A Linguistic Analysis of Group Support Systems Interactions for Uncovering Social Realities of Organizations

Language represents the medium through which we encounter reality and can be viewed as a human social action (Holtgraves 2002). In this study, we apply speech act theory to analyze the data collected in a study by Trauth and Jessup (2000) and demonstrate that GSS can be an effective tool for diagnosing the social life of an organization. Our linguistic analysis confirms previous research findings that both the topic and the group size influence the pattern of discussion, especially when issues are threatening. In addition, when GSS is applied to such an issue, linguistic analysis helps to uncover hidden defensive speech routines. Identifying the speech acts of GSS discussions may therefore complement positivist and interpretive analysis by examining if participants’ engagement is superficial or profound, if consensus is reached or blocked, and if certain speech acts lead to dysfunctional organizational learning. Taken together with Trauth and Jessup (2000)’s study, we show that social realities revealed in GSS discussions are multi-dimensional and that, by adopting a different research stance to better understand the role of GSS, a variety of research benefits may be derived

Through a discourse analysis lens less darkly: illuminating how SME principals and support agency practitioners see marketing in SMEs

The purpose of this paper is to explain the social contructivist approach taken to uncovering clearer, deeper meaning through a recent qualitative, interpretive and subjective research study. This study examined the ways in which marketing is seen and conducted in SMEs by SME principals and support agency practitioners. The research was designed with a particular method of data analysis (Discourse Analysis) in mind which was applied to the SME marketing context. The findings of the study provided a contribution to the SME marketing debate where the research approach taken proved to be instrumental in providing a contribution to both theory and practice of marketing in SMEs and the education, training and development activities of support agencies. The subjective nature of this research yielded benefits that would not have been available through a positivist research approach. The approach taken has more practical application than some traditionalists might believe. This paper explains how further understanding of SME marketing resulted from the study and how further original insights can be gained by applying the tools utilised in studies in SME marketing and marketing in other contexts

Rewriting Web 2.0 Discourses of the Local for Socio-Spatial Literacy Theory

This dissertation seeks to provide a framework for engaging with two spatial concepts that have been foundational to theorizing literacy across time but have often been taken for granted as passive backdrops to the social action of literacy practice: the notions of “the local” and “the global.” By interrogating the histories, both past and ongoing, of these two spatial concepts as they are interwoven into the sociocultural paradigm of literacy theory, research, and pedagogy, this project identifies new ways that literacy researchers and educators can attend to spatial concepts so as to promote and encourage literacy research and learning that cultivates critical spatial perspectives at the nexus of “real-world” spatial realities and the new spatial dynamics created by Web 2.0 applications. This work considers how ongoing conversations in popular culture, public discourse, and literacy theory and research have shaped understandings of familiar spatial concepts—specifically, the notions of “the local” and “the global”—as they are involved in people’s and organizations’ discursive and literacy practices. Using the examples of the discursive texts created by three local food organizations (LFOs) on Web 2.0 applications (specifically, interactive websites, blogs, and social media platforms), the integrated conceptual framing of social, spatial, and digital perspectives on discourse, rhetoric, and literacy is applied to analyze the ways in which each LFO projects a counternarrative to dominant discursive constructions of “the local” and “the global” for a network of audiences online. In the context of Web 2.0 and the fluid boundaries between people’s “real” lives and virtual lives, this project documents three cases in which the particularities of discursive activities on the Internet create spatial conditions that are rhetorically leveraged to enact material change in the world. Given these observations, this study concludes by offering implications of this study’s understanding of the discourses of spatial concepts such as the local and the global for rhetoric, discourse, and literacy studies, and, specifically, literacy education and students’ social and professional futures

Renewal through Participation in Global Food Security Governance: Implementing the International Food Security and Nutrition Civil Society Mechanism to the Committee on World Food Security

The food commodity price rises from 2006 to 2008 engendered a period of political renewal and reform in the governance of global food security. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) was designated as the main international forum dealing with food security and nutrition in 2009 as part of this reform. Through the CFS reform process, civil society organizations secured the right to co-ordinate autonomously their engagement in the Committee as official participants and are doing so through the International Food Security and Nutrition Civil Society Mechanism (CSM). The CSM is an innovative institutional form designed to allow a broad range of civil society organizations from different regions of the world and from diverse constituencies, notably those who face food insecurity on a regular basis, to participate in global food security governance. The challenges and complexities of setting up and operationalizing the CSM are presented and illustrated. These findings are considered in the context of the longer-term move towards widening participation in global governance, with a particular focus on the trajectory of civil society participation in food security governance. The broad neo-liberal logic, or embedded neo-liberalism, that underpins contemporary world politics provides boundaries within which the innovative CSM is being given shape through the political agency of the participating civil society organizations. The study concludes by suggesting that while the Civil Society Mechanism faces some internal challenges, these are not insurmountable, and that the CSM represents an effective politicizing, engaging and connecting model for food-focused civil society organization entering into global governance

Towards a typology of critical nonprofit studies: A literature review

This review examines scholarship in key nonprofit journals over four decades. Its purpose is to: 1) analyze the extent, nature, and contribution of critical nonprofit scholarship and its trajectory over time, and 2) call on scholars, research institutions, and journals in the field to engage the kinds of insights these increasingly marginalized approaches bring, providing space for them to join, challenge and shape the research conversation. Findings show only 4% of articles published within the period examined adopt critical approaches, with great variability in the ways articles exemplify core tenets of critical scholarship, and a general dampening of critical work over time. This conservatism may result from the rejection of less understood philosophies and methodologies of critical inquiry in favor of more mainstream (positivistic) models of social science. Our primary contribution is to advance a typology explicating the pluralism inherent in critical approaches to nonprofit studies, their strengths and limitations

Beyond Representation: Partnerships, Intersectionality, and the Centering of the Disability, Family, and Community Lived Experience

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced a public health crisis, overlaying the disparities in healthcare access, treatment, and outcomes that were already prevalent in Black and Latino communities across the U.S., particularly persons with disabilities (PWD) at the intersection of racial and ethnic identities. In addition, the concurrent social and political climate mirrored the pandemic in its action of magnifying existing systemic inequities for historically marginalized populations, calling for institutions to galvanize efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (EDI). Our University Center on Excellence in Disabilities (UCEDD) serves a range of families whose children have disabilities or complex health care needs and strengths within a widely diverse cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic region of the southeastern U.S. We have also committed to professional development of diverse faculty, community providers, and inclusive leadership pipeline programs across multiple disciplines. While our existing efforts have had an impact prior to the pandemic, gaps in information about COVID-19, limited access to needed supports, vacillations in services, and disruptions to family- and community-life have called for us to develop more responsive strategies. We discuss the development and implementation of new interprofessional and inclusive community approaches, building on community partnerships and using participatory-action research as a model. Beginning with a series of town halls to address the medical, social-emotional, support, and disability specific needs among our families, we transformed our practice by co-constructing panels with the community and within our UCEDD. We further amplified the voices and centered lived experiences of parents, PWD, teachers of children with disabilities and complex health care needs, as well as community organizational leaders in a conference and throughout our programs. Community partners contributed rich perspectives and expertise on the pre-pandemic conditions, the impact of the coronavirus on the self and community, as well as ways in which they pivoted, created synergies, and co-constructed initiatives. Outcomes from these events underscore the need for (1) community-engaging vs. community-facing discussions, (2) the creation of sustainable action plans that center the community and disability lived experience across a range of sociocultural and linguistic identities, and (3) moving beyond mere representation in EDI efforts toward authentic and equitable partnerships

A pragma-semiotic analysis of ‘Occupy Nigeria Group’ online posts on the 2012 fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria

In response to the fuel subsidy removal by the Nigerian government on 1st January 2012, Occupy Nigeria Group, a protest movement, embarked on different mass strike actions and demonstrations including online activism. The civil resistant actions geared towards reversal of petrol pump price increase deployed certain verbal and visual means in portraying the government and its actions. Previous studies on online protest discourse in Nigeria have adopted sociolinguistic and discourse analysis approaches in examining issues of identity and selfdetermination with little attention paid to visual-pragmatic strategies in representing people and their actions. This article, therefore, undertakes a pragma-semiotic investigation of ‘Occupy Nigeria Group’ online posts on the 2012 fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria with a view to examining verbal and visual modes of representing people and their actions in the event. Seventy-two online protest posts purposively sampled from the groups’ page are used to identify and categorize various pragma-semiotic elements and functions in the representations using insights from Mey’s (2001) pragmatic act and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal discourse analysis. It is observed that the verbal mode complements the visual in projecting the demands and resistance of the group. The posts which are classified under six semantic fields, namely divine intervention, security consciousness, innovation, exaggeration, defamation and abusive placards have various visual-pragmatic strategies such as prayer, negative labelling, humour, mockery, abuse, passionate and fierce appeal, including photo trick. The strategies correspond to the dominant pragmatic acts such as demonstrative, assertive, suppository, condoling and stipulating. All these acts are presented within the Nigerian sociopolitical and linguistic contex

Discourse Analysis as Potential for Re-Visioning Music Education

Discourse analysis holds great potential for re-visioning the field of music education. This paper explores works from Foucault, Blommaert, Scollon and Scollon, as well as others, to suggest a theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing discourse in settings of music transmission that takes into consideration who we are, what we do, and how we do it. Discourse is defined in this paper as meaningful, mediated language-in-place. By analyzing acts of speech as well as cultural objects (such as instruments, mallets, and bows) and concepts (such as a conducting gestures or solfege syllables) used as mediational means in situ, we can reveal how discursive sources of power dominance, inequality, and bias are initiated, perpetuated, (re)produced, and transformed in sites of music transmission. Analyzing such models may help develop a more flexible way of understanding and visioning music education—one that blurs boundaries between musics, ways of knowing music, and spaces where musicking takes place

Towards constructionist Organizational Data Mining (ODM) : changing the focus from technology to social construction of knowledge

This chapter addresses the definition of organizational data mining (ODM) practices that leverage knowledge creation in organizations. It argues that knowledge resides in human minds and it is created by the continuous action and interaction happening in specific social contexts. Knowledge has a rational and an emotional foundation. When represented, knowledge becomes information that shapes the action and interaction by which individuals and communities create their specific knowledge. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the advantages of adopting a constructionist approach and to present some constructionist guidelines to assist the definition of ODM practices that leverage knowledge creation in organizations