Discursive Context Research Articles

A critical glocalization approach: attending to power in the innovation space

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to provide community practitioners with the theoretical background to recognize and work in the interplay of global and local forces. This paper reviews globalization as a contested term and presents several globalization paradigms. It introduces critical glocalization as a guiding approach that sensitizes social workers to power dynamics. With this approach, social workers are encouraged to look for innovations that arise in the glocal sphere. They will understand the broader political, economic, structural, policy, and discursive contexts in which they are working, and intentionally look for the marginalized voices in our complex, interconnected world.

Constructing consensus and conflicts

PurposeThis paper aims to study discursive dynamics in place marketing collaboration, which has the potential to construct common ground between stakeholders or provoke discursive struggles emerging from competing accounts.Design/methodology/approachThe paper applies a discursive perspective to collaboration and uses the discursive model of the collaboration to analyze dynamics between stakeholder representatives in two regional level place marketing projects carried out in Eastern Finland in 2011-2014. An analysis of 23 interviews focuses on how stakeholders construct shared understandings of project issues and interests, and discursive struggles that emerge from competing accounts and heterogeneous spaces.FindingsIdentified issues in the projects related to the competitiveness between regions, peer pressure to carry out place marketing and a lack of budget resources for marketing for gaining visibility. Broader discourses of competitiveness and promotion provided shared discursive resources for the collaborators. An analysis of the interests of specific organizations revealed discursive struggles that relate to the spatial content of place marketing activities and also the symbolic content of the image of the region.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the paper underlines the embeddedness of collaboration within broader discursive contexts and cultural sensitivity attached to communication, it does not cover how broader discourses constrain communicative processes or how cultural context influences them.Originality/valueThe paper presents an original perspective on stakeholder collaboration in place marketing projects by highlighting the discursive aspects of communication, and especially the construction of shared understandings as a central element in collaboration. This is useful for facilitating and coordinating stakeholders’ communication, which has been considered important for the success of place marketing and branding activity.

Cognitive Polyphasia, Social Representations and Political Participation in Adolescents.

Studies conducted in the last few decades show that young people have a negative evaluation of politics since they relate it to conventional forms of participation. In addition, they engage in unconventional forms of political participation, though they do not think of them as political practices. In this context, a qualitative study was carried out in order to describe the social representations of politics through the narratives provided by adolescents during an interview based on Piaget's clinical method. The results obtained reveal the coexistence of two representations of politics: a conventional and an unconventional one. The representation in which politics is mainly understood as conventional forms of participation appears to be hegemonic, although a polemic unconventional representation was identified. Moreover, in many of the subjects both representations coexist in state of cognitive polyphasia that express a relation of selective prevalence between them, depending on the discursive context they are elicited.

The Five Strands of Living Lab

Since the introduction of the iconic Aware Home project [39] in 1999, the notion of “living laboratory” has been taken up and developed in HCI research. Many of the underpinning assumptions have evolved over the past two decades in various directions, while the same nomenclature is employed—inevitably in ambiguous ways. This contribution seeks to elicit an organized understanding of what we talk about and when we talk about living lab studies in HCI. This is accomplished through the methods of discourse analysis [66, 69], a combination of coding, hypothesis generation, and inferential statistics on the coded data. Analysing the discursive context within which the term living laboratory (or lab) appears in 152 SIGCHI and TOCHI articles, we extracted five divergent strands with overlapping but distinct conceptual frameworks, labeled as “Visited Places,” “Instrumented Places,” “Instrumented People,” “Lived-in Places,” and “Innovation Spaces.” In the first part of this article, we describe in detail the method and outcome of our analysis that draws out the five strands. Building on the results of the first part, in the second part of this article, each of the five types of living lab is discussed using some of the prototypical examples of that kind presented in the literature. Finally, we discuss the raison d’être and future position of the living lab as a method within HCI research and design and in relation to advances in sensing technologies and the emerging world of intelligent built environments (e.g., smart city and smart home).

On Company Time: American Modernism in the Big MagazinesPoetic Modernism in the Culture of Mass Print

On Company Time: American Modernism in the Big MagazinesPoetic Modernism in the Culture of Mass Print

Between illiberalism and hyper-neoliberalism: competing populist discourses in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT This paper draws on Laclau’s theory of discourse, hegemony, and populism to analyse competing forms of populism in the Czech Republic within the discursive context of ‘post-November transformation’ as well as in relation to hegemonic struggles over the construction of social order. It is argued that the discourses of Public Affairs (VV), ANO, Dawn of Direct Democracy, and Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) all feature a populist opposition between the ‘people’ or ‘citizens’ on the one hand and ‘political dinosaurs’, (‘traditional’) ‘parties’, or ‘godfather party mafias’ of both ‘left’ and ‘right’ on the other, while also radicalizing in different ways the exclusionary constructions of ‘work’ in the established discourses of the Civic Democrats (ODS) and Social Democrats (ČSSD). While ANO constructs ‘hard work’ in a populist manner against the (‘traditional’) ‘parties’, VV and Dawn/SPD articulate an exclusion of non-working ‘unadaptables’ that points to a notable interplay of hyper-neoliberal welfare chauvinism and anti-minorities illiberalism.

A genealogy of hostility: parental alienation in England and Wales

ABSTRACTThis article explores the emergence and development of parental alienation (PA) in England and Wales. It considers the background into which PA first appeared in private law proceedings concerning children in England and Wales, and examines how it progressed in the case law through the changing political and discursive context of private family law from 2000 to the end of March 2019. A clear pattern emerged of, initially, parental alienation syndrome and subsequently PA being raised in family proceedings and in political and popular arenas in response to concerns about and measures to address domestic abuse. The case law revealed a high incidence of domestic abuse perpetrated by parents (principally fathers) who were claiming that the resident parents (principally mothers) had alienated the children against them, which raises questions about the purpose of PA. More recently, a PA ‘industry’ appears to have amassed comprising experts, therapists and lawyers, advocating transfers of children’s care from ‘alienating’ mothers to non-resident fathers, as well as PA therapy for children and parents. While PA has had a chequered history and is not without its critics, it has become part of the discursive repertoire of current family law, with increasingly harsh consequences for women and children.

Disclosing Childhoods: Research and Knowledge Production for a Critical Childhood Studies by Spyros Spyrou (review)

Book Review: Disclosing Childhoods: Research and Knowledge Production… 139 Disclosing Childhoods: Research and Knowledge Production for a Critical Childhood Studies Spyros Spyrou (2018) London: Palgrave Macmillan, 241 pages $99.99 (hardcover; ISBN: 978-1137479037 Disclosing Childhoods by professor Spyros Spyrou from the European University of Cyprus is published as part of the Studies in Childhood and Youth series, which embraces global and multi-disciplinary scholarship on childhood and youth as social, historical, cultural and material phenomena. This important book offers a critical reflection on knowledge production in childhood studies and is extremely relevant to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including childhood studies, anthropology, geography, sociology, psychology, politics, social work, and international development studies. The book is pertinently named Disclosing Childhoods, as Spyrou describes the power of researchers to disclose particular childhoods through knowledge practices that reflect both the material and discursive conditions of their being. Syprou calls for a more “critical childhood studies” encouraging researchers to be mindful and reflexive about the processes through which they produce knowledge, and to be ethically and politically committed to disclosing knowledge that matters, that is, knowledge with preferred material consequences on children’s lives. Disclosing childhoods builds upon an analysis of the strengths and limitations of childhood studies, an interdisciplinary field of study, which has emerged and expanded in the past 30 years. Spyrou draws upon seminal work such as James and Prout (1990), Qvortrup (1994), Alanen (2001; 2009), and Mayall (2002), as well as work from a wide range of other scholars. Spyrou draws upon poststructuralist and posthumanist critiques, as well as feminist approaches, to inform his focus on relational ontologies and their potential for rethinking knowledge production in childhood studies. Applying a relational ontological framework to knowledge production has crucial implications for epistemological, methodological, ethical, and political considerations. It necessitates increased transparency from researchers regarding their ontological positions, and how such positions influence their epistemological approach. It also encourages increased attention to broader socio-economic, political, historical, and institutional forces that shape both knowledge production and its application. Spyrou suggests the “limited theoretical innovation in childhood studies may be partly attributed to the preoccupation and reproduction of foundational concepts and ideas such as those of social construction, agency, voice, and participation” (p. 27). Spyrou develops his critique in separate chapters dedicated to voice, agency, and children’s participation in research. He draws upon empirical research and theoretical insights, both from his own research, and from other scholars. In doing Book Review: Disclosing Childhoods: Research and Knowledge Production… 140 so, Spyrou offers theoretical, methodological and ethical directions to support more critical approaches to knowledge production, including application of critical reflexivity. Applying a critical reflexive approach, Spyrou questions unexamined assumptions about the authenticity of children’s voices and issues of representation. The relevance of attending to silences and non-verbal forms of communication are also explored. Spyrou emphasizes the importance of analyzing “the interactional contexts in which children’s voices emerge, the institutional contexts in which they are embedded, and the discursive contexts which inform them” (p. 86). Spyrou also critiques the way that childhood researchers tend to emphasize children's agency, without adequate attention to structural factors, contexts, and power relations that shape children’s lives and opportunities to exercise their agency. In many socio-cultural, economic, and political contexts, generational inequalities limit children's agency. Drawing upon the work of other critical scholars (such as Beauvais, forthcoming; Bordonaro & Payne, 2012; Cook, 2011; Leonard, 2016; Mayall, 2002; Mizen & Ofosu-Kusi, 2013; Oswell, 2013; 2016; Whyness, 2006; Valentine, 2011), Spyrou encourages more grounded and critical understandings of children's agency, exploring how agency is socially and relationally produced, rather than focusing on agency as a property of the self. Recognizing that contextual and relational factors shape children's agency has implications for the way research knowledge is produced through children's participation in research. Increased transparency is needed about the respective roles of adult and child researchers; about who has power to make decisions about research topics, methods, analysis; and what gets included in reports. Acknowledging the heterogeneity of children's experiences means that questions concerning representation should be raised to determine which views are being heard, and which are being left...

Event concept of EMPATHY in English juvenile fantasy prose

The article deals with the research of lingual cognitive and pragmatic aspects of empathy in juvenile fantasy prose. It reveals the nature of empathy from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, linguistic emotiology, and pragmalinguistics. The properties of empathy verbalization in juvenile fantasy prose are researched, namely the lexical and grammatical means of verbalization of the corresponding concepts and empathic illocutionary types of psychological support in discursive contexts of the English juvenile fantasy prose. The implementation of both pragmatic and lingual cognitive research findings in the light of cognitive-discursive paradigm revealed the basis of empathy conceptualization and the multifaceted empathic context. The interpretation of empathy meaning is performed by means of schematic cognitive mapping, as well as via establishing the correlation of empathy determinants in discursive contexts which present the communicative strategy of empathy. The componential analysis of definitions of various affective and cognitive states and processes connected with empathy, such as compassion, understanding, sympathy etc., as well as their antonyms, and determination of weight, status and hierarchy of the corresponding semes in vocabulary definitions, showed that generally accepted and empirically proved division of empathy into affective and cognitive is reflected in the language. The analyses revealed affective (feeling, sympathy, sorrow) cognitive (knowledge, ability, understanding) semes in the definitions of empathy types attributing them to either affective or cognitive group. Types of empathy, which belong to the same affective or cognitive group, are not equal in the degree of empathy manifestation. The factor or driving force for upgrading (or downgrading) to a different level is action. While partly addressing social functioning, empathy is turned to cognition and emotion, thus being framed as a social psychological event concept. As an event concept empathy emerges in consciousness and in verbal behavior under the influence of human activity in a certain communicative-pragmatic situation, arising in a variety of constituents of the cognitive and affective parcels of the domain of empathy and unfolding in two scripts which reflect its active and passive manifestations.

Fundamentación textual en el Corpus del español del siglo XXI (CORPES) del americanismo obsolescente. Variables de un estudio de caso

Dictionaries use the obsolescence mark to indicate, in addition to the possible process of lexical mortality, the restricted use of certain words in certain discursive contexts. All these possibilities uncover a problem of investigation that is specified in the ignorance of how these words are used in the texts generated in different linguistic areas of America. In this work, we propose that it is possible to provide synchronic data that clarifies the above by recognizing the parameters with which the obsolescent voices appear in the current texts. To this end, an empirical case study research has been designed with a lexicon of obsolete American words obtained from the Diccionario de Americanismos. Subsequently, a textual search of those voices that were possible to document in the Corpus del espanol del siglo XXI was realized. These are ninety-eight obsolescent voices that we analyze according to the variables fiction / non-fiction, geographical, number of documents and their different frequencies. The results show that some lexical units are used exclusively in a textual typology, but the most numerous group appear in general way. In addition, the similarity in texts between neighboring linguistic areas is evident, with the exception of Mexico, Central America, Caribe and Rio de la Plata. Our exploration is a contribution to the characterization of lexical Americanism from the synchronic textual foundation.

Obstacles and Opportunities for Financing the Fight against Covid-19 in the Debt Trapped Zimbabwe

The coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Zimbabwe at a time when the country was in the throes of its worst economic turmoil in recent years. Within months of its arrival, the pandemic has already upended the public healthcare system, eroded the livelihoods of millions of people, and further deepened the economic headwinds in the country. Apparently, Zimbabwe has been in a crisis mode since the beginning of the 21st Century. As such, the pandemic has added an extra burden to the country that is already creaking under mounting weight of external debt peonage, fiscal deficit, liquidity crisis, and international isolation among many other social and economic ills. In this context, the country faces an uphill task in mobilising financial and non-financial resources in order to contain the coronavirus crisis. This article therefore sets out to examine the obstacles and opportunities for financing the fight against Covid-19 pandemic within a discursive context of a debt trapped Southern African country.

From Buzz to Burst\u2014Critical Remarks on the Term \u2018Life\u2019 and Its Ethical Implications in Synthetic Biology

In this paper, we examine the use of the term ‘life’ in the debates within and about synthetic biology. We review different positions within these debates, focusing on the historical background, the constructive epistemology of laboratory research and the pros and cons of metaphorical speech. We argue that ‘life’ is used as buzzword, as folk concept, and as theoretical concept in inhomogeneous ways. Extending beyond the review of the significant literature, we also argue that ‘life’ can be understood as a Burstword in two concrete senses. Firstly, terms such as life easily turn into fuzzy, foggy and buzzy clouds of nonsense, if their use is not appropriately reflected. In these cases, the semantic orientation is detonated. This is the Burstword I characteristic of the concept of ‘life’ that we reveal for its unclear terminological use. Secondly, and in contrast to Burstword I, we show that the concept of ‘life’ can be used in a methodologically controlled way. We call this kind of use Burstword II. Here the concept of ‘life’ fulfils the function of expanding an inadequately narrow disciplinary or conceptual focus in different discursive contexts. In this second sense, ‘life’ receives an important operational function, for instance as a transdisciplinary research principle. It turns out that the innovative function and paradigm-changing power of metaphorical speech belong here as well. Finally, we illustrate three ethically relevant examples that show how ‘life’ can be applied as Burstword II in the context of synthetic biology.

PROCESSAMENTO DE FRASES E CONTEXTO DISCURSIVO

RESUMO Investiga-se o curso temporal dos subprocessos da compreensão de frases, procurando-se determinar se o processador é estritamente sintático em sua análise inicial ou se já acessa informações de natureza semântica e discursiva a tempo de influenciar a análise sintática. São reportados dois estudos com falantes de português brasileiro, para aferir efeitos de contexto discursivo no processamento. O primeiro revisita o processamento de Sintagmas Preposicionais ambíguos e encontra efeito do discurso prévio apenas nas medidas finais, que monitoram a interpretação. O segundo usa a técnica de rastreamento ocular (eye-tracking) para aferir a busca de antecedente para o sujeito de oração com verbo no infinitivo flexionado, encontrando efeito do discurso prévio tanto na medida final ou off-line, quanto na medida on-line. Discutem-se possíveis razões para as diferenças entre os efeitos de informações discursivas nos dois experimentos.

The suspect statistics of best practices: a triple critique of knowledge production and mobilisation in the global education policy field

ABSTRACT The present article addresses the production and global dissemination of ‘policy relevant knowledge’. It not only unpacks the methodological assumptions of a particular type of knowledge production – known as impact evaluations – but also analyses the issue of knowledge mobilisation within the political economy of the global education policy field. Having a critical understanding of impact evaluations is crucial because they are widely regarded as the most valid informational basis from which to make policy decisions. The importance of grasping the methodological limitations and political-economic dynamics that afflict knowledge production and mobilisation is demonstrated through the case of Colombia’s well-known charter school programme. By employing a strategy that has been labelled bibliographic ethnography, this article not only takes a critical look at the knowledge base that has been produced on this programme but also maps the way that evaluations of this charter school programme, despite their limitations, have been cited and invoked in academic and organisational publications to project this programme internationally. The article concludes by offering a theoretically-informed discussion of how we should understand the trajectory of impact evaluations (and other knowledge products) as they cross multiple personal, organisational, political, and discursive contexts.

Flipped learning as situated practice: A contrastive narrative inquiry in an EFL classroom

The traditional lecture-oriented teaching is still the norm in English as a foreign language education courses, but an innovative teaching model, expedited by recent advances in technology, becomes often popular across non-English-speaking subjects. The new model flips the usual classroom paradigm, in which students learn primary concepts outside classroom and class time is reserved for more active problem-based learning. Discussion of model and its impact are more, on the whole, theory-driven than data-informed to consider qualitative feedback to give context before drawing conclusion. Little research has so far been undertaken to rigorously consider class practitioners’ readings on flipped learning experience in EFL discursive contexts in a contrastive manner. In so doing, this study employed a narrative inquiry, using data from interviews and observational field notes. Findings show that that flipped learning is situated practice. The teacher perceived the class challenging due to workload of developing flipped learning materials, inadequate inside-classroom infrastructure, over reliance on student and old-fashioned classroom layout. Likewise, the students found flipped activities time consuming, blaming inadequate outside-classroom infrastructure and teacher’s unavailability for flipped outside class activities. Rather, the teacher valued this model strengthening routs towards transparency for students’ parents on their educational progress. Students appreciated the ubiquitous, more self-paced and autonomous learning nature of flipped model as it makes them more deeply dive into the content. The findings have ramifications for raising awareness of the flipped learning complexities in learning practice.

(Re)conceptualising physical activity participation as career

AbstractPhysical activity is increasingly positioned as playing an important role in preventing and mitigating many of the decrements associated with biological ageing. As a result, public health messages encourage older people to remain active in later life. Despite this, physical activity participation rates among older adults are low. This may be in part related to the conventional approach to understanding physical activity participation as a product of motivation. We contend that this approach does not allow for a deeper exploration of the wider structural, historical and discursive contexts in which physical activity participation occurs. Therefore, we propose that physical activity can be reconceptualised as a career. Through a synthesis of findings from four studies exploring physical activity experiences in later life, we demonstrate that beginning and maintaining a physical activity career requires a disposition towards physical activity, the legitimation of physically active practices and dealing with contingencies. In addition, we demonstrate that maintaining a physical activity career requires investment and deliberation to adapt physical activity practices continually within an individual's own personal biography. As such, we conclude that current strategies to promote physical activity to older adults are unlikely to result in increased levels of participation. To promote physical activity to older adults an understanding of how structural, cultural and historical contexts influence participation is needed.

Remembering the atrocities of their ancestral lands: reading Korean American “comfort women” novels in Japan

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the significance of reading two Korean American novels which address the issue of Japanese military sexual slavery (known as the “comfort women” system) in the context of Japan: Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life. I will explore how this act can facilitate the understanding of the militarized sexual violence in the present social and discursive context of Japan, where the issue suffers from a strong backlash. Lee’s A Gesture Life with its critique of multiple militarized imperialisms challenges the Japanese revisionists’ effort to deny the egregious wrongs of Japan’s military sexual slavery; it also responds to popular criticism in Japan that Korean/Americans disregard the practices of Western imperial and military violence and only condemn Japanese war crimes. The paper in turn also reads Keller’s Comfort Woman through the frame of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, a Japanese Canadian novel which remembers the internment and U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. My aim here is to examine both the risks and possibilities which this reading can generate. While it can help us see the comparable acts of remembering war sufferings from the standpoint of diasporas, it can also erase the non-equivalence between the two histories.

Leveraging Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Grammar Teaching with Multimedia Animations

The present paper reports on a study which aims to explore the potential of using multimedia animations to make grammar principles of cognitive linguistic explanations more transparent to learners. Fourty-nine students of German received instruction on the German passive voice. A first group (CA) worked with a cognitive linguistic explanation of the German passive by means of multimedia animations and performed tasks that aimed to foster the relevant conceptualization processes. Another group (TA) was presented with a form-based explanation of the German passive mainly focusing on the syntactic features. The results show that the CA group significantly outperformed the TA group, especially in the tasks where the passive was tested in larger discursive contexts and made use of the different types of passive sentences in a more appropriate way.

‘The More I Use the Technology, I Know What I’m Capable of Doing’: Access and the Discourse of Capacity

The concept of access has remained an important organizing logic within the education of students with disabilities. In this paper, we use spatial theory to explore the capability of technology to make spaces accessible for Maria, a high school user of assistive technology, who is labeled intellectually disabled. In investigating her technology as a means for greater access, we shift attention from the capability of technological tools to the significance of the discursive context in creating (in)accessible spaces. Using concepts of Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace epistemologies (Soja 1996) we identify how differing conceptions of Maria’s capacity as a learner produced varied meanings of disability. Such conceptions precluded Maria’s ‘access knowledge’ (Hamraie 2017) while upholding assumptions of independence that were premised on unmediated bodily capacity. We suggest that accessibility may be understood as a socio-spatial phenomenon; we conclude by providing implications for practitioners when supporting technology use by students labeled intellectually disabled.

Donna R. Miller & Paul Bayley (eds.) Hybridity in Systemic Functional Linguistics: Grammar, text and discursive context

This article reviews Hybridity in Systemic Functional Linguistics: Grammar, text and discursive context 13 978 1 78179 064 9978-1-78179-064-9