Rhetorics of Judge-Penitence : How Moral Superiority is Publicly Constructed through Admissions of past Wrongdoing.

Given the increasing number of public admissions of wrongdoing by official representatives of states, other institutions and individuals, as well as the subsequent scholarly attention directed to this phenomenon, this thesis investigates one potential misuse of such practices. Here, I take Albert Camus' novel The Fall as a starting point and ask if such admissions cannot ultimately be directed against 'others' through rhetorics of judge-penitence. Such an argumentative pattern aims to project the in-group as a penitent sinner which has faced its dark past and thus learnt the lessons provided by history. This creates, in turn, the possibility to construct an 'other' discursively as having failed to do so, i. e. as being morally inferior. Utilising Critical Discourse Analysis in the context of the debate over the Iraq crisis in 2002/3 in three European countries - Germany, Austria and Denmark - I focus on the (mis)use of self-critical references to the Holocaust and World War II in general. Through a qualitative analysis of particularly argumentative sections of broadsheet newspapers in each of these countries, the study illustrates the, albeit restricted, existence of such a phenomenon as well as its varieties. By exploring Maurice Halbwachs' notions of collective memory, (non-)constructionist approaches aiming to explain the rising significance of admissions of wrongdoing and Charles S. Peirce's semiotics in the context of the public sphere, I explain the influence of different historical contexts and national narratives on the existence and realisation of rhetoric(s) of judge-penitence. By applying Jurgen Habermas' Critical Theory when elaborating the moral significance of memory, I theoretically justify normative evaluations of both admissions of past wrongdoing and their rhetorical misuse. In conclusion, and going beyond my chosen test cases, the thesis illuminates how admissions of wrongdoing may be (mis)used in political discourse

Towards a revised theory of collective learning processes:

Societies change; and sociology has, since its inception, described and evaluated these changes. This article proposes a revised theory of collective learning processes, a conceptual framework which addresses ways in which people make sense of and cope with change. Drawing on Habermas’ classic proposal, but shifting the focus from argumentation towards storytelling, it explains how certain articulations allow for collective learning processes (imagining more inclusive orders), while others block learning processes (imagining more exclusive orders). More specifically, the article points to narrative genres (romance, tragedy, comedy and irony) which organize feelings and shape the social bond, proposing that ironic and tragic stories have the potential to trigger collective learning processes, while romantic and comic stories tend to block them.Peer Reviewe

Discourses of cultural heritage in times of crisis:The case of the Parthenon Marbles

The paper focuses on the commodification and politicisation of cultural heritage using as a case study the ongoing debate on the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the U.K. to Greece, recently reignited by the press release for the movie The Monuments Men in 2014. Greece has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis for over six years with the ever imminent threat of Grexit constantly disputed. In parallel with this ongoing turmoil, discourses of Greek antiquity have been persistently prominent in the media. In this context, we problematise the complex nexus of relationships between the financial crisis, national identity and cultural heritage. We combine the Discourse-Historical Approach and Interactional Sociolinguistics drawing data from an online forum, and investigate how the users negotiate pro-/anti-return positions and make the financial crisis relevant in the argumentation process. The analysis shows that history, identity, value, and debt are recontextualised in relation to the Parthenon sculptures. The analysis identifies an underlying process of value trade off and brings the current political and economic environment to the fore. We close the paper by foregrounding the implications of our study and provide directions for further research

Historia Magistra Vitae : Le topos de « l’Histoire comme maître de la vie » dans les controverses publiques sur la représentation de Soi et de l’Autre

The idea that “the past” could provide guidance in the present is a popular topos in public debates. Being interested in how this topos of historia magistra vitae can be utilized in discourses, representations and their consequences, this article asks how claims to know ‘the lessons’ from the past, for having learnt, give meaning to contemporary actors, events, objects and processes. The article thus raises questions such as ‘what pasts and presents does this topos draw on?’ and ‘what conclusions does the use of this topos in public struggles over demarcating ‘us’ from ‘them’ facilitate?’. Instead of providing a case study, this article offers an abstract typology of such claims by conceptualising four types of uses: rhetorics of judging, rhetorics of failing, rhetorics of penitence and rhetorics of judge-penitence. In so doing, the article carefully differentiates these uses and, thus, provides a framework for better understanding them across a range of cases

Critique, Habermas and narrative (genre): The Discourse-Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Studies

Narratives are everywhere. We tell narratives about ourselves and we make the world meaningful through storytelling. We position others through the narratives we tell and are positioned by stories told about us. And yet, while narratives have, of course, been analysed in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), including in one of its most popular approaches, the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), this article proposes to go a step further by systematically integrating the concept of narrative into the core of the DHA. More specifically, I consider narrative from the perspective of the concept of narrative genre. That is, I propose a focus on how meaning arises via the narrative genres of romance, tragedy, comedy and irony, i.e., through (modes of) emplotment. Such an integration does not contradict the DHA’s (and CDS’) focus on detailed textual analysis or reject existing foci, e.g. on argumentation, but recognises the centrality of the narrative form for social life and offers further concepts for empirical analyses. This focus on narrative genre contributes, furthermore, to the critical study of meaning-making by revising Jürgen Habermas’ Critical Theory and offering a novel integration of the latter into the DHA, thus providing a theoretically justified, immanent foundation for its critique.</div

Negotiating euthanasia: civil society contesting “the completed life”

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Kalashnikov and Cooking-spoon: Neo-Nazism, Veganism and a Lifestyle Cooking Show on YouTube

** From Crossref via Jisc Publications Router.Previously deposited in University of Leicester repository on 2017-01-20: https://leicester.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Kalashnikov_and_cooking-spoon_neo-Nazism_veganism_and_lifestyle_on_YouTube/10245203Food consumption has always been a deeply symbolic, identity-related issue. But contrary to the intuitive assumption that links meat-free diets to peace-loving, left-leaning actors and ideologies, this article illustrates how a group of (German) neo-Nazis, Balaclava Küche (Balaclava Kitchen), appropriates vegan diet in its YouTube cooking videos. Analyzing these videos, supported by an interview with the group, the article inquires into the various ways in which cooking and food consumption are intertwined with their politics. It closes by putting the group's attitude into a wider perspective, suggesting an ideal typical model of how links between culture, nature, and identity can be understood.div_BaM20pub5055pub

Critique and argumentation: On the relation between the discourse-historical approach and pragma-dialectics

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