensive understanding of how political discourse is shaped in the midst of an unparalleled social uprising

Historic British Royal Memes

Historic British Royal Memes

Referential processes in the construction of the controversial modality: a study of tweets published by osmar terra mep

This article aims to analyze, from the interface between Textual Linguistics and Argumentation, the use of referential processes in anti-vaccine speeches published on Twitter on the page of Deputy Osmar Terra. In this way, we discuss, based on the polemical modality, how the argumentative directions around the subject of discourse "vaccine" were constructed. Our corpus of analysis consists of tweets published in April 2022. The work constitutes an exploratory study, with qualitative research characteristics and deductive method, allowing us to observe that the argumentative marks manifest themselves through referential processes, such as the nominal forms, referential introductions and anaphores. We rely on the theoretical conceptions of Amossy (2017) to understand the notion of argumentation in the speeches, as well as the peculiarities of the controversial modality. Extending the View Between the argument and LT, we follow the theoretical assumptions of Cavalcante et al. (2020; 2022). In order to understand the concept of text as process, we rely on the assumptions of Koch (2015) and the studies of Monada and Dubois (2015), Cavalcante, Custódio Filho and Brito (2014), which highlight the importance of understanding referencing as a discursive activity. The study indicates that referential processes contribute to the argumentative dynamics of the text and the objects of speech is introduced, resumed, and (re)categorized depending on the communicative purposes of the enunciator. Furthermore, by means of textual strategies, traces of the polemical modality are revealed.

Refining Adult Learners’ Discursive Capacities: A Response to the Current Epistemological Crisis through the Lens of Transformation Theory

The following article begins with the observation that both public discourses, as well as dialogue between adult learners within certain educational contexts, is frequently confined to competitive and strongly assertive claims, a characteristic which significantly diminishes the epistemological potential of the dialogical act. Drawing on the description of the current ‘epistemological crisis’ by Hoggan and Hoggan – Kloubert (2021), the article first attempts to show how this crisis is reflected in the understanding of the dialogical act among particular groups of adult learners. The article then tries to explore ways through which this understanding can be enriched and transformed into a more complex and multidimensional process. The central orientation of such a transition, is elaborated through the lens of Jack Mezirow’s Transformation Theory (1991, 2000), thus growing out of an examination, as well as an effort to transform, the epistemological ‘habits of mind’ which characterize the learners’ distorted perception of the dialogical act. The discussion of the learners’ epistemological habits of mind, is followed by the attempt to set up a framework of discursive activities, which help learners actualize the above transformation, specifically to the way they articulate questions of value (that is, their value priorities and value assumptions). The suggested activities are geared towards cultivating the learners’ awareness of evaluative and conceptual ‘complexity’, with the ultimate aim of allowing this awareness to strengthen their epistemic and discursive agency. The gradual cultivation of this agency is demonstrated through a range of practical examples, which are analysed in terms of their transformative, philosophical, and ethical dimensions. The learners’ renewed understanding of the dialogical act, is finally related to their capacity to activate their ‘reflective judgment’ (see also Kant, 1790 / 1987 in Hoggan and Hoggan – Kloubert, 2021).

Developing a framework for heterotopias as discursive playgrounds: a comparative analysis of non-immersive and immersive technologies

The discursive space represents the reordering of knowledge gained through accumulation. In the digital age, multimedia has become the language of information, and the space for archival practices is provided by non-immersive technologies, resulting in the disappearance of several layers from discursive activities. Heterotopias are unique, multilayered epistemic contexts that connect other systems through the exchange of information. This paper describes a process to create a framework for Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and personal computer environments based on heterotopias to provide absent layers. This study provides virtual museum space as an informational terrain that contains a “world within worlds” and presents place production as a layer of heterotopia and the subject of discourse. Automation for the individual multimedia content is provided via various sorting and grouping algorithms, and procedural content generation algorithms such as Binary Space Partitioning, Cellular Automata, Growth Algorithm, and Procedural Room Generation. Versions of the framework were comparatively evaluated through a user study involving 30 participants, considering factors such as usability, technology acceptance, and presence. The results of the study show that the framework can serve diverse contexts to construct multilayered digital habitats and is flexible for integration into professional and daily life practices.

Комунікативні стратегії учасників літературних інтернет-конкурсів: особливості мовленнєвої поведінки у віртуальному дискурсі

The study deals with the problems of linguopragmatic description of virtual discourse. Particular focus is paid to the discursive activity of the participants of literary competitions who participate in discussions and evaluate each other's stories. Cooperative and confl ict interactionsof commentators and authors of literary stories are characterized. A typology of communicative strategies in the virtual discourse of a literary competition is proposed, with a breakdown of those used by senders and recipients. It has been proved that the strategies of commentators gravitate towards a cooperative type of communication, while the strategies of authors in response to criticism trend towards a conflict type of communication. The linguistic features of the the ways each group implements their respective strategies are traced, and the main tactics of their representation inthe discourse of the virtual discussion of literary stories are determined. The illustrative material was collected from the transcripts of discussions at the Ukrainian-language fantasy short story competitions Litavytsia and RBZh Azimut for 2021.

Shoutings, Scoldings, Gossip, and Whispers: Mothers’ Responses to Armed Actors and Militarization in Two Caracas Barrios

AbstractHow do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experiences of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. Through this comparative ethnographic project, we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional ones, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip,” to more vulnerable ones, such as whispering—are main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods. Our findings suggest that strategies are context dependent and most likely vary according to numerous factors, including the history of civic organizing, policing practices, and the type of armed actor with whom they cohabitate in their neighborhood.

APPEARANCE OF GENDER INDICATORS IN THE INTERVIEW TEXT

Depending on the nature of the participants of the addresser and addressee in the communicative act, discursive activities such as monologic and dialogic are distinguished, many researchers recognize the primary and natural character of dialogic speech in comparison with monologic speech. Since dialogues characterize the communication behavior in the interview text, which is considered a journalistic genre, it is natural for gender stereotypes to be activated in the text. In this sense, the influence of biological and social factors in the emergence of antrocentrism in language cannot be denied, despite the fact that both of them influence the emergence and formation of gender stereotypes, social factors play an important role. By identifying gender stereotypes in the language based on interview discourse materials, theoretical points can be proved. Based on different points of view in linguistics, gender can be defined as a concept or a cognitive phenomenon that is manifested in language tools and the characteristics of the speech activity of people belonging to a certain gender.
 Keywords: interview, information, discourse, linguistic units, metaphor, oral speech, written speech.

MENTAL SPACE AS A WAY OF PRESENTING AND STRUCTURING HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

The author raises one of the important issues of cognitive linguistics, namely the representation and structuring of knowledge that a person receives during their life and discursive activity. This research is based on the «theory of mental spaces» (G. Fauconnier and M. Turner), according to which language appears not only as an object of human interpretation, but also as a constructive principle: it creates mental spaces and determines the relationship between them. Mental spaces reflect reality, ways of thinking and speech of speakers. The main purpose is to model the mental space of the French adjective vert, its usual and new images, which allow demonstrating the way of obtaining, processing and storing human knowledge. The choice of idioms as research material is explained by the fact that these units vividly reflect the mentality of the representatives of the language community, the peculiarities of their vision and understanding of reality, and also demonstrate the cognitive mechanisms during the generation of new nominative units. After analyzing the material, the author suggests that during the world perception and communication, mental spaces can build up structured information. They are divided into three spheres, each of which has its own images: sacred, profane and metaphorical. The study of new idioms showed that only 75% of them fit into the traditional model of the metaphorical sphere. The mental space of other units contains new images of the adjective vert, which complement different spheres and can further serve as the basis for the formation of new idioms.

Ethics After Comparative Religious Ethics: Rereading Little and Twiss in a Pragmatic Light

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a rereading of David Little and Sumner Twiss's Comparative Religious Ethics in the context of its initial reception and legacy within the field of religious ethics and argues that we can read it more charitably as a piece of pragmatism rather than as a work of formalism or semi‐formalism. If one does not read Little and Twiss as committed positivists concerned with realizing a specific research program associated with the “twilight of logical empiricism,” then their theoretical and methodological recommendations, illustrated in their case studies, appear more pragmatic in nature and less excessively rigid. By rereading Comparative Religious Ethics in this light, we can see more clearly its relevance for the field today, particularly regarding the fundamental importance of the discursive activity of practical reasoning, or the game of giving and asking for reasons, in the study of religious ethics.

Structuration des sens dans l’espace textuel: les aspects cognitifs lexicaux et cognitifs synergiques

The article presents the results of cognitive-synergetic and lexicological research of the meaning formed in the text. The research is based on the “meaning and sense” dichotomy of cognitive lexicology, as well as cognitive semantics position on the close connection of cognition and communication, relying on the principle of multilevel analysis, the unity of language and speech. The unity of cognition and communication manifests in the need to examine text meanings within a cognitive-discursive paradigm, which allows analyzing the dialogue between the author and reader, mediated by the text. It is in the process of interaction between the author (addresser) and reader (recipient) that the author’s ideas (intentions), as well as various shades of the author’s modality meaning, are transmitted, and new senses come forth in the course of the reader’s interpretation of the narrative. The paper used a combination of cognitive-synergetic methods (discursive, conceptual, interpretive methods, fractal analysis, conceptual integration, and associative experiment). The purpose of the study is to identify the meanings of the author’s and reader’s fields in the text semantic space, to determine their types and to analyze the ways of their formation. The article considers three main meaning formation models based on the analysis of the literary text semantic space of I. Esenberlin’s novel “Nomads”: 1) the author’s meaning model; 2) a model of the meaning formed in the reader’s interpretative activity; 3) invariant meaning, formed in the recipient’s mind as different from the author’s. The author shows that the processability of meanings, i.e., that they generate new meanings in the discursive activity of the author and the reader, is common to all these models. The article also focuses on cognitive integration, when the reader’s sense is formed by taking into account social factors of other eras, the new assessment and the development of the author’s text meaning from modern positions. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the fact that, for the first time, an attempt is made to identify and describe the author’s and reader’s meanings, formed in the context both of the historical period and current times, based on the material of a literary text. In addition, the novelty of the research consists of the author’s attempt to apply a cognitive-synergetic approach to the analysis of the text semantic space. This approach is used in the process of analyzing the discourses of the author and the reader, aimed at the formation of various types of meanings (conveying the author’s ideas and evaluation of implicit meanings in the reader’s perception). As a result of the analysis, it was established that the semantic space of the text is a dynamic field in which various meanings generated by the author and the reader interact. In order to review them, a set of methods were used to unfold new word meanings in the text.

Stakeholder involvement in distributed projects: a performative approach to large scale urban sustainable development projects and the case of Stockholm Royal Seaport

The involvement of stakeholders in large scale urban sustainable development projects (LSUSDP.s) has proven difficult. The stakeholders are distributed across the geographical area, and they have stakes not only in the LSUSDP, but in the geographical location where the project takes place. To understand stakeholder management in “distributed projects”, we propose abandoning the “inside-out” perspective where the project is the point of departure, and focus on the emergence of stakeholders across time. Adopting such a performative, “outside-in,” perspective on the longitudinal and digital study of a LSUSDP, we are able to map how actors became stakeholders in the project through their actions. The paper makes four contributions. First, we reconceptualize stakeholder involvement by adopting a performative perspective, whereby “stakeholders” are envisaged as emergent and non-fixed. Second, we demonstrate how such a reconceptualization may be applied to the analysis of an empirical case. Third, we show that stakeholder involvement is not merely the result of stakeholder management but something that happens over time, through the material and discursive actions of those that become stakeholders. Finally, the paper contributes with an illustration of how the online, digital footprint, of a project may be useful to understand the emergence of a project.

Characterising Pre-Service Primary School Teachers’ Discursive Activity when Defining

Characterising Pre-Service Primary School Teachers’ Discursive Activity when Defining

Изучение мышления в московском методологическом кружке

The article analyzes three main topics: ideas about thinking, formed in ancient philosophy and in modern times, studies of thinking in the Moscow Methodological Circle, mainly in the works by G.P. Shchedrovitsky, as well as the author’s views on thinking (a kind of conceptualization). The views on thinking in logic, methodology and phenomenology are considered, the problems of development and the agent of thinking, the logical and methodological determinants of thought are discussed. The author presents the results of the cultural and historical reconstruction of the formation of thinking, showing that three components of thinking were formed in ancient philosophy — discursive activity, including the constitution of ideal objects, norms of thinking (thinking patterns, logical rules and categories), concepts of thinking. He calls this tripartite structure "the genome of thinking." The genome of thinking was established anew in the Middle Ages and in the modern culture, as the requirements for all three of its components has changed. The author characterizes the ideas about thinking outlined in the three programs of the Moscow Methodological Circle (semiotic interpretation of thinking, reducing it to activity, representation as “pure thinking” in the scheme of “thinking activity”). At the same time, he believes that Shchedrovitsky did not succeed in understanding the essence and mechanisms of the development of thinking. In turn, the author, relying on his own research on thinking, argues that the first start of thinking happened with the formation of the thinking genome, and the second start was the inclusion of the thinking genome in the institutions of modernity (science, art, law, religion, esotericism), which significantly affect thinking. The latter, in turn, changes and transforms under the influence of culture, personality, problems and challenges of the time.