In this article the relevance of a sociocognitive approach to discourse is shown by presenting a new theory of context, defined as subjective participants’ constructs of communicative situations, and made explicit in terms of mental models - context models - in Episodic Memory. Through a ‘contextual analysis’ of a fragment of one of the ‘Iraq’ speeches by Tony Blair in the British House of Commons, it is shown how such context models control and explain many political (...) aspects of interaction that cannot be accounted for in autonomous approaches to text and talk. Context models thus provide an explicit theory of relevance and the situational appropriateness of discourse, and hence also a basis for theories of style. (shrink)

Understanding a sentence and integrating it into the discourse depends upon the identification of its focus, which, in spoken German, is marked by accentuation. In the case of written language, which lacks explicit cues to accent, readers have to draw on other kinds of information to determine the focus. We study the joint or interactive effects of two kinds of information that have no direct representation in print but have each been shown to be influential in the reader’s text (...) comprehension: i. the (low-level) rhythmic-prosodic structure that is based on the distribution of lexically stressed syllables, and ii. the (high-level) discourse context that is grounded in the memory of previous linguistic content. Systematically manipulating these factors, we examine the way readers resolve a syntactic ambiguity involving the scopally ambiguous focus operator auch (engl. `too') in both oral (Experiment 1) and silent reading (Experiment 2). The results of both experiments attest that discourse context and local linguistic rhythm conspire to guide the syntactic and, concomitantly, the focus-structural analysis of ambiguous sentences. We argue that reading comprehension requires the (implicit) assignment of accents according to the focus structure and that, by establishing a prominence profile, the implicit prosodic rhythm directly affects accent assignment. (shrink)

forthcoming in Studies on Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford.

This paper attempts to account for the contrastive discourse connective (tam) tersine (‘on the contrary’) in Turkish discourse. We suggest that this connective evokes a discourse structure which has at least three parts: the material in the prior linguistic context, its refutation, and then rectification in the clause where the connective is hosted. Since negation is obligatory in the discourse context for refutation, we include a discussion of negation and we conclude that the obligatory (...) negative clauses are instances of descriptive negation rather than metalinguistic negation. We show that linguistic and cognitive contexts interact in producing and interpreting the discourse adverbial connective under discussion and the discourse structure in which it is used. It is claimed that (tam) tersine serves to bring closer the cognitive context of the intended audience to that of the writer’s while minimizing any potential discrepancies in the audience’s and the writer’s cognitive context. We argue that this discourse connective and the discourse it evokes are used in the argumentative mode. (shrink)

The fundamental interaction between discourse and context that pervades Newman’s many works provides the thread that weaves this collection together. There are five major divisions in the book.

Some expressions, such as “all” and “might”, must be interpreted differently, relative to a single context, when embedded under “says that” than when unembedded. Egan, Hawthorne and Weatherson have appealed to that fact to argue that utterance-truth is relative to point of evaluation. This paper shows that the phenomena do not warrant this relativistic response. Instead, contexts may be defined as entities that assign other contexts to contextually relevant people, and context-relative truth conditions for indirect discourse sentences (...) can be satisfactorily formulated in terms of such contexts. (shrink)

Based on the analysis of narrations in Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present, we argue that the grammatical notion of context of speech should be ramified into a Context of Thought and a Context of Utterance. Tense and person depend on the Context of Utterance, while all other indexicals are evaluated with respect to the Context of Thought. Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present are analyzed as special combinatorial possibilities that arise (...) when the two contexts are distinct, and exactly one of them is presented as identical to the physical point at which the sentence is articulated. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau introduced the category of heterogeneity into his theory of hegemony in the late 1990s. He did so as a way to capture the limits of representation, and the argument was fully developed in On Populist Reason in 2005. The chapter argues that heterogeneity should be a central category of hegemony and discourse analysis, and that antagonism can be seen as a strategy of ideological closure that suppresses heterogeneity. I show the limitations of Laclau’s concept of antagonism, and (...) how antagonism must be relativized. I then turn to examine the concept of heterogeneity. I end by discussing the usefulness of the category of heterogeneity in the wider context of how to do discourse theory and how to conceptualize the limits of representation. (shrink)

Interpretation at the argumentative level, like action selection in response to environmental change, requires decision-making based on context construction. By boosting the efficiency of this process, discourse markers keep variations in the interlocutor's processing context within a certain range.

This book investigates context-sensitivity in natural language by examining the meaning and use of a target class of theoretically recalcitrant expressions. These expressions-including epistemic vocabulary, normative and evaluative vocabulary, and vague language -exhibit systematic differences from paradigm context-sensitive expressions in their discourse dynamics and embedding properties. Many researchers have responded by rethinking the nature of linguistic meaning and communication. Drawing on general insights about the role of context in interpretation and collaborative action, Silk develops an improved (...) contextualist theory of CR-expressions within the classical truth-conditional paradigm: Discourse Contextualism. The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the distinctive linguistic behavior of a CR-expression from a particular contextualist interpretation of an independently motivated formal semantics, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. It is shown how in using CR-expressions, speakers can exploit their mutual grammatical and world knowledge, and general pragmatic reasoning skills, to coordinate their attitudes and negotiate about how the context should evolve. The book focuses primarily on developing a Discourse Contextualist semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals. The Discourse Contextualist framework is also applied to other categories of epistemic vocabulary, normative and evaluative vocabulary, and vague adjectives. The similarities/differences among these expressions, and among context-sensitive expressions more generally, have been underexplored. The development of Discourse Contextualism in this book sheds light on general features of meaning and communication, and the variety of ways in which context affects and is affected by uses of language. Discourse Contextualism provides a fruitful framework for theorizing about various broader issues in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Current theories of context see context as composed of information that is localizable to individual utterances. Current theories of discourse grant that discourses have important global properties that are not so localizable. In this paper, I argue that context, even narrowly construed as whatever combines with a sentence to determine truth conditions, must have a discourse -global component. I identify a context-dependence phenomenon related to the linguistic concepts of topic and focus, isolate the pertinent (...) feature of context, and show that this feature must be discourse -global in nature. I thus argue that context is as complicated as an entire discourse. (shrink)

Classroom discussion practices that can lead to reasoned participation by all students are presented and described by the authors. Their research emphasizes the careful orchestration of talk and tasks in academic learning. Parallels are drawn to the philosophical work on deliberative discourse and the fundamental goal of equipping all students to participate in academically productive talk. These practices, termed Accountable TalkSM, emphasize the forms and norms of discourse that support and promote equity and access to rigorous academic learning. (...) They have been shown to result in academic achievement for diverse populations of students. The authors outline Accountable Talk as encompassing three broad dimensions: one, accountability to the learning community, in which participants listen to and build their contributions in response to those of others; two, accountability to accepted standards of reasoning, talk that emphasizes logical connections and the drawing of reasonable conclusions; and, three, accountability to knowledge, talk that is based explicitly on facts, written texts, or other public information. With more than fifteen years research into Accountable Talk applications across a wide range of classrooms and grade levels, the authors detail the challenges and limitations of contexts in which discourse norms are not shared by all members of the classroom community. (shrink)

The idea of radical pedagogy is connected to the ideals of social justice and democracy and also to the ethical demands of love, care and human flourishing, an emotional context that is sometimes forgotten in discussions of power and inequality. Both this emotional context and also the emphasis on politics can be found in the writings of Paolo Freire, someone who has provided much inspiration for radical pedagogy over the years. However, Freire did not create any explicit ethical (...) foundation for radical pedagogy. This paper argues that, when constructing normative grounds for radical pedagogy, Habermas’s discourse ethics can be an important source, with the caveat that discourse ethics on its own is not sufficient grounding enough where radical pedagogy is concerned. Habermasian critical theory should be supplemented with Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, as Freire’s focus on love and human flourishing corresponds well with Honneth’s theory’s three modes of recognition: love, rights and respect (solidarity stemming from mutual relations of respect). (shrink)

Word learning depends critically on the use of linguistic context to constrain the likely meanings of words. However, the mechanisms by which children infer word meaning from linguistic context are still poorly understood. In this study, we asked whether adults (n = 58) and 2‐ to 6‐year‐old children (n = 180) use discourse coherence relations (i.e., the meaningful relationships between elements within a discourse) to constrain their interpretation of novel words. Specifically, we showed participants videos of (...) novel animals exchanging objects. These videos were accompanied by a linguistic description of the events in which we manipulated a single word within a sentence (and vs. because) in order to alter the causal and temporal relations between the events in the discourse (e.g., “One animal handed the baby to the other animal [and/because] the baby started crying in the talfa's arms”). We then asked participants which animal (the giver or the receiver) was the referent of the novel word. Across two experiments, we found evidence that young children used the causal and temporal relations in each discourse to constrain their interpretations of novel words. (shrink)

Discourses of interdisciplinary health‐care are becoming more centralised in the context of global healthcare practices, which are increasingly based on multisystem interventions. As with all dominant discourses that are narrated into being, many others have been silenced and decentralised in the process. While questions of the nature and constituents of interdisciplinary practices continue to be debated and rehearsed, this paper focuses on the discourse of interdisciplinary collaboration using psychiatry as an example, with the aim of highlighting competing and (...) alternative discourses. The fundamental premise of this paper is that collaborative relationships form the basis of interdisciplinary practices in psychiatry. Through a critical engagement and a deconstructive reading of the pretext, context and subtexts of interdisciplinarity, we interrogate the concept of interdisciplinary practice within psychiatry. We contend that an important part of understanding and further conceptualising the discourse is through fracturing it. This process is illustrated in the successive stages of our conceptual map of discourse development: establishing, maintaining and developing discourses. An understanding of interdisciplinary practice is not only critical for psychiatry, but also offers important insights into the performance of collaborative failures and indeed successes across nursing and allied health professions. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide insights into the Malaysian newspaper reports on apostasy cases in the country. Being a Muslim country with multi-religions, apostasy is highly sensitive hence any issues related to apostasy need to be carefully managed. Four keywords were used to identify newspaper reports for the analysis. Two newspaper reports met the selection criteria and were analysed using a discourse analysis approach focusing on Grammatical Analysis, Macrostructures, and Rhetorical Structures. The analysis reveals that the report in New (...) Straits Times, which is the right-wing newspaper, carries the voice of anti-apostate and disapproves the act of renouncing Islam. On the other hand, the report in The Malay Mail, which is the left-wing newspaper, carries the voice of pro-apostate. By deconstructing the newspaper reports, this paper contributes to the understanding of the agendas that have been subtly set in the news. This paper concludes that the two reports have been strategically constructed to serve the interests and promote the ideology of the two competing groups in the country, thus creating a balance in the multi-religious context. (shrink)

This work traces the development Paul Ricoeur's recent hermeneutic phenomenology since the late 1960's, and develops the critical element within Ricoeur's recent thought by examining his conceptions of ideology and utopia, and the relationship between hermeneutics and critical theory, in order to elaborate a critical and rationally justified interpretation of human action for the social sciences. Particular attention is paid to Ricoeur's works on metaphor, narrative, and ethics in the context of a critical theory of power, ideology and history. (...) Hermeneutics, if properly conceived, is, at the same time, a critical theory of society geared toward identifying ideological formations and utopian possibilities of liberation. The Habermas-Gadamer debate forms the backcloth for this study by functioning like a hidden dialogue partner that informs our reading of the development of Ricoeur's thought. I propose an extension of Ricoeur's conception of a critique of ideology in two directions, corresponding a phenomenology of the will, and a narrative theory of human action. The result of this extension, or interpolation, is to deepen and clarify a thought path begun by Ricoeur. The basis for a critique of ideological action is a conception of truth that incorporates a Husserlian notion of evidential experience, and a Habermasian notion of truth as consensus. The normative basis for critique is Ricoeur's conception of discourse ethics, which incorporates an Aristotelian conception of the good life, and a Kantian conception of autonomy and deontological moral norm. Ricoeur's model of interpretation and critique surpasses both Habermas and Gadamer, by integrating the Habermasian validity basis of discourse within a broader, phenomenologically grounded conception of human experience and action that emphasizes the creative and imaginative uses of language for interpretation, critique, practical reason, and self-reflection. (shrink)

It is no doubt that philosophy is the important way of discourse of modernity and modernity is the contemporary context of philosophy. By examining the relationship between philosophy and modernity, we will discover that philosophy enables the complete establishment of modernity, and philosophy is theimportant driving force of the gradual evolution of modernity; Contemporary philosophy is the outcome of the crisis of modernity; The important mission of the contemporary Chinese philosophy is to answer the question that how it (...) is possible to adopt modernity in China. (shrink)

The classic Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterfactuals captures that Sobel sequences are consistent sequences, for example: a.If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro dance. b.But if Sophie had gone to the parade and been stuck behind someone tall, she would not have seen Pedro dance. But reverse a sequence like this one and it no longer sounds so good, which is surprising on the classic semantics. This observation motivated Kai von Fintel and Thony Gillies to propose (...) dynamic semantic accounts of counterfactual conditionals. Subsequently, Sarah Moss defended the classic semantics against the charge that it need be abandoned in the face of these order effects, arguing that the infelicity of the reverse sequences is pragmatic. I argue that both accounts are ultimately untenable, but each account has strengths. Seeing what works and what doesn't in each account points the way to the right positive view. With this in mind, I defend a contextualist account of counterfactuals that takes conversational relevance to play a central role. (shrink)

This paper aims at foregrounding race and ethnicity discourse in Biblical Studies and beyond in order to undermine transhistorical and transcultural racism and ethnocentrism in religious discourse. It is my argument that matters of race and ethnicity should be approached as analytical categories in an interdisciplinary manner, albeit in a specific context, Hellenistic, Roman, Jewish, or Christian. In doing so, I first examine the works of Steve Fenton as well as Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown in order (...) to look closely at race and ethnicity discourse in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially from a sociological perspective. Then, I indicate how Jonathan Hall and Shaye Cohen examine Hellenic and Jewish identity, respectively, with a focus on ethnic identity in the Greco-Roman world. Finally, I consider how Judith Lieu and Denise Buell analyze early Christian identity as a racial or ethnic discourse in the Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman matrix. Hence, I contend that identity in general and racial-ethnic identity in particular are by no means stable and static in essentialist terms, but rather they are fluid along the ostensible axis of fixed identity. (shrink)

Due to new innovations and changes, every language needs new words simply because there is a need for new words to name new things. It is a common occurrence for a speaker to use some words in a way that has never been used before in order to communicate directly about certain facts or ideas. When new inventions and changes come into people’s lives, there is a need to name them and talk about them. If a new word is used (...) by many speakers of the language, it will probably survive, and the same word will one day become an everyday word and enter the vocabulary of a language. This paper looks at compounding as one of the most productive word formation process in English. The term compounding refers to a process in which two or more lexemes are combined into one new word. When a word is formed by merging two or more words, each of which can be used separately, it is called a compound word. The term “word formation” has no universally accepted use. Word formation is sometimes defined as a process associated with changing the form of a word, for example, affixation, which is, in fact, the subject of morphology. In a broader sense, word formation covers the processes of creating new lexical items. In English, word formation is of great importance because this phenomenon affects the English dictionary, which in addition to borrowing from various other languages is enriched in this way. The aim of this paper was to investigate the context based vs. non-context interpretation of English compounds by EFL students in legal discourse. The findings from the test run-questionnaire showed that students of English as a foreign language found it more difficult to apply compound words in context rather than choosing an appropriate definition for them, with or without a given context. Furthermore, students scored lower when 50% of the compounds were given in context. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard's 13 communion discourses constitute a distinct genre among the various forms of religious writing composed by Kierkegaard. Originally published at different times and places, Kierkegaard himself believed that these discourses served as a unifying element in his work and were crucial for understanding his religious thought and philosophy as a whole. Written in an intensely personal liturgical context, the communion discourses prepare the reader for participation in this rite by emphasizing the appropriate posture for forgiveness of sins (...) and confession. (shrink)

Until recently, businesses and corporations could argue that their only real commitments were to maximise the return to their shareholders whilst staying within the law. However, the world has changed significantly during the last ten years and now most major corporations recognise that they have significant responsibility to local and global societies beyond simply making profit. This means that there is now an increasing concern with the question of how corporations, and their employees, ought to behave, and this leads us (...) to consider ethics as the appropriate theoretical and philosophical domain.I will bring into the debate two relatively recent approaches to ethics: Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics ; and the critical realist approach of Roy Bhaskar. These are interesting for several reasons: they both draw on traditional ethical theories, although different ones; they bring in innovations of practical relevance; and they both share an over-arching critical perspective. After a critical introduction to both ethical theories, their similarities and differences are explored. The article ends by considering the extent to which they may be practically useful within business. (shrink)

This paper proposes that a core semantic property of temporal locating adverbs is the ability to introduce a new time discourse referent. The core data comes from that same day in narrative discourse. I argue that unlike other previously studied temporal locating adverbs—which introduce a new time discourse referent and relate it to the speech time or a salient time introduced into the discourse context—that same day is ‘twice anaphoric’, i.e. it retrieves two salient times (...) from the input context without introducing one of its own. Moreover, I argue that the adverb currently is like that same day in not introducing a new time discourse referent. Unlike that same day, however, currently has both a deictic and an anaphoric usage analogous to on Sunday. The analysis that I propose is implemented within Compositional Discourse Representation Theory. It illustrates how adverbial meaning can be integrated within a more general theory of temporal interpretation. (shrink)

The article of Shestopalets D.V. deals with the construction of theological discourse in the publications of the Spirituals Administration of Muslims of Ukraine. Special attention is devoted to the topics that represent the “proper” image of Islam, the problem of orthodoxy, approaches to interpretation of the Quran and legitimization of the religious authority of Muslim scholars.

The article explores the concept of humanism both in modern discourse and in historical retrospective. Human has always been at the center of philosophy, regardless of what spheres of being were studied. Anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, and many other sciences explore various manifestations of a person, all of which are ultimately designed to answer perhaps one of the most critical questions – what makes us human? However, this discourse significantly changed over the course of two thousand years. (...) For example, Martin Heidegger points out an important nuance of the emergence of the concept of humanism, namely, as a kind of chauvinism – the division into humans (Romans) and non-humans (barbarians). This point of view is often overlooked, but it is critical to understanding the essence of this phenomenon. In the subsequent era of the Middle Ages, human was understood as the opposite of the divine, but in such realities, there were humanistic ideals and values. Already in the Renaissance, a return to the traditions of antiquity was announced, but the understanding of a person acquired a romantic character. Humanism clearly saw something more in a person than a person himself could demonstrate. It is for this metaphysical image that many critics of humanism have criticized this phenomenon. However, where there is criticism, there is progress, which is why this concept has gained a new round of discourse, which is why new trends have appeared that have brought the concept of humanism to a new theoretical level. As a historical phenomenon, humanism is faced with certain difficulties of new eras; because of these collisions, humanism is modified and adapted. Among humanism’s problems are multiculturalism, technological breakthroughs, and the need to search for new theories. In its development, the course of humanism takes on various forms and iterations. It is worth mentioning transhumanism (the idea of becoming someone more than just a human), posthumanism (philosophical views on human nature as a posthuman), and global humanism. (shrink)

An examination of Ian Parker's definitions of discourse reveals them to be non-distinctive and of limited utility. It is argued that discourse analysis should be integrated with, rather than set against, social psychology. Discourse analysts should attend to the issues of the representativeness and generality of their evidence, should be wary of attributing causality to discourse, and should consider the advantages of systematically investigating, rather than asserting, the social consequences of the use of different discourses.

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all (...) of the contributions is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

This book explores the influence of ubuntu on South Africa’s post-apartheid transitional justice mechanism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and—in contrast to ethnophilosophy—takes differences, historical developments, and social contexts seriously.

One of the most widely debated and influential implications of the "demise" of positivism was the realization, now a commonplace, that philosophy of science must be firmly grounded in an understanding of the history of science, and/or of contemporary scientific practice. While the nature of this alliance is still a matter of uneasy negotiation, the principle that philosophical analysis must engage "real" science has transformed philosophical practice in innumerable ways. This short paper is the introduction to a symposium presented at (...) the 1994 PSA Biennial meetings that focused attention on recent developments at the interface between various disciplinary science studies fields. It brought together two philosophers who explore the implications of sociological and historical contextualization for philosophical studies of science, Brian Baigrie and Joseph Rouse; and a sociologist and historian, Andy Pickering and Betty Smocovitis, whose work raises philosophical questions about the sciences and about science studies. Each argued for ways of reconceptualizing our subject domains, our purposes, and our conventional strategies of inquiry that promise much richer understanding of the sciences, but necessarily challenge discipline-specific traditions of science studies quite profoundly. If there is a common theme to be discerned in these discussions it is that, in the spirit of Rouse's recommendations, science studies should be understood to be an essentially open ended and dynamic enterprise, like the sciences they study. (shrink)

Traditionally, pronouns are treated as ambiguous between bound and demonstrative uses. Bound uses are non-referential and function as bound variables, and demonstrative uses are referential and take as a semantic value their referent, an object picked out jointly by linguistic meaning and a further cue—an accompanying demonstration, an appropriate and adequately transparent speaker’s intention, or both. In this paper, we challenge tradition and argue that both demonstrative and bound pronouns are dependent on, and co-vary with, antecedent expressions. Moreover, the semantic (...) value of a pronoun is never determined, even partly, by extra-linguistic cues; it is fixed, invariably and unambiguously, by features of its context of use governed entirely by linguistic rules. We exploit the mechanisms of Centering and Coherence theories to develop a precise and general meta-semantics for pronouns, according to which the semantic value of a pronoun is determined by what is at the center of attention in a coherent discourse. Since the notions of attention and coherence are, we argue, governed by linguistic rules, we can give a uniform analysis of pronoun resolution that covers bound, demonstrative, and even discourse bound readings. Just as the semantic value of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ is conventionally set by a particular feature of its context of use—namely, the speaker—so too, we will argue, the semantic values of other pronouns, including ‘he’, are conventionally set by particular features of the context of use. (shrink)

The processing of sequences of (English) sentences is analyzedcompositionally through transitions that merge sentences, rather thandecomposing them. Transitions that are in a precise senseinertial are related to disjunctive and non-deterministic approaches toambiguity. Modal interpretations are investigated, inducing variousequivalences on sequences.

This paper draws attention to the significance of incorporating decolonial methodologies in analyzing political discourse in a postcolonial world, particularly in Africa. The decolonial approach to political discourse focuses on the ways politics in postcolonial context is imbricated in the logic of coloniality. Decolonial approach is considered necessary rather than sufficient in interrogating the hegemonic structure of colonialism in Africa's political discourse. The paper uses critical discourse analysis situated within decolonial methodologies to analyze former President (...) of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan's declaration-of-intent speech to seek re-election. The paper specifically draws on [Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures decolonial options. Duke University Press.] and [Macgilchrist, F. (2014). Media discourse and de/coloniality: A post-foundational approach. In C. Hart & P. Cap (Eds.), Contemporary critical discourse studies (pp. 385–405). Bloomsbury Publishing] decolonial frameworks and [Chilton, P. (2004). Analysing political discourse. Routledge] legitimization model. Situating decolonial approaches together with Chilton's legitimization model is, on the one hand, a way of interrogating hegemonic structures in Goodluck Jonathan's speech and on the other hand works to show the limitation of Chilton's theory in analyzing discourses from Africa. This limitation of Chilton's model underscores the need to bring decolonial approaches in constructing a nuanced understanding of Africa and its epistemic diversity because it is impossible to think of overcoming the coloniality of power without approaching it from the perspective of the colonized. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) and other forms of discourse analysis are regularly used to study identity, but rarely do researchers systematically compare and contrast them with other theories to identify exactly what a discursive approach contributes. In this paper, we take the example of a particular identity – the older worker – and systematically compare the contribution of CDA with other approaches, including economics, labour market research, gerontology and cultural studies. In so doing, we show the kinds of (...) research questions that CDA can address, which other theories grappling with identity cannot. In this way, we hope to delineate more clearly what CDA is, to identify specifically how it contributes to the study of identity, and to show what it can do, compared to other theories. Cynthia Hardy has been Professor of Management at the University of Melbourne since 1998. Previously, she was a professor in the Faculty of Management at McGill University in Canada. Her main research interests revolve around the study of power and politics in organizations, organizational discourse theory and critical discourse analysis, and she is particularly interested in how power and politics occur within a larger discursive context. She recently published Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social Construction with Nelson Phillips, as well as co-editing a special issue of Organization Studies on organizational discourse and the Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse. In total, she has published 12 books and edited volumes, including the Handbook of Organization Studies, published by Sage, which won the George R. Terry Book Award at the 1997 Academy of Management. She has written over 60 journal articles and book chapters, and her work has appeared in many leading international journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Organization Science and California Management. Susan Ainsworth is currently a lecturer in work and organizational studies at the University of Sidney. Her research interests include gender and employment, older workers, critical organization studies, discourse analysis, the social construction of identity, the impact of information and communication technologies on work and organizations and public policy. She has published in Organization Studies (2003), Gender, Work & Organization (2002) and Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science (2001) and has a joint chapter (with Cynthia Hardy) on discourse and identity in the Sage Handbook on Organizational Discourse Analysis (2004). (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to foreground the importance of context in discourse analysis by drawing on a study of online gender talk on Facebook in India. Design/methodology/approach Using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), this study explored participants’ use of language to construct and perform various identities in online gender talk. This study discusses the methods used and challenges in analyzing digital spaces through FDA, focusing specifically on the importance of an ethnographic perspective to contextualize online (...) talk. Findings Engagement with the larger socio-cultural context of the subject of study through various data collection methods enhanced our understanding of the contexts behind text. It helped the authors to explore the data from multiple directions from a Foucauldian framework. This study found that people constructed a “progressive” identity when talking about gender on Facebook. Originality/value There are very few studies combining discourse analysis and digital ethnography and this paper seeks to do that. Digital ethnography helps to look beyond the text and locate text in the larger socio-cultural context. To emphasize the importance of context in discourse analysis, this study engages with both online and offline data as online talk is connected with offline contexts in many significant ways. In this paper, the authors provide a description on various methodological steps used to collect and analyze online data using FDA. (shrink)

The discourse on CRS began late in Spain. Its permeation into political institutions also began later than in many Western countries. The Spanish government neither contributed nor reacted to the green paper Corporate social responsibility. A business contribution sustainable development, published by the European Commission in 2002. However, the publication of this document gave the definitive impulse for the start of the Spanish debate on CSR. After this initial impulse, the debate rapidly developed into a consolidated field of (...) class='Hi'>discourse. This field is the object of the present paper. Here, we seek to elaborate on a concept of corporate social citizenship viewed as a "field of discourse", which is being produced by an epistemic community, at Spanish yet also at a global level. Thus, we seek to depict the contours of the Spanish discourse on CSR, researching its evolution over the last 5 years. We focus on its main actors, the central topics on its agendas, the conflicts that are appearing, and how they are being dealt with. In order to in to achieve these objectives, we focus primarily on the transcription of 61 speeches made by different stakeholders at the Spanish Parliament during 2005. This initiative of the Spanish Parliament is unique of its kind. A special sub-commission was created to discuss the role that Spanish public institutions should play regarding corporate social responsibility. Sixty-one experts from different areas (academia, business, trade unions, and NGOs) were invited to present their views on CSR. Members of the sub-commission had the opportunity to discuss with these experts the nature, limits, results and evolution of CSR, seeking with special interest their opinions on the role that the Spanish Government should play in the consolidation of CSR in Spain. The thesis of this paper is that through an exhaustive analysis of the transcriptions of these interventions at the Spanish Parliament, we can identify who constitutes the Spanish epistemic community on CSR. We can also trace the main contours of this field of discourse, to identify the main actors in its development (particularly, of course, on the binding point between CRS and government) and the main issues discussed, as well as the "hot topics". The presentation will also locate the uniqueness of this debate generated in parliament within the context of the wider Spanish debate on CSR. (shrink)

Discourse communities are groups of people who share common ideologies, and common ways of speaking about things. They can be sharply or loosely defined. We are each members of multiple discourse communities. Discourse can colonize the members of discourse communities, taking over domains of thought by means of ideology. The development of new discourse communities can serve positive ends, but discourse communities create risks as well. In our own work on the narratives of people (...) with interests in health care, for example, we find that patients speak of their illness experiences as victims of circumstance; policy makers construct adverse experiences and challenges as opportunities to be taken; health care workers speak from a mixed perspective, seeing themselves as both victims and opportunists depending on context. To be trapped within the discourse of a particular community is to put at risk the ability to communicate across discourses. Membership of a discourse community can impair the habit of critique, and deny opportunities for heteroglossic discourse. Privileging critique as a mode of discourse perhaps might define the ethical community, suggesting that ethical community may be an antidote to the constraining effects of conventional discourse community. (shrink)

The situation of public functioning of philosophy today is being fundamentally changed in comparison with it that even was by the end of last century. The new opportunities of free appeal to philosophical concepts and meanings and their use by every participant of unlimited networks of open communication raise issues of preservation and protection of normative philosophical discourse. The author formulates the need in such normativity as an issue of difference between the context of reproduction and the innovation (...) one or as interdependence of reproduction and elaborating interpretation of normative meanings in philosophy. He takes attention to highlighting the issue of making and recognizing normativity in discourse/communicative practices that could be find out in works of Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. It helps to clarify a role and place of validity claims in communication actions including their meaning in philosophical discourse. Following Habermas’ theory of both linguistic and contextual depending of discourse’s normative meanings the author pays particular attention to meaning creation role of lifeworld as a cultural context that determines communicators’s understanding. It gives an opportunity to point out a principle role of communicator’s position or his or her self-understanding the lifeworld context they embodied. It also makes it possible to demonstrate clear examples of inconsistency of philosophical discourses depending on the position taken by a philosopher as we can meet radical critical position of Roger Scruton in his assessment of many prominent European philosophers’ works. In conclusion the author stresses on dependence of capacity to get added interpretation value in philosophy not only from a level of theoretical knowledge, but from his or her personal appropriation of own horizon of cultural meanings. Following Habermas's theory of linguistic and contextual dependence of normative values of discourse on context, the author draws attention to the role in the creation of values of the lifeworld as a cultural context that determines the participant's understanding. It gives an opportunity to point out a principle role of communicator’s position or his or her understanding the lifeworld context they embodied. It also allows to demonstrate clear examples of inconsistency of philosophical discourses depending on the position taken by a philosopher as we can meet in radical critical position of Roger Scruton within his assessment of many prominent European philosophers’ works. In conclusion the author stresses capacity to get added interpretation value in philosophy depends not only on a level of theoretical knowledge a person owns, but from his or her personal appropriation of own horizon of cultural meanings. (shrink)

Although the language we encounter is typically embedded in rich discourse contexts, many existing models of processing focus largely on phenomena that occur sentence-internally. Similarly, most work on children's language learning does not consider how information can accumulate as a discourse progresses. Research in pragmatics, however, points to ways in which each subsequent utterance provides new opportunities for listeners to infer speaker meaning. Such inferences allow the listener to build up a representation of the speakers' intended topic and (...) more generally to identify relationships, structures, and messages that extend across multiple utterances. We address this issue by analyzing a video corpus of child–caregiver interactions. We use topic continuity as an index of discourse structure, examining how caregivers introduce and discuss objects across utterances. For the analysis, utterances are grouped into topical discourse sequences using three annotation strategies: raw annotations of speakers' referents, the output of a model that groups utterances based on those annotations, and the judgments of human coders. We analyze how the lexical, syntactic, and social properties of caregiver–child interaction change over the course of a sequence of topically related utterances. Our findings suggest that many cues used to signal topicality in adult discourse are also available in child-directed speech. (shrink)

Central to the discourse ethics advanced by Jürgen Habermas is a principle of universalization (U) amounting to a dialogical equivalent of Kant's Categorical Imperative. Habermas has proposed that ?U? follows by material implication from two premises: (1) what it means to discuss whether a moral norm ought to be . adopted and (2) what those involved in argumentation must suppose of themselves if they are to consider a consensus they reach as rationally motivated. To date, no satisfactory derivation of (...) ?U? from these two premises has been presented. Thus the present study attempts to show how one can, without begging the question, arrive at ?U? by assuming a suitable explication of these two premises, supplemented with a fairly innocuous assumption about the context of discourse. If the argument is sound, then ?U? brings both deontological and consequentialist intuitions together with a notion of solidarity that requires an intersubjective account of insight. (shrink)

Ethnicity and im/migrant classification systems and their constituent categories have a long history in the construction of public health knowledge on tuberculosis in the United Kingdom. This article critically examines the categories employed and the epidemiological discourses on TB, im/migrants, and ethnic minorities in health reporting between 1965 and 2015. We employ a Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Analysis to trace the continuities and changes in the categories used and in the discursive construction of im/migrants, ethnic minorities, and (...) TB. These continuities and disjunctures are analysed within their socio-historical context to demonstrate the historical contingency of epidemiological knowledge production. We outline two historical phases in knowledge construction. The first coincides with the period of decolonisation, which witnessed a change in discursive identity ascriptions from ‘immigrants’ to ‘ethnic groups’ in health reporting as the ‘other’. The second commenced after 1991, when the adoption of the census ethnicity categories as a standard in the collection of population statistics entrenched ethnicity categories in health reporting. We argue the health reporting discourse reveals that the ‘new’ public health exhibits continuities with the ‘old’ by targeting the immigrant ‘other’ through biosecuritisation practices. We contend that these categories originated within a postcolonial paradigm and that increasing immigration and new forms of mobility are creating the preconditions for new discourses on identity construction that have implications for the current collaborative TB strategy. (shrink)

This case study of a 2016 Florida constitutional amendment analyses the semiotic devices and mechanisms of shaping public opinion on solar energy and beliefs about energy distribution. After a nationwide rise in rooftop solar installations between 2014 and 2015, utilities in several US states were faced with challenges to their business models. Anticipating similar problems in Florida, utilities and energy corporations promoted constitutional amendments. This semiotic analysis follows the voter from the billboards and flyers to the text on the ballot. (...) Starting from Peirce’s phenomenological categories, this critical analysis of the campaign reveals how the goals of the amendment were shrouded in positive environmental and consumer protection narratives. Lakoff ’s cognitive linguistics and Stibbe’s ecolinguistics support a deeper analysis of the ballot text. This study shows that by leaving key concepts (especially net metering) out of the discourse, the ballot text successfully framed an anti-solar amendment as a pro-consumer measure, while hiding the direct legal implications concerning alternative energy distribution. In particular, this study explains the opposition to the sharing of surplus in the context of neoclassical economics as a key factor in shaping beliefs about alternative energy distribution. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how ritual is framed in the context of ayahuasca tourism, using ethnographic data collected in and around Iquitos, Peru. Alluding to a lack of socially sanctioned spaces for altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in western cultures, contemporary seekers flock to the Amazon to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies for an array of reasons, including healing and personal transformation. Taking Gregory Bateson's concept of “framing” as a point of departure, and applying Erving Goffman's frame analysis, I (...) will show that contemporary ayahuasca ceremonies attended by westerners are designed to be liminal, transformative, and meaningful experiences that aim to heal the body through emotional modulation. I will demonstrate how this is achieved through specific discourse that takes place before or during rituals in the form of long speeches delivered by the shamans. This framing not only separates the ritual space as liminal but also frames the way that the experience is conceptualized by the participants, ultimately increasing its meaningfulness. (shrink)

In this article we argue that discourse structure constrains the set ofpossible constituents in a discourse that can provide the relevantcontext for structuring information in a target sentence, whileinformation structure critically constrains discourse structureambiguity. For the speaker, the discourse structure provides a set of possible contexts for continuation while information structure assignment is independent of discourse structure. For the hearer, the information structure of a sentence together with discourse structure instructs dynamic semantics how rhematic (...) information should be used to update the meaning representation of the discourse. (shrink)

We analyse managerial discourse in corporate communication (‘CEO-speak’) during a 6-month period following a legitimacy-threatening event in the form of an incident in a German nuclear power plant. As discourses express specific stances expressed by a group of people who share particular beliefs and values, they constitute an important means of restoring organisational legitimacy when social rules and norms have been violated. Using an analytical framework based on legitimacy as a process of reciprocal sense-making and consisting of three levels (...) of analysis which capture the relationship between text and context, we investigate the discourse used by CEOs in their initial and subsequent accounts of the incident. We find that CEOs aim to negotiate a resolution between their initial account and organisational audiences’ incongruent interpretations of the event by adopting an ad hoc normative attitude to stakeholders. This manifests itself in the strategic use of the discourse of stakeholder engagement as a means of signalling change, yet maintaining the status quo. It suggests that CEOs strategically use discourse to manufacture organisational audiences’ consent regarding the continued operation of the nuclear power plant affected by the incident. Our findings contribute to the critical corporate communication literature which regards corporate narrative reporting as a means of consolidating the private interests of corporations, rather than increasing transparency and accountability. (shrink)