The twin taboos of discussing religion and politics : a study of six basic emotions and interpersonal relationships in response to Rick Perry\u27s Strong

A fear appeal has become a common way to describe a message created by individuals, groups, or entities to achieve an array of social and political goals. For instance, law firms may use fear-based advertisements on television by listing several debilitating diseases to educate potential clients about the side effects of certain drugs. In the realm of politics, candidates may use fear-based appeals in their messages as well: certain Republican candidates use the fear of attacks similar to the ones of September 11, 2001, to “scare” the American people into voting for the candidate who would best protect the country from another tragedy. On the other side of the political aisle, Democrats tap into elements of fear promoting the idea that their political opponents are encouraging a “war on women” or an elimination of the middle-class due to favorable economic policies aimed at the wealthy. Are these messages, however, actually producing “fear” in audiences? Results of this dissertation, specifically those results gathered in Chapter IV, suggest that fear is the primary emotion respondents report after viewing a threat-based political advertisement. In this dissertation, I explore studies of demographics and emotions to see how much of a role, if any, group affiliations play on respondents’ reports of felt emotions, specifically the emotion of fear. I also examine a prominent political advertisement from the 2012 Republican primaries designed to instill fear, worry, or anxiety in its audience. I argue that audience responses to so-called fear appeals are based more in socialization and group affiliation than due to a biological reaction of fear to a certain stimulus brought about in the message. In fact, much more so than fear, disgust is the primary emotion respondents report feeling in response to watching the infamous political advertisement from the 2012 U.S. presidential campaigns referred to above. Limitations of the study and areas for future research are discussed in the final chapter

Reconciling Self-Censorship: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of University Staff and Administrators

In addition to a global pandemic, the past three years have been marked by racial, social, and political unrest. These circumstances add meaningful context to examine and better understand factors that undermine free expression and contribute to self-censorship among university staff and administrators. To date, few studies have holistically explored the unique experiences of university staff and administrators with self-censorship and how this phenomenon affects their experience on college and university campuses. Understanding why staff and administrators choose to self-censor may allow for a deeper discussion about speech climate and the degree to which colleges and universities implement and uphold speech policies. Therefore, this study aimed to understand how university staff and administrators who chose to self-censor described and made meaning of their experience and explored how policies and campus responses to speech influenced the decision to self-censor. A qualitative research design was utilized to explore self-censorship among 15 university staff and administrators at a large research university. Participants represented various backgrounds, years of higher education experience, and religious and political perspectives. Data were collected from two participant interviews and analyzed using Bar-Tal’s (2017) conceptual framework for self-censorship. In addition to a priori themes from Bar-Tal’s framework that highlighted significant reasons for self-censorship (i.e., individual characteristics, context, and circumstantial factors), four additional themes emerged as relevant factors that influenced self-censorship in a higher education setting: 1) power dynamics, 2) workplace relationships, 3) avoidance of negative outcomes and labels, and 4) professionalism. Additional findings in this study revealed that self-censorship is a nuanced decision influenced by many factors to minimize or avoid risk. Overall, self-censorship was shown to be a free speech-related and a workplace-related issue. Though participants spoke of self-censorship as both positive and negative, all agreed that negative self-censorship impedes their ability to influence others in the workplace. As such, they recommended positive strategies that, if incorporated, could help decrease self-censorship among university staff and administrators. A new model of self-censorship decision-making incorporating both a priori and emergent themes was developed as an explanatory tool to help colleges and universities better understand the viewpoint expression of their employees

A Qualitative Approach to Spiral of Silence Research: Self-Censorship Narratives Regarding Environmental and Social Conflict

The purpose of this research is to seek narratives of self-censorship from in-depth interviews of 19 participants acquired through a purposive (criterion) sampling protocol. The primary research question driving this study is “What types of sanctions contribute to people choosing to self-censor their strongly held beliefs, values, and opinions.” Previous research conducted on the topic of self-censorship (generally under the rubric of the spiral of silence theory) has been predominantly quantitative and consideration of sanctions influencing self-censorship have been limited to fear of social isolation. I suggest that ostensibly important sanction variables have not been utilized within these existing frameworks. I anticipated that this research, by utilizing a qualitative framework, would reveal other sanctions that operate in the self-censorship decision calculus. I also expected that interviews would portray a broader, more complete picture of how self-censorship operates and the variables that contribute to the construct. Research expectations were partially met as new variables in regard to specific fears of sanctioning were identified. These variables should contribute to self-censorship theory and more specifically, the frequently researched “spiral of silence” theory of mass communication and could be tested in quantitative research to verify their validity. Future research in this vein might consider testing additional sanction variables as part of a quantitative study, continue to refine the definition of self-censorship, develop better strategies to locate and secure additional informants, and continue to utilize qualitative methods to probe further into self-censorship questions

Beyond Dissociation and Appropriation: Evaluating the Politics of U.S. Psychology Via Hermeneutic Interpretation of Culturally Embedded Presentations of Yoga

Psychology in the United States (U.S.) is partially constituted by a cultural history of intellectual imperialism that undermines its altruistic intent and prevents disciplinary reflexivity. The scholarship and clinical application of Yoga exemplifies the way U.S. psychology continues to give lived authority to imperialism as part of the neoliberal agenda. Through a hermeneutic literature analysis of two source Yogic texts and peer-reviewed articles that exemplify the dominant discourse on Yoga in U.S. psychology, this dissertation identified themes that describe culturally embedded presentations of Yoga and their sociopolitical implications. Through interpretation, Yoga was conceptualized as: (a) a 5,000 year-old tradition that prescribes a life path to achieving one’s full potential and includes (but is not limited to) an expression of psychology unique to Yoga that encompasses a complex moral framework, theory of mind, conceptualization of suffering and illness, and rich collection of healing technologies; (b) a phenomenological state of being, or unwavering realization of the self as undifferentiated unified consciousness; and (c) an artifact of U.S. psychology that enacts dissociated, unformulated, and unarticulated sociopolitical arrangements and events. Themes were presented as dialogue, allowing Yogic theory, philosophy, psychology, and morality to call into question facets of U.S. psychology as they relate to the human condition, psyche, mental illness, and healing technologies. Within the scope of the dissertation, there were four articulated pathways for Yoga to influence U.S. psychology without reverting back to the unconscious inclination to dissociate or appropriate: (a) participate in the tradition of Yoga rather than trying to possess it; (b) acknowledge what the moral framework of Yoga highlights about the complicity of U.S. psychology in the neoliberal agenda; (c) discontinue practices that normalize and sustain intellectual imperialism; and (d) commit to disciplinary refinement and integrity. Also addressed were the limitations of this project and fruitful avenues of further inquiry, including possible steps towards disciplinary refinement and integrity

Introducing the employee into employee silence: a reconceptualisation of employee silence from the perspective of those with mental health issues within the workplace

In recent years, employee silence has emerged as an important construct and field of study. This thesis contributes to knowledge about the ontological foundations of silence, focusing on who is remaining silent and what they are remaining silent about; in this thesis the silence of mental health conditions is explored. It does this through conducting 65 semi-structured, qualitative interviews within TransportCo, a large transport organisation. An alternate reading of silence is presented from the perspective of the employee, whilst interviews with those with managerial authority provide a platform to understand the significance of management and the role of other factors in structuring silence. Consideration is given to how employees perceptions on the procedural opportunities for voice can be influenced. A disparity between TransportCo’s commitments to the voice of those with mental health conditions and practice is` found, demonstrating a lack of genuine commitment from management to develop their organisational strategies on mental health. The role of management in structuring silence through agenda setting, the absence of voice channels and through not building line managers’ soft-skill and mental health knowledge, organises the issues employees’ want to voice out of the voice process. Silence is shown not to be a communicative choice; rather the employees’ agency to make purposeful decisions regarding the voice process is constrained. This thesis contributes to the silence literature by offering an insight into how employees define their own silence by introducing an employee-oriented framework of silence. The thesis demonstrates how employees can regain their agency over the silence process through various silence practices, and the significance social voice plays for challenging aspects of employee-oriented framework of silence. A spiral of voice theory is presented, advancing knowledge on the positive repercussions of social voice on employee perceptions of silence and organisational voice as a whole

Developing exploratory talk and thinking in secondary English lessons: theoretical and pedagogical implications

This is a year-long, action-research project investigating how to develop pupils' exploratory talk and higher-cognitive thinking in secondary English classes. Four teachers, their Year 8 classes (110 pupils) in Sussex and an ITE educator collaborated to investigate whether the quality of pupils' exploratory talk could be improved by a structured, pedagogical approach, and to explore contextual factors and other conditions for its development. The approach included making the skills of this formal, oral discourse explicit to pupils, using pupils' ground-rules, teacher modelling and structured tasks; regular practice and critical reflection on talk. It also involved cross-school collaboration, for example, classes evaluated each other‟s developing talk on video; and teachers met throughout the project to reflect on individual and collective issues and to review data and emerging findings. The data include qualitative analysis of pupil discourse taken from throughout the project, supported by associated observations and interviews with teachers and pupils. The study concludes that a rich, apprenticeship model inducting students in how to use exploratory, dialogic talk, including student critical reflection on this, contributes to the development both of this discourse and its associated higher-cognitive processes, especially in relation to the reading of texts. However, these appear to be necessary, but insufficient conditions for such development. The transformation in students‟ discourse depends on a more significant transformation in their identities, which is contingent on a similar shift in the range of teacher identities being performed. Practising exploratory talk gives students experience of a wider range of identities, especially for those who are unconfident, low-achieving and/or from low socioeconomic backgrounds, in particular boys, but also girls, enabling them to gain a 'voice' in school precluded by the discourses and identities generally adopted. This, thus, enables students to develop ways of talking and thinking essential for achievement across the curriculum, moving from silence at the margins to speech at the centre. Teachers need to appreciate the extent to which discourse exceeds language structures, encoding ways of behaving, valuing and 'being' and therefore being related to both the relationships and teacher/pupil identities generated in the classroom. Furthermore, the study concludes that there is a highly significant relationship between pupils practising dialogic, exploratory talk in groups and developing sophisticated reading comprehension skills: critical literacy, a key aim for all English teachers. The study defines a particular type of exploratory discourse that emerges in English lessons, when pupils are reading and collaborating in groups: 'tentative talk about text'. This is characterised by its speculative, tentative and analytical nature; its openness to plural interpretations of texts and its coconstruction of meanings

THE BACKSTORY: THE POWER OF PAST LIVED EXPERIENCES AND COMMUNICATION WITHIN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

ABSTRACT Research on the public’s stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals with alcohol- and substance-use disorders is well-documented, but researchers are increasingly focused on how those public attitudes are constructed and sustained. The current study seized the opportunity to better understand the phenomena of stigmatized backstory communication as it relates to the lived experiences of substance and alcohol users. Specifically, this study addressed the following overarching research question: how are stigmatized individuals’ backstories discursively manifest? Informed by a constructivist grounded theory approach, analyses of 20 interviews with individuals who self-identified with alcohol-use disorder (AUD) and/or substance-use disorder (SUD) revealed that their stigmatized backstory communication was constituted by four major themes: (1) denial, (2) the dark side, (3) oscillation, and (4) discretionary disclosure. These themes reveal both the content and process of backstory as a communication phenomenon. The findings highlight the need to engage substance and alcohol users in the national, master narrative of addiction, and also provide a new theoretical perspective for interpersonal scholars. Several practical applications are also offered to help relational partners, friends, and others, to provide support for substance and alcohol users

Shut Up and Take My Money: Engaging Facebook Communities to Build the Brand Narrative

Social media is revolutionizing the way firms manage their brands. A broad variety of platforms provide businesses an opportunity to engage in bidirectional dialogue with their customers, the effect of which is to enhance the brand/consumer relationship. This paper contends that virtual brand communities of the type that form through social media have an important role to play in the development of a brand’s personality. Using a case study approach we demonstrate how one firm has adopted Facebook to provide their brand community with a voice which contributes to the development of the brand narrative. We find that by using well-crafted content the firm elicits the support of their community and that this interaction contributes to the development of the brand ethos