Negative Discourse Research Articles

An education and negotiation of differences: the ‘schooling’ experiences of English-speaking Canadian children growing up with polio during the 1940s and 1950s

In this paper we present oral narratives focusing on schooling experiences of Canadians who lived with polio as children between 1940 and 1959. We argue that disabled students with polio received an education about the differences ascribed to them by individuals in authority (teachers, principals), by other young people, and through the dominant negative discourses of polio and normalizing, ableist practices of schooling. Using narrative accounts from participants’ interviews, we analyze their school experiences of difference: inaccessible physical and temporal spaces, bullying at school, exclusion from classes, and negotiating youth culture related to shoes, clothes and friendships. However, participants were not passive and they discussed how, along with families, they negotiated and occasionally defied normalizing processes. This research gives voice to a generation of disabled English-speaking Canadians, whose stories about school have not been heard before.

We Believe! Online Representations of the Olympic Winner as a Mythic Hero

This article 1 is a study of the doping scandal that broke out in April 2011 and concerned the esteemed Estonian sportsman and Olympic gold medal winner, Andrus Veerpalu. The current analysis is based on the material col- lected from the Estonian online media throughout two years, from April 2011 to March 2013, during which Andrus Veerpalu's court case was actively followed by the Estonian sports circles and laymen alike. will analyse how the image of Andrus as a national hero (almost as a demigod) is constructed on the Internet and how it relates to analogous stories about athletes from earlier times (e.g., to folk stories about Georg Lurich). In the current case, the main reason why the majority of the nation sup- ported Andrus was because they believed in him. This pervading thread emerged right after the news spread, and was present in various contexts: the online comments of the articles that dealt with the scandal, Facebook community posts in the group entitled We believe in Andrus Veerpalu (Usume Andrus Veerpalu), which was created to show solidarity with the sportsman, etc. All this indicated the high status of the athlete and laid a foundation for a sincere and positive discourse. This was in opposition to the negative discourse of irony, which questioned the honesty of the athlete and foregrounded subversive emotions like indifference and superiority towards the topic. The analysis will address the emergence of the Olympic hero as a national myth, and point at various narra- tives that deal with the scandal through the present-day genres of urban legends, conspiracy stories, and Internet humour.

Residential Satisfaction in China's Informal Settlements: A Case Study of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou

China's informal settlements—villages inside urbanized areas—are often characterized by local governments as dirty, chaotic, and dangerous places. This negative discourse inevitably leads to recommendations for demolition. A number of criteria have been invoked in state decisions regarding the demolition of informal settlements; however, rarely are these places evaluated from the residents’ perspective. This paper, following a long tradition of residential satisfaction research in Western nations, uses a household survey to examine this topic in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. We find that local contexts not only matter, but may be the principal determinants of residential satisfaction. The residential satisfaction of village dwellers is not necessarily low, and most socioeconomic attributes are not statistically significant determinants of resident satisfaction. Migrants and low-income groups are not less satisfied than nonmigrants or middle-range income earners; the most important determinant is social attachment within the community. The perception of being excluded, or lacking neighborhood social attachment, significantly reduces residential satisfaction. No facilities can compensate for this negative exclusion factor. We conclude that demolishing informal settlements does not help to build a “harmonious society,” which is the purported goal of such programs. Removing the social and institutional barriers for migrant integration into the city is likely the most effective way to enhance residential satisfaction and neighborhood quality.

Public health emergency: social representations among managers of a university hospital

to comprehend the social representations of public health emergencies among managers who experienced the Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic of 2009. a qualitative case study, with its theoretical and methodological framework based on the Theory of Social Representations. The data was obtained through the techniques of free association and semi-structured interviews, applied individually to managers who worked in different positions of the hierarchical management structure of the institution during the pandemic emergency, a total of 30 participants. thematic content analysis resulted in the following categories: vulnerability, health protection, neglect - gray areas of the public sphere, and integrality. The social representations of public health emergencies attest to continuities that transit the overvalorization of negative discourses linked to the health/education public space, naturalization of the substantial character of the epidemic, and normative managerial action. However, the defense of ongoing education as a necessity associated with emergency management revealed possibilities for change in the technical-scientific perception of the management. to understand healthcare/nursing workers as political beings, assuming responsibilities in the areas of the macro and micro policies of the State, the university hospitals and the work teams, is a pathway that is emerging for the management of emergencies.

As China Returns: Perceptions of Land Grabbing and Spatial Power Relations in Mozambique

This article investigates how perceptions of China in Mozambican civil society are affected by entrepreneurial activity and bilateral cooperation between China and Mozambique – real, imagined, visible and legal as well as clandestine and illegal in the agricultural and forestry sectors. The research problem concerns how discourse on Chinese investors is formed in Mozambique. Two questions are posed. How does Mozambican civil society perceive their room to maneuver at a time of Chinese growing economic interest and ‘return’ to Africa? What views exist on the policy space for the national government? Using qualitative ethnographic interviews to answer these overarching questions about expanding/contracting maneuvering space, this article explains how Mozambique’s largest social group – peasants – the National Association of Small Farmers (UNAC) and other societal actors perceive Chinese investors. Informed by theoretical debates on civil society, the article argues that coinciding with China’s large-scale return to Africa, an already tense dynamic between civil society and the state is picking up speed. It is argued that this phenomenon is likely to have more to do with African governments accruing more power and policy space than through direct impact of Chinese economic activity on African social life. However, to avoid negative discourse formation, China and host governments need to become more open on and transparent about bilateral agreements.

Disabled students in higher education: Discourses of disability and the negotiation of identity

University is a critical arena for young disabled people in the construction of an adult identity and in obtaining higher level qualifications which have a major impact on future labour market opportunities. In Scotland, statistics show that there has been a steady increase in the proportion of students who are disabled. However, adopting the identity of a disabled person at university is far from straightforward, in part because of the conflicting discourses surrounding disability which are encountered. This article draws on data from a project on the experiences and outcomes of disabled students in UK universities, focusing on a case study of a particular student undertaking a Bachelor of Education degree in an elite Scottish university. The article illustrates the way in which positive and negative discourses of disability, reflected in learning, teaching and assessment practices and work placement experiences, impact on the identity of the student. The article also illustrates the importance of the social context in which disability is experienced. Whilst the student chooses to adopt the identity of disabled person during her time at university, this identity is rejected when she moves into the workplace. This is because the benefits of being identified as a disabled person at university outweigh the negative aspects, whilst in the post-university environment the reverse is the case.

Sexuality and Social Reproduction: Reflections from an Indian Feminist Debate

This article tries in a preliminary manner to establish links between sexual labour, the negotiations of everyday life and the reproduction of social relations. The context for this interrogation is the recent ban in 2005 on dancing in beer bars in the Indian city of Mumbai; the attempts by the state to legitimise its action amidst a range of national and international rhetoric on sexual labour, and the voices of women who were disenfranchised due to the state ban. Women’s interrogation of their role in sexual labour and their struggle for dignity and respect in the domain of work is discussed in the light of the negative discourse weighing against them, while also bringing in historical and contemporary accounts of other forms of ‘stigmatised’ labour. The attempt is to understand how notions of dignity and respectability are intertwined with shifts in gender, caste, class locations and the struggles of social movements. Significant in this discussion are various examples of how women choose to ‘move away’ in their constant search for livelihoods and survival. The article is an attempt to illuminate how an expanded notion of social reproduction could recognise labours of different kinds with the voices of those embodying these labours having a say in how justice and entitlements should devolve.

South African Adolescents’ Constructions of Intimacy in Romantic Relationships

Localized understandings of adolescent romantic relationships are needed to expand our knowledge of the diversity of adolescent romantic experiences and to challenge negative discourses of adolescent heterosexual relationships. This study explored the constructions of intimacy of 20 adolescent men and women in romantic relationships from one low-income community in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Using Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory method, we found that our participants reproduced dominant romantic and gender discourses in their intimacy constructions within a community context of limited and limiting discourses. We argue that they could benefit from alternative discourses, more opportunities to interact privately and intimately with their partners, and to reflect on and articulate their romantic relationship experiences.

E-government discourses: An inductive analysis

This article offers a new perspective on e-government by documenting the categories of e-government discourses, and evaluating them within a public value framework. Understanding e-government discourses is significant, since these discourses represent contested visions of e-government, and one can derive a feel for public sentiment about e-government from the discourses used in the media. The findings are accumulated through an inductive analysis of 85 newspaper articles, published during the year of 2010, in three top-selling, ideologically different, nationally circulating Turkish newspapers. In these 85 articles, 98 discourses presented by 90 policy actors are found. Five positive and four negative discourse categories and their relationships emerged from the analysis of the data. The results show that, government reform efforts shaped by the New Public Management movement and Turkey's harmonization efforts with the global political system in general, and with the European Union in particular, are influential in the presentation of e-government projects to the Turkish public through newspapers.

Women wearing white: Discourses of menstruation and the experience of menarche

This study examines how dominant societal discourses of menstruation are appropriated, rejected, or interpreted as adolescent girls make meaning of their menarche. Thirteen women ages 18–21 participated in flexible in-depth interviews to retrospectively recount their menarcheal experience. A variation of the Reading Guide was used for primary data analysis, which identified four themes highlighting girls’ ambivalence regarding menarche. Participants were conflicted at menarche about their putative status as ‘women’; used imprecise, distancing language when discussing menstruation; engaged in material and discursive practices of concealing menstruation; and referenced a community of menstrual suffering. Further, discourse analysis of participants’ talk suggests their continued discomfort. We argue that girls experience menarche ambivalently in relation to menstrual taboos, body shame and emergent womanhood. Negative discourses of menstruation and women’s bodies converge to set girls on a problematic gendered trajectory at menarche that can be expected to inform meaning making and experiences across the lifespan.

Meeting the health and social needs of pregnant asylum seekers, midwifery students' perspectives: Part 1; dominant discourses and midwifery students

Current literature has indicated a concern about standards of maternity care experienced by pregnant women who are seeking asylum. As the next generation of midwives, it is important that students are educated in a way that prepares them to effectively care for these women. To understand how this can be achieved, it is important to explore what asylum seeking means to midwifery students. This article is the first of three parts and reports on one objective from a wider doctorate study. It identifies dominant discourses that influenced the perceptions of a group of midwifery students' about the pregnant asylum seeking woman. The study was designed from a social constructivist perspective, with contextual knowledge being constructed by groups of people, influenced by underpinning dominant discourses, depending on their social, cultural and historical positions in the world. In a United Kingdom University setting, during year two of a pre-registration midwifery programme, eleven midwifery students participated in the study. Two focus group interviews using a problem based learning scenario as a trigger for discussion were conducted. In addition, three students were individually interviewed to explore issues in more depth and two students' written reflections on practice were used to generate data. Following a critical discourse analysis, dominant discourses were identified which appeared to influence the way in which asylum seekers were perceived. The findings suggested an underpinning ideology around the asylum seeker being different and of a criminal persuasion. Although the pregnant woman seeking asylum was considered as deserving of care, the same discourses appeared to influence the way in which she was constructed. However, as the study progressed, through reading alternative sources of literature, some students appeared to question these discourses. These findings have implications for midwifery education in encouraging students to challenge negative discourses and construct positive perceptions of asylum seeking.

Why Western Australian Secondary Teachers Resign

In recent years, Western Australian school have faced a significant increase in the number of secondary school teacher resignations. By analysing qualitative data gathered from interviews of 11 recently resigned secondary teachers, and three senior level administrators, the researchers sought to begin to understand the reasons behind a teacher attrition rate that has increased markedly since 2003. By placing the teachers' experiences within a framework of critical social theory, the paper outlines how collisions with power and the negative discourse encountered by teachers established their subsequent pathway to resignation. In outlining these pathways, we have provided an anthology of their existences.

Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in Adult ESL Classrooms: Some Issues to Consider

With anti-immigrant sentiments permeating the media, policy, and public discourse throughout the United States, little room seems to exist for understanding what drives Mexican migrants northward. However, while acknowledging the historical conditions leading to US immigration policy, negative discourses and stereotypes in the American media and public, continuing Mexican migration in spite of great sacrifice, and the choices of individuals to migrate to the US, adult ESL educators need a framework as they encounter these students in the classroom. This framework combines Freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” with a transformative pedagogy that relinquishes deficit models and invites student knowledge into the classroom.

Scientific tools, fake treatments, or triggers for psychological healing: How clinical trial participants conceptualise placebos

Placebos are an essential tool in randomised clinical trials, where they are used to control for bias and contextual healing effects. Placebos and their effects are also studied from multiple diverse perspectives, but the perspectives of placebo recipients are seldom considered. Research shows that people form cognitive and affective representations of active treatments such as medicines, and that they use these representations to guide their behaviour; it seems reasonable to suggest that people might also think about and develop representations of placebos. We adopted a qualitative approach to examine in detail how participants in one RCT, conducted in the USA, conceptualised placebos. 12 people were interviewed 3 times each, at the start, middle, and end of a trial of placebo effects and acupuncture for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). The interview data were analysed inductively and we identified four ways in which the participants conceptualised placebos: placebos are necessary for research; placebo effects are fake; placebo acupuncture is not real acupuncture; placebos have real effects mediated by psychological mechanisms. Participants’ conceptualisations of placebos were dynamic and situated in a broader psychological and socio-cultural context. Seeing placebo effects as legitimate seemed to be facilitated by having more holistic models of healing, viewing IBS as psychological, and seeing treatment as multifactorial. However, some participants maintained a negative view of placebo effects (e.g. as illusions) that was apparently inconsistent with their other beliefs (e.g. in mind-body healing mechanisms). This may indicate a dominance of negative discourses around placebos at a socio-cultural level. Negative views of placebos are inconsistent with evidence that placebo treatments can have positive effects on symptoms. RCT participants should be informed about potential benefits of placebo treatments to avoid misunderstandings and unease. Future work should improve methods of providing participants with full accurate information about placebos and their effects.

Envelhecimento e percepção corporal de idosos institucionalizados

O estudo tem por objetivo verificar, nos discursos de idosos institucionalizados, quais aspectos consideram ao remeter à percepção e visão que têm de seus corpos. Utilizou-se de entrevista semiestruturada com dados sociodemográficos e uma questão sobre a percepção e visão de corpo; e a análise de conteúdo seguiu o preconizado por Lawrence Bardin. Constatou-se que 44,4%, dos nove idosos entrevistados, remetiam sua percepção de corpo positivamente. Já os discursos negativos (33,3%) evidenciaram uma forte relação com a presença de doenças. Apenas um idoso diferenciou seu discurso, associando-o a uma percepção de corpo puramente biológico. Considerando que a percepção de corpo das pessoas está permeada de significâncias adquiridas durante as experiências vividas, destacou-se que 44,4% da amostra mostraram a percepção de corpo associada a fatores estéticos. Através da análise da literatura e das entrevistas, foi possível notar que as percepções de corpo diferem significativamente, em especial nos idosos. Constatou-se uma percepção positiva de corpo, mas a pequena amostra não permitiu maiores generalizações.

Discrimination as a Contextualized Obstacle to the Preschool Teaching of Young Latino Children of Immigrants

This article explores how discrimination acts as a barrier to providing the highest quality education to young Latino children of immigrants. Preschool teachers' concerns emerged from focus group data with 40 teachers in four US cities, collected as part of the international Children Crossing Borders study of immigration and early childhood education. Using focus group data as well as a multi-sited comparative analytic model, this study details teachers' concerns about discrimination in terms of negative discourses and harsh education and immigration policies, and explains how these forms of discrimination affect preschool teachers' efforts to teach. The findings demonstrate why and how local and national forms of discrimination can prevent teachers from reaching their full capacity to teach young Latino children of immigrants successfully, while suggesting that educational inequities facing Latino immigrant families cannot be resolved by teacher education alone, but must include cultural, societal and political changes to how Latino families are treated in the USA.

“I'm just like I always was”: a phenomenological exploration of leisure, identity and dementia

Both negative discourse surrounding dementia and changes that occur from an illness causing dementia can threaten identity. While research shows that identity remains in dementia, little is known about the role leisure plays in identity work in the dementia context. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of leisure in maintaining identity in early-stage dementia. Four participants with dementia living in the community participated in this interpretive phenomenological study. Through multiple interviews, participant observation and photovoice, conducted over several months with each participant, we found that while participants experienced many threatening assaults on identity, leisure served as an important space to uphold identity and remain engaged in life.

The “voice” of nature? Kookaburras, culture and Australian sound

Linking auditory and animal history, this article examines the kookaburra's transformation from a “bird of evil” to a symbol of and way of hearing nation. From the early colonial period, responses to the bird's aurality and behaviour were highly ambivalent and negative discourses in relation to the kookaburra continued well into the twentieth century. Yet the interwar years became the “heyday” of the kookaburra as a symbol. The analysis focuses not on the use of the kookaburra as a visual icon in this period but on the kookaburra's growing aural power and presence. Here, discussion is particularly concerned with the role of new mass communication media in integrating nation with nature via the kookaburra. Central to this is the story of Jacko, the “Broadcasting Kookaburra”, a narrative that not only helps to explain the bird's ascent in national consciousness but also the limits to that identification.

Binge flying: Behavioural addiction and climate change

Recent popular press suggests that ‘binge flying’ constitutes a new site of behavioural addiction. We theoretically appraise and empirically support this proposition through interviews with consumers in Norway and the United Kingdom conducted in 2009. Consistent findings from across two national contexts evidence a growing negative discourse towards frequent short-haul tourist air travel and illustrate strategies of guilt suppression and denial used to span a cognitive dissonance between the short-term personal benefits of tourism and the air travel’s associated long-term consequences for climate change. Tensions between tourism consumption and changing social norms towards acceptable flying practice exemplify how this social group is beginning to (re)frame what constitutes ‘excessive’ holiday flying, despite concomitantly continuing their own frequent air travels.

“The Young Ones are the Condom Generation”: Condom Use amongst Out-of-School Adolescents in Rural Southwest Uganda

This article reports on factors influencing condom use among out-of-school adolescents in rural southwest Uganda. Despite an abundance of negative discourses and myths about condoms in the community, these adolescents believe condoms protect them from sexually transmitted infections, HIV, and premarital pregnancies. Girls want partners to use condoms, but most lack the confidence to insist. Girls aged 13 to 14 reported the least difficulty asking for condoms; older girls attributed this to coming-of-age in the era of AIDS when condom use is the norm. Boys under 16 years want to use condoms, but lack confidence in application skills. Boys over 17 years always use condoms with casual partners, but only occasionally for pregnancy prevention with steady partners. Girls need skills training to improve confidence in negotiating condom use. Younger boys require training to improve confidence in skills with condom application. These findings are compared with studies conducted with in-school adolescents in the same study area. Health promotions that provide this skills training and focus on the need to think of the health of future family would be most effective for out-of-school adolescents. This study shows that it is self-confidence, rather than years of schooling, that has the greatest impact on condom use in this cohort.