Activist online journalism and the gender controversy: investigating Polish LGBTQ blogs

Dieser Beitrag untersucht einen Korpus von Blog-Einträgen ausgewählter polnischer LQBTQ-Blogs zum Thema Gender. Der Fokus liegt im Besonderen auf Texten, die als Beispiele für den AktivisitInnen-Onlinejournalismus stehen, einem hybriden Genre, das soziales Engagement und alternativen Journalismus verbindet und das mit den massenmedialen Frames und den Konventionen des Nachrichten-Genres interagiert, darauf aufbaut und sich diese aneignet. Der Beitrag verwendet dabei die positive discourse analysis (PDA) und im Besonderen die revidierte Typologie von Gegen- strategien, die von Felicitas Macgilchrist (2007) entwickelt wurden und die die Verwendungsweisen von ironischen und nicht-ironischen Strategien der Inversion, der Komplexifizierung, der teilweisen und der radikal neuen Rahmung aufzeigen, die die Formen der Darstellung des Themas Gender in den Massenmedien herausfordern.This article investigates a corpus of blog entries dealing with gender issues published on se- lected Polish LGBTQ blogs. It focuses in particular on texts which could be considered examples of ac- tivist online journalism – a hybrid genre combining social activism and alternative journalism – inter- acting with, building upon, and re-appropriating mainstream frames and news reporting genre conven- tions. The article employs the framework of positive discourse analysis (PDA) and specifically a revised typology of counter-strategies developed by Felicitas Macgilchrist (2007), showing the use of strategies of non-ironic and ironic inversion, complexification, partial reframing and radical reframing to contest the ways the topic of gender is dealt with in mainstream media

Transition in Poland, Poland in Transition:Tracing the history of gender transition discourses in Polish social media

The present article explores the history of Polish online gender transition discourses, conceptualized in terms of two main stages – “Transnet 1.0” of anonymous, text-based blogs documenting individual experiences and “Transnet 2.0” of YouTube videos, podcasts and tik-toks created by openly trans activists. It offers an analysis of various kinds of multilingual practices in these narratives and attempts to track the way they have been changing to reveal threads of local and global, conservative and liberal, medical and activist discourses. This is done against the background of Poland’s own transition from a (nominally) socialist state to a modern democracy, which has not followed a simple, straight-forward path to progress allegedly exemplified by the “West”. The history of attitudes towards the transgender community throughout Poland’s democratic transition and its traces in contemporary online discourses paint a more complex picture

Lower Sorbian (new) speakers: questions worth asking

This article discusses the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted among speakers of Lower Sorbian in autumn/winter 2020/2021. Lower Sorbian is an endangered Slavic language spoken in Lower Lusatia, a region located in the federal state of Brandenburg in eastern Germany. As is the case with many other minority languages, efforts are currently being undertaken to revitalize it and ensure its survival for future generations. Since home transmission of Lower Sorbian has practically ceased completely, the burden of revitalization is increasingly being carried by so-called new speakers, i.e. speakers who have acquired the language, usually via institutional education and often as adults. The online survey, available both in Lower Sorbian and German, consisted of 30 questions divided into four sections: General information, Language use/linguistic practices, Lower Sorbian identity and community, and Opinions and attitudes. Its goal was to gather general information on the Lower Sorbian speaker community and on how it operates. Although the survey did not target new speakers specifically, it was expected to be completed mostly by this speaker group. It was designed to provide an overall picture of new speaker profiles, to be explored in depth later in the project during individual sociolinguistic interviews and focus group discussions. The questionnaire was distributed via familiar speaker networks and completed by 78 respondents (43 in German and 35 in Lower Sorbian). As the number of Lower Sorbian speakers is not known, the results of the survey cannot be considered representative. They do, however, provide important and interesting information about a group of speakers who are mostly of working age, well-educated and living predominantly in Cottbus or the surrounding area. They make an effort to speak the endangered language in professional and social/cultural contexts, they are aware of its precarious situation and they care about its survival. Most of our respondents have learned the language — or are still learning it — via institutional education, which makes them new speakers. Through multiple diagrams that represent the survey results in an easy-to-follow way, complemented by examples of respondents’ comments to the questionnaire, the article paints a general picture of these speakers, their motivations, language practices and future hopes and aspirations

Latvian verbs of speaking and their relations to evidentiality

The paper offers a functional analysis of three Latvian verbs of speaking used in their indicative third person forms – saka, runā and stāsta ‘say(s), speak(s) and talk(s)’ – based on the Latvian language corpus online (www.korpuss.lv) and, additionally, on examples excerpted from Internet discourse. The article discusses semantic and syntactic similarities and differences between these words, the functions of particular constructions distinguished according to specific syntactic criteria (presence vs. absence of a subject), and the use of these verbs in combination with the Latvian verb form traditionally associated with (potential) evidential meanings, the oblique (atstāstījuma izteiksme). While the use of verbs of speaking for introducing reported speech is seen as unproblematic, the relationship between verba dicendi and evidentiality requires more attention and remains in focus throughout this study. In order to offer an in-depth overview of the nature of this relationship, the relations between reported speech and evidentiality, as well as the oblique and evidentiality, are also briefly considered. The paper concludes that the possibility of the three verbs functioning as evidential markers depends on considerations of theoretical/terminological nature (how to define evidentiality, should reported speech be considered part of it, etc.) and also, to some extent, on the way the subject is realized in verba dicendi constructions (specific human agent vs. non-specific empty subject and absent or zero subject)

When the obligation to be neutral becomes the right to discriminate

In this article, we discuss the narratives of struggle, resistance, and counter-resistance over the rights of the LGBT+ community at several Polish universities, which remain unnamed in order to protect our informants. In particular, we look at the discourses of LGBT+ groups struggling to establish or maintain organizations of various forms (from students' study circles to union-like institutions) within the context of internal university structure, Polish academic culture and current political developments in the country. This research draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews we conducted in the spring and summer of 2020. In our analyses of the interview material, we apply a multidisciplinary methodological framework combining CDA and narrative inquiry in order to examine linguistic phenomena participating in constructing a particular version of reality through text in talk. Such research design enables us to offer a case study of the difficulties and obstacles faced by LGBT+ activists in the Polish academia the way they understand them, and of the resistance strategies they employ in this particular context. Our research shows a wide range of resistance strategies employed by the LGBT+ community members that can be classified according to the scale of discriminatory practices they form a response to (systemic/individual discrimination) and the type of the response itself (group/individual response). On the basis of the discussed examples, our article offers an interagentive matrix of strategies of addressing LGBT+ issues emerging within the Polish academic context. 

Chromosome landmarks and autosome-sex chromosome translocations in Rumex hastatulus, a plant with XX/XY1Y2 sex chromosome system

Rumex hastatulus is the North American endemic dioecious plant with heteromorphic sex chromosomes. It is differentiated into two chromosomal races: Texas (T) race characterised by a simple XX/XY sex chromosome system and North Carolina (NC) race with a polymorphic XX/XY1Y2 sex chromosome system. The gross karyotype morphology in NC race resembles the derived type, but chromosomal changes that occurred during its evolution are poorly understood. Our C-banding/DAPI and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) experiments demonstrated that Y chromosomes of both races are enriched in DAPI-positive sequences and that the emergence of polymorphic sex chromosome system was accompanied by the break of ancestral Y chromosome and switch in the localization of 5S rDNA, from autosomes to sex chromosomes (X and Y2). Two contrasting domains were detected within North Carolina Y chromosomes: the older, highly heterochromatinised, inherited from the original Y chromosome and the younger, euchromatic, representing translocated autosomal material. The flow-cytometric DNA estimation showed ∼3.5 % genome downsizing in the North Carolina race. Our results are in contradiction to earlier reports on the lack of heterochromatin within Y chromosomes of this species and enable unambiguous identification of autosomes involved in the autosome-heterosome translocation, providing useful chromosome landmarks for further studies on the karyotype and sex chromosome differentiation in this species

Transitioning (on the) Internet:Shifting Challenges and Contradictions of Ethics of Studying Online Gender Transition Narratives

The use of social media in qualitative research has become extremely popular. YouTube, in particular, has attracted attention from scholars working on (self-)representation of minority groups, including the transgender community (e.g., Dame 2013; Horak 2014). Most academic disciplines, however, have been slow in responding to the increasingly challenging nature of social media in terms of their ethics and methodologies. For example, there is a common misconception that any publicly available YouTube videos can be freely used for research. Many studies openly reference the YouTube channels they discuss (Wotanis and McMillan 2014) or anonymize data, but do not seek informed consent from creators (Raun 2020). What is more, researchers rarely reflect on how their work could impact the communities under study or the way creators use social media (Leonelli et al. 2021). At the same time, researchers wishing to protect vulnerable communities may find themselves falling short of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable) research principles required by funders. In this contribution, I discuss these and other challenges using, as a case study, my project, which investigates gender transition narratives on Polish social media. I wish to show that there is no one-fits-all approach to the ethics of social media studies—as the very nature of social media is in constant flux—and call for attentiveness and reflexivity as an inextricable component of qualitative social media research methodology