Thematic Frame Research Articles

Enemies Everywhere: Terrorism, Moral Panic, and US Civil Society

Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, terrorism has experienced a prominence in discourse across the U.S. The representations of terrorists and terrorism by the news media and politi have contributed to the edifice of terrorism as a “moral panic”. This treatise examines the social effects that have or may occur due to the social construction of a moral panic of terrorism. The thematic frame is situated within Cohen’s stages of a moral panic. We offer an analysis of the media’s depiction and coverage of acts of terrorism, and legislative, political and legal responses in the form of social and cultural changes occurring from the creation of a moral panic. In addition, we offer an analysis of the state’s vested interest in the social construction of this panic, leading to increased levels of fear, targeted at the general public’s consciousness. This article concludes that the presentation of terrorism and terrorists by the media and politi have contributed to unnecessary levels of panic and fear, misguided public consciousness, and the development of legislation creating negative social ramifications yet be seen.

The Social and Discursive Spectrum of Peer Talk

The study aims to lay the groundwork for systematically investigating children’s peer discourse at different age levels with a view to delimiting the role of peer talk for pragmatic development. An interdisciplinary stance to the study of children’s peer talk is argued for, considering it simultaneously as the arena for the co-construction of childhood cultures as well as an arena for development. We propose a four-dimensional model of discursive events, meant to capture both dimensions simultaneously. The model takes into account the dynamic interplay among the type of (imposed, or self-selected) activity children are engaged in, the overall thematic frame of the event, its internal framing by the children themselves (keying) and the genre(s) used. The model is applied to the analysis of natural peer talk at two age levels, preschoolers and fourth graders, focusing mainly on variation along the dimension of keying. The two age groups studied are shown to share a rich repertoire of keyings and genres, but to differ in their relative salience and modes of realization by age. Our analysis suggests that peer talk offers children ample opportunities to listen in, practice and display conversational as well as academic discursive skills, and hence may very well prove a crucial site for pragmatic development.

Individual versus corporate responsibility for smoking-related illness: Australian press coverage of the Rolah McCabe trial.

This paper provides a thematic frame analysis of Australian newspaper reporting of the outcome and implications of the trial of Rolah McCabe versus British American Tobacco Australasia (BATA). In this trial, a Melbourne woman was awarded A$700,000 damages for smoking-attributable lung cancer when the defendant, BATA, had its case dismissed due to document destruction. In 60 commentaries from Australian national or capital city newspapers between 12 April and 9 May 2002, a total of 79 instances of eight tobacco-related frames were identified. Overall, 43% of the 79 instances were positive for tobacco control, 46% were negative for tobacco control and 11% were neutral. The most common frame that was negative for tobacco control (in 35% of articles) was the conception that smokers exert 'free will' in deciding to smoke and should therefore be personally responsible for their smoking and any disease that arises as a result of it. A related, but less commonly employed frame (in 18% of articles) was the expressed fear of a 'slippery slope' of litigation, which portrayed smoking as similar to eating fast food or other 'vices'. The most common frame that was positive for tobacco control (in 35% of articles) was the notion that the tobacco industry was 'evil' and, to a lesser extent, that the government should 'do more' to control smoking (15% of articles). These findings provide a sobering public health challenge to improve public communication efforts about the powerful forces that conspire to induce people to start smoking and keep them smoking for decades, despite a strong desire to quit. There is a need to fund public education programs and quit smoking services more adequately to address the complex education task of understanding the nature of addiction to tobacco and the enormity of the health risk.

Cadernos Pagu: contribuindo para a consolidação de um campo de estudos

As scientific publications are influential indicators and constitute disciplinary fields, this article reflects on the importance of Cadernos Pagu, published twice a year by Unicamp’s Nucleo de Estudos de Genero [Gender Studies Center], as it has contributed to the consolidation of that field of studies both through de stimulation and diffusion of knowledge in the area in Brazil. Here gender is no conceived of as a theme, but rather as a categorical distinction, as a distinction between characteristics taken as feminine and masculine, that run through society and, as such, can be felt within any thematic frame.

Alvaro Mutis and the Ends of History

Alvaro Mutis and the Ends of History

The role of verb argument structure in sentence processing: Distinguishing between syntactic and semantic effects

This paper describes an ongoing research program designed to investigate how syntactic and semantic aspects of lexical information become available to the sentence processing system. The two experiments described here distinguished between syntactic and semantic representations by using cross-modal naming and lexical decision in a new way. The relationship between the main verb and the probe word was varied such that the probe word met either the syntactic criteria to be an argument, the semantic criteria, neither, or both the syntactic and semantic criteria. Lexical decision times were sensitive to both syntactic and semantic congruity, while naming times were sensitive only to syntactic congruity. The two tasks were then used to investigate syntactic and semantic representations when verb argument structure was ambiguous. Subcategorized structures were constructed without regard for biasing context, but the contextually inappropriate thematic frame was ruled out while the inappropriate syntactic frame was still available.