Discussion Of Theory Research Articles

Our Princes are in Borrowed Robes: Significance of Expressed Costume Choices by Selected Ghanaian Playwrights

The playwright’s work remains the blueprint upon which all other theatre artists build their craft. This positions playwrights as indispensable artists in theatrical discourse. While some playwrights express specific costume demands in their texts, others leave it to theatre directors and designers to decipher the appropriate costume choices for the plays. The former suggests a stylistic feature by some playwrights; however, less visibility appears to be given to this phenomenon in Ghanaian theatre scholarship. What the significance and implications are for both the costume designer and playwrights is the subject of this exploration. Employing a qualitative approach, this paper samples three Ghanaian playwright educators and their costume choices and examines the dramatic significance of their choices. The findings of the study revealed that the rationale for expressing costume choices was to project major characters, and that the necessity to create special characters, create impression, as well as scene changes and time, all influenced character costume choices. The significance of costume choices was to project a rich tapestry of cultural identity and characters and enforce themes, while the implications of such costume choices were to support costumiers, make issues easier for them and the playwright, and encourage them to be more creative. Ultimately, this study contributes to scholarship on costume usage in theatrical discourse.

Uncovering the uncoverers: identity, performativity and representation in counter-disinformation discourse

ABSTRACT Treating counter-disinformation activities as a discursive practice producing knowledge in specific cultural and historical contexts, this article brings a vital cultural studies perspective to an incipient Critical Disinformation Studies agenda. At the same time, it cautions against inadvertently aligning that agenda with the ‘bad faith’, right-wing populist critique of counter-disinformation practices, acknowledging their genuine potential to enhance democratic culture. It proceeds by interrogating the communicative strategies informing the proliferating Western counter-disinformation initiatives which have mushroomed in response to what is widely perceived to be one of democracy’s most potent threats, and which border on a ‘moral panic’ serving to conceal key ideological tensions. Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis methods, a close reading of mission statements and related materials from the websites of four leading counter-disinformation units demonstrates how these texts interweave three functions – identity construction, performativity, and representation – to generate the overarching ‘discursive formation’ or ‘articulation’ constituting counter-disinformation as modern liberal democracy’s core, but also exposing its fault lines. Specifically, it shows that a failure to reconcile competing accounts of truth (as scientific rationality and normative value) indexes deeper contradictions pitting the liberal emphasis on individual freedom and capitalist efficiency against the democratic prioritizing of popular power, dispassionate observation against civic participation, and the promotion of transparency against the creeping power of surveillance. It concludes that the absolutist epistemology – a vestige of disinformation’s Cold War conceptual origins – designed to cover over these paradoxes masks the complex roles played by truth and deception in politics, thereby hindering the emergence of alternative, oppositional forms of knowledge capable of embracing truth in its radical contingency and plurality and facilitating democratic renewal.

Same Arguments, Different Outcomes: Struggles Over Private School Funding in Alberta and Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT I compare arguments mobilized for and against a policy to publicly fund private schools, including religious private schools, in Alberta and Ontario, Canada, and highlight how the arguments reflect each province’s historical, ideological, and social contexts. Grounded in Maarten Hajer’s argumentative discourse theory and based on findings from argumentative discourse analyses of 275 media articles, submissions to nine parliamentary committee meetings, and 14 interviews, I show how actors with disparate interests and values formed discourse coalitions as they pursued their policy preference by mobilizing one of two storylines: (1) public funds are for public schools or (2) private schools deserve public funds. The findings demonstrate that policy supporters and opponents mobilized the same arguments in both provinces between 1990 and 2020 with opposing outcomes. I conclude by highlighting aspects of the provinces’ historical, social, and discursive contexts that help explain these different outcomes and consider the effects of Alberta’s policy to fund private schools with public funds on enrollment and equity.

Towards a climate of hope: learning in response to frames at an innovative museum exhibit

As trusted public institutions, museums could offer crucial opportunities for climate learning. Yet, empirical research on effective approaches is limited. One potential pathway is through strategic framing, given that much research in climate communication suggests the value of specific frames. We developed an innovative climate exhibit, A Climate of Hope (ACOH), guided by five strategic frames: hope, gain, local, community, and playful. To investigate visitor learning at a prototype of ACOH, we collected data from 31 groups as they interacted with a prototype of ACOH while wearing audio recorders. Integrating theories of knowledge and discourse, we investigated learners’ use of resources at ACOH through qualitative discourse analysis and mixed-methods analysis. We found that learners brought a diverse array of resources, some of which were related to incoming views of climate change. We interpret our results as speaking to the potential of framing climate messages through a gain frame. We provide implications for educational practice around climate change in informal spaces.

Relevance of Vernacular in the Contemporary World: Use of Vernacular Languages in the Presidential Debates in Indonesia

Language is the main instrument in the political communications in elections around the world. It has become equally important in the last Indonesian presidential candidate debate. The linguistic aspects of the construction of debates that discuss various themes regarding existential problems in the Indonesian republic has far-reaching consequences. In them, the numerous ethnic groups in Indonesia must be accommodated as much as possible in order to guarantee a sense of national unity. In the contemporary Indonesian political discourse, the sense of national unity is torn apart as a result of Papua being still turbulent with some people trying to separate themselves. In this context, the employment of regional languages in the presidential debate contributes to manifest the politics of language into a reflection of the presidential candidates' ability in recognizing the languages of all the vernacular ethnic groups. This research examines the use of vernacular languages in the presidential debates in Indonesia. The research employs descriptive qualitative research methods. Data source is the recorded text of the 2024 presidential candidate debates obtained from the TV broadcasts. Data collection involved ‘listening’ and note-taking as the techniques. The data analysis technique employed Norman Fairclough's critical discourse theory. The analysis examined the text as a construction of social identity, social relations, and meaning. The results show that in this debate, there has been a strong emphasis on the recognition of social identity of the people of Indonesia. The three regional languages used by the presidential candidate Anies Baswedan in the debate reflect these identities of different ethnic groups: Java, Sunda and Maluku. what Anies highlighted was his efforts to bring about interactions among the ethnic groups. He argued that they must interact with each other to produce Indonesia as a unified nation. Anies has employed the languages to articulate philosophical meanings related to the struggle, nobility, consistency, honesty, wisdom and femininity

Studi Mazhab Frankfurt School Jurgen Habermas Dalam Diskursus Etika Politik Indonesia

This study seeks to identify two principles in Jurgen Habermas's discourse, namely Indonesian universal political ethics and Indonesian discourse political ethics. Done by implementing a qualitative description approach with the type of literature study. Data consists of documents that include books, journals, and relevant research results. The collected data will then be understood, recorded, and phrased and then analyzed by actualizing Habermas's discourse theory which contains (Universal Ethics) and (Discourse Ethics). So that conclusions can be drawn. This study states that in universal ethics, the formulation and implementation of the principles of universal political ethics Indonesia uses the philosophy of Pancasila because it is identified as the basis of the state and ideology of the Indonesian nation. Thus, all legal doctrines and legal political mechanisms in Indonesia need to contain the values contained in Pancasila. Meanwhile, discourse ethics states that the ethical principles of Indonesian discourse are carried out with the mechanism of the concept of democracy which focuses on a discourse in a public space. Therefore, the moral principles of ethics only need to be applied in the realm of legal systems and politics (Universal Ethics) not in the realm of democracy (Discourse Ethics). Because discourse upholds the principle of freedom, there is no intervention and does not require moral verification by all participants like universal ethics.

An Analysis of Linguistic Resources for Sports Tourism Media Discourse: A Case Study of the Women’s World Cup Final in Sydney

Sports have historically played a significant role in influencing travel, the twenty-first century witnessing a notable surge in sports tourism attributed largely to increasing globalisation and the pervasive influence of social media. International sports events hosted by countries and cities serve as potent platforms for tourist promotion, with meticulous attention to detail often reflected across various social media channels. Notably, recent editions of such events have seen women taking on crucial roles. This paper delves into the FIFA Women’s World Cup Final held in Sydney, Australia, in August 2023, analysing three distinct corpora to discern linguistic resources—the use of persuasion with personal pronouns and imperatives, among others—shaping tourism media discourse, specifically focusing on gender visibility and promotion of destination excellence. To conduct this research, we compiled a corpus of 11,549 words comprising webpages, online publications and tourism blogs, using AntConc software for the analysis. Our findings reveal that the media employ specific language choices to portray the event and its host city, projecting values such as teamwork and inclusion, often through community engagement. However, there exists an under-representation of coverage concerning sportswomen, with minimal linguistic patterns used to promote their visibility beyond the event’s title. Conversely, the host city receives extensive promotion. Consequently, this analysis serves as a pertinent case study contributing to the understanding of sports tourism media discourse representation.

The “Authenticity” of Cannibalism: Persisting Nineteenth-century Colonial Perceptions in the Present-day Tourism Dynamic of Lake Toba

This paper discusses perceptions of the Batak of North Sumatra popular among nineteenth century European audiences and their continuity in the tourism industry and tourist descriptions. In particular, tourist dynamics in the Batak region of Lake Toba are contextualised and interpreted by identifying how local culture has reacted to tourist demand and tourist depictions of the Batak and their culture. The paper undertakes a historiographical survey of nineteenth century European writings that ascribe a “violent,” “primitive,” and “cannibalistic” character to the Batak to illustrate prevailing perceptions of the time. These findings are interpreted through a conceptual analysis that integrates Foucauldian discourse theory, Orientalism, Stuart Hall’s “the West and the Rest” as well as some elements of Marxist-Leninist material history. This analysis of modern tourism dynamics in Lake Toba is thus argued to illustrate how colonial perceptions and power relations have maintained currency through tourism.

Disrupted coping and skills for sustainability: A pluralist Heideggerian perspective

What is the ontological significance of sustainability crises – and the struggles to overcome them? Drawing on Heideggerian perspectives – in dialogue with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theories – I argue sustainability crises become meaningful at the level of everyday experience when they disrupt the flow of ordinary skilled practices and their orientations towards the future. Such disruptions trigger what Heidegger termed ‘anxiety’, which implies an erosion of life's coherence, meaning and purpose. Developing skills to ‘cope’ with sustainability crises may enact alternative ontologies that restore what anxiety threatens; ‘skills for sustainability’ potentially disclose new worlds, meanings, values and goals. I illustrate this through vignettes of individuals transitioning to organic farming in India. I show how disruptions to farmers’ skilled practices triggered anxiety while also prompting the development of skills for alternative agricultural practice. These skills enabled new ways of experiencing worlds, non-human entities and the telos of everyday activity.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE REGIME OF TEMPORALITY: THE FOUNDATIONS OF ARCHITECTONICS

The aim of this work is to investigate and conceptualize the ‘temporality regime’ as a socio-cultural phenomenon, primarily analyzing its impact on social processes and social transformations. This study characterizes the concept of ‘temporality regime’ by employing heuristic resources of sociological theorization, particularly the socio-cultural approach, discourse theory, P.Bourdieu’s principle of double structuration of reality, and specific provisions of practice theory. Two levels of inter connection in the architectonic soft he temporality regime are established: static and dynamic. It is determined that the static level includes the inter connection of the objective background (culture) and the subjective plane (interpretative activity of subjects). The objective background is defined by cultural postulates that have imperative power, where as the subjective plane includes the activities of actors who interact with the products of cultural production. It is noted that the dynamic level of the temporality regime concerns the inter connection of social changes and the discursive field of the temporality regime through the pragmatic dimension. Social changes act as factors of transformation of the temporality regime, and conversely, temporality regimes influence social dynamics. It is found that this double interconnection forms a new level of discursive production, where social practices transform into discursive practices and vice versa, affecting the formation and development of social changes. The theoretical significance of the study lies in a deeper understanding of the temporality regime as a socio-cultural phenomenon, enabling the analysis of the interaction between culture and social practices in the context to social changes. The practical significance of the studies that understanding these inter connections will allow form or effective management of social changes and prediction of their consequences. The scientific novelty of the research is associated with the identification of static and dynamic levels of interconnection in the architectonics of the temporality regime, allowing for a concrete analysis of the impact of culture on the activities of actors and social changes, and vice versa. Limitations of the study include the need for additional empirical data to confirm theoretical conclusions. Therefore, future research prospects involve the collection of additional empirical data.

JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET´S CREATIVE LEGACY: THINKING ABOUT LANGUAGE

The study focuses on the works of J. Ortega y Gasset, in which the Spanish philosopher offers a new vision of Linguistics analyzed from the point of view of Anthropology, Discourse Theory and Philosophy and first presented by him in 1938. Ortega’s bibliography contains articles in which he develops ideas relevant to Philological science, objecting to Saussure and criticizing Structuralism as the dominant research paradigm at that time. The subject of the research paper is the J. Ortega y Gasset’s ideology about the language and speech nature, formalized in the concepts called New Linguistics and Theory of Utterance, as well as the author’s views on the new approaches to the study of Philology (New Philology) and Grammar (New Grammar). In his works, the Spanish philosopher examines the dynamic nature of language and speech in its projection onto the speaker and substantiates the need to take into account the communicative intention and the communicative context, thereby anticipating the scientific research of the founders of the Speech Act Theory and Discourse Analysis J. Austin, J. Searle and Teun A. Van Dijk. The article makes an attempt to describe and systematize the main ideas introduced by J. Ortega y Gasset, relevant to such areas of modern Linguistics as Pragmatics and Text Linguistics.

A Study on Teacher’s Regulative Discourse in Online Academic English Writing Course

This study investigates the use of teachers’ regulative discourse in an online academic writing course from the perspective of Bernstein’s pedagogic discourse theory. By observing and analyzing the data from the “Academic English Writing” course on the China University MOOC platform, the study examines the forms, syntactic expressions, and functions of directives used by teachers in online classes and explores their impact on teaching and student learning. The findings reveal that teachers prefer to use direct regulative discourses, such as imperative sentences while utilizing indirect and more polite discourses less frequently. The findings help to provide references for MOOC teachers to optimize their use of regulative discourse.

Rough Excision: a poetic response to Great Expectations (1861) and Jack Maggs (1997)

ABSTRACT Read together or as stand-alone pieces, the thirteen poems offered below are conceived as a creative-critical response to two novels, a Victorian one, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861), and its neo-Victorian counterpart, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997). Rather than simply inspired by these novels, the poems are the result of a critical reading of both Carey’s reimagining of Dickens’s great English novel and the source text itself. As such they implicitly engage with Carey’s critics, who have almost unanimously analysed Jack Maggs from a postcolonial perspective, thereby largely ignoring the rewriting of the women characters. Scholars have systematically pointed out how Dickens’s orphan Pip is rewritten by Carey as Henry Phipps, the Australian convict Abel Magwitch as Jack Maggs and Dickens himself as the great Victorian author Tobias Oates. Together with the annotations in part II, the poems offer a creative contribution to the critical engagement with Carey’s novel, by arguing that Carey’s Mercy, servant and mistress of would-be gentleman Percy Buckle in Jack Maggs, can be fruitfully read as a re-imagining of Dickens’s Molly, biological mother of Estella and housekeeper of unscrupulous lawyer Jaggers in Great Expectations. The poems raise questions concerning neo-Victorianism, patriarchal discourse and trauma theory from a feminist perspective.

Neophenomenological strategies in techno-images. Towards the post-metaphysical ontology

The article deals with the deconstruction of “metaphysics of presence”, based on the subject-object duality, in a postsecular/mystical approach. Post-metaphysical ontology, that is described here as negative ontology, needs a neophenomenological tool to be revealed. Characterized by a “wave” structure, beyond the “hard presence”, it can’t be defined as “being” or “non-being”. It is rather a kind of perpetual motion, determined by the trajectory of “photons of light”. This recognition seems to find an appropriate manifestation in a contemporary techno-culture. In the field of media technology (analog film or digital new media art), the negative ontology may be experienced by strategies of neophenomenology, in which “sus- pension” (epoché) gesture would concerns first the “ground” itself, then the aesthetics and narration, constituted by the cognitive/rational act of counsciousness. In other words, the visuality of the techno-image may be a tool of liberation of the perception from a cognitive/rational paradigm, which is closed to experience of what is the Other / the apophatic, wave Reality as it is. What should be underlined, in this proposal neophenomenology is not only the epistemology; the virtual image is directly related to negative ontology. An intuitive, mystical transformation of vision, proposed here, that denudes the discourse of representation, allows us to immerse into pure/“naked” Seeing and pure/“naked” Being. Exemplary materials to the outlined issues are films by Béla Tarr and video installations by Bill Viola.

Back to the future: re-examining John Mearsheimer’s idea of hypernationalism in the context of the Russian–Ukrainian war

ABSTRACT Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is an opportunity for readdressing a crucial theoretical question: How to understand the role of hypernationalism in the run-up to war? Given the participation of Ukrainian ultranationalist militias and Russia’s goal of de-Nazifying Ukraine, a need emerges to provide a greater understanding of hypernationalism and its relation to this war’s origins. By going back to John Mearsheimer’s 1990 article ‘Back to the future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’, this article examines Mearsheimer’s idea of hypernationalism and the problem of how states can signify other nations most negatively in the run-up to war. Drawing on a problem-driven strategy, it tackles this problem by applying ‘Essex School’ poststructuralist discourse theory. It argues that Ukrainian hypernationalism played a vital role in the genesis of this war, although not as a stable set of principles that possess a causal force but as a political subjectivity that the Russian government signified as a threat to its national identity. I use this distinction to theorise the role of hypernationalism by examining Russian official statements about Ukrainian neo-Nazism.

Care as pluriversal strategy? Caring in counter-hegemonic struggles in the degrowth and environmental justice movements

ABSTRACT Overcoming the destructive power of the capitalist world system requires bringing relevant alternatives together in a way that respects their diversity. In this article, we investigate the significance of care – in its ethical, practical, and affective dimensions – in the task of uniting the pluriverse alternatives at moments and sites of counter-hegemonic struggle. Our analysis focuses on the degrowth movement and environmental justice movements. Adopting a post-Marxist discourse theory lens, we argue that care can mobilize and coalesce these pluriverse alternatives into temporarily united counter-hegemonic coalitions. For effectively disrupting the hegemony of the capitalist world system, we suggest that the pluriverse should meet the following three conditions: (1) the symbolic construction of the world system as an enemy to mobilize against, (2) a vision recognizing the foundational nature of care-based relations for pluriversal futures, and (3) practices of care fitting together with the parallel understandings and visions of the pluriverse.

Analisis Podcast Close The Door Tentang Pelanggaran Etika Episode Catheez

The purpose of this research is to conduct an analysis of possible ethical violations contained in the episode "CRAZY KAYA GINI TURNS OME TV⁉️ - CATHEEZ - WHERE IS THE BOCIL OME TV!?" from the "Close the Door" podcast narrated by Catheez. This research uses a qualitative approach to identify and evaluate ethical aspects that appear in the conversations and narratives in the podcast. This research also integrates feminist discourse theory with Vand DJik which is divided into 3 structures, namely macro structure, super structure and micro structure to explore the influence of this episode on gender construction and social norms in the context of conversation. The results of the research identified several forms of ethical violations which were emphasized in the episode including gender stereotyping, verbal harassment, as well as the use of derogatory language. With a feminist discourse perspective, this research also reveals the ways in which these episodes may strengthen or undermine gender norms in society. The results of this research provide important insights regarding the influence of podcasts on understanding ethics and social norms, taking into account gender and feminist perspectives. This research makes an important contribution to understanding the ethical issues that arise in the world of podcasts and also how feminist discourse theory can be applied to analyze the impact of audio media such as podcasts in the social and cultural realm.

The Representation of Female Biblical Figures in Major Israeli Discourses

Israeli girls’ names that remained prevalent over lengthy periods were examined with the aim of determining their representation in social discourses as defined by Foucault (2002). Rare names occurring three to ten times per year from 1948 to 2015 were examined as well. Foucault defined four dichotomous axes that distinguish social discourses, with each axis characterized by social normativity at one end and original creativity at the other. The four dichotomous axes of discourse according to Foucault are ‘discursive event opposed to creation’, ‘discursive series opposed to unity’, ‘discursive regularity opposed to originality’ and, ‘condition of possibility opposed to signification’. The most prevalent girls’ names were considered as representation of the social normativity, while the rare names were considered as representations of social discourse contains original creativity. 19 prevalent names were found, 12 of which stayed on the most-popular-names list for 68 years, and seven of which appeared on the list for at least 40 years. Fifteen of these 19 names are the names of female figures from the Old Testament. Eight of the names are those of the most important women in the Bible – women who also have enjoyed the greatest degree of favor in Jewish tradition. Four other names are those of assertive women whose actions were viewed unfavorably in Jewish tradition. An analysis of these names in Foucauldian terms indicated that the most-popular-names list for girls constitutes part of three simultaneous social discourses in Israeli society across its component subgroups. These three discourses are: traditional Jewish discourse, Zionist discourse, and Israeli discourse. The latter discourse has not only featured names that appeared for many years on the popular-names list; it has also featured, in more than half the cases, names belonging to the rare-names lists – a phenomenon consistent with creativity, in Foucauldian terms.

Demands as the black box of discourse theory: the German integration debate, demanding a ‘leading culture’ and the mainstreaming of the far-right

ABSTRACT The recent rise of the far-right ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ (AfD) in Germany has puzzled researchers. How did demands around cultural homogeneity and the need to be protected from ‘dangerous’ immigrants become acceptable in the mainstream when previously they were not? Crucially, understanding political change is paramount for discourse theorist Ernesto Laclau, who considers ‘demands’ as pivotal for the construction of political identities. Yet, the notion is underdeveloped in his writings. I discuss the aporias in Laclau’s understanding of demands and probe how far we can take Laclau in theoretically accounting for the emergence of demands. The concepts of horizon and dislocation are most helpful in this regard. I then utilise those concepts to analyse demand emergence in the ‘Leitkultur’ (leading culture) debate. I show how the horizon on which these demands are inscripted changed over the years, with a culturalistic discourse becoming dominant. There, following a dislocatory public debate of a non-fiction bestseller by career bureaucrat Thilo Sarrazin, integration was increasingly framed as problematic and foreigners needing to shed unintegratable parts of their own culture to assimilate to a German Leitkultur. I argue that acts of mainstreaming like these allowed the AfD to make their formerly radical demands seem credible.

Syntax, Technology and Politics: Analyzing Political Facebook Posts

This study used Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory to analyze syntactic complexity in digital communication. Thirty Facebook posts made between August and December 2023 by John Dramani Mahama, a Ghanaian former president, were analyzed in this study. A textual analysis was conducted on the data. The findings affirmed that grammatical categories are functional. There was a deliberate linguistic strategy marked by a prevalence of declarative sentences and a notable dominance of complex structures in this genre of digital writing. The strategic use of non-finite clauses contributes to the complexity of the discourse. The genre of writing is also characterized by information ranking and integration. The linguistic choices align with the formal expectations of political and digital communication – precision, depth, and engagement. These observations challenge and enrich existing theories of political discourse and communication strategies in the digital era. Keywords: Syntactic Complexity, Digital Communication, Facebook, Sentence Types, SFL