The process of civilization (and its discontents): violence, narrative and history

Historical violence studies are being increasingly influenced by theoretical approaches which focus on the development of ‘cultures of violence’. However, this growing interest in the interconnections between violence and culture faces a number of significant challenges posed by the influence of disciplines other than history as well as by internal difficulties in (and disagreements over) identifying the precise role of discourse in shaping (and changing) cultures of violence. In dealing with these issues, historians are becoming increasingly interested in Norbert Elias’s theory of the ‘civilising process’. This perspective has proven to be very fruitful; nonetheless, there are problematic issues raised by Elias’s approach. In particular, the relationship between 'culture' (and thus 'discourse') and the social forces which, according to Elias, have driven a historical decline in violent behaviour – interdependence, class differentiation and the state monopolisation of legitimate physical force – remains unsettled. In this essay, I contribute to the theoretical discussion of discourses of violence from a historical perspective marked by a critical engagement with the notion of a ‘civilising process’ and incorporating conceptual tools from the fields of discourse analysis, social geography and anthropology. My conclusions, though focused on the past, are nevertheless relevant to current issues in violence and the ways that it is understood

Discourse Analysis: varieties and methods

This paper presents and analyses six key approaches to discourse analysis, including political discourse theory, rhetorical political analysis, the discourse historical approach in critical discourse analysis, interpretive policy analysis, discursive psychology and Q methodology. It highlights differences and similarities between the approaches along three distinctive dimensions, namely, ontology, focus and purpose. Our analysis reveals the difficulty of arriving at a fundamental matrix of dimensions which would satisfactorily allow one to organize all approaches in a coherent theoretical framework. However, it does not preclude various theoretical articulations between the different approaches, provided one takes a problem-driven approach to social science as one?s starting-point

Palestine, Apartheid, and the Rights Discourse

Since the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the oft-made analogy between the South African and Israeli cases has been extended to suggest the applicability to the Palestinian quest for justice through the rights discourse, arguably the most effective mobilizing tool in the anti-apartheid struggle. This essay explores the suitability of the rights approach by examining the South Africa-Israel analogy itself and the relevance of the anti-apartheid model to the three main components of the Palestinian situation: the refugees, the Palestinians of the occupied territories, and the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It concludes that while the rights discourse has many advantages, it cannot by its very nature -- the focus on law at the expense of historical context -- address the complexity of the Palestinian problem

An overview of focal approaches of critical discourse analysis

This article aims to present detailed accounts of central approaches to Critical Discourse Analysis. It focuses on the work of three prominent scholars such as Fairclough’s critical approach, Wodak’s discourse-historical approach and Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach. This study concludes that a combination of these three approaches can be useful to critical analysis of texts

Power-knowledge and critique in Australian legal education : 1987-2003

While the word 'critique' appeared frequently in Australian legal education texts between 1987 and 2003, the meaning and the emphasis accorded critique varied widely. Michel Foucault's ideas about the close relationship between knowledge and power provide a theoretical framework within which this inconsistency of meaning and emphasis can be described, analysed and explained. Rather than monolithic, the discipline of legal education was by 2003 a dynamic nexus of distinct and competing discourses: doctrinalism, vocationalism, corporatism, liberalism, pedagogicalism and radicalism. Each of these six discourses was simultaneously a form of knowledge and an expression of disciplinary power within the law school. As a form of knowledge, each discourse accorded critique a different meaning and a different emphasis as a consequence of a range of historical, social and political contingencies. As an expression of power, each discourse was an attempt to achieve a set of objectives including the universalisation of a particular approach to the teaching of law and the enhancement of the status of a particular role within the law school. Critique, in a variety of forms, was a strategy employed by each discourse in order to achieve these objectives and to dominate and displace competing discourses

Korean to English Translation Using Synchronous TAGs

It is often argued that accurate machine translation requires reference to contextual knowledge for the correct treatment of linguistic phenomena such as dropped arguments and accurate lexical selection. One of the historical arguments in favor of the interlingua approach has been that, since it revolves around a deep semantic representation, it is better able to handle the types of linguistic phenomena that are seen as requiring a knowledge-based approach. In this paper we present an alternative approach, exemplified by a prototype system for machine translation of English and Korean which is implemented in Synchronous TAGs. This approach is essentially transfer based, and uses semantic feature unification for accurate lexical selection of polysemous verbs. The same semantic features, when combined with a discourse model which stores previously mentioned entities, can also be used for the recovery of topicalized arguments. In this paper we concentrate on the translation of Korean to English.Comment: ps file. 8 page

Episteme and Subjectivity: The Context does not solve the “Gettier Problem”

Objective: In this essay, I will try to track some historical and modern stages of the discussion on the Gettier problem, and point out the interrelations of the questions that this problem raises for epistemologists, with sceptical arguments, and a so-called problem of relevance. Methods: historical analysis, induction, generalization, deduction, discourse, intuition results: Albeit the contextual theories of knowledge, the use of different definitions of knowledge, and the different ways of the uses of knowledge do not resolve all the issues that the sceptic can put forward, but they can be productive in giving clarity to a concept of knowledge for us. On the other hand, our knowledge will always have an element of intuition and subjectivity, however not equating to epistemic luck and probability. Significance novelty: the approach to the context in general, not giving up being a Subject may give us a clarity about the sense of what it means to say – “I know”

The information sources of the first Spanish Newspapers (1618-1635): the construction of information credibility

Este trabajo analiza las fuentes de información utilizadas en un corpus numeroso de avisos recogidos en periódicos españoles impresos entre 1618 y 1635. El objetivo de partida es determinar cómo se construye, en términos tanto históricos como retóricos, la credibilidad informativa. Analizaremos la construcción retórica de la credibilidad en el texto mismo de los avisos, concretamente en las fuentes de información que estos declaran u ocultan; para comprobar si existe una intención deliberada de encubrir las fuentes de información, estudiaremos la frecuencia con que aparece la atribución on deep background. La aproximación metodológica que orienta este estudio es la que sostiene el Historical News Discourse, que aplica las conclusiones y métodos de análisis del Análisis Crítico del Discurso a los periódicos del pasado, y contextualiza y explica sus resultados en relación a los planteamientos de la Historia del Periodismo y de la Comunicación (Conboy, Brownlees, Broersma y otros). Defendemos en este trabajo que el análisis del discurso de los primeros impresos informativos resulta fundamental para conocer cómo se consolida en España la profesión periodística, gracias a una nueva forma de auctoritas basada en la competencia discursiva. El gacetero o periodista aparece como una nueva modalidad de escritor, cuya credibilidad y reputación dependen de su capacidad para acceder, organizar y declarar –de acuerdo a patrones retóricos reconocibles para sus lectores– las fuentes de información a las que tiene acceso.This paper analyses the information sources used in a large corpus of news items published in Spanish printed newspapers between 1618 and 1635. The initial aim is to determine how information credibility was constructed in both historical and rhetorical terms. To this end, the rhetorical construction of credibility in the news stories are analysed by focusing on the information sources that these reveal or conceal. And in order to determine whether or not these sources were deliberately concealed, the frequency with which ‘on deep background’ attribution appears is examined. The methodological approach on which this study is based is Historical News Discourse, which applies the conclusions and methods of critical discourse analysis to newspapers of the past, in addition to contextualising and explaining the results in terms of journalism history and communication approaches (Conboy, Brownlees and Broersma, among others). In this work, we contend that the discourse analysis of the first printed newspapers is essential for gaining further insights into how the journalistic profession consolidated its position in Spain thanks to a new form of auctoritas based on discourse competence. The gazetteer or journalist emerged as a new kind of writer, whose credibility and reputation depended on his ability to access, organise and reveal –according to rhetorical patterns recognisable to readers– the information sources available to him

Catalunya no és espanya: a critical discourse analysis of artur mas’s selected speeches

peer reviewedAbstractThis article is a Critical Discourse Analysis of secessionist discourse in Catalonia in the light of a selection of speeches given by Artur Mas. This work aims at deciphering the linguistic strategies used by Mas to construct a separate Catalan identity in three of his speeches, namely his acceptance, inauguration and 2014 referendum speeches. The analysis of these speeches was carried out in the light of Ruth Wodak´s Discourse-historical Approach to Critical Discourse and yielded the identification of three sets strategies to which Artur Mas mostly resorts; singularisation and autonomisation strategies, assimilation and cohesivation strategies and finally continuation strategies.

Excavating widening participation policy in Australian higher education: subject positions, representational effects, emotion

This article uses Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify two subject positions within Australia\u27s Widening Participation higher education policy. Purpose The massification of higher education is a definitive feature of the late twentieth century. Widening Participation (WP) policy is a recent manifestation of this phenomenon in Britain and Australia. This article uses Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify two subject positions within Australian WP higher education policy, that of the cap(able) individual and the proper aspirant. The article also traces the feeling-rules associated with these subject positions to ask critical questions about neo-liberal social justice. Design/methodology/approach A Foucauldian discourse analysis was conducted on a range of policy documents relating the higher education during the period 2008-2013. Using Bacchi’s (2012) ‘what is the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach, two subject positions and their attendant feeling-rules are identified.    Findings The two subject positions, the cap(able) individual and the proper aspirant, represent a quintessential neo-liberal subject who possesses ‘natural’ ability, hope for social mobility and is highly individualised and entrepreneurial in disposition. As a reinvention of social justice approaches to higher education, WP has wide emotional and common sense appeal derived from its links into older discourses on social justice, meritocracy and the redemptive promise of education and childhood hope.  A new neo-liberal appropriation of social justice, WP neglects critical historical, social and contextual factors related to educational inequity