Discursive Domains Research Articles

Dialogue without negotiation: illiberal peace-building in Southern Thailand

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the Thai state’s approach in tackling the separatist movements in Thailand’s predominantly Malay-Muslim South. Developing upon Lewis et al.’s concept of Authoritarian Conflict Management, I argue that the state has largely employed an authoritarian mode to respond to the resurgence of violent rebellion since 2004, with the military taking dominant roles. Illiberal peace-building, largely influenced by Thai Cold War counterinsurgency doctrine, has extended not only to spatial, discursive and economic domains, but also to the legal realm. A nationally driven peace process initiated in 2013 was a departure from the state’s long-standing modus operandi. It was a period in which national elites experimented with a relatively more liberal approach. The Kuala Lumpur-facilitated process sparked both inter- and intra-group contention and soon collapsed due to the effect of unending battle between the so-called democracy camp and the royalist-establishment camp. The trajectory of the formalised dialogue took a significant turn after the 2014 coup. While retaining the process, the military regime turned it into an extended domain of illiberal peace-building.

The Location of Infrastructure

A & Q 55 Kuzuoglu, Ulug. 2018. “Codes of Modernity: Infrastructures of Language and Chinese Scripts in an Age of Global Information Revolution.” PhD diss., Columbia University. Lewis, Geoffrey. 1999. TheTurkishLanguageReform:ACatastrophicSuccess. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nammour, Yara Khoury. 2014. Nasri Khattar: A Modernist Typotect. Amsterdam : Khatt Books. Simons, Gary F., and Charles D. Fennig, eds. 2018. Ethnologue Global Dataset : Twenty-­ First Edition Data. Distributed by SIL International. http://www.sil.org/. Star, Susan Leigh. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 3: 377–­ 91. Zaugg, Isabelle Alice. 2017. “Digitizing Ethiopic: Coding for Linguistic Continuity in the Face of Digital Extinction.” PhD diss., American University. Zhong, Yurou. 2019. Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity 1916–­1958. New York: Columbia University Press. The Location of Infrastructure Ram Bhat I argue that infrastructures are useful when understood as a vantage point, a point from which one could investigate both state and subject, materiality and meaning, structure and agency. Admittedly, to occupy this productive vantage point, a broad working definition of infrastructure is needed, for example, “a totality of both technical and cultural systems that create institutionalised structures whereby goods of all sorts circulate , connecting and binding people into collectivities” (Larkin 2008, 6). The entanglement of media and communication infrastructures in state–­ subject relations is fertile ground for interdisciplinary collaboration and research among social anthropologists, political sociologists, media and communication scholars, and science and technology studies scholars, to name a few. In the age of late capitalism, the expansion of internet infrastructure further aids the free flow of capital across the globe. At the same time, this free flow of capital should not be used as an excuse for us to assume that the effects of either capital or technologies are similar everywhere. In several countries of the Global South, especially in Asia and Africa, neoliberalism has been accompanied by the increased visibility and influence of the state, although key sectors, such as transportation, aviation, telecommunication, education, and 56 A & Q health, continue to be privatized rapidly. Infrastructures as conduits of capital contain material and symbolic traces that can be studied in various ways—­ as evidence of novel social practices, institutional and financial arrangements, electoral politics, new government schemes, new disciplinary practices, and so on. Such new practices and arrangements are sites for rethinking the specificities of “Asia” and “inter-­ Asian” connections, thinking about how our societies are constellated in new ways without necessarily reverting to older and increasingly exhausted conceptual categories. Media and communication scholarship, along with other disciplines and fields, has seen a renewed interest in infrastructure. Infrastructure studies has been a crucial component of what has been called the “ontological ” turn. This “ontological politics covers more than the question of how politics is embedded in technological devices, for it concerns the emergence of potentially novel forms out of infrastructural arrangements ” (Jensen and Morita 2015, 85; cf. Knox 2017; Woolgar and Cooper 1999; Woolgar and Lezaun 2013). In part at least, this move signals an exhaustion with analytics that treat politics as an exclusively discursive domain. “In shifting attention away from politics as a primarily discursive activity, these new materialist reworkings have distanced themselves from conventional political categories in order to focus instead on processes and relations that exceed these descriptive concepts” (Knox 2017, 365; cf. Braun and Whatmore 2010; Marres and Lezaun 2011; Whatmore and Landström 2011). Such a postdiscursive perspective can generate insights into media and communications infrastructures that have hitherto been understudied in favor of investigations focused on content, audiences, and political economy. Take the case of satellites used in warfare. It has been argued that “satellite images can be used to bring (infra)structural processes and matters to the fore by intimating or revealing parts of systems or processes that are simply too vast for the frames, conventions and capacities of modern media” (Parks 2012, 79). From undersea cables to standards and protocols, infrastructures—­ taken literally as objects of research—­ show how the local is constantly marked by the national and the international (Starosielski 2015; Easterling 2016). In India, for example, since the mid-­ 1980s, the rise of Hindu nationalism has gone hand in hand with utopian imaginaries of technological development. The right-­ wing Bharatiya Janta...

The culinary as ‘border’: perspectives on food and femininity in the Indian subcontinent

ABSTRACT The word ‘border’ usually refers to the dividing line between two distinct territories. Geo-political borders not only protect the sovereignty of the nation but also preserve the cultural and the religious identities of the people inhabiting the nation. ‘Food,’ an important signifier of cultural identity, is an effective tool for drawing lines between the South Asian ethnic and sub-ethnic groups. Women play a crucial role in sustaining such borderlines. For them, kitchen is the fortress, where traditional food items are prepared and the secrets of cooking are handed down the generations through daughters and daughters-in-law. The performative roles associated with the production of food are strictly reserved for women. In the Indian subcontinent, food can be studied as a discursive domain of feminine rituals observed in social and religious ceremonies. In this article, I have analysed this connection between food and femininity by examining the gendered kitchen rituals. I have also examined the kitchen space as the cultural borderline that protects and preserves the traditions of a community and nation. I have explored the culinary practices as a site of patriarchal surveillance and feminine resistance in the literary narratives of Bulbul Sharma, Monica Ali and Tahira Naqvi.

Boundary-work in management accounting: The case of hybrid professionalism

This paper investigates boundary-work in management accounting in the context of globalization and hybrid professionalism. The paper demonstrates how permeable symbolic boundaries of the management accounting field can be altered by employing expansion boundary-work. Contrasting boundary-work of IMA officials and IMA members in Russia, we show that IMA officials employ primarily monopolization boundary-work while IMA members employ primarily expansion boundary-work. Our findings illustrate how boundary-work is employed to exhibit organizational and occupational professionalism in the symbolic realm. The paper provides additional insight into the discursive domain of the accounting profession by linking boundary-work to globalization, two forms of professionalism, legitimacy, status and professional identity. This suggests that the professionalization process is influenced by the properties of professional boundaries.

Literatura mundial, guerra, revolución: la relevancia de Viaje sentimental, de Viktor Shklovski

El presente artículo analiza el interés de Shklovski, no analizado hasta la fecha, por un dominio discursivo que actualmente tiende a denominarse “literatura mundial”. Este trabajo trata de presentar una contribución original para entender Viaje sentimental, considerado el mejor volumen de la trilogía de memorias de Shklovski publicada en los años 1920, así como presentar una aproximación transnacional a su escritura. Si bien el trabajo de Shklovski ha sido previamente estudiado a través del prisma de la movilidad y el nomadismo, el presente artículo trata de poner el énfasis tanto en su participación activa como en su reacción ante los discursos y prácticas en torno a la “literatura mundial” durante los primeros años de la Unión Soviética, ubicando el interés del autor ruso por la idea de literatura mundial en el contexto más amplio de los debates presentes acerca de la cuestión. Para entender la “literatura mundial” como una construcción específica, resulta preciso preguntarse acerca del problema ineludible de la localización de la “literatura mundial” con respecto a la lengua, aspecto que conlleva importantes consecuencias a la hora de interpretar el legado disperso de la teoría literaria moderna (fundada como es sabido por Shklovski y los formalistas rusos). Ello nos permitiría reconocer la persistente relevancia de la idea shklovskiana de literariedad en los presentes debates en torno a la literatura mundial.

Multimodal representation of social discourses in Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation: a social semiotic study

ABSTRACT The directorial oeuvre of Asghar Farhadi thrives on incorporating a wide range of semiotic resources to feature fractured interpersonal relationships, socially indoctrinated gender roles, and class division(s) within the contemporary society of Iran. Farhadi utilizes the cinema as a medium to reflect on latent social contradictions and how personal identity is conditioned by patriarchal forces. A Separation (2011), his magnum opus, cultivates an ensemble of shades and layers of “separation” between dissenting social discourses. Taking Kress and Van Leeuwen’s [(2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge] social semiotic model as its theoretical framework, this paper attempts to delineate the registers through which social and cultural values are presented, enacted, and subverted throughout the film. A discursive and polysemic semiotic domain pointing to a broad canvas of social and cultural predicaments, the film is a microcosm of the developing society of Iran where “religious” beliefs and values come to clash with newly emerging cross-cultural “secular” perspectives.

A prática da oralidade em sala de aula: a perspectiva dos professores de língua portuguesa da rede básica de ensino

O presente trabalho tem como recorte temático o domínio discursivo da prática da oralidade. Dentre as práticas previstas para o ensino de língua portuguesa nas DCE (2008) é comum que os professores de língua portuguesa considerem a oralidade como mais informal e mais passível de erros do que a prática da escrita. Neste trabalho, fundamentado em Dolz e Schneuwly (2011) e Marcuschi (1997; 2010), a proposta é refletir sobre a importância da oralidade, enquanto prática discursiva, e, sobretudo, sobre seu ensino nas aulas de língua portuguesa. A concepção e o modo como a prática da oralidade é considerada em sala de aula foram analisados por meio de questionários aplicados a professores de Língua Portuguesa da rede básica de ensino. Este corpus de análise mostrou que o ensino-aprendizagem da oralidade enquanto prática discursiva é tardio e pouco realizado. Os professores demonstraram uma concepção superficial de oralidade e um trabalho que não privilegia a prática de produção oral, já que os gêneros escritos são indicados como os mais trabalhados em sala de aula.

The Verbal-Kinesic Enactment of Contrast in North American English

In this paper, I explore the linguistic and kinesic expression of contrast—the pitting of one position, object, or idea, against another. The archetype utterance for the embodied expression of contrast in English is the bipartite construction On the one hand . . . . On the other hand . . . . in which hand gestures are often performed sequentially along the sagittal axis (first on one side and then on the other side of the body) to depict the two options. However, English speakers have a variety of other linguistic means available to them for expressing contrast. Using data from naturally occurring discourse, I describe a range of linguistic resources that mark contrast and examine the semiotic relationships at play in the dynamic, multimodal signs (i.e. speech / gesture constructions) that accompany them. I demonstrate that, far from being ad hoc, when analyzed across the propositional, cognitive, and discursive domains, the way in which contrast is marked in the body can be viewed on a continuum of highly imageable to more schematically iconic kinesic movements. By placing the primary focus on the multimodal sign, this paper makes clear how speakers of North American English build semiotic environments around the construal of contrast.

Mythological Indifference in Schelling and Nerval

Mythological Indifference in Schelling and Nerval

The Actress in Nature: Environments of Artistic Development in Victorian Fiction and Memoir

This essay provides a new approach to reading actress memoirs in light of the influence of environmental thinking on Victorian culture more broadly and acting theory in particular. By demonstrating that actress autobiographies were written within a discursive domain that understood human temperaments and biographical trajectories to be fundamentally shaped by social and physical surroundings, I examine how renowned actresses narrate the conditions within which their temperament developed. In order to do so, I first examine the entanglement of environment and character in novels about actress protagonists in order to develop a framework for analysing the narrative qualities of actress memoirs. This essay focuses specifically on the trope of the ‘wild’ girl who, undisciplined by parents or teachers, develops a sensitive yet wilful and even anti-social temperament that enables her to become an actress praised for her authentic displays of spontaneous emotion.

Memória e emoção. Analogias e transposições poéticas na obra de Pedro Nava

Este artigo oferece uma leitura do tema da emoção, centrando-se em Baú de ossos (1972), Balão cativo (1973) e Chão de Ferro (1976), de Pedro Nava. O tópico é analisado a partir do discurso memorialístico do autor, considerado em relação aos estudos de Paul John Eakin e Patrick Colm Hogan, no campo da emoção e da memória. A meta é expor como Nava combina domínios discursivos literariamente moldados pela Estética, História e Psicologia para contar histórias de vida.

Letramento escolar em aula de língua inglesa: uma proposta pedagógica de leitura crítica

Teaching a Foreign Language (FL) in Basic Education has among one of its goals contributing to the learner’s singular experience of building meaning by a discursive basis domain (Brasil, 1998), by means of reading and writing activities that promote his engagement in varied social practices and his formation as a citizen (Schlatter, 2009). This way, it’s presented a reading activity to Elementary School students based in Critical Reading (CR) and literacy as social practice (Street, 2014). It is started from reading as a process, proposing steps to achieve it (pre-reading, while-reading e post-reading), which involve previous knowledge of the text issue, text comprehension and interpretation and the development of the learner’s criticism through the text, respectively. Considering this proposal, it’s expected to emphasize the importance of CR to increase the learners’ participation in literate social practices, contributing to the formation of a critical reader and a citizen.

Biases we live by: Anglocentrism in linguistics and cognitive sciences

This paper explores “Anglocentrism” as a bias in contemporary linguistics and cognitive sciences. Anglo concepts dominate international discourse on language and cognition, but the influence that this Anglocentric metalinguistic discourse has on global knowledge production, research methods, and the theoretical framing of research questions is rarely debated. Three case studies on heavily “Anglicised” discursive domains are provided: (i) “the mind” – and the Anglicisation of global discourse of human personhood; (ii) “happiness” – and the Anglicisation of the global discourse of human values; (iii) “community” – and the Anglicisation of the global discourse of human sociality. With cross-linguistic evidence from Europe (Danish), and the Pacific (Bislama), the paper denaturalises the English words mind, happiness, and community and the cognitive models they stand for, demonstrating that these words are not “neutral” nor “innocent” metalinguistic descriptors. Rather, they are quintessential Anglo constructs, and as such they provide a lens on humanity that is biased towards an Anglo interpretation of the world. Finally, the paper explores the “bias” concept. Paradoxically, the bias concept is in itself a product of the Anglosphere, as as such a part of the problem. However, due to this word’s meta-discursive function, the paper argues that the bias concept can become a useful Trojan Horse, a concept through which we can fight Anglocentrism from within, and pave the way for a more adequate representation of human diversity in linguistics and cognitive sciences.

Duress and Messianism in French Moyen-Congo

The Matsouanist religion in Congo-Brazzaville has its roots in Amicale, a sociopolitical association and movement that aimed to improve the rights of colonial subjects that emerged in the late 1920s. After its leader, André Matsoua, died in prison, the movement transformed into a religion that worships Matsoua as a prophet. In this article, I argue that this transformation should be understood not as a rupture but as continuation, albeit in a different discursive domain. This transformation was steered by duress, or the internalization of structural violence in everyday life under colonialism. Through this discursive transformation, Matsoua’s followers appropriated the movement and brought it into a culturally known place that enabled them to continue their struggle for liberation from colonial oppression.

A nominalização deverbal em cartilhas de agências reguladoras do Estado: de como a gramática produz efeitos de autoridade e não-negociação

O objetivo central deste estudo é analisar o emprego de nominalizações deverbais em cartilhas produzidas por agências reguladoras do Estado. Partimos da hipótese de que, no texto escrito, especialmente no âmbito oficial, o uso das nominalizações deverbais sofre o impacto das condições de produção do discurso e, por isso, merece análise específica. Foram analisadas 10 cartilhas produzidas por agências reguladoras brasileiras, nas quais foi identificado um número significativo de instâncias nominalizadas. Do ponto de vista de sua estrutura argumental nominal, o estudo identificou as ocorrências de apagamento de elementos dessa estrutura, bem como analisou como esses elementos são recuperados, o que, em geral, é feito via fluxo discursivo. Com relação à análise das nominalizações como instâncias de metáforas gramaticais, estas são entendidas aqui como fenômenos produzidos no sistema de transitividade hallidayiano. Esse uso propiciou uma maior densidade lexical dos textos analisados. Esse aspecto contribuiu para elevar o caráter objetivo e supostamente neutro dos acontecimentos, ou fatos, aos quais as cartilhas se referem. Os resultados indicaram também que as nominalizações deverbais configuram-se como recursos importantes para que as cartilhas cumpram a finalidade de impor ao leitor a aceitação de pressupostos não-negociáveis, veiculados por estas em sua função oficial.

Towards a conceptualization of power in energy transitions

The field of sustainability transitions has recently benefitted from efforts by multiple scholars at better conceptualizing power and politics, and integrating insights from other fields. This article argues for an understanding of power as relational, productive, contingent and situated. I conceptualize power to the aim of understanding and explaining how and where power relations become de/stabilized in energy transitions in poor rural communities. An understanding of power as a relational capacity to act is integrated with a sociotechnical and relational understanding of constitutive power, which enables us to explore the co-production of social relations, technology and nature. The resulting conceptualization is applied to a case of mini-hydropower electrification in Tanzania. I find that electrification simultaneously reinforces social inequality and enhances social mobility. I identify material, symbolic and discursive domains that work as sources of de/stabilization of social hierarchies, producing effects on the system configuration and relations of class and gender.

Security or insecurity? Representations of the UK border in public and policy discourses

This article analyses representations of the UK border (in relation to migration) in UK public and policy discourses. It uses methods from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to compare the two discursive domains. A 26 million-word corpus of policy documentation and British newspaper articles published between 2007 and 2014 is examined using the analysis tool Sketch Engine and applying qualitative concordance analysis. The analysis reveals a key difference between the two domains: while the UK border is represented as a security concept in the policy corpus, the corpus of the public newspaper domain frequently and saliently represents the UK border as a concept dominated by insecurity. The article argues that the discursive label of European Union has played a role in contributing to this difference.

Communicating environmental science beyond academia: Stylistic patterns of newsworthiness in popular science journalism

Science communication in online media is a discursive domain where science-related content is often expressed through styles characteristic of popular journalism. This article aims to characterize some dominant stylistic patterns in magazine articles devoted to environmental issues by identifying the devices used to enhance newsworthiness, given the fact that for some readers environmental topics may no longer seem engaging. The analytic perspective is an adaptation of the newsworthiness framework that has been applied in news discourse studies. The material is a sample of the 38 most-read environment-oriented articles in the online version of the international science magazine New Scientist collected between late 2013 and late 2014. The articles are analysed qualitatively to show the instantiations of such newsworthiness criteria as novelty and superlativeness, timeliness and impact, negativity and positivity as well as other strategies aimed at engaging the readers: rationalization and speculation, direct address and conversational style. The analysis reveals how, in this case study, science communication is turned into infotainment and considers the implications of this discursive shift for the public understanding of environmental science.

Analysis of Language used in Gikuyu Marriage Negotiation Discourse

<p>This paper which focuses on language use within the formal discursive process of negotiating and legalising marriage in the domain of ‘<em>Ruracio</em>’ or bride wealth payment amongst the <em>Agikuyu</em> of Kenya was conceived on the premise that language is a significant phenomenon in the production and maintenance of social relations of power. The focus is on language elements that are both linguistic and non-linguistic and their influence on the concepts of gender and power as brought out through the data collected for this study. Data, consisting of five recorded discourses from sampled negotiation sessions and five focus group discussions from Kiambu County Kenya, was translated, transcribed and analysed with a view of examining how people use language to accomplish social acts. The findings are that language use, linguistic or non-linguistic, demonstrates that <em>Gikuyu</em> marriage negotiation discursive domain is male dominated, it constructs roles and identities and also defines how people can have power over others to a level that they control their behavior. It is hoped that the findings will be useful to all language users in this domain as well as contributing to knowledge in discourse analysis. </p>

Expanding the discursive domain of research on the New Culture Movement: An incomplete review of studies on the New Culture Movement

ABSTRACTThe discussions revolving around the common subject of the New Culture Movement have experienced a complex and convoluted history, with a discursive domain ranging from the differentiation of new and old culture, to appeals for a scientific and democratic enlightenment, to the balancing of the cultural relationship between China and the West. The New Culture tends to be regarded as development in the direction of increasing rationality, liberality, and inclusiveness, in which the pursuit of an understanding between the Chinese and Western cultures is the only path by which Chinese civilization may gain future opportunities and development.