Figure In Discourse Research Articles

Why is there a special issue on perirhinal cortex in a journal called hippocampus? The perirhinal cortex in historical perspective

Despite its small size, the perirhinal cortex (PRh) plays a central role in understanding the cerebral cortex, vision, and memory; it figures in discussions of cognitive capacities as diverse as object perception, semantic knowledge, feelings of familiarity, and conscious recollection. Two conceptual constructs have encompassed PRh. The current orthodoxy incorporates PRh within the medial temporal lobe (MTL) as a memory area; an alternative considers PRh to be a sensory area with a role in both perception and memory. A historical perspective provides insight into both these ideas. PRh came to be included in the MTL because of two accidents of history. In evolutionary history, the hippocampus migrated from its ancestral situation as medial cortex into the temporal lobe; in the history of neuropsychology, a "memory system" that originally consisted of the amygdala and hippocampus came to include PRh. These two histories explain why a part of the sensory neocortex, PRh, entered into the conceptual construct called the MTL. They also explain why some experimental results seem to exclude a perceptual function for this sensory area, while others embrace perception. The exclusion of perceptual functions results from a history of categorizing tasks as perceptual or mnemonic, often on inadequate grounds. By exploring the role of PRh in encoding, representing, and retrieving stimulus information, it can be understood as a part of the sensory neocortex, one that has the same relationship with the hippocampus as do other parts of the neocortex that evolved at about the same time.

Property-Owning Democracy, Civic Education, and the Reasonable Surfer

Property-Owning Democracy, Civic Education, and the Reasonable Surfer

Margaret Jewett Burland, Strange Words: Retelling and Reception in the Medieval Roland Textual TraditionStrange Words: Retelling and Reception in the Medieval Roland Textual Tradition. Margaret Jewett Burland. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Pp. ix+332.

<i>Margaret Jewett Burland</i>, Strange Words: Retelling and Reception in the Medieval Roland Textual Tradition<i>Strange Words: Retelling and Reception in the Medieval Roland Textual Tradition</i>. Margaret Jewett Burland. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Pp. ix+332.

Moral Arguments in the Debate over Nanotechnologies: Are We Talking Past Each Other?

How are we to understand the fact that the philosophical debate over nanotechnologies has been reduced to a clash of seemingly preprogrammed arguments and counterarguments that paralyzes all rational discussion of the ultimate ethical question of social acceptability in matters of nanotechnological development? With this issue as its starting point, the study reported on here, intended to further comprehension of the issues rather than provide a cause-and-effect explanation, seeks to achieve a rational grasp of what is being said through the appeals made to this or that principle in the range of arguments put forward in publications on the subject. We present the results of the study’s analyses in two parts. In the first, we lay out the seven categories of argument that emerged from an analysis of the literature: the arguments based on nature, dignity, the good life, utility, equity, autonomy, and rights. In the second part, we present the background moral stances that support each category of argument. Identifying the different categories of argument and the moral stance that underlies each category will enable a better grasp of the reasons for the multiplicity of the arguments that figure in discussions of the acceptability of nanotechnologies and will ultimately contribute to overcoming the tendency towards talking past each other that all too often disfigures the exchange. Clarifying the implications of the moral arguments deployed in the debate over nanotechnologies may make it possible to reduce the confusion observable in these exchanges and contribute to a better grasp of the reasons for their current unproductiveness.

Thronging the Ear: Hopkins and the Counterpoint of Prosody

Thronging the Ear:Hopkins and the Counterpoint of Prosody John Golden Hopkins Quarterly, 38.1-2, published by agreement of the editors in conjunction with Victorian Poetry, 49, no.2, as sharing the common theme, “Prosody.” "I fumble a little at music, at counterpoint, of which in course of time I shall come to know something; for this, like every other study, after some drudgery yields up its secrets, which seem inpenetrable [sic] at first."1 Hopkins, aged thirty-nine, wrote this to Richard Dixon in June, 1883; he would die six years later. There is more than humility in this self-caricature: Hopkins's life-long interest in music took the form of a perpetual amateur's struggle. As a child, he sang rounds and songs written by his father, but he could not read music. He never learned to play an instrument well, but in the last decade of his life he set several poems (usually not his own) to music. He would be seen in his last years at University College, Dublin, sitting at a piano and strumming with one finger, trying out melodies.2 Yet Hopkins has become a central figure in discussions of the relation of music to prosody in particular because of his notion of counterpoint rhythm. Counterpoint as a possibility of poetic rhythm continues to raise questions for prosodic theorists, but Hopkins's own difficulties with counterpoint suggest that productive difficulty itself lies at the root of its application to prosody, indeed at the root of the relation of music to prosody generally. Hopkins's aesthetic generalization of counterpoint, finally, illuminates his innovative sense of the dynamic, layered nature of cognition and self-recognition. It is in the "Author's Preface" of 1883, the year of his letter to Dixon about learning musical counterpoint, that Hopkins's most influential description of "Counterpoint Rhythm" occurs. Hopkins describes a reversal of meter (usually trochees substituted for iambs) for two consecutive feet: [Such a reversal] must be due either to great want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the superinducing or mounting of a new rhythm upon the old; and since the new or [End Page 51] mounted rhythm is actually heard and at the same time the mind naturally supplies the natural or standard foregoing rhythm, for we do not forget what the rhythm is that by rights we should be hearing, two rhythms are in some manner running at once and we have something answerable to counterpoint in music, which is two or more strains of tune going on together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm.3 The ambiguity left open here—that the reversed feet might indicate simply the poet's "great want of ear"—is not duplicated on the side of the reader: "the mind," Hopkins unequivocally asserts, "naturally supplies the natural or foregoing rhythm" as it hears the "new" one. And yet this dual action is itself an open question for later critics. Thus John Hollander in 1975 urges us to see Hopkins's term less as a "fruitful analogy" than as a "startling metaphor":4 "[N]otice how Hopkins's own metaphors of 'superinducing or mounting a new rhythm on the old' lead him to an actually inaccurate musical analogy. The correct one would be rather one of syncopation." Hollander allows Hopkins a passage out of this semantic cornering by denying Hopkins the aural metaphor. What Hopkins was really thinking of, Hollander explains, was a visual image. "For Hopkins, counterpoint is generated by two musical lines, commensurate in category; but the two kinds of rhythm, the potential or schematic and the actual, are hardly so." Hopkins must have imagined the poetic line supplemented by two "alternative strings of scansion marks," one for the standard and one for the mounted rhythm. "Together, these two strings of syllable markers might have seemed to Hopkins like a staff of musical notation, like two musical lines being simultaneously generated."5 By removing Hopkins's metaphor to the visual realm, Hollander defuses even its power to "startl[e]" us: he makes it another formal notation, a side-effect of mere scansion. Derek Attridge, in The Rhythms of English Poetry, similarly refuses any audible reality...

The eye of the storm

The claim to be a profession traditionally assumes the need for a University level qualification. In a previously unregulated area of practice, the development of a professional qualification is thus central to the professionalisation process. In Scotland, the development of a Teaching Qualification for Adult Literacies practitioners became the focal point for the tensions in the broader professionalisation project and a site of discursive contestation in an emergent field of practice. This paper explores the play of power and resistance, drawing primarily on two separate but related research studies– a policy analysis and an exploration of practitioners' conceptualisations of practice. Whilst the first study explicitly used the methodological framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2003) and the second, Personal Construct Theory (Kelly, 1955), they are connected by their postmodern focus on language use and an interest in how practitioners are managed by and, in turn, manage and mediate managerial and professional forms of power; both aimed to examine 'how discourse figures in the processes of change' (Fairclough, 2003, p. 205). Brought into relationship with one another in the context of the nexus of power relations formed by the development of the new qualification, they illuminate the multiple 'projects' competing discursively in the space.

Critical Discourse Analysis in Political Studies: An Illustrative Analysis of the ‘Empowerment’ Agenda

In the first sections of this article I give a simple and general account of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and how it might contribute to the theoretical and methodological repertoire of political studies through its discourse-dialectical theory of how discourse figures as an aspect of social practices without reducing those practices to discourse. In the final section I give a short illustrative example of how a CDA approach to detailed textual analysis might also be applied to specific texts (or groups of texts) in the political arena: in the example I take the press release in which the national UK government heralded its recent ‘empowerment’ White Paper, ‘Communities in Control’.

Frank O’Hara and the Turn to Friendship

A couple of bright new books on Frank O'Hara and the New York School of poets underscore two notable trends in scholarship on twentieth-century U.S. poetry and culture. The first of these trends is fairly easy to describe. Since his stunning death in 1966—struck by a beach buggy late at night on Fire Island—O'Hara has been transformed from an influential though little-known poet and supporter of experimental art into a full-fledged member of the literary canon. Donald Allen's The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1971) and Marjorie Perloff's Frank O'Hara: Poet among Painters (1977) were early and indispensable steps in the rise of pop ular and scholarly interest in O'Hara, which continued apace throughout the 1980s and '90s, fueled in part by the invention of queer theory and the growing influence of cultural studies. O'Hara's poems captured a number of movements that scholars were keen to describe, flitting easily across the great divide between high art and popular culture, meditating cleverly on the practice of everyday life in the postindustrial city, and addressing both the pleasures and difficulties of articulating queer desire in the public sphere. By now we have a biography, sev eral tributes and essay collections, and recent books on O'Hara and the New York School marketed to broader audiences.1 I'm so grateful to you! O'Hara might have exclaimed to his growing audience in the new millennium, with his char acteristic combination of self-deprecating ambition and joy.2 Lytle Shaw's Frank O'Hara: The Poetics ojCoterie and Andrew Epstein's Beauti ful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry confirm O'Hara's position as a charismatic and irresistible figure in discussions of postwar American poetry. They underscore a second trend as well, at once more intriguing and more difficult to

Fighting for space in supervision: fantasies, fairytales, fictions and fallacies

In higher education the supervision of graduate research students is an uncertain practice. When given the opportunity, supervisors and students ask what it means and how it should be done. In this paper, the author interprets the uncertain state of supervision affairs as an effect of many competing and contradictory social discourses that offer us more ways of making sense of supervision than in the past. Each discourse figures its Loyal Supervisor and Student, its ‘Proper’ Supervision, in particular ways. These are the multiple and contradictory fantasies, fairytales, fictions and fallacies of the title. First each discourse is described and then a close reading is given of some extracts of data from the author's research with Master's students and their supervisors to illustrate various discourses at work. Finally, there is discussion of which discourses are the most powerful at the present time and some implications, both dangers and fruitful possibilities, of the author's interpretation are suggested.

"Israël selon la chair" et "Israël selon l’esprit" : philo-soémitisme et réforme chez Roger Williams

The aim of this paper is to examine the historical thesis whereby the Old Testament and Judaizing’ culture of British Calvinism contributed to the readmission of the Jews into England in the mid-17th century. The example of Roger Williams’ debates with those supporting a national church in the 1640s would seem to show, however, that the Jews were still considered as figures of discourse and were not considered as ‘real’, contemporary Jews. After the collapse of the national Episcopalian church, the issue of the Reformation was more relevant than ever. A new religious elite attempted to secure their authority by holding as the ultimate foundations of reformed society the institutional models of the Pentateuch, though the Jews were accorded no place within it. Conversely, Williams is opposed to identification with Israel but proves willing to welcome the Jews into the state. Nevertheless, this toleration is only the indirect consequence of a political theory founded on the distinction between divine law and natural law, where the figure of the Jew is anathema and Judaism is a counter-model.

'The Contingency of Universality': Some Thoughts on Discourse and Realism

Constructionism and realism are dominantly regarded as incompatible meta-theories. In this article, I argue rather that a realist epistemology offers some premises that can usefully ground discourse analysis in social scientific research. This has implications for the latter ' s modes of theorising and its potential for social criticism. The argument is in two moves. First, I discuss how the concept of discourse figures in three major critical traditions of social theoretical, sociological and political theoretical thinking. I argue that, for different reasons each, these traditions offer a less than satisfactory answer to the ontological question of how discourse figures in the social and/or to the epistemological question of how discourse is operationalised in theory and research. Second, I turn to a discussion of critical realist meta-theory. I critically discuss Bhaskar ' s ontology of the real and suggest that realist epistemology should be combined with a constructionist ontology, along the lines of feminist theorising. This is useful in providing discourse theory and analysis with more effective accounts on the nature of the social and on the modes of social inquiry. In so doing, I sketch a view of discourse informed by critical realist elements and point to its conceptual and analytical advantages.

Treating Eating Disorders: Ethical, Legal and Personal Issues

As someone who specialises in eating disorders, I greeted this book with some excitement. Here was a book that was going to tell me how to do it! In fact it didn’t. It brings together leading international figures in discussions of issues pertaining to treating this complex illness. It doesn’t bring anything new but makes information accessible in one volume.

Bodies and God: Poststructuralist Feminists Return to the Fold of Spiritual Materialism

In contemporary feminist theory, no issue is more vexed than that of determining the relations between the feminine body as a figure in discourse and as material presence or biological entity. The debates surrounding this question in recent years have been the most highly charged, but also perhaps the most fruitful. -Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sally Shuttleworth, in their introduction to Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science

The brain-life theory: towards a consistent biological definition of humanness.

This paper suggests that medically the term a 'human being' should be defined by the presence of an active human brain. The brain is the only unique and irreplaceable organ in the human body, as the orchestrator of all organ systems and the seat of personality. Thus, the presence or absence of brain life truly defines the presence or absence of human life in the medical sense. When viewed in this way, human life may be seen as a continuous spectrum between the onset of brain life in utero (eight weeks gestation), until the occurrence of brain death. At any point human tissue or organ systems may be present, but without the presence of a functional human brain, these do not constitute a 'human being', at least in a medical sense. The implications of this theory for various ethical concerns such as in vitro fertilisation and abortion are discussed. This theory is the most consistent possible for the definition of a human being with no contradictions inherent. However, having a good theory of definition of a 'human being' does not necessarily solve the ethical problems discussed herein.

The Introduction to Mark's Gospel

It is widely assumed that Mark's introduction consists of i. 1–13 and that these verses ‘introduce’ what Mark has to say. At the same time, there is little agreement about what it is that Mark wants to say. For example, Bultmann has contended that it was Mark's aim to combine the Hellenistic kerygma with the traditions about Jesus; at the same time, he agrees with Wrede that the ‘Messianic secret’ is designed to explain why faith arose only after Easter. More recently, Schille has held that Mark answers the question, How is one to grasp more precisely the nature of Jesus' work, since he not only suffered but appeared as Son of God? Eduard Schweizer, on the other hand, emphasizes Mark's interest in discipleship and the way of the cross as the meaning of the kerygma, and sees this as a polemic against a Gnosticism in which Jesus is in danger of becoming a mere symbol of the kerygma. T. A. Burkill claims that Mark is concerned with ‘the exposition of two central themes, namely, the secret fact of the messianic status of Jesus and the mysterious meaning of that fact’, the first controlling the first half, the second the latter half of the gospel. We need not present an exhaustive catalogue of suggested aims for Mark in order to make the point that unless Mark is haphazard, each of these alleged aims is probably reflected in the introduction—both in its scope and content. Yet almost never does the introduction figure in discussions of Mark' purpose. This same phenomenon doubtless lies behind the fact that there is relatively little discussion about what constitutes the introduction. It is the purpose of this article to analyse the introduction in the light of these two questions and their bearing on each other: theextentof the introduction and theintentof the author. This investigation is based squarely on what is obvious—that Mark assumed his contemporary readers (in contrast with modern scholars) did not have the whole of his work in mind when they began, and that therefore the opening paragraph was his opportunity to orient them to what he wanted to say and to how he wanted to say it.

Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N. J.) Case

THE purpose of this paper is to determine whether the pre-dissolution Standard Oil Company actually used predatory price cutting to achieve or maintain its monopoly. This issue is of much more than antiquarian or theoretic interest. Settling it is of direct importance to present anti-trust policy. At the very least, finding the facts should aid in defining certain hazy notions that now figure in discussions of monopoly and its control. The Standard Oil case of 19111 is a landmark in the development of antitrust law. But it is more than a famous law case: it created a legend. The firm whose history it relates became the archetype of predatory monopoly. It is sometimes said that Standard Oil was influential because it revealed deadly and reprehensible techniques by which Monopoly on a heroic scale could be achieved and, probably more important, perpetuated. Historians tell us that the facts revealed in Standard Oil were in good part responsible for the emphasis that the antitrust laws came to place upon unfair and monopolizing business practices. Perhaps the most famous of all of the monopolizing techniques that Standard is supposed to have used is local price cutting. Given the bad repute in which monopoly has long been officially held in this country, and the prominence of predatory pricing in Standard Oil, it is not surprising that the practice received special attention in the law. Monopoly was not new in 1911, but a predatory giant may have seemed novel. The vision of a giant firm that used a brutally scientific, and completely effective, technique for acquiring and maintaining monopoly must have aroused uncommon concern. Standard was invincible. Anything economists could say about the transience of monopoly must have seemed hopelessly unrealistic in view of the vigor and success with which Standard was said to have prevented entry. In any case, by 1914, in the Clayton Act, predatory price discrimination was included among a select group of business practices the character or effect of which called for explicit statutory prohibition. The Robinson-Patman