On ‘flip‐flopping’: Branded stance‐taking in U.S. electoral politics1

This article examines stance in U.S. political discourse, taking as its empirical point of departure Democratic candidate John Kerry's epistemic stance‐taking in the televised 2004 presidential debates. Kerry's stance‐taking is shown to help display the characterological attribute of ‘conviction’ and serve as a rejoinder to critics who had branded him as a ‘flip‐flopper.’ His stance‐taking is thus not primarily ‘to’ or ‘for’ copresent interactants, but is largely interdiscursive in character. ‘Conviction’ and its opposite, ‘flip‐flopping,’ suggest further how stance‐taking itself has been an object of typification in the agonistic dynamics of candidate branding and counter‐branding. In moving from epistemic stance‐taking in discourse to models of the stance‐taker as a social type, this article addresses questions about the units and levels of analysis needed to study stance in contemporary political discourse.     

The Effects of the Tomatis Method on the Artistic Voice

In the theory of the French Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor Alfred Tomatis, the voice emits the frequencies the ear can perceive. The auditory stimulation, through the treatment elaborated by Tomatis, can determine the stabilization or the improvement of some vocal parameters, as well as the effect on the formants of voice. A group of N = 19 subjects, singers and actors, were assessed by complete clinical ENT evaluations including fibrolaryngoscopy, otoscopy, and clinical audiometry. The voice analysis was carried out with the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) and with the Praat software. The results demonstrate that after the treatment entails an increase in the mean of energy density on the third formant of voice (F3). An improvement in the ability to maintain a constant intensity of the vocal emission resulted from MDVP analysis with a reduction on the standard deviation of the voice amplitude. The improvement in the auditory perception, particularly for 3 kHz, determines a better intelligibility and articulation of the words. The better auditory perception in the zone of 3 kHz reduces the phenomenon of nasalization and gives expressive power to the artistic voice. The decrease of Peak-Amplitude Variation (vAm) lead to a stable voice emission with a better control.     

叙利亚危机的媒体话语与话语政治分析

叙利亚危机持续三年多,受到了全球媒体的关注。本文以叙利亚、美国、俄罗斯和中国四个国家主要媒体2013年8月至11月对叙利亚危机的报道为语料,从话语分析和话语政治视角探讨话语选择背后的权力和意识形态动因,考察不同意识形态的国家媒体如何从各自立场和利益出发,对同一社会现实进行不同的话语建构,从而揭示出同一事件蕴藏的媒体话语之间的博弈与意识形态之间的竞争。本研究是基于五层次话语政治分析框架的案例分析和实证研究,可以为中国政府的中东战略和对外话语体系建构提供参考。     

Listening for policy change: how the voices of disabled people shaped Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme

Voice has become an important yet ambivalent tool for the recognition of disability. The transformative potential of voice is dependent on a political commitment to listening to disabled people. To focus on listening redirects accountability for social change from disabled people to the ableist norms, institutions and practices that structure which voices can be heard in policy debates. In this paper, I use disability theory on voice and political theory on listening to examine policy documents for the National Disability Insurance Scheme in light of claims made by the disability movement. Although my study finds some evidence of openness in the policy development stage, the scheme falls short of valuing the diverse voices of disabled people as partners in shared dialogue.     

Patterns of age‐based linguistic variation in American English1

In prior sociolinguistic research, speaker age has been considered the principal correlate of language change, but it ‘has not yet been explicitly studied as a sociolinguistic variable’ ( Eckert 1997 : 167). Consequently, little is known about how language varies across the life span. The present study employs key word analysis on a large corpus of casual conversation in American English to explore age‐based linguistic variation in spontaneous conversation. Analyses of the key words point to two major patterns of age‐based lexico‐grammatical variation: use of slang, and use of stance and involvement markers. Younger speakers' talk is characterized by an unusually frequent use of slang and swear words, and by a marked use of features indexing speaker's stance and emotional involvement, including intensifiers, stance adverbs, discourse markers, personal pronouns, and attitudinal adjectives; older speakers favor modals. These patterns are suggestive of functional differences in the discourse of youth and adults. It is argued that the expression of personal stance is more explicit and plays a key role in younger speakers' discourse.     

They tell us “we don’t belong in the world and we shouldn’t take up a place”: HIV discourse within two-spirit communities

Objectives: We investigated how HIV discourse is negotiated and given meaning in the lives of young, male two-spirit leaders, when considering their communities’ and their own health and wellness. These men are also unique in that they have always lived under the specter and dominant discourse of HIV; that is, they are part of a second generation since the time of HIV/AIDS. Methods: We conducted a discourse analysis of six qualitative interviews from the HONOR Project, a multi-site, mixed-methods study of the two-spirit community across the United States, foregrounding the relationships among trauma, coping, and health. Results: HIV functions discursively in four ways: as a shadow presence, professionalized identity, health sub-/priority, and vehicle for belonging and (re)claiming. Conclusions: This study is important to social work as well as HIV prevention and care as it affords voice to two-spirit men, a highly marginalized community and one often silenced in scientific discourse. And, it centralizes language and context, complicating social epidemiological characterizations of HIV/AIDS, risk, and historically traumatized populations.     

Regranting identity to the outgraced – narratives of persons with learning disabilities: methodological considerations

Good research should be relevant and useful, it may even be enlightening or symbolic, but it can also be emancipatory. Qualitative research can be useful in challenging structures, policies and practices that disempower and marginalize segments of the population. However, could it be that the empowerment of the participant ends where the weakness of the researcher begins? In qualitative studies the researcher seems to have a number of favourite interviews. In a study on the relational and sexual experiences of 46 people with learning disabilities, 12 interviews were withdrawn from the general data on the basis of lack of relevance. It is important to re‐examine why the voice of some people fell out of the in‐depth analysis and whether this was justified. In this article some methodological opportunities and pitfalls to re‐grant identity to these silenced narratives are considered and discussed.     

Self‐presentation in sociolinguistic interviews: Identities and language variation in Panambi, Brazil

This paper contributes to recent work examining the role of identity, and in particular the uses of language for self‐presentation and the expression of individual identity, through the analysis of two sociolinguistic interviews from a community of German origin in southern Brazil. Drawing from a quantitative study of variation in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, we conducted a detailed analysis of the interviews of two women of different ages and social backgrounds. We first describe the social, cultural and historical context of the interviews, and then discuss how our two speakers use their linguistic resources to express varied, and at times conflicting, aspects of their identities. More specifically, we show how our participants seem to maintain certain in‐group, German‐linked features, yet also use out‐group or Brazilian features in order to index both the (local) German and (regional) Brazilian aspects of their identities. Our data and analysis highlight how participants' identity and language use patterns can be better understood through close analysis of the content of their discourse.     

Speaking up and stepping back: Examining the link between employee voice and job neglect

How does an employee attempts (or lack thereof) to improve or change work related circumstances influence one's ability to do one's job? This longitudinal study sought to examine this question by testing the relationship between employee voice and two distinct forms of job neglect (active and passive neglect) among child welfare workers at baseline (time 1: n = 359) and six month follow-up (time 2: n = 187). Path analysis results revealed significant yet unexpected relationships between employee voice and the forms of job neglect. At time one, results showed that as employees voiced, they engaged in active neglect; yet this relationship shifted over time. In that, employees who exercised voice at time 1 were less likely to engage in active job neglect at time 2. With respect to passive neglect and voice, employees who indirectly limited their work effort at baseline were more likely to speak up at time 2. This study examines this unique finding and the role that both employee voice and job neglect play as workers attempt to manage dissatisfying work conditions or promote positive organizational change.     

Achieving pay equity: Strategic mobilization for substantive equality in Aotearoa New Zealand

In an unprecedented move the New Zealand Government in 2017 announced a $2 billion pay equity settlement for 55,000 healthcare workers in aged and disability residential care and home and community support services. The settlement reversed the Government's previous austerity stance that pay equity for carers was too expensive, and that pay parity in the sector was out of the question. The political concession followed five years of intensive equal pay feminist activism. While pay equity settlements overseas have generally used either legal opportunity structures or government intervention, this article argues it was the combination of complementary and intersecting elements of mobilization that led to the negotiated settlement. These elements include a statutory human rights inquiry; legal opportunity; civil society coalition building; increased women's voice; and a government‐led negotiated settlement. The novel theoretical contribution of this article is its empirical support for the concept of substantive equality.     

Demonizing the Sensible and the ‘Revolution of Our Generation’ in Rosia Montana

Abstract

‘Save Rosia Montana’ is an emblematic socio-ecological movement in post-communist Romania. It started in 2000 as a local reaction against what was projected to be the largest open-cast gold mine in Europe; it has gradually grown into a national movement with global networking. Activists have been consistently accused of acting under the impulse of an emotional luggage which could function as an impediment to understanding the ‘real’ issue, that of Romania's development. While the corporation claims to present the ‘real’ story articulated in the supposedly objective discourse of rational science, the choice to take a stance out of other beliefs has been demonized as emotional. This article will make a critical discourse analysis of corporate texts and Rosieni's testimonies to highlight what appears as ‘legitimate’ versus ‘illegitimate’ discourse, how some phrases are presented as self-evident rationales while others are dismissed as inappropriate or ‘emotional’. Rosieni have created visibilities for new things, objects, languages, and projections that have been downplayed by the post-communist political context. The conflict is not just over cognitive aspects or valuation languages but also over how one is allowed to feel, what one is allowed to enjoy (doing), how is one supposed to live (spend time), what Ranciere calls the ‘distribution of the sensible’.     

How not to become a museum piece

In this essay I want to address two question marks which arose during my reading of Michael Burawoy's inspiring piece. First, sharing his spirit of recreating the sociological enlightenment by differentiating between different types of public sociologies, I do not share his optimism that sociology can easily become an integral part of public discourse and practice. Second, I don't think that mainstream sociology is really prepared for this adventure. My argument points in the opposite direction: all the different forms of public and non-public sociology are in danger of becoming museum pieces. Thus, sociology not only needs a public voice, it also needs to be reinvented first--in order to have a public voice at all!     

数学类文章英文摘要的语言特点分析

使用参数估计法、方差分析和假设检验法,分析国内外各10种著名的数学类期刊的时态、语态和人称,结果发现国外期刊更多使用主动语态和第一人称,而国内期刊则更多使用被动语态和第三人称;在时态方面,国外期刊更多使用一般现在时。     

Articulations of Same-sex Desire: Lesbian and Gay Male Dating Advertisements

A survey of self and other categorisation in 200 lesbian and gay male dating advertisement texts, taken from current magazines and newspapers, reveals the discursive means by which homosexual advertisers in our corpus commodify and market sexual/self-gendered identities. Detailed analysis of a sub-sample of the advertisements allows us to trace the discourse processes and conventions used in formulating identity in such texts. We interpret these discourse practices in relation to a social critique of gay attitudes, beliefs and lifestyles. The different conventions for self-commodification followed by lesbians and gay men in this survey suggest generalisable differences in sexual stance and cultural identification     

Emotion,reflexivity and social change in the era of extreme fossil fuels

Reflexivity is an important sociological lens through which to examine the means by which people engage in actions that contribute to social reproduction or social elaboration. Reflexivity theorists have largely overlooked the central place of emotions in reflexive processing, however, thus missing opportunities to enhance our understanding of reflexivity by capitalizing on recent scholarship on emotions emanating from other fields of inquiry. This paper explores the role of emotion in reflexivity, with a qualitative analysis of social responses to hydraulic fracturing in Alberta, Canada, utilizing narrative analysis of long‐form interviews with rural landowners who have experienced direct impacts from hydraulic fracturing, and have attempted to voice their concerns in the public sphere. Based on interviews with a selection of two interview participants, the paper highlights the means by which emotions shape reflexivity in consequential ways, beginning with personal and highly individualized emotional responses to contingent situations, which then factor into the social interactions engaged in the pursuit of personal projects. The shared emotional context that emerges then plays a substantial role in shaping outcomes and their implications for social stasis or change. This study exemplifies the extent to which reflexive processing in response to breaches in the social order can be emotionally tumultuous affairs, constituting a significant personal toll that many may be unwilling to pay.     

Resistance to dominant narratives and the construction of identity legitimacy: counterstories of Chinese migrant workers with pneumoconiosis

This study is focused on the pneumoconiosis workers’ illness narratives in Bashan Town in Chongqing. In-depth interviews were used to gather their illness narratives, and a “counterstory” framework was adopted for the critical analysis of the resistance of these texts to the dominant discourse. The results showed that these pneumoconiosis counterstories to be legitimacy narratives that sought four types of legitimacy: medical, suffering, moral, and public. Three opposing identity relations were explored in these narratives: qualified vs unrecognized pneumoconiosis patients, bearers of great suffering vs complainers without cause and neglected within the pneumoconiosis group vs Invisible pneumoconiosis. These identity relations strengthened the pneumoconiosis workers’ confrontation with the illegitimacy of the main social narrative, and they were used in the attempt to construct a legitimized self-identity. The study also identified three narrative strategies used to resist the oppressive dominant narrative, they are revelation, refusal and contestation. Finally, the author proposed that these counterstories consisted a weapon for the weak to voice their legitimacy concerns and offered recommendations for the prevention and treatment of pneumoconiosis.     

How the Right Usurped the Queer Agenda: Frame Co‐optation in Political Discourse

This article draws on a case study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and queer politics in Vermont to explain the conditions under which radical discourse gains and loses a public voice. In contrast to claims that the marginalization of queer discourse is due to silencing by LGBT rights activists or to litigation strategies, we argue that variation in queer discourse over time is the result of the co‐optation of queer discourse and goals by opponents. Extending the social movement literature on frame variation, we argue that opponents co‐opt discourse when they adopt aspects of the content of a movement's discourse, while subverting its intent. We show that conservative LGBT rights opponents co‐opted queer discourse. As a result, queer positions lost their viability as the discursive field in which those arguments were made was fundamentally altered. Because queer positions became less tenable, we see the withdrawal of queer discourse from the mainstream and alternative LGBT media. Our work both supports and builds on research on frame variation by demonstrating how discourse can change over time in response to the interplay between changing aspects of the political and cultural landscape and the discourse of opponents.     

Effective Public Relations Leadership in Organizational Change: A Study of Multinationals in Mainland China

This study explored the role of public relations leadership during organizational change in 3 multinationals in mainland China. Based on 40 in-depth interviews, the findings suggested that the leadership of public relations unit or function during organizational change was shown through coaching middle management to manage employee emotions, providing communication training to middle management, communicating and reinforcing shared visions for change, and managing the conflicts between middle management and top management regarding change rationales, planning, and procedures. The leadership role of public relations managers was enacted through consulting CEOs' communication styles, exerting upward influence in change management, and acting as the different voice when decision making for change was questionable. Results of the study extended existing public relations leadership scholarship and shed light on some tentative dimensions of public relations leadership during organizational change: (a) coaching emotion management, (b) educating communication knowledge and skills, (c) reinforcing shared visions, (d) resolving conflicts, (e) exerting upward influence, and (f) acting as a different voice. Limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

Increasing spiritual diversity in social work discourse: a scientific avenue toward more effective mental health service provision

The costs associated with mental disorders are substantial, yet treatment efficacy is still in its infancy. Drawing from key concepts in the philosophy of science literature, this paper argues that increasing spiritual diversity in social work discourse represents one important avenue to increase the effectiveness of mental health service provision. Toward that end, the role that cognitive diversity plays in scientific advancement is discussed. Demographic data is related suggesting most social workers hold secular values and, consequently, secular perspectives enjoy a privileged status in professional discourse. The effects of the lack of spiritual diversity are delineated on disciplinary discourse, interventions, and service provision. Islam is used as an example to illustrate how effectiveness can potentially be augmented by incorporating the voice of Muslims and other people of faith into disciplinary discourse.