Inconsistency as an interactional problem: a lesson from political rhetoric

The classical theory of cognitive dissonance suggests that when two related cognitions are mutually inconsistent, one of them will change to restore consistency. However, Billig suggests that inconsistency is primarily an interactional problem between subjects and not a cognitive problem within a subject. In the current paper, we adopt Billig's rhetorical approach to inconsistency and study inconsistency as an interactional problem in the context of political rhetoric. More specifically, we use Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis to identify the discursive strategies the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, used to cope with the inconsistency between his national ideology and his contradictory behavior during his short term in office.     

Policy Recommendations for Carrier Testing and Predictive Testing in Childhood: A Distinction That Makes a Real Difference

The genetic testing of children raises many ethical concerns. This paper examines how five position statements from Canada, UK and USA, which present guidelines for good practice in this area produce different recommendations for carrier testing and predictive testing. We find that the genetic information generated through carrier testing is routinely presented as less serious than that generated from predictive testing. Additionally, the reproductive implications of predictive testing are also routinely erased. Consequently, the papers argue strongly against predictive testing but advise caution against carrier testing in somewhat weaker terms. We argue that these differences rest on assumptions about the status of reproduction in people’s lives and on an ethical stance that foregrounds the self over others. We propose that questioning the crude and sharp distinction between carrier and predictive testing in principle may enable practitioners and parents/families to make more nuanced decisions in practice. Parts of this work have been presented in the 1st International CESAGen Conference, London, 2004, and Genetics and Society Meetings, Wales.     

"If you and I,if we,in this later day,lose that sacred fire . . .": perspective in political interviews

It is argued in the following that the dialogical complexity of speaker perspective requires a broad empirical analysis. To date, such analyses, particularly of political discourse, have been couched in terms of narrower concepts, such as self-presentation and political positioning or involvement/distancing, and have been typically carried out by means of qualitative methods applied to pronominal usage. The present research applies complementarily both quantitative and qualitative analyses to BBC television interviews of Shimon Peres (January 29, 2001) and of Edward Said (October 18, 2000) by Tim Sebastian in a program entitled HARDtalk. In addition to pronouns, these analyses include a number of other hypothetical indicators of a broad concept of perspective on the part of both interviewer and interviewees: turn-initial words, hesitations, questions, use of yes and no, personal reference utterances (e.g., I think), interjections, number of syllables spoken, and interruptions and overlaps. Quantitative comparisons of interviewer with interviewee revealed important differences on all these measures. Qualitative analyses also confirmed subtle local dynamics of perspective. Accordingly, the findings are interpreted within a general theoretical concept of perspective, derived from Bakhtin's (1981) dialogicity.     

Eurabia Comes to Norway

Andres Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 22/7/11 terrorist attacks in Norway, was profoundly inspired by what has become known as the Eurabia genre. Behring Breivik's 1516-page cut-and-paste tract, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, makes extensive reference to Eurabia authors, and most prominently to the blog essays of the Norwegian extreme right-wing blogger “Fjordman,” also known as Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen. A popular transnational genre found in both film and literature, the Eurabia genre is central to understanding the worldviews of extreme right-wing “counter-jihadists.” It is a conspiratorial genre in which a central rhetorical trope is that Europe is on the verge of being taken over by Muslims. It alleges that European Muslims want to establish continent-wide Islamic domination in the form of an Islamic state or a caliphate, using higher fertility rates and immigration as their main means of achieving this. The Eurabia genre has, however, hitherto received limited academic attention. In this article, I use the insights of critical discourse analysis in order to analyse some central contributions to this profoundly Islamophobic genre and its popularization and political mainstreaming in Norway in the past decade.     

The Mutually Constitutive Relationship between Place and Identity: The Role of Place‐Identity in Discourse on Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Recent discursive research has shown that constructions of place may function to regulate social relations and reinforce particular notions of belonging. However, extant discursive research on place‐identity has so far neglected the mutually constitutive relationships between constructions of place and identity in legitimising people's presence. To address this gap, this study, undertaken in Scotland, applies the notion of place‐identity to the discursive analysis of interviews with asylum seekers and refugees, people who work in organisations that support asylum seekers and refugees and locals who live in areas where asylum seekers and refugees tend to be housed. The analysis suggests that constructions of asylum seekers’ and refugees’ countries of origin as dangerous, and the host society as relatively problem‐free, function to constitute their identities as legitimate and to justify their presence in the host society. Moreover, constructions of place may work to portray refugees and asylum seekers as benefiting the local community and as belonging more than certain other locals. In contrast, constructing the host society as ‘full’ functions to oppose their presence through portraying them as not being able to belong. This demonstrates the mutually constitutive roles of place and identity in legitimising or resisting people's movement and belonging. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tracking the Lacanian unconscious in language

This paper makes two contributions to the emerging field of Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA); one, by way of theoretical exposition and a second, oriented toward the challenges of empirical analysis. In the first section of the paper, I illustrate and develop upon the elusive Lacanian notion of the unconscious structured as a language. This discussion yields a series of important ideas: the assertion that a matrix of latent significations shadows any utterance; the distinction between statement/enunciation; and the concept of repression-in-language. These concepts provide a platform for the second section of the paper which draws on textual material collected by the Apartheid Archive Project in order to demonstrate a particular procedure of LDA. This procedure entails an attention to discontinuous narrative components and the role of symbolic juxtapositions. It points, furthermore, to the value of making novel combinations of given textual elements as a way of querying what may be repressed in the text. Two important conclusions are drawn from this discussion, each of which indicates a priority for Lacanian practice. Firstly, the idea that the ongoing work of symbolic juxtaposition may be more profitable than ‘depth’ interpretations in conducting analysis. Secondly, that facilitation of lateral significations and associated significations should take priority over the aim of extracting a single over-arching message.     

The power of ideas: esotericism,historicism, and the limits of discourse

This article is a response to the reviews by Giovanni Filoramo, Olav Hammer, Bernd-Christian Otto, Marco Pasi, and Michael Stausberg of Wouter J. Hanegraaff's book Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. The author attempts to clarify his view of the relation between history and theory, and between intellectual history and discourse theory in particular; he provides a summary of his motivations for writing the book and of its main argument; he concludes by addressing a number of theoretical issues raised by the respondents.     

Values in children's stories in South Africa: an exploratory discourse analysis

This study explored the presentation and construction of the values in story texts for children in South Africa. The data were from five children's stories from a widely-circulated weekly newspaper. The story content was analysed for value-laden themes child readers are exposed to. The themes to emerge from the study suggest the endorsement of values such as delighting in one's natural beauty, the importance of education, martyrdom, inclusivity, telling the truth, gratitude, appreciating one's own talent, truthfulness, respecting one's elders, community unity and forgiveness. Some of the stories touched on family structure, including the absent father as well as gender stereotypes, gender inequalities and social norms.     

网络空间医患话语权失衡现象的成因分析

选取了两个标志性医疗传媒事件“八毛门事件”和“徐文被砍事件”为研究样本,以传播学的视角,透视网络空间医患话语权失衡现状,并从医疗报道的话语特征、医患双方的身份特征、网络话语的传播特征等方面剖析了成因,对构建以尊重差异,沟通各种意见表达为目标的医患对话空间具有现实指导意义.     

‘It is safe to use if you are healthy’: A discursive analysis of men’s online accounts of ephedrine use

Ephedrine use in sport is a common practice among men. Less well understood is men’s use of ephedrine as a slimming aid. Arguably fuelled by the ‘war on obesity’ and the drive for muscularity, the Internet has become awash with claims presenting ephedrine as safe. The use of this psychoactive substance can have acute health implications such as tachycardia, arrhythmias and cardiovascular disease. Given the tension between health risk and ephedrine-induced weight loss, how men justify their use of ephedrine becomes an important question. In particular, we wished to analyse how male users talked to others about ephedrine in discussions linked to an online version of a popular men’s magazine. Because we were particularly interested in how men accounted for their ephedrine use, we used discourse analysis to examine their posts. In analysing the data, we noted that a ‘community of practice’ was constructed online categorising legitimate (and barred) users, emphasising the benefits of ephedrine and downplaying health-defeating side effects. Our analysis has clear implications for engaging men who use ephedrine in health promotion interventions.