Shift In Discourse Research Articles

Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural WorldsCredulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism

Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural WorldsCredulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism

Media Framing Dynamics of the ‘European Refugee Crisis’: A Comparative Topic Modelling Approach

Abstract The complexity and duration of the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ created a climate of uncertainty, which left ample room for mass media to shape citizens’ understanding of what the arrival of these refugees meant for their respective country. This study analyses the national media discourses in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Spain for this time period. Applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling in five languages and based on N = 130,042 articles from 24 news outlets, we reveal country-specific media frames to track the overall course of the refugee debate and to uncover dynamics and shifts in discourses. While results show similarities across countries, due to media coverage responding to real-world developments, there are differences in media framing as well. Possible sources of these differences such as countries’ geographic location or status as receiving country are discussed.

Discourses about language and literacy education in Portugal: past and present

Abstract This article presents a historical analysis of discourses about language and literacy that have emerged during different periods in the political and cultural history of Portugal. It covers six periods, from the colonial era to the present, and it considers different geopolitical spaces, including the Portuguese mainland, the Atlantic archipelagos, former Portuguese colonies and diasporic spaces created as a result of emigration from Portugal. The article traces three kinds of discursive shift: (1) shifts in discourses in Portuguese society regarding the goals of language and literacy education, along with associated discourses about appropriate language and literacy pedagogies; (2) shifts in discourses about the specific nature and significance of literacy in Portuguese; and (3) shifts in discourses about the value and symbolic power of standardized forms of spoken and written Portuguese. It shows how each historical period has been characterized by distinctive political and ideological currents which have, in turn, shaped and re-shaped ways of thinking about the role of language and literacy education in the definition of citizenship and national identity, in the construction of heritage, in the creation of a “modern” democratic state and, more recently, in the retooling of human resources to create a flexible labour force.

Emerging sustainability concerns and policy implications of urban household consumption: A systematic literature review

Abstract The 2015 Paris Agreement marked a significant shift in public and scholarly discourse on climate change by laying more emphasis on stakeholder involvement and local level policies in achieving sustainability transitions. Sustainable Development Goal 12 further emphasises the importance of households in achieving sustainable consumption before 2030, especially in urban centres. However, since its adoption in 2015, no study has sought to synthesise the scholarship conducted around the emerging urban household consumption challenges that could inhibit the achievement of Goal 12. Through a systematic selection and in-depth review of relevant literature over the last five years, this paper assesses these sustainability challenges and critically examines the policy implications for achieving sustainable consumption. The review notes that in recent years, researchers have explored a range of issues including energy consumption, sustainable lifestyles, consumption footprints and class relations in urban household consumption through models and social perspectives. The urban household challenges identified include, inter alia: intensifying household consumption; rising commodification of household activities; continued reliance on unsustainable energy sources; low levels of sustainability education; high costs of sustainable lifestyles; and class differences in sustainable consumption patterns. In addressing these problems, the literature suggests strategies such as greening urban infrastructure, involving households in intervention programmes and promoting sustainability education, among others. Furthermore, to achieve Goal 12, future research and policy initiatives should consider the impact of materiality in household consumption, explore the interlinkages of household consumption with wider socio-cultural institutions and be more practice-oriented.

‘Double-taxing’ Indigenous business: exploring the effects of political discourse on the transfer of public procurement policy

ABSTRACT This article details how shifts in political discourse can reconfigure the intent, and effect the outcomes, of public procurement policy. Through critical discourse analysis of public procurement policies focused on supplier diversity in Australia, we explore how discursive struggles over policy meaning and intent can have real effects. Our findings show how the intent of public procurement policy shifted from stimulating Indigenous entrepreneurial activity to affirmative action in employment. We highlight how this policy mutation shifted responsibility for solving the intractable problem of Indigenous unemployment away from the government and corporate Australia and on to Indigenous business.

Catholic Fasting Literature in a Context of Body Hatred: A Feminist Critique

Some concerned Catholic theologians and popular writers have addressed the ubiquity of body hatred in the United States in their prescriptive considerations of liturgical fasting. This essay brings a feminist theological lens to their writings to argue that this Catholic fasting literature presents dualistic and decontextualized accounts of embodiment and of sacramental practice that reify the discursive structures of body hatred in the US context. In response, the author advocates for a shift in Catholic theological discourse about fasting as one attempt to resist body hatred and support more liberative possibilities for embodiment in this context.*

The End of Sodomy: Law, Prosecution Patterns, and the Evanescent Will to Knowledge in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, 1770–1830

Abstract This article analyses discourses concerning male same-sex sexuality produced in the context of law and policing in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands between 1770 and 1830. Intervening in the debate over the making of “the homosexual” and the change from homosexual “acts” to “identities,” I argue that shifts in sexual discourses were not linear. In the late eighteenth century, the courts and the police displayed a strong “will to knowledge” in same-sex sexual matters, collecting, requesting, and recording discourses on inclination and, in some regions, even innateness. This will to knowledge all but disappeared in the early nineteenth century, when in the aftermath of the official decriminalization of sodomy, same-sex sexual acts became mostly devoid of further meaning in legal and police records. The emergence of sexual discourses was therefore uneven.

Generalized self-efficacy of youth in the new territories

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the generalized self-efficacy (GSE) of youth in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Youth issues have been at the forefront of political discourse in the region and often youth are presented in the media as having fundamental deficits, which are tied to growing inequality and lack of social mobility. This study offers more perspective of the characteristics of Hong Kong youth to contribute to the literature as well as influence the discourse on youth and youth issues. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a community survey of youth in the New Territories of Hong Kong with over 2000 respondents. The survey was based on a valid and reliable instrument on GSE to measure the GSE of youth in the region. GSE characteristics are analyzed using descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s α for internal consistency, factor analysis to verify the dimensional nature of the scale. The relationships between GSE and age and gender were analyzed using multiple linear regression model. Findings Findings indicated that despite a slightly higher, yet statistically significant GSE scores for females, and little impact of age on GSE, Hong Kong youth have normal levels of GSE. This finding offers a counter to the pathologizing of youth’s individual characteristics, and implies the need for a shift in discourse toward more targeted examination of the structural issues that act as barriers to social mobility of today’s young people in Hong Kong. Research limitations/implications The study focused on GSE, which is correlated with other constructs such as confidence, but not established in causal relationships with other variables. More research is needed to link GSE and confidence in these groups, as well as links to structural issues that may impact various youth characteristics. Practical implications The study offers insight, which could be used to inform Non-Governmental Organizations and educational programs targeting disadvantaged youth. Programs that pathologize youth characteristics may be able to employ the findings to shift approaches toward more targeted skills-building as well as programming addressing structural barriers. Social implications The study offers a counter-narrative to the contemporary deficit view of today’s youth in Hong Kong. This study provides basis for shifting the discourse away from situating social issues in Hong Kong at the individual level with youth, and toward structural, societal level influences on inequality and social mobility of younger generations. Originality/value Although GSE has been measured across the globe, this study sought to target the GSE of a group that has been framed in the media and political discourse as lacking in a variety of important characteristics. This study’s findings offer a counter-narrative to the generally negative attitudes toward youth as shy, lacking in confidence, antisocial and without a strong work ethic.

Infrastructure and the Post-Truth Era: is Trump Twitter\u2019s Fault?

This paper explores the relationship between social media and political rhetoric. Social media platforms are frequently discussed in relation to ‘post-truth’ politics, but it is less clear exactly what their role is in these developments. Specifically, this paper focuses on Twitter as a case, exploring the kinds of rhetoric encouraged or discouraged on this platform. To do this, I will draw on work from infrastructure studies, an area of Science and Technology Studies; and in particular, on Ford and Wajcman’s analysis of the relationships between infrastructure, knowledge claims and politics on Wikipedia. This theoretical analysis will be supplemented with evidence from previous studies and in the public domain, to illustrate the points made. This analysis echoes wider doubts about the credibility of technologically deterministic accounts of technology’s relationship with society, but suggests however that while Twitter may not be the cause of shifts in public discourse, it is implicated in them, in that it both creates new norms for discourse and enables new forms of power and inequality to operate.

Gender nonconformity and military internment: curating the Knockaloe slides

ABSTRACT This article discusses the interpretation and curation of the glass plate slides surviving from the First World War civilian internment camp at Knockaloe, Isle of Man, which show internees (all assigned male at birth) presenting as female in various situations. With reference to recent debates in heritage studies concerning the social agency of museums, and to the ways in which erasure of trans history is increasingly politically instrumentalized, it argues in favour of acknowledging the possibility that some internees’ female presentation was motivated by female gendered subjectivity. The article discusses the circumstances in which people who were assigned male at birth presented as female in military contexts; considers the specific issues at stake when curating the history of marginalized groups; and analyses the multiple possible motivations for the female presentation shown in the Knockaloe slides. Consequently, it advocates a polyvocal curatorial approach, which validates the slides’ trans possibility equally alongside other motivations. It concludes by arguing for a shift in the historiographical discourse of gender and military internment, including a more mindful approach to the use of gendered language.

Understanding the slum-health conundrum in sub-Saharan Africa: a proposal for a rights-based approach to health promotion in slums.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's least urbanized region but is ironically also the region with the largest proportion of urban slum dwellers. However, there exists limited understanding of the impact of slums on health in the region. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic search in PubMed, Google, and Google Scholar to identify and review studies examining the slum-health relationship in sub-Saharan African cities. Subsequently, we performed thematic analysis of 40 studies to identify themes that explain the health impact of slums in the region. The majority of studies characterize slums as health-damaging settings, where poverty and unfavorable environmental conditions pose threats to public health and safety. Only a handful of studies suggest a beneficial relationship between slums and health, in such areas as affordable housing provision, employment generation, and community cohesion. We argue that the literature's overwhelming emphasis on the environmental risks of slums feeds into a neoliberal urban agenda that seeks to clear slums at the expense of their beneficial contributions to health. Accordingly, we advocate a shift in policy discourse, from static characterization of slums as health risks to a health-promotion agenda that emphasizes the housing and service rights of slum populations.

Subordinating Conjunctions as Discourse Markers in Lithuanian

Over the last decades the development of conjunctions into discourse markers has been researched by a number of scholars. In Lithuanian, studies on discourse markers are fragmented and lack the application of efficient qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. The paper focuses on the Lithuanian discourse markers kad ‘that’ and net ‘until, even’ as well as their combinations with other particles and/or conjunctions (such as tai kad; bet kad; kad ir; taip kad; net ir etc.), which have not received an in-depth analysis so far. In Old Lithuanian, both kad and net mainly function as temporal conjunctions, which, over time, developed discourse functions and came to serve as discourse markers. Adopting both a synchronic and diachronic perspective and applying corpus-driven methodology, the present study aims at investigating the semantic functional potential of kad and net as well as their position and structural status in discourse. The data set analyzed includes written and spoken Present-day Lithuanian as well as Old Lithuanian texts (the 16th century). In the earliest Lithuanian texts, kad is most often used in different types of adverbial clauses, including time, purpose and condition; net, in its turn, functions as a conjunction marking time or contrast or as a particle. However, in Present-day Lithuanian, kad and net are multifunctional: kad can be used either as a conjunction or a discourse marker with a clear discourse function—to signal a discourse shift and to preface a response or reaction of the speaker. Net, as a discourse marker, is positionally mobile and primarily marks the speaker’s surprise or functions as a hedging device.

STEREOTYPING AFRICAN AMERICANS’ RACIAL IDENTITY ON VALERIE MARTIN’S PROPERTY

This study is intended to analyze the persistence of African American stereotype in the contemporary slavery-themed novel authored by Valerie Martin, Property (2003). Valerie Martin is a white author, who seems to have changed the slavery discourse, but the stereotyping of African Americans is still there and built in a new form of stereotyping. Postcolonial analysis showed that the stereotyping of African Americansas ‘other’ existed in direct stereotyping and indirect stereotyping. Direct stereotyping is that the author directly uses the pejorative language and symbols in forming the African American character, meanwhile indirect stereotyping is the author using the shift of discourse that seemed worthy in describing the African American character, but in the same time it affirms the stereotype of the African American identity as inferior still exists, even in the so-called Post-racial era in the United States. Keywords: Representation, Stereotyping, Identity, Race, African American

Hypermodernity, automated uncertainty, and education policy trajectories

ABSTRACT This paper examines how elite transnational policy and research organizations are framing emergent technologies as a hypermodern risk. It outlines how innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning are feeding into global policy imaginaries and responses oriented to education and skills as adaption and minimization of potential disruption flowing from unpredictable workforce transitions. Drawing on research reports by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, World Economic Forum, and McKinsey, the paper suggests that this emphasis on risk and uncertainty represents a shift in elite policy discourse. The paper discusses how automated uncertainty is feeding into educational policy trajectories that seek to mitigate disruption through digital learning and work synergies via agile learners of risk. The cognitive structuring of these policy trajectories reflects a closed ideological loop deflecting analysis from political economy and alternative policy futures within hypermodern capitalism.

Healthy urban planning: an institutional policy analysis of strategic planning in Sydney, Australia.

Rapid urbanization requires health promotion practitioners to understand and engage with strategic city planning. This policy analysis research investigated how and why health was taken up into strategic land use planning in Sydney, Australia, between 2013 and 2018. This qualitative study develops two case studies of consecutive instances of strategic planning in Sydney. Data collection was done via in-depth stakeholder interviews (n = 11) and documentary analysis. Data collection and analysis revolved around core categories underpinning policy institutions (actors, structures, ideas, governance and power) to develop an explanatory narrative of the progress of 'health' in policy discourse over the study period. The two strategic planning efforts shifted in policy discourse. In the earlier plan, 'healthy built environments' was positioned as a strategic direction, but without a mandate for action the emphasis was lost in an economic growth agenda. The second effort shifted that agenda to ecological sustainability, a core aspect of which was 'Liveability', having greater potential for health promotion. However, 'health' remained underdeveloped as a core driver for city planning remaining without an institutional mandate. Instead, infrastructure coordination was the defining strategic city problem and this paradigm defaulted to emphasizing 'health precincts' rather than positioning health as core for the city. This research demonstrates the utility in institutional analysis to understanding positioning health promotion in city planning. Despite potential shifts in policy discourse and a more sophisticated approach to planning holistically, the challenge remains of embedding health within the institutional mandates driving city planning.

Technologies of governance and education welfare: monitoring education transitions in Greece

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to explore the ways educational transitions, i.e. student dropout and early school leaving (ESL), are understood and governed in the contemporary Greek sociopolitical context that is dominated by a persistent economic crisis. Drawing upon the residual nature of the Greek welfare state the paper examines the shifts in the dominant discourses referring to ESL. Furthermore, it attempts to understand the configurations of educational attainment as well as the significance of monitoring technologies such as those of comparative statistics, especially in the context of European governance. It is argued that education transitions are multifaceted phenomena and act as sensors of socio-economic and cultural diversity in each national setting. While EU governance shifts from sophisticated technologies to direct unreserved control, compliance with the rules is a manifestation of political realism on the part of the Greek state, but at the same time a representation of the never accomplished European political integration.

Before BDS: Lineages of Boycott in Palestine

Abstract Boycotts have a persistent presence in the world of anticolonialism in general, and Palestinian history in particular. Whereas they are often associated today with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), this article shows that they have been consistently utilized in Palestine since 1908, responding to a long continuum of colonization. The article accounts for their varying origins, instrumental functions, contextual relationships to other tools of struggle, and modes of articulation. It examines shifts in Palestinian boycott practice and discourse, emphasizing the importance of considering this tactical form not in the abstract terms of social movement theory, but in light of its concrete relationship with broader anticolonial structures and strategies. Drawing on lessons from boycott’s long history in Palestine and other anticolonial contexts such as South Africa, it further reflects on its position in contemporary Palestinian politics. It argues that, in the post-Oslo environment, boycott shifted from a tactic serving a revolutionary strategic vision to a tactical solidarity response addressing the absence of a comprehensive national strategy. Boycott plays a crucial role in the global war of position in which the Palestinian solidarity movement is currently engaged, but this does not alter the need for a rejuvenation of representative national structures that are capable of deliberating and implementing broader anticolonial strategies.

What If? An Experiment to Include a Religious Narrative in the Approach of the European Court of Human Rights

According to some interpretations of Islam supported by gender activists, the veil can be perceived as a passport that enables women to participate in public affairs. This argument has been overlooked by the courts, including the European Court of Human Rights. The latter has adopted a discourse that considers the veil to be a threat to public order and gender equality, and more recently, an obstacle to social cohesion. By doing so, the Court has excluded veiled European Muslim women from the public sphere. The Court has justified curbing freedom of religion by granting states a wide margin of appreciation on the basis of the concept of “living together.” I argue that the Court needs to take the “passport veil” into account to be consistent with its argument on living together. A shift of approach and discourse would constitute a new way of understanding integration through the veil.

Black (anti)fandom's intersectional politicization of "The Walking Dead" as a transmedia franchise

Despite axiomatic industry and academic discourses of The Walking Dead's (2010–) status as quality TV—linked to its graphic visuals and compelling story lines—strong counterclaims question the text's (mis)representations of race and its propensity for systematically killing off Black male characters. An analysis of African Americans' responses to marginalized Black male characters politicizes the racial milieu of the series against the backdrop of wider racial relationships in the United States. Moreover, The Walking Dead is a successful transmedia franchise, and thus racial discourse shifts and changes, depending on which transmedia texts are being consumed. Thus, Black antifan rhetoric aimed at the spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead (2015–) centers on the zombification of Black men, a metaphor of the mistreatment and othering of young Black men by US police. Comparatively, The Walking Dead video game (TellTale Games, 2012) offers character development for its Black male lead character that fans praise against wider cultural representations in relation to both the franchise's hyperdiegesis and to video games in general. Therefore, Black audiences may read The Walking Dead as both racially reductive and radical. In doing so, aspects of self-identity, such as race, can inform (anti)fan positions through intersectional politics.

Social Media, Violence and the Law: ’Objectionable Material’ and the Changing Countours of Hate Speech Regulation in India

With the advent of the internet and increasing circulation of hate speech, and material that has been linked to public order disturbances, there has been a shift in the legal discourse around hate speech. What has emerged, especially post the striking down of section 66A of the Information Technology Act, are categories such as ‘objectionable’, ‘provocative’ content. The focus has shifted from the content itself, what it says, and the intention of the author, to being able to pre-empt the circulation of such material. Law is increasingly invoked to prevent speech (through prior restraint) rather than post facto investigation and prosecutions. This in turn has given rise to a range of institutional mechanisms such as monitoring labs that are now part of policing practice. Additionally, civil society organizations are now collaborating with police to help trigger mechanisms to take content off internet platforms. Increasingly it is through keywords and algorithmic searches that the category of hate speech has been defined rather than traditional legal doctrine. In the words of Lawrence Lessig, code plays the role of law, and the architecture of the internet becomes policy. This paper will examine the issues outlined above relying heavily on a series of interviews with lawyers, policy analysts, journalists, academics, civil society activists, and police personnel conducted in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune.