National Discourse Research Articles

The Moderating Role of Gender Between Job Satisfaction and Organisational Commitment in Ghanaian Colleges of Education

In an era where governments and organisations dedicated to improving education worldwide are concerned about quality teacher education and dominate the national discourse, it is crucial to emphasise teacher quality, gender parity, satisfaction, and commitment. This article examines the role of gender as a moderator between tutor job satisfaction and organisational commitment in Ghanaian Colleges of Education. A research hypothesis was formulated with a cross-sectional survey to guide the study. A sample of 319 tutors was used. Multivariate multiple regression, SEM and Process Analysis were used to test the hypothesis. The study revealed that gender was a significant moderator between job satisfaction and organisational commitment of tutors in Ghana. As a result of this, it was recommended that the governing council focus on factors affecting the extrinsic and intrinsic motivations (job satisfaction) of their tutors so that stronger commitment and greater loyalty may be demonstrated by the tutors.

“We are snowflakes”: Minor transnationalism and the cultural resilience of slash fanfiction community in China

This article examines the cultural resilience of the Chinese slash fanfiction subculture. Popular among Chinese youth, the writing and reading of slash are subjected to increasingly stringent regulations due to changes in the political environment. Drawing from the theoretical framework of minor transnationalism, the current study situates the development of the Chinese slash community in the context of post-socialist reform and globalization, arguing that slash fanfiction is a form of non-institutional, border-crossing cultural practice that challenges orthodox heteronormativity in nationalistic discourses. Foregrounding the double-edge-sword role of digital platforms, this article dissects the cultural resilience of the Chinese slash community—manifested as various strategies in keeping the viability of their cultural practices, including cultural enclosure, border-crossing platform-switching, and social media activism. This article contributes to the study of subcultures by bringing a transnational perspective that focuses on continuous, resilient cultural practices in negotiations of alternative cultural and political agendas. Methodologically, it also contributes to social media ethnographic research by testing out a comprehensive toolkit that combines close reading with computational text-mining and visual network analysis in the analysis of multimodal social media discourses.

Bending Time and Space for Pan-Americanism: Shots of the “Western Hemisphere” in Wartime Cinema

Analysing World War II films, from Allied propaganda to Good Neighbor Policy productions, this work probes the visual construction of the idea of the Western Hemisphere and Latin America’s place in it. It finds how war propaganda carried messages beyond the explicit anti-Axis one. In the films discussed here, the resources of novel aerial photography, cartography, and time-travel plots achieved the contradictory effect of showing the entire continent as one, while North and South were in contrast. During the war, Good Neighbor Policy productions promoting a continental alliance used many of the same visual elements as war propaganda to shore up morale ahead of battles. A focus on Brazil offers a counterpoint to US-based pan-Americanism, considering its nationalist discourse in the Estado Novo. Wartime cinema created a New World where the US was the future of “Western” civilisation as a continuum of Europe, while Latin America was visualised as existing in the past, resulting in a deeply ambivalent Western Hemisphere.

Affectation in the Affect Nation: The Re-arrival of Singapore's Affective Laborers

Abstract: Notorious for its ever-changing urban landscape, Singapore has seen plenty of projects in recent years to archive disappearing sites and the stories people have about them. While archival work and collective memory formations are commendable, the affective labor that goes into these projects risks uncritically reproducing existing structures of feeling that fuel the nation's postcolonial triumphalist narrative. This narrative is characteristically dependent on the planned obsolescence of these sites and the nostalgia that neoliberal industries then eagerly monetize. Through a close literary analysis of Charmaine Leung's 2017 memoir 17A Keong Saik Road , this essay builds on Raymond Williams' concept of structures of feeling and Sara Ahmed's notion of affect aliens to make sense of Singapore's affective regimes and interventions. I argue that place-based literature may reclaim the affects that are foundational to Singapore's postcolonial triumphalist narrative from the state's affective determinations. By highlighting the intergenerational, gendered, affective labors of those involved in the sex industry, Leung's recounting of her childhood in this historical red-light district frees the titular Keong Saik Road, the sex workers who formerly inhabited this site, and Cantonese—one of the undermined non-Mandarin Sinitic languages of Singapore—from the existing scripted affective discourses of the postcolonial nation.

Book review: Daniela Francesca Virdis, Ecological Stylistics: Ecostylistic Approaches to Discourses of Nature, the Environment and Sustainability

Book review: Daniela Francesca Virdis, <i>Ecological Stylistics: Ecostylistic Approaches to Discourses of Nature, the Environment and Sustainability</i>

21세기 남북한 고등학교 역사 교과서의 민족 정체성 교육

This article compares the national identity education of the recent high school history textbooks in the two Koreas. The 21st two Koreas’ high school history textbooks have held national identity education from the viewpoint of the primordial formation and perennial development of nation. South Korea has tried to overcome its exclusive national identity education through the 2015 curriculum revision but is still understanding nation based upon the notions of the bloodline and ethnicity. Similarly, North Korea has politically utilized the bloodline-centered notion of nation through fusing the notion of the Dangun nation into the Jeche idea since the 2013 curriculum revision. Through comparative analysis of Korean history from ancient history to modern history, this article examines the primordial and perennial discourse of nation in the two Koreas’ high school history textbooks.

National Speeches on Notable Political Figures

This study highlighted the value and appropriateness of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in the examination of national speeches of political leaders for policy pronouncements. The purpose of this study was to investigate the interplay among power, ideology, and language and the mechanisms deployed in the national discourses of some notable political leaders to capture reality, manipulate, persuade and shape the audience (citizenry) to action. This study underscored the capability of Critical discourse analysis (CDA) to investigate the manner by which social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political contexts. The study revealed attempts at ideology legitimization and power dominance through the use of cognitive discourses. We are taken through the empowerment ability of discourse in diverse socio-political contexts and how power relies on discourse for multidisciplinary actions that convince the citizenry to acknowledge, sustain and advocate their leaders’ ideologies. The study adopted a conceptual framework and relied on secondary and tertiary sources. The study also made recommendations to scholars on how to adopt discourse-related methodologies to enhance knowledge creation in political addresses. Lastly, the study acknowledged the limitations of the CDA approach.

Contemporary Epistemology of Nationalism:

This inquiry examines the structure of knowledge of nationalism. While numerous studies on nationalism focus on the nature and defining elements of nations, this research explores nationalism discourse from a purely epistemological viewpoint and asks two overarching questions: what are the constitutive beliefs in these various theories and how are they structured? The first section outlines a contemporary foundationalist argument and analyzes two widely accepted theories of nationalism from this theory of knowledge. The study finds that the linear constraints of a foundationalist approach, resting on the existence of non-inferentially justified beliefs, provide a weak framework for understanding the knowledge structures of nationalism. No single element alone can be deemed to be a sufficient basic belief of nationalism that is self-justified. The second part of this research utilizes contemporary coherence theory to assess the interconnected beliefs embedded in nationalism. Examining several theories of nationalism which arguably adopt coherentism, this particular theory of knowledge is shown to provide a more holistic approach. The study concludes that the very definition of nationalism incorporates interconnected beliefs and ideas about ideology, ethnic basis, shared culture and history, as well as unity and autonomy which imply a befitting epistemological refocus away from foundationalism and towards coherentism.

“Eileen Gu fetish” as a feminist phenomenon: the intertwining of feminist, neoliberal, and nationalist discourses on Chinese social media

ABSTRACT During the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Eileen Gu attracted considerable attention and sparked numerous discussions on Chinese social media. Using the method of textual analysis, this paper examines the various responses of Chinese women, particularly Chinese feminists, to Eileen’s achievements on Chinese social media, framing these responses within recent studies of neoliberalism’s undoing of feminism as well as long-standing debates about the relationship between feminism and nationalism. This paper argues that discussions about Eileen on Chinese social media not only illustrate how neoliberalism is absorbed, reworked, and resisted in its transnational circulation but also demonstrate how nationalist narratives can be strategically used by Chinese feminists to validate their feminist positions. It further enriches existing scholarship on neoliberalism with a transnational perspective, reaffirms the importance of contextualizing the relationship between Third World feminism and nationalism, and highlights the significance of uncovering indigenous feminist resources in Third World countries.

How can an alternative natural resource co-management system be established? —Evidence from Chinese community forestry

ABSTRACT In developing countries, interest in community forest management (CFM) has steadily increased over the last decade. Based on the extended political institutional analysis and development (P-IAD) framework, this paper analyzes the Chinese CFM system by combining the political-economic context, rules-in-use, and discourses to show alternative co-management practices. We find that CFM is rooted in national-level development strategies, embedded government-society relationships, and social development claims. This governance structure determines that the public sector guides the development and utilization directions of forest resources based on development planning and national discourses, while community leaders serve both villagers and the public sector. Over the course of development, this co-management system undergoes dynamic adjustments and gradually fulfills the evaluative criteria, including employing varied institutions, ordinary rules, and cross-scale connections. Compared with the previous co-management system, the current system presents the features of national layer penetration, continuous power coordination, and development orientation. The experience of Chinese CFM shows that scholars should focus on the impact of national-level macro strategies and social construction on natural resource management, not just cooperation between civilian agencies and the community. The findings provide developing countries with new thoughts for designing natural resource management systems.

Exploring the Role of Women’s Print Media in the Indian Nationalist Movement: A Study of Select Women’s Magazines in Colonial India

This research paper explores the role of women’s print media in the Indian nationalist movement, focusing on select women’s magazines in colonial India. The study examines the ways in which these magazines facilitated the participation of women in the movement and contributed to the dissemination of nationalist ideologies. Through a qualitative analysis of primary sources, including magazines such as Stri Dharma and Bharati, the study uncovers the diverse ways in which women’s magazines engaged with nationalist discourse. These magazines served as a platform for women writers to express their views on political issues, and also provided information on the activities of the nationalist movement. The study finds that women’s magazines played a significant role in shaping the political consciousness of women in colonial India, and that they provided a space for women to participate in nationalist discourse. The magazines also served as a means of building solidarity among women, as they shared stories of struggle and celebrated the achievements of female nationalists. Furthermore, this study contributes to our understanding of the role of women in the Indian nationalist movement and highlights the importance of women’s print media in shaping political discourse during this period. The findings suggest that women’s magazines were instrumental in creating a space for women’s voices in the nationalist movement, and played a significant role in shaping the political consciousness of women in colonial India.

Internet as an ideology: nationalistic discourses, and multiple subject positions of Chinese internet workers

ABSTRACT Ideology works. This article examines how the Internet as a capital actor has become a nationalist ideology in China. Disclosing how nationalism serves to facilitate the expansion of China-based Internet platforms in the age of informational capitalism, we directly confront the Chinese Internet as an ideology apparatus that works to fulfill a dual logic of capital and territorial power. This article contributes to the study of three types of Chinese Internet workers: programmers, white-collar employees (excluding programmers), and assembly-line workers, and focuses on how nationalist discourses are created, which enthrall but at the same time are questioned by different workers who help fabricate nationalism as well as challenge it. We conceptualize topos of threat and referential strategy of collectivization as cultural and media tactics, driven by the nationalistic sentiments that form part of the “common sense” of Chinese users. We further analyze the multiple subject positions of Chinese Internet workers into hegemonic position, negotiated position, and oppositional position to discover the complexity of labor subjectivity which may create discrepancy or sometimes even challenge the Chinese Internet as an ideology. This study sheds light on how subject positions could disrupt a homogenous process of merging nationalism with populist sentiments, a conservative ideology that is prevalent in today’s China.

Teaching through objects and collections: The case of Strängnäs Secondary Grammar School and school museum 1830-1960

This paper aims to introduce educational history to multimodal studies by combining a source-oriented approach with multimodal social semiotics. We trace the role of objects and collections in teaching and learning, and focus on Strängnäs Secondary Grammar School in Sweden 1830-1960 as a case example. Closely examining original documents, remaining physical objects, and examples of their situated use as represented in photographs and drawings, the paper provides a nuanced perspective on how object-based pedagogy was applied. It traces how objects and artefacts were incorporated into the school’s collections, by the actions of different actors, in processes of recontextualisation and framing. The activity types that we use as examples, include: drawing lessons in art, weapons practice in physical education, plant collecting in botany, and map exercises in history. These examples show how objects and their meaning potential were used in teaching and learning, and how they realized certain discourses of schooling. Based on our examples, we can see how educational discourses such as progressivism came to have different impact in different subjects. While an authoritarian and national discourse prevailed in art and physical education, a scientific and progressive discourse seem to have been established in botany and history. By combining multimodality with historical research, we can understand meaning-making within a larger context of sociocultural practices and sociopolitical forces.

‘When there is an opportunity, I’ll try to write it down in Tatar’: National Identity as Constructed in the Diary of High-School Student Fathima Kashafutdinova, 1917-1920

The author examines the process of construction of national identity by high-school student Fathima Kashafutdinova based on her diary entries of 1917-1920 in the context of sociocultural, economic and political changes at the turn of the 20th century and as a result of the Great Russian Revolution (1917-1922). The author analyzes how elements of the Tatar national discourse developed in Fathima’s diary over time and how they were used to express her self-reflection and her identification with other people. Through their research, the author has discovered that Fathima’s had initially needed to construct her national identity as a Tatar, which can be clearly traced through the earlier pages of the diary. Nevertheless, by May 1918, any sign of a “Russians/Tatars” dichotomy disappeared in her text. However, this dichotomy was not completely resolved since she was influenced by both cultural and intellectual processes in the Tatar community as well as by the Russian-speaking urban cultural and social space.

Gender, Education and Citizenship as Ideological Weapons of an ‘Army of Holy Women’ in Bengal: The Matua Matri Sena

This paper seeks to analyze the recent phenomenon of the development of a Matri Sena (literally, an ‘Army of Holy Women’) among the Matua sect of West Bengal, India. Historically known to have suffered caste-based untouchability and forced migration due to communal conflict, the Matua community’s current political motivations surround the issue of ‘refugeehood’ and Indian citizenship. Given this background, the emergence of the Matri Sena as a complex identity among a religion–caste–gender–nation nexus is oriented towards bipartite objectives: one, to actualize the gender-egalitarian ethos that informs Matua religious foundations, and two, to claim legal citizenship status for its community members precisely through a new gendered ideology. We argue that the women gurus of the Matri Sena are able to realize their religious/political aims by fashioning themselves as mothers of an ideal family, community, and by extension, the nation. In deploying their specific gendered ideological constructions, they enact their new roles as influencers in both private and public Matua lives. In such renderings, the woman guru’s mother-figure emerges as a political subject through crucial engagements with Matua religiosity on one hand, and dominant Hindu nationalist discourses on the other. In this article, we critically analyze ways in which the Matri Sena constructs a new maternal notion of religio-political power, and how such power furthers both collective Matua aspirations and contemporary national imaginations.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and the performativity of sport nationalism: Taiwanese identity and online mobilization

ABSTRACT This essay examines how Taiwanese national identity was performed on social media during the postponed Tokyo Olympics 2020. Taiwan achieved its best-ever medal tally, leading to the emergence of a new form of sport nationalism. Athletes' off-field behaviors, including diverse gender expressions, distinguished them not only from their Chinese counterparts but also from previous generations of Taiwanese athletes. Badminton, weightlifting, and table tennis athletes became the “proxy warriors” of Taiwan, showcasing the democratic and diverse nature of Taiwanese society. The Tokyo Olympics, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions, became a battleground for ideologies, with the complex relationships among Taiwan, China, and Japan setting the backdrop for narratives. To depart from traditional research on official national discourses, this essay employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) by examining Facebook content and comments on news reports related to Taiwanese Olympians. This essays argues that Taiwan's cyber civil society has developed a flexible strategy to counter China's aggression on the internet. Taiwanese online mobilization demonstrated self-control, creativity, and adaptability, establishing a unique Taiwanese identity during the Tokyo Olympics in the midst of the pandemic.

Factors of Influence of the Power Elites of the North Caucasus on the Processes of National Discourse

Factors of Influence of the Power Elites of the North Caucasus on the Processes of National Discourse

Political independence through monetary dependence? The case of Montenegro

ABSTRACT As an economic policy, currency substitution – the use of a foreign currency in lieu of a domestic currency – is rarely associated with nationalism. This is due to a natural tendency to equate nationalism with economic mercantilism and with the political need to foster nationalist feelings among the population. This need not to be the case, though, as the case of the newly independent Montenegro demonstrates. How can we explain the apparent inconsistency between nationalist leaders fighting for independence and opting to use the currency of the European Union (EU), the quintessential supra-national entity? This paper suggests that conventional explanations need to be complemented with a contextual historical analysis of nationalism. By incorporating the fluid and multifaceted nature of nationalism which, in the hands of skilful political elites, can be reframed to include apparently contradictory positions, I suggest that euroisation has been extremely consistent with nationalist goals. As the content and directionality of nationalist discourse shifted, the euro was transformed into a symbol of national identity in this Newly Independent Country.

Some Womanist Inscriptions in Ebony Reigns’ Song Maame Hwɛ: A Literary Approach

Music is a part of life in Ghana. Studying a people’s music brings one closer to understanding them since music and reality are intertwined. Despite this reality, the contribution of popular music to national discourse has not received adequate research attention in Ghana. This paper sets out to study the lyrics of one of the songs of Ebony Reigns (Opoku-Kwarteng Priscilla), a Ghanaian musician who died few years ago. Using the womanist theory, the paper investigates how the tenets of this theory are inscribed in the song, the problems that womanism addresses in the song and their implications to the Ghanaian youth. The researchers conclude from the analysis in the paper that the youth have to use social media with caution; they need to listen to advice from the elderly in choosing life partners and the African woman needs to fight for self-expression and liberation through positive cultural means.

Balancing unity and diversity? Shifting state policies and the curricular portrayal of China’s minority nationalities

ABSTRACT This article analyses the implications of recent policy changes for the portrayal of minority nationalities in the latest China’s history textbooks published around 2017. We argue that ideological responses to the fierce ethnic clashes of the late 2000s and the leadership transition since 2012 have generated increasingly contradictory official discourses on the relationship between Chinese identity and cultural diversity, which are manifested in the textbooks. On the one hand, policies and textbooks still appear to endorse a multi-minzu, inclusive understanding of nationhood and Chinese history. On the other hand, an increasing emphasis on nationalist discourses celebrating the Han culture and achievements reinforces assimilationist narratives based on a monolithic and homogenising vision of Chinese nationhood. We argue that such tensions reflect conflicts over contradictory understandings of Chineseness that have intensified since 2008–2009, and that the increasing marginalisation in textbooks of non-Han groups may contribute to further exacerbating problems in the handling of inter-minzu relations.