A case of double discourse in politics: the Spanish government’s counterarguments to the discursive racism of the parliamentary opposition

Este artículo explora algunos de los mecanismos empleados en la argumentación acerca de la discriminación social, en particular el racismo en sus encarnaciones más novedosas centradas en la nacionalidad y la cultura. Antes que atender al discurso explícitamente racista, parte de la idea de que en un medio donde la expresión pública de esta clase de convicciones está severamente restringida, son muchas veces expresiones pretendidamente imparciales o aún favorables a los sujetos discriminados las que construyen, transforman o aplican procedimientos racistas. Se ofrece un análisis contextual y discursivo del discurso político parlamentario en España, para realizar un relevamiento de las instancias concretas en que el contenido racista se encarna en los procesos de la democracia deliberativa a varios niveles. Este se pone en relación con los procesos históricos y sistemáticos que lo vinculan a otras dimensiones sociales, de modo de explorar las condiciones específicas de las que deriva su estructura y a las que ha de atenderse para cualquier intento de formular un proyecto crítico.This article explores some of the mechanisms employed in argumentation about social discrimination, especially in the most recent forms that racism has adopted in Western countries, which hinge on nationality and culture rather than on race itself. The focus here is not on discriminatory discourse explicitly, but instead on the allegedly neutral or even sympathetic discourses produced on a medium where the explicit embracing of racism is actively discouraged and stigmatised, which may nevertheless function to construe, shape or apply racist prejudice. The practices of parliamentary political discourse in Spain are examined both discursively and contextually to search for instances of racist speech in the process of policy-making and political deliberation. These are analysed in their relations to the historical and systematic processes that shape discursive practice, so as to propose a model suited to the fundamentally constitutive nature of elite discourse

Overlooked text types: From fictional texts to real-world discourses

Behind the enthusiastic adoption of corpus-based approaches in discourse research lies the promise of an ability to explore data more completely and representatively. Traditional methods in discourse studies were primarily designed for delicacy and richness; given the complexity of the links between language use and its social context, and the wide range of linguistic features in which these links are expressed, research tended to focus on the ‘detailed analysis of a small number of discourse samples’ (Fairclough 1992: 230). But the depth afforded by such approaches places corresponding limits on breadth of coverage: examining particular excerpts in such detail is only possible at the expense of overlooking everything else that goes on in a given discursive practice. The ‘fragmentary [and] exemplificatory’ nature of the evidence that can be thus gathered poses considerable problems for generalisation (Fowler 1996: 8). When texts and features for analysis are selected on the basis of the researcher’s intuitive judgement (Marchi & Taylor 2009: 3), there is no guarantee that they truly represent the distinctive patterns that characterise a discourse (Stubbs 1997)

Doing the naughty or having it done to you? Agent roles in erotic writing

Frequent criticisms of pornography have argued that it reproduces hegemonic misogyny by emphasising representations of females as passive, powerless and submissive. Nevertheless, attempts to substantiate such claims have been scarce. This paper seeks to provide empirical evidence on this question through an analysis of the representation of sexual activity in a large corpus of online pornographic stories. I employ corpus linguistic methods to examine the grammatical patterns used to attribute agency to male and female participants in sexual acts. The analysis shows these narratives tend to represent sexual intercourse as an asymmetric engagement between an agent and a patient, rather than as a joint collaborative activity. Although representations emphasising female agency are not rare, they are significantly less common than those assigning males the agent role, thus reinforcing rather than challenging dominant discourses of gender and sexuality. Linguistic methods such as these have the potential for a more nuanced and finer-grained description than is often possible for visual materials, and can profitably add to our understanding of gender and genre differences in pornography

What Is the Environment Doing in My Report? Analyzing the Environment-as-Stakeholder Thesis through Corpus Linguistics

This paper seeks to explore whether business organizations' claims to regard the natural environment as a stakeholder are consistent with the way in which the environment is represented in their corporate social responsibility reporting. It applies corpus linguistic methods to analyze statistical regularities and differences in the discursive construction of core stakeholders, such as customers and employees, and that of the natural environment. Results show that the representation of the environment is not characterized by the agency and capacity for engagement that characterizes other stakeholders. While organizations overtly acknowledge a duty toward the environment, the dominant lexical and grammatical patterns in which it is represented tend to obscure the organization's responsibilities and emphasize its mitigating actions instead. Although the argument for regarding the environment as a stakeholder is based on the fact that it places objective and compelling demands on our actions, we look in vain for recognition of such demands in organizational reporting

Efectos de la interacción entre células tecales y granulosas sobre la esteroidogénesis en el folículo ovárico porcino

Fil: Lischinsky, Adriana Leonor. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina

From neural signatures of emotional modulation to social cognition: Individual differences in healthy volunteers and psychiatric participants

It is commonly assumed that early emotional signals provide relevant information for social cognition tasks. The goal of this study was to test the association between (a) cortical markers of face emotional processing and (b) social-cognitive measures, and also to build a model which can predict this association (a and b) in healthy volunteers as well as in different groups of psychiatric patients. Thus, we investigated the early cortical processing of emotional stimuli (N170, using a face and word valence task) and their relationship with the social-cognitive profiles (SCPs, indexed by measures of theory of mind, fluid intelligence, speed processing and executive functions). Group comparisons and individual differences were assessed among schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and their relatives, individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), individuals with euthymic bipolar disorder (BD) and healthy participants (educational level, handedness, age and gender matched). Our results provide evidence of emotional N170 impairments in the affected groups (SCZ and relatives, ADHD and BD) as well as subtle group differences. Importantly, cortical processing of emotional stimuli predicted the SCP, as evidenced by a structural equation model analysis. This is the first study to report an association model of brain markers of emotional processing and SCP.Fil: Ibañez, Agustin Mariano. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; Argentina. Universidad Diego Portales; Chile. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Aguado, Jaume. Universidad de Barcelona; EspañaFil: Báez Buitrago, Sandra Jimena. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Huepe, David. Universidad Diego Portales; ChileFil: Lopez, Vladimir. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; ChileFil: Ortega, Rodrigo. Universidad de Chile; Chile. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; ChileFil: Sigman, Mariano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Mikulan, Ezequiel Pablo. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Lischinsky, Alicia Graciela. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; ArgentinaFil: Torrente, Fernando. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; ArgentinaFil: Cetkovich Bakmas, Marcelo Gustavo. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; ArgentinaFil: Torralva, Teresa. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; ArgentinaFil: Bekinschtein, Tristán Andrés. Instituto de Neurología Cognitiva; Argentina. Medical Research Council. Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit; Reino UnidoFil: Manes, Facundo Francisco. Instituto de Neurologia Cognitiva. Laboratorio de Psicologia Experimental y Neurociencia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Change but no climate change: discourses of climate change in corporate social responsibility reporting in the oil industry

Using corpus linguistic tools and methods, this paper investigates the discourses of climate change in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental reports produced by major oil companies from 2000 to 2013. It focuses on the frequency of key references to climatic changes and examines in detail discourses surrounding the most frequently used term ‘climate change’. The analysis points to shifting patterns in the ways in which climate change has been discursively constructed in the studied sample. Whereas in the mid-2000s, it was seen as a phenomenon that something could be done about, in recent years the corporate discourse has increasingly emphasised the notion of risk portraying climate change as an unpredictable agent. A pro-active stance signalled by the use of force metaphors is offset by a distancing strategy often indicated through the use of hedging devices and ‘relocation’ of climate change to the future and other stakeholders. In doing so, the discourse obscures the sector’s large contribution to environmental degradation and ‘grooms’ the public perception to believe that the industry actively engages in climate change mitigation. At the methodological level, this study shows how a combination of quantitative corpus-linguistic and qualitative discourse-analytical techniques can offer insights into the existence of salient discursive patterns and contribute to a better understanding of the role of language in performing ideological work in corporate communications

Cateterismo portal a través de la vena umbilical: Umbilicoportografía

González Carbalhaes, basándose en estudios anatómicosy quirúrgicos, demostró en 1959 la posibilidad de introducir uncatéter en el sistema portal, repermeabilizando la vena umbi­lical

Tratamiento quirúrgico de la úlcera gástrica

Este relato pretende señalar algunos perfiles del tratamientoquirúrgico de la úlcera gástrica, en un Hospital Regional quecomprende una población de aproximadamente 75.000 habitan­tes, extendida en un área urbana y rural

A comparative pattern of lectin-binding in the endometrial glands of the uterus and placenta of healthy buffaloes and bovines at early gestation

Water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) and domestic cattle (Bos taurus) are closely related species. However, embryo transfer interspecies has been attempted without any success. The failure in hybrid embryo-implantation is associated with the glycocode in the maternal-fetal interface. Glycosylation patterns have been studied in different species of ruminants; however, in B. bubalis, only the binucleated cells (BNC) have been analyzed. This glycocode is essential for a successful embryo-implantation and can be defined by Lectin-Histochemistry (LHC). The aim of this study is to compare the glycosylation pattern of placenta and uterus in water buffaloes and cattle by LHC. Tissue samples of placenta and uterus from pregnant Mediterranean female water buffaloes (Buf1) and Angus cows (Bov1) were analyzed. All animals were euthanized at 98 days of gestation. LHC was carried out using twelve lectins (Con A, LCA, PSA, sWGA, PHA-e, SBA, UEA-1, WGA, RCA-1, PNA, DBA, BSA-1). The intensity of lectin binding was semiquantitatively scored using a scale of 0 (negative) to 3 (strongly positive). Difference between species was found in trophoblast layer by PSA, SWGA, PNA and BSA-1, in BNC, and in the mononuclear cells by LCA, PSA, PHA-e, DBA, BSA-1, PNA. In utero, differences in the apical cellular membrane and the secretion of glands were identified by DBA and RCA-1, and in the cytoplasm of those glandular epithelial cells by PHA-e, BSA-1, WGA, and SBA. In both species, BNC presented a strong positive reaction with DBA and SBA, a moderate response by LCA, PHA-e, BSA-1 and PNA lectin, and a low reaction by PSA, UEA-1, SWGA, WGA, Con A and RCA-1. The results found in this study suggest that although both species are closely related, glycosylation patterns in the placenta and uterus are different, thus providing a possible reason for embryo transfer not being possible between these species.EEA MercedesFil: Caspe, Sergio Gaston. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Mercedes; ArgentinaFil: Konrad, Jose Luis. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias; ArgentinaFil: Moore, Prando Dadin. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Balcarce; ArgentinaFil: Sala, Juan Manuel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Mercedes; ArgentinaFil: Lischinsky, Lilian Haydee. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Balcarce; ArgentinaFil: Campero, Carlos Manuel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Balcarce; ArgentinaFil: Barbeito, Claudio G. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias; Argentina