Senses of Gender

This paper explores the testimony of trans respondents to Count Me In Too (a participatory action research project that examined LGBT lives in Brighton and Hove), and this analysis occasions the development of innovative concepts for thinking about understandings and experiences of trans phenomena and gender. The analysis starts by exploring the diversity of trans identities before considering evidence of how health services pathologise trans experiences. These analyses not only call into question mind/body dualisms within contemporary gender schema, but also challenge the continued reliance on a sex/gender dichotomy – both in public institutions and in academic theorising – making a definitive distinction between transsexualism and transgenderism difficult to sustain. To do justice to the complexity of the respondents\' testimony, we advance the concept of a \'sense of gender\' – a sense that belongs to the body, but that is not the same as its fleshy materiality – as one register in which gender is lived, experienced and felt. This sense of gender becomes expressed in relation to a sense of dissonance (sometimes articulated through the \'wrong body discourse\') among the various elements that compose the body, its sex and its gender, such that the \'body\' experiences an inability to be \'consistent\' in ways that are usually taken for granted. The paper suggests that further work needs to be undertaken to explore how the concept of \'senses of gender\' can be applied to a broader rethinking of the relationship between gender and the body.Trans; Transgender; Transsexual; Sex; Gender; Sense; LGBT; Embodiment; Body; Mental Health

Harsh V. Pant. China’s Rising Global Profile: The Great Power Tradition. Brighton, Portland, and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press. 2011.

Book review

Rhetorical categories and linguistic mechanisms in describing research conditions: a comparative genre-based investigation into researchers' choices in Education and Applied Linguistics

Novice writers of research reports often assume that research methods are generally not mentioned in the Results section of a research paper. The extent to which such an assumption is well-founded can be determined by conducting a mixed-method genre-based study of data obtained from authentic research papers. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques in a genre analysis of two corpora of Results sections in linguistic and educational research articles, the researcher has investigated the various ways in which research methods are mentioned or reiterated in the Results sections of research reports. The findings have shown that despite the significantly different frequencies of steps related to data collection procedures in the two disciplines, research methods are frequently incorporated in the Results section. What merits attention, however, is an important range of communicative functions and an interesting repertoire of linguistic choices that should be thoroughly studied in the preparation of teaching material aimed at enlightening learners on how research methods need to be described in presenting results. The findings of this study will demonstrate that teaching novice writers how to describe research methods while presenting certain results should in fact constitute an important component in an ESP programme intended to promote academic literacy

Looking beyond comparative descriptions of subject behaviours: a pedagogically motivated qualitative study of research results in applied linguistics and education

Guiding novice research paper writers to present findings may form an essential component in an ESP course at the tertiary level. To enlighten second language learners on the possible types of findings generally presented in the Results section of research papers, the researcher analysed seven categories of results in journal articles on applied linguistics and education. By means of a genre-based approach recommended by Swales (1990; 2004) and employed by Brett (1994), various categories of findings were analysed with reference to both rhetorical functions and prominent linguistic resources. The results have shown that text segments related to findings may exhibit distinctly different linguistic characteristics that need to be highlighted in exercises aimed at helping learners distinguish categories of findings. This investigation is of considerable pedagogical significance, in that the close link between experienced writers’ communicative intentions and their linguistic choices can be effectively demonstrated to help learners present findings in the two academic fields

Unintended targeting of Dmp1-Cre reveals a critical role for Bmpr1a signaling in the gastrointestinal mesenchyme of adult mice

Cre/loxP technology has been widely used to study cell type-specific functions of genes. Proper interpretation of such data critically depends on a clear understanding of the tissue specificity of Cre expression. The Dmp1-Cre mouse, expressing Cre from a 14-kb DNA fragment of the mouse Dmp1 gene, has become a common tool for studying gene function in osteocytes, but the presumed cell specificity is yet to be fully established. By using the Ai9 reporter line that expresses a red fluorescent protein upon Cre recombination, we find that in 2-month-old mice, Dmp1-Cre targets not only osteocytes within the bone matrix but also osteoblasts on the bone surface and preosteoblasts at the metaphyseal chondro-osseous junction. In the bone marrow, Cre activity is evident in certain stromal cells adjacent to the blood vessels, but not in adipocytes. Outside the skeleton, Dmp1-Cre marks not only the skeletal muscle fibers, certain cells in the cerebellum and the hindbrain but also gastric and intestinal mesenchymal cells that express Pdgfra. Confirming the utility of Dmp1-Cre in the gastrointestinal mesenchyme, deletion of Bmpr1a with Dmp1-Cre causes numerous large polyps along the gastrointestinal tract, consistent with prior work involving inhibition of BMP signaling. Thus, caution needs to be exercised when using Dmp1-Cre because it targets not only the osteoblast lineage at an earlier stage than previously appreciated, but also a number of non-skeletal cell types

Delineating sampling procedures: Pedagogical significance of analysing sampling descriptions and their justifications in TESL experimental research reports

Teaching second language learners how to write research reports constitutes a crucial component in programmes on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in institutions of higher learning. One of the rhetorical segments in research reports that merit attention has to do with the descriptions and justifications of sampling procedures. This genre-based study looks into sampling delineations in the Method-related sections of research articles on the teaching of English as a second language (TESL) written by expert writers and published in eight reputed international refereed journals. Using Swales’s (1990 & 2004) framework, I conducted a quantitative analysis of the rhetorical steps and a qualitative investigation into the language resources employed in delineating sampling procedures. This investigation has considerable relevance to ESP students and instructors as it has yielded pertinent findings on how samples can be appropriately described to meet the expectations of dissertation examiners, reviewers, and supervisors. The findings of this study have furnished insights into how supervisors and instructors can possibly teach novice writers ways of using specific linguistic mechanisms to lucidly describe and convincingly justify the sampling procedures in the Method sections of experimental research reports

Elucidating data analysis procedures in research reports on language education: an inquiry into writers? communicative resources

Helping learners acquire the skills in writing research methods constitutes an important component in various programmes in tertiary education. One of the challenges encountered by novice writers in language education has to do with the elucidation of data analysis procedures in experimental research reports. Adopting a genre-based approach, this study analyses the rhetorical strategies and linguistic resources used for recounting and justifying the steps taken in analyzing data. Employing the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), the researcher conducted a quantitative analysis of the rhetorical steps used by experienced writers in 32 experimental research reports published in eight reputed international refereed journals. Attention was directed to the determination of the degree to which the frequencies of the steps under investigation-focused headings differ from those under procedure-focused headings. A detailed qualitative analysis of the writers’ textual data was also conducted to identify the broad spectrum of language mechanisms employed in recounting and justifying the data analysis procedures. The findings have shed some light on what and how dissertation supervisors and instructors can possibly highlight while guiding second language writers to recount and justify data analysis procedures in experimental studies on language education

Commenting on research results in applied linguistics and education: a comparative genre-based investigation

As university students are frequently given the tasks of writing research reports to fulfil their respective programme requirements, teaching novice writers to present the results of their reports understandably constitutes an essential component of English lessons at tertiary level. While past research has shown that results are consistently commented on in the Discussion section in various disciplines, the degrees to which they are allowed in the Results section may vary across different disciplines and across research reports based on different research methods. Without a detailed investigation into such disciplinary and methodological differences, instructors and supervisors would find it difficult to inform novice writers about the permissibility and necessity to incorporate comments of different categories in the Results section. This mixed-method genre-based study used quantitative and qualitative techniques to (i) identify the extent to which disciplinary and methodological differences have a bearing on the frequencies of comments in the Results sections of research papers in applied linguistics and education, and (ii) investigate the various categories of comments in relation to their prominent linguistic mechanisms. The findings of this study can also help instructors design relevant teaching materials that illustrate how experienced writers link their comments with major categories of research results