Rational Discourse Research Articles

The Dataveillance and Care in Teachers’ Work with Early Warning Systems

It has now become a widespread practice in both public and private organisations to analyse data collected through digital systems and tools. Datafication in schools has resulted in additional work tasks for teachers and an increased level of accountability on their part. One of these data-work-related tasks of teachers is to proactively recognize students who may be at risk of dropping out of school and help them. Machine learning holds significant promise in the creation of advanced early warning systems (EWS) for predicting such student dropouts. Such systems are in line with a positive discourse supporting teachers’ effective decision making and a deeper understanding of student behaviour. In contrast, critical scholars raise concerns about the impact of data-driven practices in education on the teaching profession. This study adds to this body of literature by exploring how teachers are regulated by and regulating EWS as part of their work practice.In this study as part of a larger working life funded project, we focus on one digital tool used in Swedish upper secondary schools called StudyBee, integrated with Google Classroom and connected to the Swedish National Agency for Education. We conducted a combination of ethnographic methods such as desktop research of application’s website and social media posts to gain a deeper knowledge on the StudyBee’s Graphical User Interface, interviews with teachers and principals, as well as go-alongs with teachers to understand their interactions with EWSs. Based on Decuypere’s (2021) topological framework, we analyse what is happening on, with, behind, and beyond EWS.To argue that teacher work is shaped by accountability mechanisms, we use a critical perspective on teacher work within the digital platform/accountability discourse, aiming to reveal underlying power dynamics. We apply the concept of dataveillance (datafied surveillance, Clarke in Lyon, 2022) to illustrate how power operates, encouraging teachers to self-regulate in alignment with school accountability. Furthermore, we utilize the concept of care (Zakharova & Jarke, 2022) to understand technology-related aspects and care for students.

Does information matter? Online discourse on the Yemenite children’s affair in Israel after release of archival documents

PurposeThis study evaluates how publicly available archival documents shaped online discussions about allegations that thousands of children were kidnapped during the 1950s in Israel, known as the Yemenite children’s affair. It examines if access to historical records leads to more informed and rational public discourse, especially on social media.Design/methodology/approachUsing content analysis, this study examines Facebook posts from media outlets, politicians, NGOs and public groups between 2016 and 2021 to understand how the Israeli State Archives’ release of over 300,000 documents affected support of the kidnapping.FindingsDespite extensive archival information debunking the kidnapping theory, public opinion and discourse largely continued to support it. This suggests a complex interaction between information availability, preexisting beliefs, echo chambers and group allegiances, suggesting that access to factual data alone may not effectively challenge established beliefs in online public settings.Research limitations/implicationsSince data were collected only from Facebook, our conclusions cannot be generalized to other platforms. The study relies only on publicly accessible data and does not establish causality between exposure to information and shifts in opinion. Our findings show that disclosing archival information does not significantly benefit public political discourse on contentious topics but also point to the advantages of mediating information by politicians, NGOs and journalists.Originality/valueAs a unique case study, this research contributes to understanding the role of historical archives in digital-age public discourse. It highlights their potential and limitations in facilitating informed debate and deliberation, emphasizing the complexity of influencing established beliefs with factual data.

Secularism as an Anti-Religious Conspiracy: Salafi Challenges to French laïcité

Regarding organizational power, Salafism in France is a minority of dispersed groups emerging on the periphery of the Muslim French space. However, it can be regarded as a discursive force that has influenced significantly French discussions about Islam. Specifically, one of the most contentious positions in French political and intellectual discourse at the moment is Salafi vehement rejection of laïcité as a conspiracy against religion in general and Islam in particular. This article provides a close reading of three Salafi and neo-traditionalist discourses on secularism written by well-known theologians and intellectuals associated with this school of thought: Youssef Hindi, Kareem El Hidjaazi, and Aïssam Aït-Yahya. Investigative in nature, our aim is to comprehend the fundamental criticisms of French secularism and the rhetorical devices these Salafi and neo-traditionalist discourses have been using for the past ten years.

The role of English Wikipedia in mediating East Asian historical disputes: the case of Balhae

ABSTRACT With the expansion of the Internet in the early twenty-first century, public historical disputes between South Korea and China have become more pronounced. While existing research has focused on domestic Korean or Chinese digital spaces, the convergence or clash of these national narratives on global platforms remains underexplored. Our research bridges this gap by investigating the role of online platforms in shaping public historical debates. We compare the portrayals of Balhae, an ancient kingdom with contested contexts between the two nations. By comparing Chinese, Korean, and English Wikipedia entries on Balhae, we identify differences in narrative construction and framing. Employing Habermas’s typology of human action, we scrutinize related talk pages on English Wikipedia to examine the strategic actions multinational contributors employ to shape historical representation. This exploration reveals the dual role of online platforms in both amplifying and mediating historical disputes. While Wikipedia’s policies promote rational discourse, our findings indicate that contributors often vacillate between strategic and communicative actions. Nonetheless, the resulting article approximates Habermasian ideals of communicative rationality. This interaction accentuates the challenges and potential of fostering rational online discourse, the complexities of digital collaboration, and the quest for neutrality in open, decentralized platforms.

Reconstructing a teachers' discourse to build inclusive interactions using positive discourse analysis and a formative intervention program

ABSTRACT This study aimed to transform the discourse of an English teacher to build peace and promote inclusive interactions, democracy, and social justice in the classroom with students with disabilities. It used formative interventions and positive discourse to transform the teacher’s activity system regarding a teacher’s discourse. Research has explored whether teachers’ discourse promotes a peaceful environment, revealing signs of discrimination and symbolic violence. Studies have focused on raising awareness of the power of teachers’ discourse to generate an understanding of its impact. Nevertheless, little is known about teachers’ discourse transformation to promote inclusive interactions while teaching English to students with disabilities. The study is framed under the theoretical underpinnings of activity theory aimed at transforming teachers’ praxis. Results showed transformation in the teacher’s discourse in three main elements: subject, object, and mediation tools.

Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome: A Pluriversal Narrative to Decolonise the Past and Confront Universal Eurocentrism

The Calcutta Chromosome takes readers on a convoluted journey through time and space. At once a work of science fiction, a medical mystery, and a history of malaria research, this hybrid novel sets into rivalry India’s old-time wisdom and spirituality against Western science and English colonial presumptuousness, thus advocating transmodernity and the pluriversality put forward by critics such as Rosa María Rodriguez Magda, Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo, among others. This paper will analyse the way in which this novel denies the existence of a universal scientific method by deconstructing the certainties of an exclusively rationalist discourse whose discoveries have often gone hand in hand with exploitation, unequal power relations and colonization. Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance and Emmanuel Levinas’s ideas about the ethics of silence and knowledge will also be used to analyse silence as an alternative epistemological framework through which the dominant discourse can be undermined and the subaltern heard, and as a means to make amends for the injustices of the past by reclaiming the histories written by those who were made ‘others’ by the English imperial power.

The will to consensus

AbstractIn a democracy, when a group of deliberators have a set of differing (and contrary) views and beliefs about a particular policy or action, p, a recommended course of action is for them to pursue, and ultimately reach, a consensus on p. The pursuit of consensus allows deliberators to ‘reach over the aisle’ in accommodating dissenting views through rational dialogue until a consensual agreement is reached by all the deliberators. What fuels this pursuit of consensus is the ‘will to consensus’—a ‘frame of mind’ or a ‘disposition’ to resolve disagreements into a consensus. In this paper, I will raise some conceptual problems with positing a ‘will to consensus’ that is prior to, and supervenes on, the rational discussion of deliberators. Instead of a ‘will to consensus’, democratic theorists should be content with the minimal claim of a ‘will to dialogue’.

Museum Discourse in the Conditions of Information Warfare: problem statement

The article is devoted to the consideration of the position of museum discourse in the communicative system of modern Russia and, more broadly, in the national security system. In the context of geopolitical challenges and the development of political discourse in the semantics of the pervasive cancel culture in the format of applying new ethics as a symbolic act of oblivion, the national museum discourse acquires a particular significance. The “memory war”, the purpose of which is to delegitimize the previous discourse using techniques of rewriting, ignoring, neutralizing, and denying, actualizes the study of museum discourse in the context of national security strategy. Considering museum discourse as an imperative to strengthen national security, the authors identify a separate research area of socio–humanitarian sciences – “memory studies”, and introduce into the scientific categorical apparatus rather interrelated concepts of political discourse: “identity politics”, “memory politics” and “memorial politics”. The authors implement a strategy for analyzing the communicative effects of ensuring cultural sovereignty and overcoming the cancel culture, and conclude that museum discourse and the discourse of memory in the logic of cognitive and structural aspects represent mental constructs with the potential for dialogism and conversion (including the conversion of cultural capital into political capital), and determine the multilevel combinatorics of various communicative effects in the development of national identity. Hence, the authors propose to study the mutual influence of three discursive constructs: museum discourse – discourse of the state policy of memory – discourse of national identity, considered in relation to the modern political realities of Russia in the context of the implementation of the national security strategy.

Transitivity and agency in Richard Jefferies’s rural essays: an ecostylistic analysis

Abstract This essay aims to provide an ecostylistic analysis of transitivity and agency in selected extracts from Richard Jefferies’s late nineteenth-century rural essays, which were collected in his so-called country books. Jefferies’s portrayal of the interconnection between humans and the natural environment has been variously described as “pantheistic”, a “pantheist revery”, or an “ecstatic communion”. The present study proposes to validate these claims by showing that Jefferies’s essays utilise patterns of transitivity to depict manifold relationships between human and non-human agents in placid landscape descriptions. These can be regarded as positive discourse praising the rural environment and humans’ entanglement with other animal and vegetable organisms. An in-depth scrutiny of the linguistic patterns of Jefferies’s texts, corroborated by the theoretical and methodological framework of (eco)stylistics and related disciplines (i.e. Systemic Functional Grammar), offers useful insights into the author’s ecosophy and holistic understanding of the human and non-human world. By conceptualising the various constitutive elements of the physical environment as active/agentive participants in particular types of processes, Jefferies gives special prominence to ecocentric, rather than anthropocentric positions.

Gendered organisational and professional discourses of emotions in ‘macho’ social work: ethnographic insights

ABSTRACT Drawing on empirical research this paper explores how gendered discourses position emotions and emotion practices in social work environments characterised as ‘macho’. It highlights the intersection of traditional emotion-reason dualism and gendered constructions of emotions with dominant hegemonic organisational and professional norms. This ethnographic study in an English Children’s Service explored how emotions were understood and used in practice. It identified essentialist negative beliefs and a paradoxical positioning of practitioners’ emotions alongside their constructive use. Problematic perceptions of professionalism fed into notions of conformity, heroism and transgression, devaluing engagement in agile emotion practices which underpin relationship-based systemic practice. Institutionalised dynamics created scope for differential impacts given practitioners’ status and social locations such as, gender, race, age, sexuality or status. These findings contribute new knowledge, relevant to humane social work, professionalism and workforce retention.

The rationalities of strategic planning: a structural analysis of the legitimacy basis of MAL policy

ABSTRACT Due to the minimal role of statutory city-regional planning in Finland, the Finnish state promotes inter-municipal, integrated planning of land-use, housing and transportation in the biggest city regions by a strategic planning instrument and a contractual policy tool called MAL procedure. MAL procedure includes MAL agreements, where the central government agrees to fund transportation infrastructure, while the municipalities in the city-regions commit to certain planning principles. MAL policy has advanced sustainability goals in planning, but it has also been argued to be prone to legitimacy problems as MAL negotiations take place behind the backs of citizens. The article discusses the structure of the MAL policy, assessing the ways in which this structure supports the legitimacy of the policy. It focuses on the interplay of strategic and communicative rationalities in the MAL procedure, starting from the observation that the theorists of strategic planning have focused predominately on communicative rationality as the legitimacy basis of planning. This paper aims to show that from a broader, structural perspective, both rationalities – and the way in which they interact – have a role in maintaining the legitimacy of planning. The article builds on theoretical studies and interviews with actors engaged in the MAL procedure.

“The youths are wiser now”

Abstract This study examines several Nigerians’ resistance to the two major political parties and their presidential candidates using positive discourse analysis. Additionally, the study critically investigates Nigerians’ support for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) during the build-up to the 2023 Nigeria’s general elections. Data for the study comprise 1000 tweets with the hashtags #Obidients, #Atikulated, #Tinubu and tweets that mentioned Peter Obi, Atiku, Atikulated, Jagaban, Tinubu, Emilokan, PDP, APC and LP between June and October 2022. The analysis reveals that tweeps construct resistance via three discursive strategies: critiquing and resisting the APC and PDP, portraying Peter Obi of the Labour Party as a political saviour, and positioning Nigerians as politically wiser. This study provides a fresh perspective on analysing Nigeria’s electoral rhetoric by identifying social media as sites for atypical resistance, social change, and revolution.

A spark of change: developing an innovative gerontological nursing intervention mapping initiative for training and education (IGNITE)

BackgroundWith an aging global population and advancements in medical technology, there is an urgent need for innovative gerontological nursing education programs. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the Innovative Gerontological Nursing Intervention Mapping Initiative for Training and Education (IGNITE) program. This program is a digital platform-based postgraduate nursing curriculum that employs the Intervention Mapping Approach (IMA) and Transformative Learning Theory to address the evolving needs of gerontological nursing.MethodsThe IGNITE program’s development process encompassed a comprehensive approach, including needs assessment, mapping of course objectives, integration of theory-based methods and strategies, course design, implementation, and rigorous evaluation. The pilot evaluation study involved pre- and post-tests focused on ageism, attitudes towards elder care, knowledge about older adults, transformative behavior change, and program satisfaction. The findings revealed significant improvements across all these dimensions, affirming the effectiveness of the program.ResultsThe program leveraged experiential learning, critical reflection, and rational discourse to facilitate transformative educational experiences. Notably, pre- and post-test comparisons showed marked improvements in attitudes towards older adult care and dementia care knowledge. Participants expressed high satisfaction with the program, with significant reported changes in transformative behaviors. The study also illuminated the initial negative attitudes of clinical nurses towards older adults and underscored the importance of transformative learning experiences in fostering empathy and understanding.ConclusionsThe IGNITE program lays a foundational framework for developing educational materials that promote transformative learning and self-reflection among healthcare professionals. This approach can lead to innovative nursing practices and personal growth. The application of the IMA and Transformative Learning Theory in gerontological nursing education shows significant promise. Future research should focus on exploring the long-term impacts of such programs and their applicability in diverse healthcare settings.

Laicità e partecipazione politica

Legal secularism and political participation
 ABSTRACT: As is well known, the Italian term ‘laicità’ is polysemic and cannot be adequately translated into English. The word ‘secularism’, in fact, only captures certain senses of ‘laicità’. Ultimately, we are dealing with a very complex phenomenon that surely cannot be analyzed with a dichotomic black and white concept. In this paper we are mainly interested in highlighting legal secularism, understood as neutrality. However, we must pay attention to the fact that liberal neutrality, understood as mutual tolerance and impartiality of institutions, is a “committed neutrality” which deeply differs from Max Weber’s uncommitted neutrality to which scientists aspire. On the other hand, the ideal of legal secularism comes into harsh conflict with the partisan spirit that characterizes political life. Democracy is not only respect for rules, but must come to terms with the citizens’ variegated senses of belonging to this or that community. As they say: “My country, right or wrong”. Precisely because of these limits to rational discourse, we believe that legal secularism, in a broad sense, is not fully achievable even in an open society.
 SOMMARIO: 1. L’individuazione del tema che verrà affrontato - 2. Laicità, una nozione complessa - 3. (segue) Tre concetti di laicità - 4. (segue) La neutralità degli scienziati e la neutralità delle istituzioni laico-liberali - 5. (segue) La così detta “scienza del diritto”: un ideale sulla via del tramonto - 6. Partecipazione e appartenenza - 7. (segue) Il fascino duraturo della democrazia diretta e la ritrosia del laico - 8. (segue) Il successo delle argomentazioni fallaci quale fenomeno collettivo - 9. Concludendo: i pregi e i limiti della ragione laica.

Fidelity to Life ∼ Hospitable Biopolitics

While fidelity is a crucial aspect of Jacques Derrida’s thinking as it pertains to issues of faith, ethics, and responsibility, this key position in deconstructionist discourse has hardly yet been brought to light. Less still have the biopolitical resonances of Derrida’s work, with its careful attention to the terms and stakes of life particularly in his later writing, been considered as a deconstructionist practice of fidelity and infidelity in its own right. In pursuing these threads, this essay argues that thinking a deconstructionist ethics through fidelity and biopolitics makes possible the crafting of a new philosophical weave for catching our responsibilities to others – to the very otherness of life itself – that Derridean hospitality opens up. Taken together in this way, a deconstructionist fidelity to life otherwise, to a biopolitics to come, makes possible an infidelity to political order as we know it that explodes the limitations of biopolitical theory. In squinting, blinking, tearing up, and listening, the borders of life are blurred in an ambivalent ethics of a transness within which life itself is made to waver and arrive anew.

Arts promotion and Black urban displacement: Exploring the paradox of the positive in government public relations and urban renewal discourse

For decades, scholars in the United States have lamented public policies and government actions that seem to affect, intentionally or unintentionally, already marginalized Black populations. Urban renewal policies and initiatives are examples of government actions that receive such criticism. Arts promotion as a strategic public relations tactic, used to attract middle- to -upper class residents and visitors to cities, is one communicative approach cities take to sell their attractiveness and viability. Yet, cities, urban renewal, and urban tourism research has not received much attention from Public Relations researchers. Critical public relations scholars, however, can help to expose key issues such as displacement and marginalization of Black citizens that are associated with city public relations activities such as promotional culture, arts/city marketing, and urban tourism. Using racial neoliberalism as a theoretical, analytical framework, we examine urban renewal in Cincinnati, Ohio USA, to demonstrate the power of boosterish, government-sponsored urban renewal efforts and the ways such paradoxically positive discourse makes it difficult for the often Black, inner-city communities to challenge advancement that might marginalize them further.

Climate crisis literacy through media: a positive discourse analysis of selected Nepali media content

Climate crisis literacy through media: a positive discourse analysis of selected Nepali media content

Sustainable Green Future from a Multimodal Positive Discourse Analysis Perspective: Investigating Environmental Metaphors in Some Selected Cartoons

A substantial body of research pertaining to ecological issues has significantly centered its attention on laying out the deleterious, harmful and destructive consequences stemming from human actions upon the environment. This emphasis often revolves around negative metaphors that evoke fear, threats, and danger, leaving the positive aspects of green and sustainable future relatively unexplored. This paper adopts a Multimodal Positive Discourse Analysis (MPDA) approach to scrutinize visual socio-cognitive metaphors presented in 11 environmental cartoons disseminated by the Indian Council of Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) on diverse ecological issues. The study aligns with Forceivelle's (1996 & 2009) theory of multimodal metaphor and Hart's (2008) model of critical metaphor analysis in the light of Martin's (2004) Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) theoretical framework. Therefore, emphasizing the significance of visual metaphor in the formulation of new and positive eco-friendly scenarios through the process of projection and integration across two distinct input spaces. The results of the study show that positive scenarios such as hope, success, aspiration, ambition, and optimism have been motivated in the generic space, providing an antithesis to the predominant negative scenarios characterized by stereotypes of eco threat, harm, insecurity, and instability.

‘Never have they had any chance to spread their wings’: The construction of agency and socio-gender identity of Iranian women

This paper intends to study how the agency and social-gender identity of Iranian women are constructed through social-cultural-political structures. To this end, we conducted 35 semi-structured interviews with Iranian citizens, both men and women in the context of the Zan-Zendegi-Azadi (Women-Life-Freedom) movement in Iran. This study is grounded upon the main tenets of Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA), seeking to give voice to the oppressed and minorities and reverberate the alternatives to make the world a better place. Findings suggest that certain suppressive social-political-cultural structures in the course of history have largely confined women’s agency in practising their fundamental civil rights and have given them a subordinate position in society, thereby preventing them from constructing independent social-gender identity and status both at social and familial terrains. Analyses also indicated that such structures are constructed and naturalised in the course of history with political systems buttressing domination over women.

The Democratic Value of Strategic Game Reporting and Uncivil Talk: A Computational Analysis of Facebook Conversations During U.S. Primary Debates

This study explores discourse features on Facebook pages of news organizations during the 2020 U.S. primary debates using a state-of-the-art machine-learning model. Informing the scholarly debate about the implications of strategic game reporting in online spaces, we find that it is not necessarily linked to uncivil discourse, yet it might deter from relevant conversations. Second, addressing fears about the undesired outcomes of uncivil talk, our data suggest that incivility can coexist with rational discourse in user comments, although this relationship is not pervasive. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of the role of hybrid media for political engagement during electoral campaigns.