Variety Of Discourses Research Articles

Positive inclusive experiences of a same-sex desiring male Foundation Phase teacher

Background: Much work has been done to realise the discourse of diversity and gender equality in the perceived feminised Foundation Phase (FP) of teaching and learning. Part of the work was done through the inclusion of males in FP teaching to provide learners and teachers alike with diverse learning experiences. In South Africa, most research focuses on why FP teaching remains a feminised space, the marginalisation of few male FP teachers. However, less is known about male FP teachers’ positive inclusive experiences.Objectives: To contribute to the discussion by presenting Camagu’s case study, a same-sex desiring male FP teacher, and his positive inclusive experiences in a conservative context in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa.Methods: A qualitative single case study methodology employing photovoice to elicit Camagu’s positive inclusive experiences in FP teaching.Results: Findings revealed positive inclusive practices implemented by the school, discussed under two themes: Finding a sense of belonging through school structures and ‘It’s nice to have someone as different as you in the school …’ - Learners’ perspective.Conclusion: The study suggests a need for increased support for school leadership and teachers to promote inclusive policies and practices affirming diverse identities of all learners and teachers.Contribution: Camagu’s experiences offer new research dimension by sharing best practices for fostering inclusive school environments. The study challenges deeply rooted gender norms in South African education, particularly in FP teaching. It advocates for inclusion and acceptance of male teachers, regardless of their diverse gender and sexual orientations, promoting gender diversity.

Desired or contested futures? Competing discourse-coalitions for sustainable aviation in Sweden

ABSTRACT The future of aviation is a growing subject of debate, with different actors promoting diverse discourses on climate mitigation and sustainability. We employ argumentative discourse analysis to explore competing discourses around the future of aviation in Sweden, focusing empirically on the aviation industry and the flight-free movement. Drawing on thirty interviews, one workshop, and forty-three documents, we show how these actor groups represent two discourse-coalitions that articulate opposing discourses on the future of aviation: ‘Green flying’ and ‘Staying on the ground’. Following a logic of (techno)solutionism, Green flying anticipates aviation to maintain a dominant role in society and assures that technological progress will overcome the sector’s climate concerns in the future. Meanwhile, Staying on the ground follows a logic of prefiguration to demonstrate the desirability of an alternative and less aeromobile future, with actors embodying new norms and practices around avoiding flying in the present. The paper contributes to research in critical policy studies by demonstrating how actors with conflicting interests, values, and worldviews imagine and engage with futures differently in their attempts to shape transition pathways and policy-making in the present.

교육적 이상향으로서 인문주의에 나타난 ‘안과 밖’의 모순 - 독일 교양시민계층의 사례와 정전(正典) 논쟁을 중심으로

This thesis focuses on two historical cases by comparing the contradiction between the ideal of humanistic education and its realization in the concept of dialectical logic to the inner and outer. The first inside and outside is the socio-political consequence of the Bildung concept, which is the German typical of modern humanist educational ideology, and the educated middle class, which has made it a group identity. The result of the neo-humanistic educational ideals and the instrumentalization of education understood by the German educated middle class shows the modern origin of class inequality in schooling, which is a drastic problem in modern capitalist society. The second contradiction is that between the inner logic of European tradition and values, and the outer logic of non-European perspectives. Humanism has regarded the power-guaranteed classics, called canon, as an absolute value transcending time and society. However, since the middle of the 20th century, the discourse of diversity driven by multiculturalism, criticism of orientalism, feminism, and political correctness debate have raised questions about the canonization itself. Humanism tried to preserve its content value as a European heritage, but from the outside, charges of Eurocentrism were accused. The contradictory attributes of humanism are related to the aporia of discord between the ideology of education and reality.

Network Flow of Campaign Discourses and News Frames: The Changing Fortunes of Twitter/X as a Conduit for Frame-Building

ABSTRACT Periodic changes continue to impact the fortunes of Twitter as a political communication and news-sharing platform, particularly among diverse individual and institutional African users. Yet few studies provide empirical insights into Twitter’s changing role in campaign communication and its influence on news frame-building across the region, mainly in Nigeria. This study bridges the gap by analysing n = 763 tweets to determine how the political campaign discourse strategies in the tweeting activities of two prominent candidates influenced the news frame-building practices of mainstream newspapers during the four months of Nigeria’s 2019 presidential campaign. Findings affirm that the Twittersphere served as a playground where candidates deployed diverse discourse frames correlating with political agendas to show their intent to integrate Twitter into their campaign communication strategies. Moreover, the candidates’ tweets contribute to the journalistic frame-building process, although the newspapers tend to focus more on frame-setting than frame-sending due to the dynamic nature of journalistic content production across individual news outlets.

Intersectional cognitive schemas of diversity and inclusion in higher education

ABSTRACT Despite efforts towards diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, systemic oppression persists. This study reflects on how initiatives intended to foster inclusion interact with existing exclusionary mechanisms, impeding progress in equity projects. Specifically, we investigate the visual representation of diversity as an inclusion initiative and explore how the new diversity discourse is assimilated into established organizational cultures through intersectional cognitive schemas that help reproduce class, gender, race and ableist relations. Using a gendered lens to analyse university brochure photographs from five universities in Belgium, we identify the distribution of embodied dominant expressions of masculinity and femininity among white and non-white individuals across different professions. Our findings reveal a hierarchy of inclusion based on intersectional cognitive schemas that place non-white individuals under white women and those under white men. These schemas include meritocratic beliefs regarding the required capacities for each profession, with non-white women emerging as the most disadvantaged. The findings suggest that diversity and inclusion initiatives require critical re-evaluation, taking into account the intersectional and systemic nature of oppression.

Moving Beyond Thai-Centrism: Theorizing “Asia as Method” in Decolonial Education

Grounded in Chen’s idea, Asia as method, the author conceptualizes his theorizing with Winichakul’s signified meaning of Asia as a home for understanding how the author encounters educational phenomenon and having the authority to reconstitute Thai-centrism discourse in education. The notion of “home” signifies Thailand is part of Asia, which is used to move beyond the debate over “us vs. them”, which is non-productive and leads to other shortcomings. Asia as method as a frame of reference can be used to conceptualize how knowledge, culture, power, and discourse intersect in education. Given that the field of education is a cultural praxis in which diverse discourses, positionalities, and pedagogies deserve its place, education needs to be reconceptualized by moving beyond the legacy of western modernity-coloniality episteme and any forms of epistemic internal colonization, a legacy that continues to occur at the deep-rooted socio-cultural and psychological level and plays essential roles in constructing our subjectivity about educational ideals for cognitive and social justice. Thus, to move forward with decolonial and critical education projects, it is essential to explore multi-epistemology and methodology for nuanced understandings of education in the socio-cultural, political, historical, and environmental contexts. The relationship between Asia as method and decolonial and critical education projects need to be a point of departure for democratic deliberations against epistemicide and demonstration of how education as a form of cultural praxis works to internalize particular knowledge production for constructing a specific notion of citizenship in Thailand, Southeast Asia and beyond.

Data snapshots of the access and participation of ‘women’ academics in UK universities: Questioning continued gendered, racialised and geopolitical inequalities

AbstractReplete with espoused discourses of equality, diversity and inclusion within public bodies, is the UK, wherein lauded initiatives reward its universities’ commitments to increasing the access and positioning of ‘women’ in higher education. This paper contributes a critical quantitative analysis of the state of representation and participation of academic staff within these universities generally, and the majority‐female discipline of education particularly. Education is important because it has a direct relation to social change and ethicality. It may maintain or reproduce the status quo; however, exercising its transformative potential is essential for the success of various international frameworks aiming to address global inequality, including most recently the Sustainable Development Goals. Sensitised by QuantCrit principles, a descriptive statistical exploration was undertaken of the staff composition and employment conditions captured within the administrative datasets reported on academic staff by all the public universities in the devolved nations of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales from 2015 to 2020. The findings of this study confirmed: (i) the continuation of gendered inequalities across the academic hierarchy, particularly as the pyramid narrows to the assigned intellectual leadership position of ‘professor’; (ii) racialised, gendered inequalities in access to employment, and in positioning once employed; and (iii) more adverse conditions where gendered, racialised and geopolitical inequalities intersect, most extremely for Black African female academics. The study demonstrates that the centring of ‘race’ and consideration of nationality are required to challenge coloniality, and to bring to the fore the differential impacts of systems of discrimination within this globally influential sector.

New Trinitarian Ontologies? Trinitarian Theology, Theological Anthropology and Contemporary Critical Consciousness in Dialogue

AbstractThe recent translation into English of Klaus Hemmerle's Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology has led to a renewed interest in ontology and in the construction of new trinitarian ontologies. In his Theses, Hemmerle argues that a new trinitarian ontology discloses a new order of things: the analogy of Being becomes an analogy of the Trinity. A trinitarian ontology, therefore, turns on an axis of relationality and its impetus is reflexive and performative. In this article, I take up Hemmerle's argument that dialogue with theological anthropology is essential in the development of a trinitarian ontology. I engage the theological anthropologies of Kwok Pui‐Lan and Rita Nakashima Brock, whose work reflects a relational turn in theological anthropology, and bring these into dialogue with Hemmerle's insights. In doing so, I consider the implications of contemporary critical consciousness for thinking the human‐divine relationship and argue for a Christian trinitarian praxis which explicitly works to subvert narratives and structures that perpetuate the silencing of diverse discourses.

캐나다의 정체성과 캐나다 문학에 형상화된 야생동물

This paper examines the representation of wildlife in Marian Engel’s Bear as a departure from that of wildlife in realistic animal stories in Canada. Canada’s vast wilderness serves as a green space to escape civilization, to explore the self, and to provide solace and renewal. Engel’s Bear firmly stands in this tradition, and this book occupies a central place in Canadian identity and in the Canadian literary imagination. In Engel’s Bear, amazingly complex textual qualities can be noticed. This complex textual grain subverts the stable paradigm that human language can reflect the lives of wildlife. The diverse discourses found in the colonel’s library amplify the meaning of Lou’s bear to an overwhelming degree and make its meaning uncertain. The numerous images and stories about bears are juxtaposed and superimposed like a mosaic, making it difficult to determine the meaning of the bear that Lou encounters. Engel’s Bear is a remarkably successful retelling of a Canadian wildlife story that draws on Canadian artistic traditions with disturbing resonance.

Does political distance spur populist reportage? media framing of a geopolitical conflict

ABSTRACT In 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 of its Constitution that accorded special status to Jammu and Kashmir – a state within India and the subject of dispute between India and Pakistan. It became a political hot potato, with both the Indian and foreign media vigorously covering it for months – quite often, exhibiting conflicting views. While the Indian mainstream media are proximal to the political establishment and – thanks to their habitual coverage of the decades-old Kashmir conflict – have an outstretched understanding of political players and diverse discourses, the geographical distance of foreign media could embolden an unschooled standpoint affording political-ideological variations. To examine the relevance of political distance and differences in media narratives, a content analysis was performed on 162 news articles, using five factors – sources, topics, tone, literary-rhetorical devices and frames. Study results indicate that geopolitical distance inspirits populist reportage characterized by an anti-establishment view and advocacy of rights and privileges of the people, with statistical differences exhibited in terms of topic and source selection (filtering through gatekeeping) and employment of frames and devices (as a part of wider discourses). While the Indian media was more pro-abrogation to preserve national interests, the foreign media substantially defended protest and violence.

Strengthening digital citizenship through discourse analysis of presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the 2024 Presidential Election

With the rapid advancement of information technology and increased internet access in Indonesia, citizens' participation in the digital realm has grown substantially. Digital citizens' presence is crucial in the 2024 Presidential Election, playing a pivotal role in disseminating political information, influencing public opinion, and providing support to candidates. This study examines the digital citizens' discourse on presidential and vice-presidential candidate pairs in the 2024 election in the digital public sphere. The method of issue analysis employs topic modeling with keywords "anies muhaimin," "ganjar mahfud," and "prabowo gibran" on social media platform X. The research findings indicate that the discourse is clustered for each candidate pair. Narratives of support and optimism predominantly characterize the Anies-Muhaimin pair. The Ganjar-Mahfud pair exhibits clusters covering volunteer support, constitutional narratives, development aspirations, uniform buzzer narratives, and support from figures such as Yenny Wahid and advocacy for Palestine. The Prabowo-Gibran pair has clusters discussing support from the younger generation, political dynasty issues, PDIP reactions, and buzzer strategies with massive hashtags. Digital citizens engage in organized and diverse discourses regarding presidential and vice-presidential candidates, emphasizing the importance of understanding these dynamics to ensure responsible participation in the digital political process.

Youth and COVID-19 immunization: navigating the nexus of individualism and mistrust

ABSTRACT The objective of this study is to comprehensively examine the diverse discourses among unvaccinated young individuals against COVID-19 in the region of Madrid. Our aim is to gain insights into the motivations and underlying rationales they articulate to justify their decision to remain unvaccinated. To achieve this, we employ a methodological triangulation approach, encompassing in-depth interviews, urban space ethnography, and a social network analysis with a specific focus on Telegram groups. The qualitative data collected is subsequently analyzed using a combination of Grounded Theory procedures and critical discourse analysis. Ultimately, our findings reveal three fundamental discursive dimensions. These encompass the assertion of the right to individual autonomy, perceptions of social and political manipulation, and skepticism towards vaccines rooted in scientific skepticism.

Идентификация дискурсов советских профессионалов: социологический анализ

The article presents a sociological analysis of the discourses of Soviet professionals, as well as the identifica-tion of their antagonism and hegemony. Soviet production brochures containing author’s narratives of profes-sionals of several specialties and industries are analyzed. The sequence of discourse analysis is developed according to the methodological model of E. Laclau and Ch. Mouffe. The following categories are identified: key signs, articulation, moments, elements, domain of discursivity, discourse structure, nodal point, subject, discourse, slippage, antagonism, hegemony. Within the overarching hegemonic Soviet discourse, the following specific discourses are identified: quantitative and qualitative indicators, collectivism and individualism, men-torship and apprenticeship, personal responsibility and public good. Social practices for shaping these dis-courses were identified, as well as mechanisms for forming, maintaining, and preserving the social patterns of Soviet professionals. A generalizing classification of the identified discourses has been developed. Through a rigorous sociological analysis, this study sheds light on the diverse discourses among Soviet professionals and their role within the broader societal context. Furthermore, the developed methodology provides a framework for future studies on discourse analysis in similar socio-political contexts.

Interpreting Monastic Cartularies in Northwest Europe, 900-1200: Thirty Years of Scholarship

Since the publication of Les cartulaires in 1993, the study of cartularies has evolved in two main directions: as part of a broader documentary culture and studying regional or textual patterns using digital tools and postmodern approaches. This article offers an overview of interpretive trends since then, focusing on monastic cartularies in northwestern Europe in the Central Middle Ages. It outlines the diverse discourses incorporated in these cartularies, involving patrimony, commemoration, communal identity, and history. It then explores the variable forms of monastic cartularies, including smaller groupings of charters, and their functions. It argues that monastic writers carefully framed their re-presentation charters from their archives, to impart multiple messages to their medieval audiences.

Disrupting neoliberal diversity discourse with critical race college transition stories

AbstractThe college transition can challenge students’ sense‐making of diversity, race, and oppression. Yet prevailing neoliberal discourses touting the market value of diversity can thwart this potential by promoting color‐evasive messaging that avoids reckoning with racism. Guided by Critical Race Theory, we explored incoming students’ sense‐making of diversity (n = 421) after being exposed to either color‐evasive transition stories or more critical stories that discussed intersecting experiences with oppression. Using discourse analysis, we observed that Black, Latinx, and Native students and their Asian and white counterparts reproduced common neoliberal logics emphasizing the educational benefits of diversity. However, critical stories reminded Black, Latinx, and Native students of the limits of diversity to change structures. For Asian and white students, critical stories elicited more aversive reactions and more endorsements of how diversity broadens equal access. Understanding students’ diversity discourses can inform how universities engage conversations about difference to counteract neoliberal talk that undermines racial justice.

Discourses of cultural diversity and inclusion in film policy: The case of Flanders (2002–2022)

This article examines how Flemish film policy actors and industry stakeholders have conceptualized, framed and operationalized cultural diversity and inclusion over the past two decades (2002–2022). Drawing on critical discourse and interpretive policy analysis of policy documents and a series of in-depth expert interviews, we investigate how discourses of diversity in cultural policymaking are consistently shaped by (neo-)liberal continuations of deregulation, state neutrality and marketization. This article identifies three discursive shifts over the years, highlighting their complex tensions with the persistent, liberal-egalitarian principle of difference-blind universalism. Framing these tensions as a major obstacle in achieving a paradigmatic policy shift toward the inclusion of ethnic/diasporic minorities in Flemish cinema, we advance a more comprehensive way of understanding why media diversity policies have, so far, proven inadequate.

The agency of “doing something”: Ethnographic research on subject positions at predominantly White institutions

AbstractA small elite liberal arts college in the northeastern United States provides a context for the promotion and proliferation of a discourse of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This article considers projects emergent from a summer research fellowship offered to groups of faculty members and students. We compare the ways in which the group of students led by us and the group of students led by another set of faculty developed questions and explored aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We show that the other group began their efforts by foregrounding work on the production of inequality but ended up with a rather neoliberal subjectivity focused on the exploration of the self and one's feelings. Our group managed to avoid such an outcome, but, unlike the other group, our work got passed over for promotion on the College's website. Our insights seek to provide a context for the transformation of calls to “do something” in the academic institution in which we work into depoliticized representations of difference ripe for institutional display and promotion.

The Anti-Monarchist Turn in British Politics, Society, and Culture: Diana, Harry and After

This article returns to the context of the royal crises of the late nineteen-nineties and re-examines the origins of the term “anti-monarchism” and scholarship in this field. Taking the popularity of the monarchy as a starting point and acknowledging the weakness of an openly republican discourse in Britain rarely expressed through the platforms of the major political parties, anti-monarchism provides a measure of the shift in public opinion that resulted in a questioning of the influence, probity, public role, and privileged financial position of the royal house. The focus of this article is on public attitudes, and the move towards sympathy for younger, less establishment royal figures, defined by celebrity culture, who attract the empathy and interest of a younger public. In the following analysis, figures from Princess Diana to Harry and Meghan may be cast as pretenders, fulfilling the role of an alternative to the existing family and, in some views, a compromised court of the Windsors. Here there emerges the outline of a potentially “liberal” vision of monarchy that eschews the established conventions of royal life and reflects a discourse of diversity and pluralism. Further, this piece analyses the increasing relevance of anti-monarchist discourse against the turbulent backdrop of Brexit, debates around Scottish independence, a renewed emphasis on the importance of Englishness, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the potential break-up of the union. Locating Harry’s memoir Spare in a broader tradition of royal revelations and exposures, this article also explores the role of anti-monarchist currents in the former empire, particularly the Caribbean, and across the Commonwealth in shaping the discourse of anti-monarchism in Britain.

РИТОРИЧЕСКИЙ СУБЪЕКТ У СОФИСТА ГОРГИЯ: ЛОГОС, ФЕНОМЕН, БЫТИЕ

The article attempts to reconstruct Gorgias’ theory of logos. It is shown that the logos, hiding reality, produces infinite existential possibilities in the consciousness of the subject, connected not with truth, but with doxa. The article also suggests that Gorgias, unlike Parmenides, limited the use of the logos only to this world. In our world, the phenomena of consciousness, qualia, all perceptual acts are somehow linguistically encoded. When we approach the realm of the transcendent, the language falls silent, and any attempt to describe such an experience turn out to be profanation. Of the diverse discourses that exist in our world, according to Gorgias, only poetic creativity is authentic, which, being in no way connected with objective reality, creates an entirely fictional world of art, where only true empathy through catharsis, i.e. morality, is possible.

ONE FOOT OUT THE DOOR: INTERROGATING THE RISKY HIRE NARRATIVE IN STEM FACULTY CAREERS

Many faculty members believe that the racial demography of their disciplines afford highly qualified, racially minoritized scholars more power in the academic job market. As such, search committees may not offer faculty positions to candidates from these groups because they perceive them to be high risk and difficult to retain. One often cited study debunked this myth, showing that highly competitive racially minoritized candidates did not have more offers; however, the study was published over two decades ago and the narrative still remains. Using publicly available data from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, we identified 671 awardees and found no statistically significant differences in rates of early departure between highly qualified, racially minoritized scholars and other highly qualified racial groups across three different science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. We also used data from U.S. News and World Report university rankings, and the FY 2007 Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges to understand whether early departing faculty members across all racial categories leave for more prestigious institutions, as is assumed. Those results indicate a slight trend of early departing faculty members leaving for more prestigious institutions than their previous one. We situate these findings within the faculty diversity discourse and offer implications for practice and future research.