Multiple Discourse Research Articles

Retooling the corporate brand: A Foucauldian perspective on normalisation and differentiation

In this paper, we draw upon the social theory of Michel Foucault to explore the neglected tension between normalisation and differentiation in corporate branding. The mainstream response within the corporate marketing literature to addressing this tension is exemplified by Deephouse who argues for the identification of a ‘strategic balance point’, which would lead managers to strive for the singular identity that represents the ideal compromise between differentiation and conformity. In contrast, we contend that corporate brands exist in multiple discourse contexts, that the tension between normalisation and differentiation must be managed within each of these contexts and that the brand positioning may therefore vary between and within discourse contexts. We also argue that corporate marketers consider the use of strategic ambiguity in managing the tension between normalisation and differentiation because it facilitates the creation of flexible interpretations and therefore allows multiple branding strategies to evolve and flourish.

한국고전문학교육 영상콘텐츠의 담론 유형별 활용 및 글쓰기 방안

The first purpose of this study is investigating the discourse type of digital image media content for Korean classical literature education. Next purpose is investigating the utilizing and literal text writing method of digital image media content for Korean classical literature education.. So, I applied J. L. Kinneavy's communication model and discourse types ; expressive discourse for encoder, persuasive discourse for decoder, literary discourse for signal, and referential discourse for reality, and introduced the four types of 'visible / audible / readable digital image media content' for Korean classical literature education which is combination of literal text, video image, and audio sound. And I investigated the utilizing and literal text writing method on a discourse case by case. Additionally I introduced two types of multiple discourse utilizing sample ; the one is a sort of multiple chained discourse, the another is story-telling applied discourse. After all, this study presented the frame of utilizing and literal text writing method about discourse type of digital image media content ; expressive discourse content for media literacy education, persuasive discourse content for value education, literary discourse content for creation education, and referential discourse content for knowledge education. But this frame is somewhat superficial. In future, this frame must investigated more deeply.

Towards a framework for establishing rigour in a discourse analysis of midwifery professionalisation

This paper develops a framework for establishing rigour for a discourse analysis of professional transition in midwifery, theorised as a 'female professional project'. Discourse analysis has gained recognition as a useful approach in nursing and midwifery research. It provides an alternative to those qualitative approaches that propose to reveal a 'reality' from the perspective of the individual experience, and that this lived experience can be directly represented in language. There are multiple discourse analytic approaches, and often researchers are not explicit about what type they are employing. Furthermore, to date there are few clear guidelines for what constitutes rigour in a discourse analytic study. Rigour in qualitative research broadly falls into two categories: the replication perspective that argues for the maintenance of criteria of validity and reliability, usually with an underpinning assumption (often unquestioned) that a 'truth' can be revealed. The second is the parallel perspective that questions the ontological and epistemological assumptions of the replication perspective and argues for the development of criteria that reflect the assumed questionable nature of truth and reality. Transferring these criteria to a discourse analytic study revealed some problems. A common challenge identified in achieving rigour in discourse analysis is the maintenance of congruity between the epistemological and ontological basis of a piece of research and the actual analysis conducted or reported. A framework is proposed to address these incongruities and includes six elements. As nurses and midwives increasingly employ discourse analysis in their research, attempts to clarify how rigour will be determined are important if the outcomes of such research are to be seriously considered for their implications for theory, policy and practice.

Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication

Despite the rich literature on disciplinary knowledge construction and multilingual scholars’ academic literacy practices, little is known about how novice scholars are engaged in knowledge construction in negotiation with various target discourse communities. In this case study, with a focused analysis of a Chinese computer science doctoral student's alternate forms of one paper, i.e., its Chinese version aimed at publication by her target domestic journals and its English version aimed at acceptance by an overseas-based international conference, I report the strategies and problems of the student in negotiation of knowledge contribution in three layers of discourse communities: her disciplinary community of artificial intelligence (AI), the domestic discourse community as represented by her target domestic journals, and the international discourse community as represented by her target international conference. I point out that the student's practices of negotiation with her target communities were closely related to her novice status. In terms of pedagogical recommendations to assist novice scholars’ efforts in knowledge contribution, apart from pointing to the need for particular textual-level assistance, this study highlights the importance of incorporating into the EAP classroom consciousness-raising with regard to the epistemological characteristics of particular disciplines, as well as helping students to develop a critical positioning on the conventions of alternate discourse communities in their effort to contribute to disciplinary knowledge.

The uses of nouns and deixis in discourse production in Alzheimer's disease

Deixis is a linguistic tool derived from the Greek word for ‘pointing’ that handles reference in relation to the immediate communicative context. This study investigated the uses of deictic (spatial vs. person) and nouns, using multiple discourse tasks in 26 dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) patients and 26 demographically matched healthy elderly. The chief research findings were: (1) the effects of the DAT process differed across the spatial vs. person deictic forms and (2) the discourse task under study, hence the communicative context, determined the nature and degree of group differences as well as the relationship between discourse variables.

“ Minister, we will see how the public judges you.” : Media references in political interviews

This contribution investigates political interviews from a sociopragmatic angle and defines them as negotiating validity claims with regard to the first-frame interaction of interviewer and interviewee, and with regard to the second- or media-frame interaction consisting of the first-frame (interviewer, interviewee) interacting with the media frame. Section 1 examines a political interview's dual status as a communicative genre and as a media event by accounting for interfacing frames, constitutive multi-frame interactions and multiple discourse identities. Section 2 discusses the linguistic representation of media references, such as TV, program, institutional roles of interviewer, interviewee and audience, and investigates when, where and how the references are realized and which communicative function(s) they fulfill. In unmarked interviews, explicit references to the media frame are restricted to the opening and closing sections. If employed in the topical-sequence section, they may either function as securing the common ground between the first-frame and second-frame interactants, or they may be exploited in order to communicate conversationally implicated meaning, such as boosting the pragmatic force of a challenge or expressing criticism. In conclusion, media references have the communicative function of (1) initiating the opening and closing sections of the political interview, and of (2) intensifying the pragmatic force of a communicative contribution thus indirectly guiding the audience in their process of calculating the interviewer's and interviewee's communicative intentions.

On CDA’s Potential for Application in Education

In their introduction to the subsection on critical discourse analysis (CDA) in the article, “Multiple discourse analyses of a workplace interaction”, Marra and Holmes summarize the aims of CDA. These include raising “people’s awareness of the reciprocal influences of language and social structure” (p. 367) as well as showing how “power and dominance are produced and reproduced in social practice through the discourse structure of generally unremarkable interactions” (p. 367). These aims seem to be in line with Fairclough’s (1989) view of the need to “increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation” (p. 1).

Multiple Discourse Analyses of a Workplace Interaction

This article explores the contributions that five different approaches to discourse analysis can make to interpreting and understanding the same piece of data. Conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, politeness theory, critical discourse analysis, and discursive psychology are the approaches chosen for comparison. The data is a nine-minute audio recording of a spontaneous workplace interaction. The analyses are compared, and the theoretical and methodological implications of the different approaches are discussed.

Effects of four years of exercise, language, and social interventions on Alzheimer discourse

This article describes a comprehensive cognitive–linguistic intervention program for mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients that provided communication skills practice in the context of health-enhancing and esteem-building community-based activities: physical fitness training and supervised volunteer work. The interventions were administered by undergraduate students who completed academic work, received faculty supervision, and earned three credits for one semester of participation. Effects of the interventions on the discourse of four participants who completed all 4 years of the program are reported in detail. The maintained or improved performance on multiple discourse outcome measures provides powerful rationale for making such interventions more widely available and preliminary support for their effectiveness in preserving communicative function. An additional role for speech–language pathologists (SLPs)—as trainers and supervisors of non-professional rehab partners for persons with dementia—is proposed. Learning outcomes From this article, participants will be able to (1) list specific language tasks that can be used to assess discourse in individuals with AD; (2) identify several cognitive–linguistic interventions appropriate for use with AD patients; and (3) understand how long-term cognitive–linguistic interventions may affect the language performance of individuals with AD.

Formation of filter dust during CA membrane preparation

Two concepts – genre and discourse community – have been at the core of discussions about language and learning within the disciplines since John Swales integrated the two into ESP pedagogy. While in his earlier work, Swales (1990) proposed a relationship of genres ‘belonging’ to discourse communities, he later (e.g. 1998) understood discourse communities as sometimes cohering around genres, suggesting a more open-ended relationship between the concepts. This paper takes up the issue of this relationship, and reports on a recurrent event in architecture education. The data is drawn from a project on postgraduate design studio pedagogy at a major Australian university. The focus was the weekly activities in a studio taught by a senior academic. Working primarily within a rhetorical genre framework, this paper explores the desk-crit genre from two angles – its evolution over time and its performance in a contemporary studio session. The paper shows how a 'situated genre analysis' contributes to an understanding of the interconnections, tensions, different discourses of the academic and professional architecture communities, characterized in this paper as 'adjacent worlds'. The paper concludes that this type of analysis helps us understand genre as a space in which multiple discourse communities interact.

Discourse Communities and the Discourse of Experience

Discourse communities are groups of people who share common ideologies, and common ways of speaking about things. They can be sharply or loosely defined. We are each members of multiple discourse communities. Discourse can colonize the members of discourse communities, taking over domains of thought by means of ideology. The development of new discourse communities can serve positive ends, but discourse communities create risks as well. In our own work on the narratives of people with interests in health care, for example, we find that patients speak of their illness experiences as victims of circumstance; policy makers construct adverse experiences and challenges as opportunities to be taken; health care workers speak from a mixed perspective, seeing themselves as both victims and opportunists depending on context. To be trapped within the discourse of a particular community is to put at risk the ability to communicate across discourses. Membership of a discourse community can impair the habit of critique, and deny opportunities for heteroglossic discourse. Privileging critique as a mode of discourse perhaps might define the ethical community, suggesting that ethical community may be an antidote to the constraining effects of conventional discourse community.

John Wesley and the Liberty to Speak: The Rhetorical and Literacy Practices of Early Methodism

early Methodism John Wesley created an extracurricular site of literacy and rhetoric that empowered women and the working classes to read, write, and speak in public. Wesley's method of literacy in community not only transformed religious life in Britain but also redefined the intersections of education, class, and gender. an article based on her 1993 CCCC Chair's address, Anne Ruggles Gere critiqued the field of composition: In concentrating upon establishing our position within the academy, we have neglected to recount the history of composition in other contexts; we have neglected composition's extracurriculum (79). Influenced by Shirley Brice Heath's study of community literacy practices, Glenda Hull's work on workplace literacy, Patricia Bizzell's concept of multiple discourse communities, and others, Gere examined the cultural work and literacy practices of writing groups outside the academy, focusing particularly on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American clubwomen, both white and African American. Gere urged us not only to expand our field's history to

Negotiating validity claims in political interviews

This contribution presents an investigation of the interactional organization of the media event and discourse genre of political interview in the framework of the communicative act of a plus/minus validity claim based on the contextualization of Jurger Habermas's (1987) theory of communicative action. In this setting, political interviews are defined as negotiating validity claims with regard to the first-frame interaction of interviewer and interviewee and the second-frame interaction, which consists of the first frame (interviewer, interviewee) interacting with the media frame. The first section investigates political interviews with regard to their dual status as process and product, and their attribution to media communication. Section 2 discusses the communicative act of a plus/minus validity claim from both micro- and macro-viewpoints. Here special reference is given to the accommodation of genre-specific constraints and requirements. The third section applies the functional grammar concept of markedness to the analysis of discourse genre and investigates the communicative function of explicit references to the media frame, such as television, program(s), the institutional roles of interviewer, interviewee, and audience, and discusses when, where, and how these references are realized and what communicative function(s) they fulfill. Since explicit references to the media frame are generally restricted to the opening section of the interview, any deviation from the standard, routine interview represents a marked variant, in which the first- and second-frame presuppositions are exploited in order to communicate conversationally implicated meaning. In conclusion, the analysis of political interviews requires a dynamic framework which not only accounts for their dual status as both processes and products but also for the constitutive multiframe interactions and multiple discourse identities.

Communication Gone Wired: Working Toward a "Practiced" Cyberfeminism

This article complicates concepts of gender and race in virtual environments by presenting a case study of an African American woman's (Celie's) on-line personalities. It discusses how one woman's presence in a college class and her on-line contributions to a (cyber)community of peers influenced her and the group's perspectives on violence and gender issues. The article shows that Celie's interactions on a virtual forum are related to and an extension of a multitude of factors such as her upbringing, her schooling, her wish to succeed in an environment often inhospitable and hostile to her needs, and her gendered identity. A close analysis of her online voice provides a starting point for cyberfeminists to look more closely at virtual forums and their potential for enhancing student learning, diversity, and multiple perspectives in classroom environments. This article also encourages feminist scholars to continue explorations centered around the multiple discourse strategies employed by participants in any given conversation.

From translation to navigation of different discourses: A model of search term selection during the pre‐online stage of the search process

We propose a model of search term selection process based on our empirical study of professional searchers during the pre-online stage of the search process. The model characterizes the selection of search terms as the navigation of different discourses. Discourse refers to the way of talking and thinking about a certain topic; there often exists multiple, diverse discourses on the same topic. When selecting search terms, searchers appear to navigate a variety of discourses, i.e., they view the topic of a client's search request from the perspective of multiple discourse communities, and evaluate and synthesize differences and similarities among those discourses when selecting search terms. Six discourses emerged as sources of search terms in our study. These discourses are controlled vocabularies, documents and domains, the practice of indexing, clients' search requests, databases and the searchers' own search experience. Data further suggest that searchers navigate these discourses dynamically and have preferences for certain discourses. Conceptualizing the selection of search terms as a meeting place of different discourses provides new insights into the complex nature of the search term selection process. It emphasizes the multiplicity and complexity of the sources of search terms, the dynamic nature of the search term selection process, and the complex analysis and synthesis of differences and similarities among sources of search terms. It suggests that searchers may need to understand fundamental aspects of multiple discourses in order to select search terms.

From translation to navigation of different discourses: A model of search term selection during the pre-online stage of the search process

We propose a model of the search term selection process based on our empirical study of professional searchers during the pre-online stage of the search process. The model characterizes the selection of search terms as the navigation of different discourses. Discourse refers to the ways of talking and thinking about a certain topic; there often exists multiple, diverse discourses on the same topic. When selecting search terms, searchers appear to navigate a variety of discourses, i.e., they view the topic of a client's search request from the perspective of multiple discourse communities, and evaluate and synthesize differences and similarities among those discourses when selecting search terms. Six discourses emerged as sources of search terms in our study. These discourses are controlled vocabularies, documents and the domain, the practice of indexing, clients' search requests, databases, and the searchers' own search experience. Data further suggest that searchers navigate these discourses dynamically and have preferences for certain discourses. Conceptualizing the selection of search terms as a meeting place of different discourses provides new insights into the complex nature of the search term selection process. It emphasizes the multiplicity and complexity of sources of search terms, the dynamic nature of the search term selection process, and the complex analysis and synthesis of differences and similarities among sources of search terms. It suggests that searchers may need to understand fundamental aspects of multiple discourses in order to select search terms. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Peer discussion on training physicians to be competent communicators: support for a multiple discourse approach.

To consider medical educators' views about training physicians to be competent communicators, a focus group was conducted at a large southeastern medical college with faculty responsible for training interns and residents to be competent communicators. The medical school was undergoing a curriculum review and instructional development process, including an examination of the methods being used to teach communication. A discussion of a teaching faculty committee revealed several themes, including the foundational assumption that communication is a natural ability that some have and others do not. Other notions likely to affect the educators' beliefs about the importance and effectiveness of communication education include the ideas that courtesy is synonymous with good communication and that although a few fundamentals might be transmitted, experience is the best teacher. Participants identified several audiences, in addition to patients, with whom they communicate as part of their profession, including other physicians, other health care providers (e.g., nurses and lab technicians), and hospital administrators, health care insurers, and others responsible for evaluating physicians' performance. The implications of this project for the development of medical communication courses within a multiple discourse approach are discussed.

Meta-quotation

This paper explores the thematic and interactional significance of the quotative marker tte in Japanese comics. The quotative expressions examined are 'meta-quotations', their main function being to self-qualify the quoter's speaking act. Although a similar use is observed in the standard quotation marker to followed by the verbs of saying and thinking, this study primarily focuses on tte that appears independently in casual speech as depicted in comics targeted at adolescent girls. Extending beyond the concept of speech act qualification, I argue that meta-quotation offers a device in Japanese discourse to qualify and manipulate multiple discourse organizational and interactional meanings, including theme presentation, 'pseudo-quotation', and quotation across Speakers* Through tte's function as a metalinguistic device, this study illustrates that language not only describes events and states but also reflexively qualifies the speaker's voice that describes these events and states.

Philosophical and Conceptual Perspectives on the Design of Group Support Systems

Design of information systems (IS) has been one of the most elusive tasks of the system analyst, requiring technical expertise, creative inspiration and deep understanding of the problem under examination. Perhaps even more than is the ease with other IS. Group support systems (GSS) design is challenging because it involves groups who vary in behavior, process and culture. The system designer's worldview will shape its features. In an attempt to shed new light on GSS design, this paper examines the problem from four philosophical perspectives or paradigms: Functionalism, Social Relativism. Radical Structuralism and Neohumanism. The generic requirements identified from the analysis include support for multitasking, multiple languages, customization, multiple communication modes, interoperability, rational discourse and knowledge validation. While these appear to be valid requirements to support computer-mediated decision making, it may be difficult if not impossible to satisfy them in one software system.

Collaborative writing in multiple discourse contexts

Research in computer-supported writing has traditionally compared electronic communication with oral, face-to-face communication to identify the benefits and weaknesses of each, as if they entailed dichotomous choices. In this article, we challenge that view and argue instead that any form of communication and its educational usefulness is shaped by the situation in which it is used, the backgrounds and goals of the participants, the institutional and technological setup, and the intended purpose of the medium. Three modes of communication in one graduate course are examined — oral discussion, synchronous written discussion on a local area network, and asynchronous written postings on an email list set up for the class. It was found that patterns of participation, topic introduction, and topic development differed across the three communication modes, but that the three were interwoven with each other and embedded within the larger classroom context and forms of knowledge creation in the class. Thus, rather than examining different communication media separately, researchers interested in understanding computer-supported collaborative writing need to look at how different media are used to create a “meta-medium,” which is established by the discourse community involved.