Making Sense in and of the Asexual Community: Navigating Relationships and Identities in a Context of Resistance

Despite some increased visibility in recent years, the asexual community and asexuality generally remain largely unknown. Aiming to demystify asexuality, this paper discusses the context of anti‐asexual animosity in which the (largely American) asexual community is situated. Specifically, the asexual community constructed itself in response to hostility, including explicit anti‐asexual discrimination, homophobia against asexual people perceived to be lesbian or gay, and the negative impact of (implicit) pathologising low sexual desire. This theoretical paper outlines some of the unique challenges asexual people face negotiating identities and relationships; the collective sense‐making strategies they use (generating language and discourse) to do so; and why these things are central to understanding asexual people's experiences. This is accomplished through a purposeful review of literature and a case study of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network as an asexual community space. Understanding the challenges asexual people face and the resources they invoke to overcome them helps applied psychologists develop the cultural competence they need to work effectively with the asexual people they will encounter. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The person-centred approach as an ideological discourse: a discourse analysis of person-centred counsellors' accounts on their way of being

In accord with humanistic psychology, the person-centred approach (PCA) highlights individuality and is characterised by subjectivity and freedom vs. objectivity and determination. This study endeavoured to define how person-centred counsellors position themselves within PCA. In order to employ a critical frame of mind, analysis focused on identifying constructions, contradictions and functions of language that pointed to power relations. This study revealed a power relation between PCA and the counsellors, displaying five discourses: the philosophical discourse, the discourse of freedom, the discourse of religion/spirituality, the discourse of militarism and the discourse of eros (love). PCA is thought to empower the client in relation to its respectful and non-directive, therapeutic framework. Analysis suggests that despite rhetorical endorsement of PCA as enabling, the approach has implications for subjectivity and practice regarding the counsellor him/herself. Adhesive attachments closely resembling religious and erotic ones seem responsible for dogmatic and militaristic phenomena as described by participants. Strong emotions such as pride and guilt are indicative of this adhesive investment. Furthermore, the analysis shows that as the discourse of freedom becomes embedded in the philosophical discourse of PCA, it has connotations of truth. Lastly, the discourse of religion/spirituality seems to organise PCA in terms of meaning coherence.     

From Ideology to Feeling: Discourse,Emotion, and an Analytic Synthesis

Recent arguments in the social sciences exhort a turn to affect and, either explicitly or by implication, a move away from or beyond the earlier turn to language. This conveys a presumption that the site and logic of discursive investigation must inevitably be different to the site and logic of affective investigation. Instead, this article suggests that a nonreductive psychosocial understanding of both discourse and affect needs a way of dissolving the dualism which inhabits and motivates much current debate around discursive and affective “fields.” This article illustrates a route towards dismantling the apparent segregation of discourse and affect in the call to an affective turn. The data come from a project exploring women’s talk of success and failure. Analysis here focuses on affective-discursive practices in discussion of “failed attempts to control body weight” set within the context of contemporary western neoliberal ideology. Discourse and affect are both approached as semiotic, relational practice. As such, affect is made accessible to analysis via concepts already familiar in studies of discursive practice in social psychology, including the reproduction and negotiation of ideologies and the management of trouble. This analytic focus on practical deployments in interaction enables epistemological and ontological psychosocial arguments to be grounded in practical discursive-affective accomplishments.     

篇章阅读中先行信息通达的若干影响因素

采用实时窗口阅读技术,探讨在篇章阅读理解中,当读者在建构先行信息已能考虑其合适与不合适这一条件下,先行信息与当前信息的关系及距离如何影响对先行信息的通达。实验一采用以句子为单位的自控阅读,通过再认探测技术,结果发现,被试在加工含回指词的目标句时,回指词的不合适先行词也会得以通达。实验二以词汇为单位呈现阅读材料,通过命名探测技术,结果发现,与当前回指词关系合适的先行词会得到更快的通达,而先行词与当前回指词距离的远近不会影响先行词的激活水平。     

医患会话不同研究方法进展

医患会话研究是研究医患矛盾和医患关系的关键,从社会学和语言学的视角,对国内外的医患会话研究进行了梳理。社会学和语言学视角对会话的分析有很大的差异。社会学家是研究如何进行会话,认为会话能透视社会生活,而语言学家则研究语言如何建构以产生会话,认为作为社会生活资源的会话可以帮助发现语言的本质。医患会话研究还应该拓展到认知神经科学、心理学和医学领域。只有更好地开展医患会话的研究才能指导医生的会话策略,提高医患沟通能力,改善医患关系。     

Redefining the Meaning of Negative History in Times of Sociopolitical Change: A Social Creativity Approach

This article explores the role negative history plays in political discourse on crisis management and how times of sociopolitical change in turn influence the strategies that can be employed to write a positive historical charter. Choosing Germany as a case study, we analyzed how political leaders negotiate Germany's narrative and political role during the European “refugee crisis” in speeches (n = 332) held between 2015 and 2018. Applying a combination of corpus-based and qualitative narrative analysis, we found that the context of a crisis is used to attach new meaning to Germany's role in World War II. By focusing on the lessons learned from history and pointing out the parallels between the current crisis and sociopolitical developments that took place 80 years ago, Germany is presented as the ideal advocate for a free and united Europe, a narrative that legitimizes its advancingly dominant role within the EU and beyond. The analysis demonstrates how times of change can facilitate social creativity strategies for nations whose past is dominated by negative history, with implications for the theory of identity management.     

Shooting Genes,Distributing Credit: Narrating the Development of the Biolistic Gene Gun

Using oral histories with scientists, technology transfer managers and other collaborators who were involved with the development of the biolistic gene gun, I investigate how actors narrate their experiences of technology transfer. The individuals who worked on the gene gun draw on two different interpretive repertoires for describing the innovation process: a ‘localized’ repertoire that highlights defined moments and the conceptual contributions of a few individuals; and a ‘distributed’ repertoire that emphasizes longer time frames, the process of technical implementation and the importance of a network of collaborators. Each of these repertoires identifies a different assemblage of actors as deserving of credit and reward for the development of the gene gun. Examining how scientists employ these modes of describing the innovation process offers a way of thinking about how university inventors negotiate tensions around novel features of academic capitalism, such as personal profit arising from the commercialization of university technologies.     

Collaboration Talk: The Folk Theories of Nano Research

The nano initiative in the US and elsewhere encourages and promotes various forms of multi-stakeholder activities, such as industrial collaborations. Forming part of the discourse of expectations around emerging technologies, collaboration is an important resource holding together different practices of knowledge production. In the conversations between policy and science, collaboration becomes a measurable entity and a measure in itself, figuring in the evaluations of the performance of individual faculty and research centres; however, the policy metaphor of ‘collaboration’ stands for a variety of different forms and shapes of interactions between university and industry. From a discourse analysis perspective, ‘folk theories’ of nano collaboration help to explore the dynamics of the university/industry boundary in the scientific organisational discourse as in a recent series of interactions with scientists, university officials and technology transfer officers in a number of US universities. What does the introduction of the new entity (nano) mean for scientists, and for university practices of technology transfer and commercialisation, in terms of trying to accommodate individual ‘nano’ cases into university regulations and procedures? How are these practices and experiences discussed in terms of collaboration? Assessments of value of collaboration ranged between polarised views, raising questions about occasions, audiences and communities of assessors invoked in the construction of acceptable accounts of nano collaboration. Metaphors and analogies were used to mobilise specific meanings in the discourses of the innovative potential of emerging fields. As such, assessments of the potential of terms pertinent to the emerging discourses, such as collaboration, would be better based on the assumption of shared meanings, not fixed and given, but actively achieved.     

A Substantivist Construal of Discourse Ethics

Abstract

This paper presents a substantivist construal of discourse ethics, which claims that we should see our engagement in public deliberation as expressing and elaborating a substantive commitment to basic moral ideas of solidarity, equality, and freedom. This view is different from Habermas’s standard formalist defence of discourse ethics, which attempts to derive the principle of discursive moral justification from primarily non‐moral presuppositions of rational argumentation as such. After explicating the difference between the substantivist and the formalist construal, I defend the former by showing that it is not only intuitively compelling, but also particularly well equipped for addressing four important objections recently levelled against discourse ethics and its political applications (Rawls’s concern that it lacks substantive guidelines, Gunnarsson’s challenge that it has not been proven to be superior to alternative moral conceptions such as utilitarianism, Scanlon’s complaint that it lacks an account of moral motivation, and Galston’s and Young’s worries that it could lead to political practices of cultural imposition). I conclude by pointing out some consequences of the previous discussion for the future of Critical Theory.     

Role of Researchers in the Ethical Conduct of Research: A Discourse Analysis From Different Stakeholder Perspectives

The ethical conduct of research rests largely on researchers, and as such, an understanding of how they perceive and enact their role in research is paramount. However, the literature around ethics and research mostly focuses on researchers’ perception of Research Ethics Boards (REB; also known as Institutional Review Boards) roles and functions. To fill that gap, we analyzed the perceptions of researchers, REB members, and influential parties (n = 40) about researchers’ role in the ethical conduct of research through discourse analysis. Three discourses emerged: researchers as reflective practitioners, protectors of participants, and technicians. Understanding the commonalities and differences among the discourses may foster a shared and compelling institutional research culture.