The construction of social work in Brazil: a study of scientific texts

This article is a review of 50 selected peer-reviewed articles from 2004 to 2013. The texts are analysed with reference to Malcolm Payne’s model of the three-way discourse of social work, and the findings are discussed in relation to Brazil’s social and political background. The review of the articles reveals a general perspective on social work in Brazil as a profession aiming at social change through collective transformation, and a normative identity of social work as a profession with political implications. The texts written in Portuguese for a Brazilian audience are more inclined to promote explicit political perspectives on social work than the English texts. Ideological concepts such as democracy and universal rights expressed in the articles are challenged by competing views in Brazilian society. This is especially the case in discussions about the role of the third sector in Brazil. Social work as a concept cannot be taken for granted. The experience of extreme inequalities that Brazil shares with several other Latin American countries makes it necessary to consider historical and social characteristics in order to understand the analytical perspectives that national and international academics employ when studying social work in Brazil.     

Girls’ “New Femininity” Refusals and “Good Girl” Recuperations in Soap Talk

The “new femininities” produced in postfeminist media confront girls with complex and challenging subjectivities that reach into the spaces where girls engage in their own productions of self. Feminist scholarship has interrogated and critiqued the “girl” produced in postfeminist popular culture texts, highlighting her internal contradictions and often problematic re/production within the heterosexual matrix. Yet, despite an intensified focus on girls featured in popular culture, the ways that girls themselves make sense of the “girl” in contemporary femininity texts has been relatively neglected. Viewing girls' sense-making of femininity in popular culture texts as crucial in the process of their subjectivity or self-production, in this paper we examine pre-teen girls' negotiations of femininity through their talk about Scarlett, a main teen girl character in a New Zealand soap drama. Our analyses and discussion focus on girls' management of the contradictory and regulatory productions of femininity in the text, in particular the often classed conditions under which girls recuperate the “good girl” discourse to refuse the regulatory femininities inside the heterosexual matrix. We suggest that an absence of empowering discourses outside of postfeminism's sexual empowerment limits girls' resources for critiquing and challenging regulatory femininities, “new” and “traditional.”     

Mother Tongues

SUMMARY

As women make their first journeys into motherhood, their relationships and discussions with other women, especially other mothers, can be of vital importance. I argue that as women journey into motherhood, they also journey into what might be called a culture of motherhood-a discursive and symbolic realm shared by all mothers. Through interactions among mothers, information, resources, and advice are shared; hierarchies of authority within the community of mothers are established; and women are given opportunities to discursively explore and construct their maternal identities, for example, through the sharing of birth stories. These symbolic, ritualistic, and communicative dimensions of the journey into motherhood can differ between lesbian-identified and heterosexual-identified women. Lesbian mothers can be suspect or marginalized and, at times, feel the need to be circumspect in their interactions. On the other hand, coupled lesbians make the journey into motherhood, into maternal identity, and into the community of mothers, together as a couple. This is not the same for heterosexual women whose most intimate female companions on the journey tend to be friends, sisters, and mothers. Based on research with 53 Canadian mothers, I compare the journeys into motherhood of lesbian and heterosexual women.     

China Daily文化报道话语模式的认知分析及其对外语学习的启示

十八大以来，提升国家传播能力、建构国家文化形象已上升至国家战略高度。新闻媒体作为中国文化传播的“窗口”和“中国故事”的“诉说者”，在文化传播中发挥着至关重要的作用。语言是文化的载体，China Daily文化报道的话语模式的研究为外语学习提供了启示。基于China Daily文化报道的话语模式所提出的“文化—概念—语言”三维习得互动指出了语言习得、概念习得和文化习得的缠绕关系，旨在提升外语学习者的跨文化交际能力和文化传播能力，从而更好地传播中国文化，塑造良好的中国文化形象。     

Women,Poverty, and the Microenterprise: Context and Discourse

The article discusses the claims of success of microenterprise development programmes (MDPs) in poverty reduction and gender equality. It also deals with the broader theoretical and methodological issues related to the ways in which context and discourse interact in the assessment of anti‐poverty and gender equity strategies. MDPs are considered among the most viable strategies for helping women overcome poverty and promoting gender equity. However, there has been significant debate over these claims. The relationship between business ownership, poverty reduction and gender empowerment is still to be proved. The article presents the voices of women engaged in a microenterprise (ME) from a context‐informed and discourse analysis perspective, and considers the women's insights about ME as an anti‐poverty and gender empowerment strategy. The findings show a complex picture. On one hand, the new occupational status promises a tangible alternative to multiple personal, social and gender constraints. Additionally, women in the study perceived the ME as a space for self‐definition and as an outlet for expressing their oppressed identities. On the other hand, the findings seriously challenge the capacity of the MDP strategy to promote gender equity and combat poverty among low‐income women. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

从关联理论角度探讨话语标记语oh的语用功能

关联理论为探讨语言形式与话语理解之间的关系提供了理论框架。在该理论的基础上,从认知—语用的角度分析总结了话语标记语oh在言语交际中的六个语用功能:信息修正标记、话语延缓标记、话轮转换标记、信息追加标记、认可旧信息标记和获得新信息标记,进一步揭示了言语交际的动态性,以期帮助人们更好地生成理解话语。     

Equivocating on reconciliation

This critical discourse analysis of welfare workers' responses to reconciliation demonstrates the ways in which language operates to maintain Indigenous people's disenfranchisement and oppression within the Australian polity. It cautions against welfare personnel assuming more liberation within their ranks than found within general society.     

Who speaks and how? Studies of voicing in the China Daily following a decade of change

This study used critical discourse analysis (CDA) to identify and unpick some of the ideas, beliefs, and attitudes encoded in newspaper texts without being explicitly stated. It uses a quantitative-qualitative approach to content analysis to compare articles published in the Chinese government-owned, English-language newspaper the China Daily in 1998 (n = 50) and 2010 (n = 50). The analysis focused on two things: the people considered by China Daily journalists to be important/interesting enough to be quoted and (through an analysis of Halliday's verbal processes) how these people's words are presented. The aim was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach advocated and to see whether such an approach can help answer how much the media in China has changed in response to changing times.