Distinct Discourses Research Articles

Risks of competing discourses of scientific responsibility in global ocean futures

Accelerated innovation in climate-impacted oceans is outpacing standards of scientific responsibility. Standards of responsibility are critical because they shape research agendas, funding flows, scientific practice, and how innovations are regulated. Here, we examine responsibility debates among 243 marine scientists and end-users proposing, trialling and/or implementing 76 innovations for climate-impacted oceans. We identify three distinct discourses: ‘science outside society’, ‘science for society’ and ‘science with society’. Competition within and across these discourses reveals heightened tensions between the need to protect scientific autonomy and freedom, and moral duty to ensure socially just and desirable ocean futures. Without thorough debate and oversight, the wide-reaching power of such unresolved tensions could propel marine science and ocean futures into volatile ethical and moral territory. Better connection and articulation of standards of responsibility with scientific motivations, practices, and funding are key to ensuring the transparency and accountability required to progress equitable and sustainable oceans.

The division of main and subordinate discourse information in real-time comprehension

The study examines the role of discourse structure representation in real-time comprehension, with a focus on how main discourse and subordinate discourse information guides language processing. Using a web-based visual world eyetracking paradigm, we investigated pronoun resolution in two types of relative clauses: appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and restrictive relative clauses (RRCs). While ARCs were generally considered as secondary and side-commentary information, aligning with subordinate discourse, RRCs were usually construed as part of the main discourse. Making use of this distinction between ARCs and RRCs, the current study examined pronoun resolution with two possible antecedents. In one condition (RRC), the two antecedents were part of the same discourse whereas in the other (ARC), they were in distinct discourse units. We found stronger competition between the two possible antecedents in the former condition than the latter. Our findings can potentially be explained by an encoding interference, where linguistic entities encoded with similar discourse status information can lead to an interference effect.

Exploring teacher discourse patterns: Comparative insights from novice and expert teachers in junior high school EFL contexts

Effective teacher discourse is critical in improving English as a foreign language (EFL) education, particularly in junior high schools in China, where students are at a crucial stage in their language development. As junior high school students are at a pivotal developmental stage, this research investigates the discourse patterns employed by novice and expert teachers to assess their impact on students' engagement and language acquisition. Despite the extensive research on teacher discourse in higher education, a significant gap remains regarding its application in compulsory primary education settings. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the current classroom discourse patterns of EFL teachers in junior high schools to identify the distinctions between novice and expert teachers and explore the factors contributing to these differences. This mixed-methods study includes qualitative and quantitative analyses. Verbatim transcriptions of six classes were used to create a corpus exceeding 20,000 words. The data were analysed using cross-tabulation in Excel and Chi-square tests in SPSS 22.0, complemented by semi-structured interviews with selected teachers. The theoretical framework is grounded in Long's（1996）interaction hypothesis, which underlines the significance of communication in facilitating language proficiency through meaningful interaction, and the analysis follows Sinclair and Coulthard's（1975）discourse patterns. The initiation-response-feedback (IRF) and initiation-response-0 (IR0) emerged as predominant patterns among both novice and expert teachers. Novice teachers predominantly relied on the basic IRF pattern, while expert teachers exhibited greater flexibility and more frequent use of variant patterns, such as IRFR, I[RnFn] and [InRn]F. Such adaptability among expert teachers creates a more interactive and engaging learning environment, thereby enhancing student participation and language acquisition. The study also identifies a novel variant structure, IRnF, used more frequently by expert teachers, underlining the benefits of group work in fostering teamwork and independent thinking. Expert teachers demonstrated a greater propensity to adapt their discourse strategies to foster a more production-oriented learning environment, which was the main factor driving the teachers' differing discourse patterns. This study significantly contributes to the analysis of teacher discourse in the junior high school EFL context, providing empirical evidence and practical insights that bridge the gap between theory and practice. By elucidating the distinct discourse practices of novice and expert teachers, this study offers valuable recommendations for teacher professional development and highlights the importance of employing varied and interactive discourse structures to improve EFL teaching effectiveness. The study also provides valuable insights for educators striving to improve their instructional practices and the language acquisition in EFL classrooms.

Transitioning to proof via writing scripts on the rules of a new discourse

Coming from the commognitive standpoint, we consider proof-based mathematics as a distinct discourse, the transition to which requires special rules for endorsement and rejection of mathematical statements. In this study, we investigate newcomers’ learning of these rules when being taught them explicitly. Our data come from academically motivated high-school students who took a special course in undergraduate mathematics. The course teacher dedicated three academic hours to introducing and explaining selected rules of proof to support students’ shift to the new discourse. The homework assignment consisted of typical proof-requiring problems and a scriptwriting task, asking students to compose a dialogue between fictional characters about a proof-related mistake of their choice. We analyzed the differences and similarities between the rules discussed in the classroom and those that students addressed and implemented in their proofs. The analysis showed that while students’ solutions to proof-requiring problems required rule implementation, fictitious dialogues opened the space for rule formulation and substantiation. In many cases, the students discussed the rules presented in the classroom, extending, elaborating, and specifying the teacher’s formulations. Furthermore, while the students’ proofs were mainly consistent with the teacher’s expectations, some of their rule formulations were more radical and overgeneralized than expected. These findings suggest that newcomers’ communication about the rules of proof may lag behind their capability to implement those rules to prove mathematical statements.

Riddles of Vedānta and the Revival of Kotta Satchidananda Murty

What is the central philosophy of the Upanishads? Is it theistic, monistic, polytheistic, panpsychistic, or something else? Are the world and God real or unreal? Such questions have been a riddle for ancient sages and modern scholars of the Vedāntic tradition, alike. Interestingly, if any thinker has made this discourse more puzzling, it is none other than Śaṅkarācārya (c. 7th–9th centuries CE); through his famous dictum, Brahma satyam jagat-mithya jivo brahmaiva naparah (“Brahman alone is real, the world is unreal. Jiva is not other than Brahman”), he almost changed the entire Vedāntic paradigm, akin to Nietzsche in Western thought with his “God is Dead” dictum. Now, before any thinker embarks on the Vedāntic path, they must first encounter Śaṅkarācārya’s thesis in one way or another, as only then can one engage with notions including ethics, aesthetics, bhakti, karma, and others. Following the same line of inquiry, this review article investigates Professor K. Satchidananda Murty’s distinctive discourse on Vedānta and his engagement with Śaṅkarācārya’s philosophy, as portrayed in a recent edition of some of his works, titled Vedānta and Bhagavadgītā: The Unpublished Writings of K. Satchidananda Murty, proficiently compiled by Professor Ashok Vohra and Kotta Ramesh.

On heritage pharmacology: Rethinking ‘heritage pathologies’ as tropes of care

This article develops the concept of heritage pharmacology as an encompassing critical framework in order to radically recast the interactions and efficacies of heritage as a particularly potent pharmacology of care. I critically engage with Stiegler's philosophic reflections On Pharmacology, which builds on Derrida's work and recasts pharmacology – a term usually reserved for that branch of the biomedical sciences dealing with drugs and their interactions and efficacies – in order to draw out the ‘curative-toxic’ dimensions at play in wider care tropes. By placing core concepts and practices of heritage and pharmacology in critical dialogue, my aim as heritage critic is to gain mutual insights into ‘care’, as that which links together the two domains of heritage and health, as otherwise distinct discourses, concepts, technics, and practices. My specific intervention rethinks the crucial role of ‘heritage pathologies’ and the underpinning memory-work at play within these tropes while grounding these in a case study of Jerusalem Syndrome (JS). I argue that it is the dynamic of heritage pathologies, best crystallized in JS debates, that invests us in the wider Stieglerian quest/ion of ‘pharmacology’, as a concern with ‘what makes life worth living’. Such quests ultimately take this article into the realpolitik of Palestine.

Mapping shared lexical bundles onto rhetorical moves in nursing research articles: A comparative study of paradigmatic variation

Abstract Previous studies have identified frequent lexical bundles associated with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research paradigms. These paradigmatic investigations of lexical bundles conducted thus far seem to have two limitations. One is that they have primarily concentrated on distinctive lexical bundles, without much analysis of the shared bundles in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research paradigms. Another shortcoming is that they tend not to explore in which contexts lexical bundles are likely to occur. These two problems deserve attention, as shared bundles are also frequently used to facilitate fluent linguistic production and analysing lexical bundles in their surrounding contexts can help reveal their specific textual meanings. To address these two limitations, this study seeks to link shared lexical bundles with rhetorical moves based on a corpus consisting of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods nursing research articles. The findings of this study show that in certain move-steps, shared lexical bundles have distinctive discourse functions in mixed methods research. Meanwhile, the findings also show that there are move-steps where shared lexical bundles have similar discourse functions in two or three research paradigms. Revealing shared lexical bundles’ discourse functions in specific contexts may enable learners to know where to use the bundles in a text.

You change the way you talk: Examining the network, toxicity and discourse of cross-platform users on Twitter and Parler during the 2020 US Presidential Election

This study examines code-switching behaviours of cross-platform social media users specifically between Twitter and Parler during the 2020 US Presidential Election. Utilising social identity theory as a framework, we examine messages related to voter fraud by users who migrated from Twitter to Parler following Twitter bans. Our analysis covers 38,798 accounts active on both platforms, analysing 1.5 million tweets and more than 100,000 parleys. The key findings of the study are as follows: First, we discovered differing levels of network homophily between high degree centrality and low-degree centrality cross-platform users, illustrating how individuals with varying degrees of influence engage differently across platforms. Second, we observed higher toxicity levels in heterogeneous networks, which include both in-group and out-group members, compared with homogeneous networks that are primarily composed of in-group members. This suggests the level of toxicity in online spaces correlates with the level of group diversity. Third, we found that cross-platform users created distinctive discourse community with in-group and out-group members, indicating that content and discussions within these networks are influenced by the social identity dynamics of the users. Our study contributes to the current research in political communication and information science by proposing comparative user analyses across multiple social media platforms. Focusing on a critical period of platform transition during a contentious political event, our study offers insights into the dynamics of online communities and the shifting nature of political language used by social media users.

Making Memory: Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland

This is a study of how collective memory forms out of traumatic experience. It addresses questions about the formation of collective identity out of individual trauma, and, in turn, how individual and collective trauma intertwine. This process of memory formation is illustrated through the example of an incident that took place in Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972, an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. A lawyer representing the families of the victims once succinctly described it as a ‘mass murder perpetrated before the world’s media [. . . which] took place over a period of ten to twelve minutes, within a geographical space not much bigger than two football pitches’. To explain how this ‘ten to twelve’ minutes became a powerful symbol of the excesses of state violence and a memory forever linked to Ireland’s history I apply the theory of cultural trauma. Previous research has identified several arenas of memory, ‘social spaces where different narratives of collective memory interact [. . .] distinct discourses that are tied to specific individuals, organizations, and institutions that advocate specific narratives through specific forms of media’. Four areas were identified, the political, the academic, the artistic, and the community. Along with the theory of cultural trauma, I apply that framework in analyzing the memory and memorialization of Bloody Sunday.

Adapting agroforestry to upland farming systems: narratives from smallholder farmers in Northwest Vietnam

Fruit tree–based agroforestry has been promoted as an alternative farming practice in upland Northwest Vietnam to replace monocultures of staple crops. Although many studies have focused on evaluating the performance of agroforestry systems at the plot level, research on how farmers perceive and evaluate agroforestry considering whole-farm contexts is limited. We explored the perceptions and reasoned management decisions of agroforestry farmers to uncover challenges that hinder the wider use of agroforestry, and we assessed farmers’ strategies for effective management of adoption challenges. We combined the Q methodology and the systems thinking approach. With the Q methodology, we explored prevalent discourses among the members of the farming community on the impact of agroforestry. Systems thinking elucidated a system-wide understanding of farmers’ adaptive decision-making processes. By combining the two approaches, we uncovered the dynamics that shape farmers’ perceptions and the rationale behind their management of the adoption process. Through the Q method, we identified three distinct discourses among participants. Two of these discourses are in favor of agroforestry, highlighting its beneficial impacts on livelihoods and the environment, e.g., through diversification of household income and through soil erosion control. We also generated a collective development pathway outlining how farmers navigated and adapted agroforestry practices to overcome adoption challenges through a whole-system approach to farm resource management. We identified structural barriers, such as unstable farm-gate prices, that may need high-level interventions. Our study adds a new dimension to the assessment of agroforestry through farmers’ perspectives and contributes to the existing body of research on knowledge systems in agroforestry. Considering farmers’ views and their ways of reasoning during innovation processes may allow tailoring appropriate innovations by accounting for unique farm situations and local farming systems. Such locally generated knowledge will have relevance for real-world contexts and therefore be useful for guiding actions.

Sex, Gender, and Devotional Desire: Refiguring Bodily Identities in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Discourse

Many of the debates among theorists of the body in feminist and gender studies center on the gendered body and its relation to the sexed body, with the validity of the sex/gender distinction itself a topic of contention. On the one hand, feminist advocates of social constructionism tend to distinguish between sex and gender, in which sex (male or female) is identified with the biological body as a “natural” datum and gender (masculine or feminine) is a second-order sociocultural construction that is superimposed as an ideological superstructure on this “natural” base. On the other hand, feminist advocates of sexual difference such as Judith Butler call into question the sex/gender distinction and insist that the sexed body, like gender, is socially constructed. This article brings these contemporary feminist interlocutors into conversation with sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authorities who developed a distinctive discourse of embodiment in which they frame the categories of sex and gender in relation to devotional desire in their ontological theories of bodily identities. The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment explodes notions of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, materiality, and gender on both the human and divine planes and challenges prevailing body theories by positing bodies beyond matter, personhood beyond matter, and gender beyond sex.

Pragmatic patterns and discourses on Twitter: Unpacking perspectives in the discussion of the Turów lignite mine

Much public debate today is carried out on Twitter (now X), where the participants employ a range of diverse resources to convey their ideas effectively. Disentangling the resources into clear and understandable structures and patterns presents a fresh challenge for discourse pragmatics. This article addresses that challenge methodologically by evaluating existing methods for identifying and classifying pragmatic patterns, revealing their drawbacks, and advocating for a new coding system. This categorizes tweets based on a post's primary pragmatic function (informing, appealing, or expressing emotivity), considering subsidiary functions. The study then applies this new scheme to analyze the Twitter debate on the Polish Turów lignite mine, which became a subject of international dispute as the Czech and European authorities sought the mine's closure to eliminate its negative environmental impact. The debate unfolds mainly in Polish, Czech, and English, each language being associated with a distinct discourse. The English discourse emphasizes a transnational appeal for widespread decarbonization, contrasting with the predominantly oppositional, national political perspectives in the Polish and Czech discourses. These rely heavily on emotivity directed, in the Polish case, primarily against the country's ruling party, and in the Czech one against the deal eventually reached with Poland to mitigate the problems.

A fence of opportunity

Abstract This article deconstructs the parliamentary discourses regarding two migratory incidents in Ceuta, May 2021, and Melilla, June 2022, when hundreds of people attempted to cross the fences that separate Morocco from Spain. Most of them were immediately deported, many injured, and several died. This analysis compares the density of populist, anti-populist, re-bordering, and de-bordering references in forty-five speeches at the Spanish Congress regarding both tragic events. Vox speakers articulate a distinct discourse that instrumentalises these incidents to convey a sense of existential crisis and to (re)define a populist right-wing political identity based on moral hierarchies, a homogenising conception of society and the exclusion of a dangerous “other.” Meanwhile some parties applied a populist logic to promote de-bordering views and others combined re-bordering and de-bordering claims without imposing a populist frame. This was an opportunity to exhibit a progressive sense of place in borderlands contrasting with Vox’s reactionary one.

University Students’ Conceptualisation of AI Literacy: Theory and Empirical Evidence

This research endeavours to systematically investigate the multifaceted domain of AI literacy, given the pervasive impact of artificial intelligence on diverse facets of contemporary human existence. The inquiry is motivated by a fundamental question posed to educators: how best to cultivate AI literacies and competencies and how these proficiencies are structured and influenced. Employing a rigorous two-part methodology, the initial phase scrutinises 28 studies from the SCOPUS database, unveiling five distinct discourses germane to AI literacy. Subsequently, the second phase involves the administration of questionnaires to 73 students, whose responses undergo thematic analysis to discern patterns within the four domains delineated by Ng et al. The ensuing discourse underscores a pivotal revelation: despite formal adherence to established discourses, the conceptualisation of AI literacy necessitates a departure from conventional perspectives. Ethical principles, elucidated by students, emerge not merely as individual components but as integral facets of a broader societal literacy profile, thereby advocating a paradigm shift towards social reflection. This novel insight prompts a critical re-evaluation of AI literacy’s prevailing assumptions and conceptual frameworks, urging a transition towards models grounded in ecological or network dynamic interactionist principles.

Assessment of transdisciplinarity by its participants: the case of Tertúlias do Montado, Alentejo, Portugal

AbstractEvaluation plays a pivotal role in transdisciplinary (TD) research, often discussed during funding stages or when assessing project impacts. A few studies delve into the participant perspective when examining the quality of transdisciplinarity. Our work contributes to this area of assessment. Rather than providing a definitive definition of transdisciplinarity, we developed a questionnaire to evaluate a set of TD principles within a specific TD initiative. We collected insights from 100 individuals out of a pool of 200 participants engaged in a TD initiative since 2016. Given the long-term nature of the case study, our sample included both frequent and occasional participants. Using non-parametric statistical, we concluded that frequent participants express higher satisfaction with their involvement, identify more outcomes stemming from their participation, and assign greater importance to TD principles. These findings highlight the significant impact of investing in long-term TD initiatives. Additionally, our questionnaires featured open-ended questions to capture participants’ individual definition of the initiative, along with their perceived benefits and drawbacks. Through content analysis, we identified two distinct discourses: positivism and postpositivism. The positivist discourse predominantly features male participants over 60 years of age, primarily from the research community. These participants express lower satisfaction with their participation and assign less value to TD principles. We found no association between positivism/postpositivism and participation frequency (i.e., frequent/casual). This suggests that these two discourses can coexist and interact within a TD environment. Nevertheless, the perceived value of TD is not uniform across these groups, indicating that TD may not align with everyone’s objectives, even in complex contexts where the approach is considered essential.

Understanding Children’s Experiences of Care in Their School Lives Through Participatory Research Methods: A Comparative Analysis of Focus Group Discussions and Photovoice

The theoretical development of the ‘new sociology of childhood,’ coinciding with the recognition of children’s right to express their voice and have it heard on matters affecting them, has inspired the proliferation of participatory methods in research with and by children. This paper addresses a gap in the methodological literature by comparing two such participatory methods, focus group discussions and photovoice, in an exploration of care in children’s school lives. Drawing on the narratives of 49 Second Class children (typically aged eight to nine years) participating in Ireland’s national longitudinal study of primary schooling, Children School Lives ( https://www.cslstudy.ie ), the paper details the data collection, processing, and analysis associated with each method, as well as the emergent themes arising from each. We draw on our exploration of care in children’s school lives in order to illustrate the comparison of the two participatory methods. Our comparative analysis underscores the greater complexity associated with the data collection, processing, and analysis for photovoice. In addition, emergent themes suggest two distinct discourses on care arising from each method. While narratives from focus group discussions offer descriptive accounts of children’s experiences, photovoice data provide a more personal, emotive, and in-depth account of care in children’s school lives. Methodological decisions taken in this study and implications for future research which employs participatory methods with children are discussed and positioned within the wider literature.

Įkūnijimas ir bendrystės jausmas kalbų mokymosi nuotoliniu būdu kontekstuose

This paper studies how embodiment is realised in distance and online language learning. Eleven students from the University of Helsinki Language Centre participated in the study. The interviews conducted were thematic, and the research question was as follow: How is embodiment evident in students’ narratives about online language learning? I apply nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon 2004, 2007, 2009) as the analytical method of this study. Focusing on the connections between narratives of historical bodies and language learning in online contexts, four distinct discourses emerged in the data: 1) the lack of embodiment; 2) embodiment as a matter of power; 3) private, safety-giving embodiment; and 4) embodiment in relation to the material and social world.

How do secondary students engage in complex problem-solving processes in a STEM project?

STEM education emphasizes improving student learning by linking abstract knowledge with real-world problems and engaging students in authentic projects to solve real-world problems. Accordingly, project-based learning has been widely promoted in STEM programs and has shown a promising impact on student learning. However, solving real-world problems in STEM projects involves complex processes. It remains unclear how students engage in complex problem-solving processes in STEM projects and how their processes may differ among students. This study was conducted with secondary school students who engaged in a design-based STEM project in small groups. The findings show that questioning and responding appeared most frequently and connected with other elements in group discourse, while argumentation and justification appeared least frequently. The findings reveal distinctive discourse patterns that differ among high-, medium- and low-performance groups, based on which the implications of the findings were discussed.

Investigating systemic and social dynamics of food loss and waste: An application of waste regime theory to food production in Aotearoa New Zealand

This research investigates the relationships of social and discursive effects on food loss and waste (FLW) in primary food production through a case study of the kiwifruit industry in Aotearoa New Zealand by using ‘waste regime theory’, which was first developed by Science and Technology Studies scholar Zsuzsa Gille as an organising concept. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews and analysis of industry and policy documents are interpreted through thematic analysis to explore the production, politics and representation of FLW, and to demonstrate the ways in which these factors interact to enact a ‘food waste regime’. The findings identify two distinct discourses of FLW: either as consequence of supply chain dynamics, or as a consequence of market driven quality assurance (QA) requirements. The former is seen as opening possibilities for technical interventions. The other is seen to be a baked-in structural reality of the industry that doesn’t allow for any strategic intervention. Either discourse arguably has the effect of invisibilising different aspects of FLW in the sector and potentially reducing the perceived need interventions by managers at a systemic level in the sector.

A lexical bundle analysis of art-related crowdfunding projects

In the context of Open Science, crowdfunding projects are gaining increasing attention. They are becoming an alternative way of funding research and an opportunity for researchers across the disciplines to share and disseminate their work widely while engaging their potential backers. The aim of this paper is to analyze crowdfunding projects online by examining language-in-use at the level of phraseology, understanding the latter from a lexical bundle approach. Using corpus analytical approaches, the study findings show that there is a recurrence of lexical bundles conveying deontic meanings used to persuade the potential backers that the project and the research methods proposed for carrying it out are reliable and therefore trustable. Lexical bundles expressing gratitude and politeness are also recurrent, not unexpected considering that crowdfunding proposals aim to prompt the audience’s participation through donation. The findings further reveal how distinct discourse style and language features especially frequent in the conversational register realise the main communicative purpose of the genre, namely, to build credibility and trust in research with a view to persuasively enticing the backers’ audiences to donate money.