‘A person with some sort of learning disability’: the aetiological narrative and public construction of Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle’s audition for the television talent competition Britain’s Got Talent attracted global attention and widespread media discourse. In this article, I would like to examine this discourse to consider how Boyle’s success troubles conventional constructions of both learning disability and celebrity.

I extend Ciara Evans’s recognition that learning disability is invisible to reflect on the media responses to Boyle’s impairment. This reflection notes that even within Boyle’s own discourse, she is loosely positioned as having ‘some sort of learning disability’.

Detailed attention is given to the aetiological account of the ‘brain damage’ Boyle ‘suffered’ at birth. The analysis will consider the correlation with scientific discourse, trauma theory and the imposed biography to suggest that the construction of Boyle as both contained and unpredictable is already implicit in the aetiological narrative.     

日语教育中句群的实义切分与信息结构

信息结构是句子实际意义的切分，它与句群有着天然联系。本文通过对日语句群的信息结构的分析，指出了日语句子的实义切分标准是信息相对于听话人是已知或未知、信息在说话人语流中出现或未出现过、信息在目前是激活状态还是未激活状态、信息的预设或断言的实际情况等四项，同时讨论了句子的实义切分在日语句群教育中的应用。     

意识形态之争探赜

伴随着阶级和国家的产生,关于意识形态的争论从来没有停止过。意识形态之争的表象是话语权、信奉者和影响力、感召力的争夺;意识形态之争的根基源于意识形态的科学性、传播方式和经济基础;意识形态之争的实质归于阶级和国家利益的维护。当前,认清意识形态争论的表象、阐明意识形态争论的根基、揭示意识形态争论的本质对于我国主流意识形态的建设具有重要意义。     

Defending White Scientific Masculinity

While many feminist and postcolonial scholars have analyzed the post-9/11 politic in the United States, few have focused on the anthrax “attacks” that followed the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center disaster. The FBI search for the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax mailings was an important node in US national security discourse making – it culminated in the fingering of a white male government biodefense scientist and cast doubt on the role of scientific expertise in provisioning national security. This article argues that while “white scientific masculinity” was put into question, it was simultaneously shored up as a nationalist symbol of protection against bioterrorism. This article traces shifts across the three FBI-led profiles of the anthrax perpetrator, along with concomitant news media coverage: the white male “loner” nonscientist, the white male “loner” amateur scientist and finally the white male biodefense scientist. Using a cultural studies approach, this article details how at each successive investigatory stage profilers mobilized hegemonic discourses to re-instantiate the authoritative status of white scientific masculinity in US national security. This analysis offers an important dimension to feminist and postcolonial critiques of the symbolic and institutional investment in white masculinity during the War on Terror.     

Making Sense of Neoliberal Subjectivity: A Discourse Analysis of Media Language on Self-development

The influence of neoliberalism on culture and subjectivity is well documented. This paper contributes to understanding of how neoliberal ideology enters into the production of subjectivity. While subject formation takes place in multiple and contradictory ways and across multiple social sites, we focus on the increasingly popular media discourse of self-development, and examine it as a technology of neoliberal subjectification. Drawing on Foucauldian understandings, we analyze data from two different newspapers from two different national contexts, both of which are heavily influenced by neoliberalism. Based on our analysis, we detail four interrelated discourses—rationality, autonomy and responsibility, entrepreneurship, and positivity and self-confidence—demonstrating how these discourses constitute the neoliberal subject in ways consonant with neoliberal governmentality. There is no observable resistance to subject positions offered within these discourses. Self-development discourse instills stronger individualism in society, while constraining collective identity, and thus provides social control and contributes to preserving status quo of neoliberal societies.     

后现代话语中的行政公共性

后现代公共行政以反叛和解构为其旨趣,直接地指向现代公共行政本身。行政公共性作为现代公共行政的本质属性,首当其冲地受到后现代的反叛和解构。但后现代行政公共性并非一种虚无的事实,而是与现代行政公共性完全不同的一种事实;它包含于碎片、差异、多元之间,在制度层面表现为公共治理。公共治理在其中展开的环境与语境,构成后现代行政公共性发生的场域,它是一种公开、实在、共同的场域,可以称之为＂阳光之幕＂。后现代公共行政是该场域中的游戏,它需要共同制定游戏规则,又需要政府提供服务,从而后现代行政公共性得以实现出来。     

The Peasant World in the Discourse of Generational Sorrow

This article spells out the methodological considerations and various procedural and methodological subtleties developed over the author's quarter century of sociological field studies of Russia's peasant worlds. Particular attention is paid to “voices from below”—peasant discursive formats that capture, in natural and undiluted form, the evolution of peasant practices constituting the core of everyday life. In particular, the phenomenon of generational sorrow and a special chronological nostalgia that functions as a “social gyroscope” is identified and discursively captured. This phenomenon is noteworthy and useful for its ability to retain a record of the productively longed for past in a rural community's collective memory and thereby influence new peasant worlds taking shape today.     

情境植入视角下第三人称指称形式的所指定位

由于第三人称不是言语交际的直接参与者,其指称形式的所指定位存在诸多复杂的情况。基于Langacker的情境植入理论,分析探讨英汉日常语言中第三人称指称形式所指定位的认知规律。研究发现,英汉日常语言中第三人称指称形式的所指会在形态、语义及范畴层次等方面发生变化,其具体定位需通过话语参与者共建话语框架并进行认知加工才能得以完成。     

Almost the same stories: narrative patterns in EU treaty referendums

ABSTRACT

The article analyses narratives that favoured or opposed European integration in three referendum debates held during the constitutional process of the 2000s: in France and the Netherlands in 2005 (Constitutional Treaty) as well as the first vote in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. In all debates examined, speakers used similar narratives of European integration. While most narrative patterns have transnational character, however, they are also remarkably country-specific. They depend on the specific cultural context and the social positions of the speakers articulating them.