Discursive Field Research Articles

Vaativaa vai vahingollista valmentamista – missä menee raja? Suomalaisten päivälehtien uutisointi valmentajien epäasiallisesta käytöksestä ja negatiivisesta palautediskurssista urheiluvalmennuksessa

In this article, we focus on Finnish daily newspapers’ coverage of inappropriate behaviour and negative feedback from sports coaches towards their trainees. The aim of the study is to explore the reported content and meanings of the feedback given by coaches and highlight the negative feedback discourses produced by the news in which the coach’s biopower is directed at the athlete. The research data consists of 23 sports news articles published in 16 different daily newspapers. The data was collected from the digital newspaper service epress.fi, using the search command “valmentajan epäasiallinen*” (eng. “coach’s inappropriate*”). Our research method is based on critical discourse analysis and its key concepts such as biopower, discourse practice, sociocultural practice, ideology, hegemony and discursive field, but otherwise, we combine different discourse theories relatively freely in our analysis.

Altruismi julkisjohtamisen kehyksenä

Altruism as a framework for public leadership This article examines altruism as a framework for public leadership. It also aims to analyse the meanings that public leaders attach to altruism in the context of meaningful public leadership. The empirical data consists of interviews with eighteen public leaders. The data has been analysed using antagonistic discourse analysis. Based on the research, it seems that altruism can be considered as a dominant way of thinking and approach in public leadership. Leaders described altruism and its meanings through 57 discourses. The discursive field lacked discourses that described altruism as part of good governance or ethics in public service. Contrasting discourses were the potential for altruism in the private and public sectors and the different motivational bases for altruism.

Polar Contradictions: China’s Dialectical Thinking About the Arctic

ABSTRACT Using China’s seemingly contradictory positions on the Arctic as a starting point, this article examines China’s official and academic Arctic discourses. This paper proposes that China’s apparently contradictory positions in the Arctic region are the result of the dialectical resolution of discursive tensions. Using an original dataset of over one thousand Chinese academic articles and books, together with China’s official statements, this article presents China’s Arctic policy discourse as a polyphonic landscape where diverse opinions and ideas compete within a discursive field. The research proposes that by utilising dialectical thinking, China is able to seek a middle ground between conflict and cooperation, between the near-Arctic state and stakeholder identities and between resource development and environmental protection. China also aims to preserve the status quo while striving to reform Arctic governance.

Displays of Expertise: Constructing Authority in Men’s Fashion Advice Videos

Fashion and style are largely the products of discursive fields where individuals with varying degrees of power can dictate trends and “proper” manners of dressing. As with other fields, bloggers and influencers have increasingly challenged the traditional fashion media’s expertise. This paper seeks to explore how influencers who give male fashion advice construct and deploy their perceived expertise. To do so, this paper uses a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to examine videos posted to TikTok and Instagram Reels by nine men’s fashion advice influencers. By comparing videos by multiple influencers, the paper recognizes the repeated signs and discourses which demonstrate expertise in fashion but also reproduce hegemonic discourses.

Metáfora conceptual y discurso judicial: un estudio de caso

Given that metaphor is generally conceived as a resource inherent to specific discursive fields, such as Literature, the Legal Tradition has not demonstrated substantial interest in considering it as a field of reflection. From a cognitivist standpoint, however, metaphor is assumed as a ubiquitous mental mechanism in various spheres of discourse. Adopting this theoretical-methodological perspective, we conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of a socially, politically, and legally significant ruling in recent Argentine History. We examine the most relevant conceptual metaphors in the justification of the resulting decision, identifying two schematic images that intertwine as complex and recurrent elements in the text. These images not only facilitate the argumentation of the involved magistrates but also aid in the understanding of the resolution by all its recipients, namely, the diverse audience comprising all the citizens of this nation. In our work, we aspire to integrate these reflections into the framework of Legal Discourse, which requires an interdisciplinary approach, along at least the three epistemological guidelines of law, language, and cognition.

The concept that went viral: Using machine learning to discover charisma in the wild.

The term "charisma" is recognized as sociology's most successful export to common speech. While sociologists habitually dismiss popular uses of the word, we address its vernacularity head on as a worthy object of study and as a potential resource for conceptual development. Using machine learning, we locate "charisma" within the wider discursive field out of which it arises (and continues to arise) across four corpora; namely: Weber's major writings; social scientific research (123,531 JSTOR articles); and social media ("X") posts containing of "charisma" (n=77,161) and its 2023 variant, "rizz" (n=85,869). By capturing meaning structures that discursively suspend "charisma" across multiple dimensions, we discern three spectrathat help todistinguish charisma's sociological and non-sociological uses. Spectrumone differentiates perspectives which see charisma as having either a structural or individual-level range of efficacy. Spectrumtwo differentiates indifferent/analytical perspectives on charisma from perspectives which see it as desirable but also morally conservative. Spectrumthree differentiates between relational and individualized ontologies for charisma. We find that, rather than hewing closely to the Weberian formulation, social scientific uses exist in an intermediate position vis-à-vis these three spectra. Thus, scholars participate in what they otherwise criticize as charisma's vulgarization. The article concludes with recommendations for how to constructively interact with 'popular charisma.'

Attention, shocks, and relevance judgements: the case of white nationalism in the U.S. South, 1980–2008

ABSTRACT Why do white nationalist organizations (WNOs) focus attention on the issues they do? I draw from social movement studies, organizational studies, and social psychology to explain why WNOs shift attention over time to one particular grievance domain: borders- and immigration-related issues. I propose a cognitive-environmental theory of attention shifts and argue that WNOs are more likely to shift attention to borders and immigration when there is a grievance-validating external shock that is likely to be interpreted as a threat. Using a unique dataset of digitized WNO literature between 1980 and 2008 and a combination of computational text analysis and panel models, I find that white nationalist organizations in this sample were more likely to shift attention to borders and immigration when there was a high number of non-right-wing terror threats or attacks in the U.S. in the previous year relative to the size of the organization’s non-Hispanic/Latinx community. I conclude with implications for work on attentional selection and the evolution of discursive fields.

Institutional power and the deinstitutionalization of marriage

AbstractIn this article, I revisit the debate surrounding the deinstitutionalization of marriage. I identify the divergent methodologies used to evaluate deinstitutionalization and argue that institutional power requires greater definition. I develop the concept of institutional power by applying a Lukesian lens to new institutionalist theories of institutional activities. I define deinstitutionalization as the loss of connection between institutions and their sources of institutional power which constitutes their institutionality. Further, I argue that the indicators used to assess deinstitutionalization must recognize (a) the formal and informal aspects of marriage's institutionality and (b) the regulatory, normative, and cultural‐cognitive bases of marriage's institutional power. I argue that discursive processes drive developments in the discursive field of intimacy yet the emphasis on individualization in existing scholarship struggles to adequately explain developments such as same‐sex marriage. I propose that the personal life thesis offers a more cogent explanation of these changes.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE REGIME OF TEMPORALITY: THE FOUNDATIONS OF ARCHITECTONICS

The aim of this work is to investigate and conceptualize the ‘temporality regime’ as a socio-cultural phenomenon, primarily analyzing its impact on social processes and social transformations. This study characterizes the concept of ‘temporality regime’ by employing heuristic resources of sociological theorization, particularly the socio-cultural approach, discourse theory, P.Bourdieu’s principle of double structuration of reality, and specific provisions of practice theory. Two levels of inter connection in the architectonic soft he temporality regime are established: static and dynamic. It is determined that the static level includes the inter connection of the objective background (culture) and the subjective plane (interpretative activity of subjects). The objective background is defined by cultural postulates that have imperative power, where as the subjective plane includes the activities of actors who interact with the products of cultural production. It is noted that the dynamic level of the temporality regime concerns the inter connection of social changes and the discursive field of the temporality regime through the pragmatic dimension. Social changes act as factors of transformation of the temporality regime, and conversely, temporality regimes influence social dynamics. It is found that this double interconnection forms a new level of discursive production, where social practices transform into discursive practices and vice versa, affecting the formation and development of social changes. The theoretical significance of the study lies in a deeper understanding of the temporality regime as a socio-cultural phenomenon, enabling the analysis of the interaction between culture and social practices in the context to social changes. The practical significance of the studies that understanding these inter connections will allow form or effective management of social changes and prediction of their consequences. The scientific novelty of the research is associated with the identification of static and dynamic levels of interconnection in the architectonics of the temporality regime, allowing for a concrete analysis of the impact of culture on the activities of actors and social changes, and vice versa. Limitations of the study include the need for additional empirical data to confirm theoretical conclusions. Therefore, future research prospects involve the collection of additional empirical data.

A discursive field of contested ethics: Reporting the UK’s blue economy in the making

This paper analyses newspaper coverage of ‘blue economy’ in the UK 2012–2020. It elaborates on Germond-Duret and Germond’s (2022) finding that UK media published a dominant development discourse concerning the UK’s marine space without reflecting on the risks of growth agendas. Articles from UK print media featuring ‘blue economy’ were compiled from LexisNexis then analysed to establish patterns of publishing, the investors, investments and projects reported, the experts cited and their statements on blue economy. Analysis reveals no sustained coverage, little that communicated with a national audience, little investigative reporting, and no predominance of London-based newspapers in news production. Reporting on blue economy was sporadic until a surge in 2020 that coincided with efforts to secure investments through local growth plans. Newspapers registered this buzz of activity, collecting statements from actors who used business ethics to express the legitimacy of their planning to build what they called a ‘blue economy’ even though this looked more like ‘blue growth’. A second group of actors including the Scottish Government announced plans to build a ‘sustainable blue economy’. These actors used the ethics of regional development, achieving net zero and protecting, enhancing or restoring ocean environments. Journalists reported critical views on these plans: inadequate attention to environmental protection, investment in activities seen as environmentally unsustainable or investments with limited regional development. Thus, analysis of statements on ‘blue economy’ reveals a discursive field featuring a confusion of contested ethical claims. This paper identifies the UK’s fragmented newspaper landscape and new architecture of public–private enterprise partnerships as important contexts shaping media engagement with blue economy.

Competing Claims of Caliphal Legitimacy: Al-Tamaghrouti’s Rihla and the Moroccan-Ottoman Early Modern Diplomatic Landscape

This article explores al-Tamaghrouti’s Rihla, Al-Nafhah al-Miskia fi al-Sifarah al-Turkiyah [The Fragrant Breeze in the Turkish Embassy], to illuminate his engagement with the spiritual and temporal legitimacy of caliphal claims in the early modern Islamicate Mediterranean. It argues that Moroccan embassies to the Sublime Porte were arenas where claims to temporal and spiritual superiority played themselves out in the form of competing caliphal symbolism. When situated within Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur’s caliphal vision, Al-Tamaghrouti’s account reveals a discursive landscape marked by contrasting claims to the superiority of the Moroccan normative order. His Rihla vividly captures the double-bind challenges faced by al-Mansur’s Morocco in the sixteenth century: Iberian imperialism and Ottoman expansionism. I resituate the insight that dynamic interactions among various Muslim-Christian universalistic principles maintained a paradoxical longevity of peaceful relations (Windler 2018) within the rubric of Muslim-Muslim relations to explore how different universalistic ideologies interact within inter-imperial/religious Muslim relations, particularly in the context of diplomatic engagements and political interactions. Al-Tamaghrouti drew on various spiritual and temporal motifs to construe a space of hermeneutic ambiguity whereby Sultan al-Mansur’s claims to universal caliphal leadership not only fulfills Mahdist qualities but transcends them, construing a discursive field in which al-Mansur emerges as a leader who transcends prophetic norms. By analyzing the interplay of power, religion, and diplomacy in al-Tamaghrouti’s travelogue, we gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of statecraft and the ongoing pursuit of legitimacy in the Islamic world.

Discourse Implementation of “New Sincerity” in Communicative Space of Media

The article represents the peculiarities of “new sincerity” discursive representation in a media text. The research into this phenomenon from sociocultural angle presupposes conducting a multifaceted analysis, in particular, in communicative-and-cognitive and communicative-and-discursive perspectives. It is shown that the willingness of a linguistic personality to share their own thoughts and feelings in the public space is manifested in the generation of media discourse of “new sincerity”. The referential aspects of the “new sincerity” are revealed. The author establishes a repertoire of denotative-identifying reference (concrete, abstract referents, referent event), and a set of subject-marked text reference (emotive, evaluative referents). The explication of “new sincerity” is proved to become a tool of linguistic creative activity, as a result of which discourse scenarios are generated. They are focused on influencing the addressee (explication of personal significance, hypersensitivity). The macrostructural positions of the radio discourse of the “new sincerity” are revealed: lead, detailing, evaluative, emotionally oriented parts. Thematic dominants that form the discursive field of “new sincerity” are identified: “everyday life”, “life’s troubles”, “demonstration of weaknesses, inability”, “personal achievements and failures”, “personal preferences, secrets, qualities, interests, habits”, “fears and phobias”, “desires and dreams”, “details of personal life”. The television and radio discourses are rich in emotionally and personally oriented topics and concepts of sincerity, which leads to a change in the status of sincerity and sensitivity from peripheral phenomena to discourse-forming ones. It determines significant functional, qualitative changes in television and radio discourse.

FRAMING, COUNTERFRAMING, AND DISCURSIVE FIELDS IN THE MOBILIZATIONS AGAINST CRIMINAL VIOLENCE IN MEXICO

In social movements literature, frame analyses have focused mainly on the strategic discourse of mobilized groups, a smaller proportion has discussed official frames, a minimal share has studied the dynamics of framing and counterframing, and barely a few studies have analyzed the development of discursive fields. This article broadens and deepens our understanding of discursive fields through a longitudinal analysis of four episodes of mobilization against criminal violence in Mexico. My main argument is that the discursive field of these movements has developed and transformed in a relational way from the framing and counterframing disputes between mobilized groups and governments, with observable changes in four dimensions: the central issue of the discussion, its participants, the diagnoses and proposed solutions, and the official responses to the protest. The article contributes to the literature by proposing an operationalization of the transformations in a discursive field that is useful for studying other social problems.

Crisis of loyalty and the defense of Empire in the estimates of the british Military class: colonial army during the inter-war period

In the interwar period, three powerful ideological factors – nationalism, pan-Islamism, and communism - simultaneously undermined the power of the metropolis in the dependent territories. Behind this façade, as was reasonably assumed in Delhi, Simla, Jerusalem, Cairo, and London, the interests of rival states were concealed. Overseas territories were seen both as a source of strength (economy, international prestige) and weakness (diversion of resources because of the leadership’s belief in the existence of an external threat).The historiography of the British Empire pays attention to how the colonial administrations and the metropolis responded to the challenges posed by the prospects of combining crises of loyalty and worsening international competition into a single problem of ensuring colonial order after the First World War. The question remains open about how the representatives of the military class themselves looked at such a cross-border threat. The article shows that, in this light, one of the key topics for the army corporation in the framework of the professional discussion was the institutionalization of the colonial army. To what extent did the esprit de corps of the British Army have an imperil character in terms of institutional peculiarities and public self-presentation? Was colonial service has been perceived as a priority over participation in conventional conflict in the training of the officer corps? How was it supposed to solve the problem of the growing obligations of the army to suppress anti-colonial protests (including guerrilla warfare in full-scale) against the background of worsening international relations, financial shortages and personnel restrictions? To what extend did the logics of the military thought development and corporate interests had mirrored the evolution of the colonial rule’ models after the Great War? As the results of the presented study demonstrates, these issues did not only constellate internal and interdepartmental discussions on the declared topic. Their participants had a hand in the further development of a wider discursive field – about the prospects for the future of the British Empire as such.

Toward a Generalizable Understanding of Rightist Movements: Utilizing the Revolutionary Right’s Value Wars in Iran (1995–2009) as a Case Study

Bringing rightist movement studies into the Iranian context, this study advances a generalizable understanding of the ideological, moral, and cultural activism of Islamist movements and their rightist counterparts. While numerous studies have discussed the economic explanation of rightist movements, I integrate Islamist movements in the Muslim world and rightist movements in the West to develop a generalizable cultural and moral explanation of rightist movements. Value and ideological conflicts, as well as moral outrage, drive this integrated understanding of rightist movements. The rise of innovative and contentious forms of millennialism in Iran—especially the increasing salience of the Jamkaran mosque, the rise of new media outlets and millennial discourses, and pertinent policies—provide evidence for proposing this generalizable understanding. I argue that the rise of performative contentions surrounding millennialism, known as Mahdaviat, within the pro-regime revolutionary rightist movement in Iran was Islamists’ ideological response to liberal threat perceptions. These threat perceptions were activated before the liberal Reform era (1997–2005). After the ascent of Ahmadinejad to power in 2005, ideological millennialism became the dominant discursive field in Iran’s state politics. Drawing on narratives of prominent Islamist figures and media personalities in Iran and events surrounding Mahdaviat, this paper advances a generalizable argument of the moral and cultural explanation of rightist movements.

The Phenomenon of Creative Heritage in Socio-Humanitarian Discourse

The main idea of the article is to address the phenomenon of creative heritage as an independent basic concept of modern socio-humanitarian research. Having analyzed a certain corpus of works in the field of memorial cultural practices, the authors came to the conclusion that there is no instrumental distinction of the concepts “cultural memory”, “artistic heritage”, “creative heritage” in this discursive field. The novelty of the study lies in analyzing the specificity of the concept “creative heritage”, as well as its role in contemporary socio-humanitarianism in general and art history in particular. Since the field of applied interest of the authors lies in the sphere of a specific art form — dance, practical conclusions are drawn in relation to it. It is emphasized that along with the generally accepted methods of research in a given discursive space — typological, structural, functional, biographical — the method of humanitarian blockchain and the concept of “artistic code of the epoch” proposed earlier by one of the co-authors can be used to study the creative heritage of a person (creative group) in the history of art. Emphasis is placed on the relevance of this research policy in connection with the current geopolitical agenda, the practices of “culture of cancellation” being implemented before our eyes, and, accordingly, the need to develop effective projects in the sphere of state cultural policy, forming the working contours of cultural memory and national identity. The problem of identifying, studying and preserving the creative heritage as part of the cultural heritage acquires special relevance in the realities of the modern historical stage — the “early digital era”, accompanied by the rapid development of digital technologies, including destructive ones such as deepfake. The practical potential of the development of this concept is particularly noted, which allows for the consistent preservation of traditions and innovations in artistic activities, to use both the formed array of cultural heritage of different levels and the potential of creative cultural industries.

Rethinking Conceptual Parameters of Choreography (in Social Spaces)—Actualization of Intensities in Discursive Fields

This article aims to take part in the ongoing discussion on the social and political potentialities as well as the conceptual premises of choreography and to contribute to the discussion about world relations in the choreographed movement. The much-used definition of Western choreography is “organized movement in space and time”. Although this definition always applies, it does not specify the world relations and worldmaking capacities of the choreographed movement. The main focus of this article is an ontological rethinking of the basic concepts of choreography: movement, space, time and organization, with the addition of kinaesthetic fields, kinaesthetic and spatial intelligence, virtual and actual realms, striated and smooth spaces (Deleuze and Guattari) and different conceptions of time. By analyzing these concepts, the aim is to provide a view of ontologically elementary units in choreography (such as a change in space, the difference over time and space, and passage to shared actuality), with a wider understanding of the inherent social relationality in choreographed movement. After discussing these topics, a few social choreography events and protests are described to represent different choreographic aims and organizational modes arising from each specific situation. The article concludes by proposing that choreography could be seen as organizing movement in space and time but also as a choreographic actualization of intensities in different discursive fields.

Metaphorical nominations of national leaders of the past as a phenomenon of actual political communication

The article is devoted to the analysis of the metaphorical nomination of the subject as an instrument of deep-datified mediatization of a political incident of a special nature - the death/departure from active politics of a political leader on a national scale. The theoretical basis is the theory of deep mediatization, the cognitive theory of metaphor and the sociology of memory. The authors prove that the analysis of the metaphorical nominations of outstanding statesmen who left this world makes it possible to identify the public's attitude to the current state of political problematization and the structural profile of current political conflicts. Media texts and user-generated content in foreign English-language media were selected as empirical material for analysis. The resulting dataset is analyzed on the basis of the theory of metaphor in political discourse. The article shows that the death/departure from active politics of a political leader of the distant or relatively close past acts as a significant information event that generates the actualization of the political discursive field in a datatized online environment. English-language online media or online versions of traditional media were selected by the monitoring method in the system Semanticforce.ai : Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Reuters for the period 08.30.2022 ‒ 09.10.2022. A total of 12320 texts were taken into account. By means of lexical and semantic analysis, the nominations were selected from the texts and their classification into lexical and thematic groups was carried out. As a result of the study, it is shown that the death/departure from active politics of a political leader of the distant or relatively close past acts as a significant information event that generates the actualization of the political discursive field in a datatized online environment. - English-speaking online media assess the personality of Mikhail Gorbachev in a generally positive way: one of a kind, democrat, peacemaker, etc. - The thematic group of lexemes with the meaning of paradoxicity and inconsistency in English-speaking media is one of the most representative in the analyzed media discourse. - The paradoxical nature of personality assessment is linked to the counter-predictive assessment of Mikhail Gorbachev's activities during his presidency in European and Russian politics.

Styles of Science and the Pluralist Turn: Between Inclusion and Exclusion (Tome 145, 7e Série, n°3-4, (2023)).

This paper aims to map out the links between style and science. Two moments mark the migration of style from the discursive field of the arts to that of the history and philosophy of science: the first occurred in the German-speaking world during the first decades of the twentieth century; the second appeared in an Anglo-American context between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, when the category of style became involved in the so-called "pluralist turn" in the history and philosophy of science. Taking this framework as its point of departure, the paper uncovers neglected contributions to the epistemology of style in order to foreground the concept of style as both a vector of inclusion (highlighting the plurality, historicity, and locality of scientific ways of knowing) and of exclusion (by generalizing the most correct ways of doing science and side-lining alternative ways of knowing).

Rethinking the Taxonomic Category “Sect/School” (Zong 宗) in the Construction of Modern Buddhism in China—Focusing on Hešeri Rushan’s Eight Schools and Two Practices (“Ba-Zong-Er-Xing 八宗二行”)

This paper explores the origin and role of the Buddhist taxonomic category “zong 宗” (“sect” or “school”) in the formation of modern Buddhism in China. It does so by examining a highly significant late-Qing Buddhist text titled Ba-zong-er-xing 八宗二行 (Eight Schools and Two Practices), which the author discovered recently in Japan. Authored by the 19th-century Manchu bannerman official Hešeri Rushan 赫舍裏如山, Eight Schools and Two Practices had a direct influence on the prominent Chinese lay Buddhist Yang Wenhui (1837–1911)’s Shi-zong-lue-shuo 十宗略说 (Brief Outline of the Ten Schools) (1913), which subsequently became the most important narrative model, known as the ten-school model, for describing Chinese Buddhist history in modern times. Historians have long recognized that Yang Wenhui’s Brief Outline of the Ten Schools (1913) was influenced by the medieval Japanese text hasshū kōyō 八宗綱要 (Essentials of the Eight Schools) composed by the 13th-century Japanese monk Gyōnen. Identifying, in detail, Hešeri Rushan’s influence on Yang Wenhui sheds light on how a narrative model for Buddhism in its national form grew out of trans-national intellectual sharing and interactions, and how Chinese Buddhism emerged from the interactive and mutually enabling Sino-Japanese discursive field of the 19th century. Gyōnen, Rushan, and Yang Wenhui all used the category zong, referring to both doctrine and school/sect, to organize narratives of Buddhist history. Their uses were, however, different. Gyōnen’s conception of zong (shū in Japanese) was fixed and exclusive, whereas zong for Rushan and Yang meant more of a mobile, nonexclusive identity. Without knowledge of Japanese Buddhism, Rushan made creative use of zong for describing the history and current condition of Chinese Buddhism, thereby superseding the traditional framework of lineage, doctrine, and precept, or zong 宗, jiao 教, lu 律. Rushan’s zong provided the necessary prerequisite knowledge for Yang Wenhui to understand Gyōnen’s theories, which he studied for constructing his own historical narrative and vision for modern Buddhism.