Why shall I call you ze? : Discourse analysis of the social perception of institutionally introducing the gender-neutral pronoun ze

It was the Oxford University’s Students Union (OUSU) which first promoted the use of gender-inclusive pronouns to avoid gender-binarism in the English-speaking European academic life. OUSU finds it supportive if students declare their chosen pronouns by which they wish to be addressed at meetings (he, she or ze). Public attention turned to the emergence of the new pronoun. The present study aims to explore the social perception of the newly appearing gender-neutral neologism by mapping public attitude towards the idea of institutionally introducing a neopronoun (ze) in the English language for the sake of celebrating gender diversity. The discourse plane investigated in the research was comments given to online newspaper articles. The genre of comments provides insights into the opinions and feelings of the general public. A near-thousand comments of online dialogues displayed on the websites of six British newspapers (three broadsheets and three tabloids) during a one-year timespan (December 2016 – December 2017) were analysed qualitatively. Arguments on either discourse position were studied, hidden premises were uncovered. The results of the exploratory study reveal that there is a notable imbalance in the voicing of opinions: the promotion of the gender-neutral English pronoun is markedly underrepresented in the public (1.32%) while the set of arguments against its introduction is versatile. The findings of the analysis indicate that the voice of the people does not consider pronoun-binarism as a sign of exclusion or the marginalizing of gender-diverse people; however, the novel pronoun tends to excite shock and refusal in the public

What makes the Wuhan virus American? The discursive strategies of legitimising and delegitimising a coronavirus conspiracy theory

From the sociolinguistic perspective, conspiracy theories (CT), which convey heterodox forms of knowledge that diverge from accepted narratives, are worth examining since their discourses abound in persuasive language. Still, the discourse of CTs is under-researched (Demata/Zorzi/ Zottola 2022). The present empirical, discourse-analytical case study seeks to address this lacuna by exploring the discursive (de)legitimation strategies of conspiracy discourse in competing narrative frames. The research adopted the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective, and the comparative analysis was carried out within the methodological framework developed by van Leeuwen (2008) and Tankard (2001). The findings complement van Leeuwen’s “grammar of legitimation”, and also contribute to existing knowledge on framing theories. The results of the explorative case study indicate that the persuasiveness of the discursive strategies of (de)legitimisation depends on several features, such as synergy, projection, the sense of belonging, silencing with blockers, implying the generality of specific cases, and the partial investigation of causality

The effect of experimental hyperoxia on erythrocytes’ oxygen-transport function

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of hyperoxia, calcium ions and pH value on the composition of major phospholipids in human erythrocyte membranes and erythrocytes’ oxygen-transport function. To create a model of hyperoxia, we saturated the incubated mixture with oxygen by constant passing of oxygen–air mixture through the incubation medium. To assess the effect of elevated calcium ion concentrations, CaCl2 was added to the incubation medium. An incubation medium with different pH was used to study the effect of various pH values. Lipids were extracted from erythrocytes and chromatographic separation was carried out in a thin layer of silica gel deposited on a glass plate. The thiobarbituric acid (TBA)-active products and the content of diene conjugates (DC) in erythrocytes were determined. The oxygen-binding capacity of haemoglobin was evaluated using Raman spectroscopy. The obtained results indicated that hyperoxia causes deep changes both in the composition and character of bilayer lipids of erythrocyte membranes, which affects the functional characteristics of erythrocytes, primarily the oxygen-transport properties of erythrocyte haemoglobin. It should be noted that a combination of Ca2+ ions and change in the pH value intensify the processes associated with disruption of phospholipids’ composition. The findings indicate that the lipid phase is one of the key elements in the functioning of erythrocytes in norm as well as during development of various pathological processes

A key to understanding why a text is difficult to process. Lexical uniqueness of academic English texts

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Voices of Supporters : Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections

This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between “the people”, who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation

Voices of Supporters : Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections

This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study, the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms, defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice, realised in discourse, that is based on a dichotomy between “the people”, who are unified by their will, and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people, with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties, what role national identities and values play in those motivations, and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation

Conservative treatment for patients over 80 years with acute myelogenous leukemia

In order to evaluate the best treatment of very elderly patients with AML, we have retrospectively analyzed 60 cases of patients aged more than 80 years, with a diagnosis of AML and observed from January 1988 to December 1998. Six of these patients were subsequently referred to other centers; of the remaining 54 patients, 20 (37%) received only supportive care, whereas 34 (63%) required palliative chemotherapy to control leukocytosis, after a median time from diagnosis of 9 days (range 0-253). Median overall survival was 13 weeks (range 1-105): 21 (39%) and 6 (11%) patients survived more than 6 and 12 months, respectively. Twenty-eight patients (51.8%) died from progressive disease, 19 (35.1%) died from AML-related or unrelated causes in the phase of stable disease, while in 7 patients the cause of death was unknown. In univariate analysis, PS > 2 and WBC > 50 x 10(9)/L had an adverse prognostic significance on survival. Our results, as compared with those reported in the literature for patients over 80 years treated with intensive chemotherapy, support the idea that intensive chemotherapy is usually not indicated in very elderly patients with AML, and that conservative treatment and the primary strategy of "watch-and-wait" presently seems to be the best choice

IgM-secreting diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: results of a multicentre clinicopathological and molecular study

Large B-cell lymphom