“We don’t have to talk about how I feel”: emotionality as a tool of resistance in political discourse among Israeli students – a gendered socio-linguistic perspective

This article demonstrates how the gendered patriarchal mechanisms that exclude women from the political sphere are being produced, re-produced, and challenged in interpersonal political conversations by concentrating on the discursive mechanisms that construct the way young Israeli women and men talk about politics. The research is based on a yearlong intra-group dialog process. The group met for weekly sessions during two semesters, in which the group members discussed and expressed their thoughts and feelings regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) demonstrated how the political space is being marked, defined and delimited through gendered discursive practices. We present the different roles participants take in the group, and in particular the different strategies women use in face of disciplinary discursive mechanisms. The process revealed that the development in the group discussion was strongly intertwined with the change in the positioning strategies of the female participants. In particular, we found that women deployed emotionality as a tool of resistance that challenges gender binaries and masculine dominance. Our conclusion highlights the importance of the daily interactions in creating, sustaining and changing the political discourse of a society in conflict.     

Discursive Struggles Animating Individuals’ Talk About Their Parents’ Coming Out as Lesbian or Gay

The goal in the present study was to understand the discourses that animate children’s talk about having a parent come out and how these discourses interplay to create meaning. Data were gathered through 20 in-depth interviews with adults who remembered a parent coming out to them as lesbian or gay. One discursive struggle animated the participants’ talk about their parents’ coming out: the discourse of lesbian and gay identity as wrong vs. the discourse of lesbian and gay identity as acceptable. Analysis of participants’ talk about their familial identities revealed a range of avenues for resisting the negative discourses regarding lesbian and gay identities. The findings highlight discursive power in participants’ talk about their familial identities and how participants organize the conflicting messages they receive in their culture and in relationships regarding family identities.     

Kissing Macaca: Blogs,Narrative and Political Discourse

Blogs rest at the cross‐section of politics, media, and discourse. This relatively new medium has injected itself into the spectacle that is campaigns; competing narratives seek to define candidates, lure voters, and wage a war over the ownership of symbols and meaning‐making. Blogs influence the formation of narratives within the political spectacle of campaigns. This article seeks to describe local/regional blogs as social and discursive phenomena that participate in, and provide part of, the discourse of political spectacle. The article looks at this political subculture and attempts to express through an analysis of form, function, and meaning this new, palpable discursive force — a counter to the existing hegemony. The case studies utilized are the local/regional blogospheres that have developed in the states of Connecticut and Virginia. In Connecticut, we analyze the metonymic chains built in the Ned Lamont versus Joe Lieberman senatorial race and, in Virginia, Jim Webb against former lobbyist Harris Miller in the primary and Senator George Allen in the general election.     

Studying Circular Questioning “In Situ”: Discourse Analysis of A First Systemic Family Therapy Session

The present article focuses on the study of circular questioning “in situ,” that is, in the context of the discursive arena of an actual first systemic family therapy session. Two typical circular questions are selected, and discourse analysis heavily drawing from the discursive action model is deployed with the aim to highlight their function in the context of therapist and family members' problem talk. The analysis demonstrates the gradual building of two respective patterns, which both exhibit signs of shifts toward the instillment of a systemic epistemology in relation to problem talk: a shift from homogeneity to heterogeneity in family members' voices, which legitimizes the existence of different viewpoints within a system, and a shift from the construction of an accusation toward its deconstruction, which challenges the linear perception of causality underlying the accusation, thus introducing a more circular perspective. Implications are discussed in relation to contemporary, constructionist systemic family therapy practice, and reference is made to the methodological “promises” and challenges of the deployment of discourse analysis for the scrutiny of systemic family therapy therapeutic techniques and tools under a discursively informed light.     

Between reforms and birth rates: Germany, Japan, and family policy discourse

This paper examines the development of employment-oriented family policy in Germany and Japan, two countries united by conservative welfare legacies and very low birthrates, through a close analysis of discourse. Why have recent reforms in Germany moved well beyond those in Japan despite remarkably similar “human capital” discourses? The relative strength of interpretative patterns—in this case, discursive patterns that successfully frame family policy reform as an economic imperative—and the role of employers are identified as critical explanatory factors. Further comparative attention is called to the role of the state as a guarantor of new family policy entitlements.     

The new genetics: professionals' discursive boundaries

In this paper we examine new genetics professionals’ accounts of the social context of their work. We analyse accounts given in interview by an ‘elite’ group of scientists and clinicians. Drawing on the work of Gilbert and Mulkay (1984), we consider interviewees’ discourse about knowledge, exploring the way in which they separate science from society through the use of what we have called the ‘micro/macro split’. We then go on to consider the reasons for such a discursive boundary, exploring the interviewees’ wider discourse about expertise and responsibility for the social implications of the new genetics. We argue that interviewees’ discursive boundaries allow them to appeal variously to their objectivity, to dismiss bad science and to characterize the public as ignorant. However, these discursive boundaries are permeable and flexible, and are employed to support the new genetics professionals’ role in guiding education and government policy, whilst at the same time deflecting ultimate responsibility for the use of knowledge on to an abstract and amorphous society. Responsibility is flexibly embraced and abrogated. These flexible discursive boundaries thus promote rather than challenge the cognitive authority of new genetics professionals as they engage in debates about the social implications of their work. We end by challenging the replication of these discursive boundaries, noting some of the implications of such a critique for evaluation of the new genetics.     

Individual and Family Factors Related to Psychosocial Adjustment in Stepmother Families With Adolescents

This article presents additional data analyses from an earlier study on risk and resilience factors linked with adjustment in stepfamilies with adolescents. The primary objective addressed how individual and family-level factors impacted adjustment in a sample composed of 3 members (biological father, stepmother, and adolescent) from a subsample of 39 stepmother families. Multiple regression results showed that each stepmother family member's adjustment is affected by both shared and nonshared processes. Results also highlighted the role of triangulations and role ambiguity in the psychosocial adjustment of stepmother family members.     

Social Support Received by Children in Stepmother,Stepfather, and Intact Families

This study compared the (step)mother-(step)chiId relationship among college students using social support concepts in three family types: stepmother, stepfather, and intact. As predicted, when compared to the relationship between children and their bio- logical mothers in other family types, children in stepmother fami- lies perceived less relationship quality, less support and more con- flict with their stepmother. However, children in stepmother families did not perceive more overall family conflict or less family cohesion than children in the other family types. Similarly, children in the stepmother families were no less satisfied with the overall social support they received from their entire social network than children in the other family types.     

Discursive Methodologies for Couple and Family Therapy Research: Editorial to Special Section

In this article, we aim to introduce the special JMFT section on discursive research methodologies for couple and family therapy research. These are qualitative research methodologies which resonate with the systemic emphasis on the semantics and the pragmatics of therapy discourse. First, we provide a brief overview of such methodologies and their use in the family therapy field. We then introduce the context and the content of the special section, where four approaches, including conversation analysis, discursive psychology type of discourse analysis, poststructurally informed discourse analysis (subject positioning analysis), and semantic analysis, are introduced by means of analyzed extracts from a Tom Andersen consultation session with a couple in distress and their therapist. We conclude with implications for the field. For Tom and Michael     

“They love death as we love life”: The “Muslim Question” and the biopolitics of replacement

This article approaches the analytic of the “Muslim Question” through the prism of the discursive and conspiratorial use of demographics as an alleged threat to Europe. It argues that concerns about “Muslim demographics” within Europe have been entertained, mobilized, and deployed to not only construct Muslims as problems and dangers to the present and future of Europe, but also as calls to revive eugenic policies within the frame of biopower. The article begins by sketching the contours of the contemporary “Muslim Question” and proceeds with a critical engagement with the literature positing a deliberate and combative strategy by “Muslims” centered on birth rates—seen by these authors as a tactical warfare—to allegedly replace European “native” populations. The analysis continues by focusing on two images juxtaposing life and death as imagined within the replacement discourse, and that capture that discourse in powerful albeit disturbing ways. Finally, the article proposes reading the population replacement discourse as a deployment of biopolitics and one of its many techniques, namely, eugenics.     

Social Exclusion,Social Identity and Social Work: Analysing Social Exclusion from a Material Discursive Perspective

Within this article I explore the concept of social exclusion, considering how it has been defined and the implications of this for social exclusion policy. It is suggested that the current use of the concept focuses on material definitions of exclusion, obscures the discursive origins of exclusion and tends to individualise the problem. I argue that we need to adopt a broader approach to defining and analysing social exclusion which understands social exclusion as a process which is influenced by both material and discursive factors. The connections between discourse, identity and marginalisation are discussed and these arguments are illustrated using examples related to different aspects of social identity. Finally the article presents a framework for analysing social exclusion from a material discursive perspective and suggests that adopting this perspective clarifies the role of social work in working with people who experience exclusionary processes.     

The Gendered Nature of Managerial Discourse: the Case of a Local Authority

This paper is a response to organizational analysis which highlights the significance of discursive processes in the formation of occupational gender identity. A recurrent weakness in many of these accounts is their focus on the simple dualisms which structure gendered discourse. This tendency is often associated with the abstraction of debate from specific organizational settings. I aim therefore to address the question of the gendered nature of managerial discourse with reference to a case study of a local authority under restructuring. I argue here that the gendered nature of managerial discourse has to be seen as particularly complex, given the way in which it incorporates both ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ identities within an overarching managerial ethos, which is itself related to wider hegemonic projects.     

THE LIMIT OF THE DISCURSIVE: A Critique of the Radical Constructionist Approach to Family Experience

To date, the postmodernist approach to family experience which considers the actor's use of discourse rather than external sociocultural forces as primordial in constituting domestic reality has become an intellectual stream which sociologists can hardly ignore. Using the Gubrium–Holstein model as an exemplar for a “more sophisticated” postmodernist approach to constructing family experience, this article attempts to outline a critique of radical constructionism which overemphasizes the discourse of actors as artfully producing reality as featured in the notions of “doing things with words” and “talking reality into being.” The critique is mainly based on the works of Schutz and Garfinkel, of which Gubrium and Holstein claim their own model share “abiding concern,” and is further supplemented by the work of Bourdieu. This article carries a commitment to rebuking the postmodernist emphasis on the discursive by highlighting that the prepredicative structure of the lifeworld—which is nondiscursive in nature—constitutes the primordial, albeit insufficient, basis of the nomos pertaining to experience as constituted.     

Young people's reproductions of the ‘father as provider’ discourse: intersections of race,class, culture and gender within a liberal democracy

ABSTRACT

Despite a plurality of paternal forms available to men, certain enactments of fathering remain immobile. In South Africa the ‘father as provider’ discourse, which establishes the legitimate father as one who provides financially for his family, continues to be regarded as the primary mark of a good father. Using photo-elicitation interviews to interrogate the persistence of this discourse, this paper examines how adolescents from two low-resourced South African communities construct fathering. Using a critical intersectional discursive framework, the analysis focuses on how gender, race, class and culture are implicated in the reproduction of the ‘father as provider’ discourse. Participants’ constructions suggest that the father’s duty to provide is intensified within marginalised contexts. Central to participants’ reproductions of the ‘father as provider’ discourse was a neoliberal conception of ‘freedom of choice’. The paper concludes that South Africa’s post-apartheid reliance on discourses around liberal democracy has cast the low-income father’s ability to fulfil the provider role as a conscious choice. While the father is made responsible for his failure to provide, broader structural oppressions are in turn rendered largely invisible by such discourse.     

The indelible ink of the special stamp: an insider’s research essay on imprints and erasures

The medical profession ascribes otherness to people with disabilities through diagnosis and expertism, which sets in motion discursive powers that oversee their exclusion through schooling and beyond. In this paper, I present a narrative pieced together from personal experiences of ducking and weaving the deficit discourse in ‘inclusive’ education, when seeking employment and in day-to-day family interaction as a person with severely impaired vision. This work builds on previous qualitative research I conducted in Queensland, Australia with a group of young people with impaired vision who attended an inclusive secondary school. I frame this discussion using Foucault’s conception of normalising judgement against the hegemony of normalcy, and consider that inclusion for people with disabilities is reminiscent of a haunting. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how my ideology is formed, and how it in turn shapes a research agenda geared toward seeking greater inclusion for young people with disabilities in schools.     

Discursive shifts associated with coming out: A corpus‐based analysis of news reports about Ricky Martin

This study seeks to shed light on the discursive effects of a public sexual identity declaration as they surface in the language used to construct the social actor in question. Subscribing to queer linguistically informed critical discourse studies, it builds on and advances the theoretical discussion of coming out in language and sexuality studies. The investigation analyses a corpus of news reports about Ricky Martin, comparing two sub‐corpora, one with texts published before and another with texts from after Martin's public coming out as a gay man in 2010. A keyword analysis is performed to identify linguistic traces of central discourses manifesting in the two corpora. The quantitative analysis is complemented by an in‐depth qualitative analysis of the discursive construction of ethnicity and sexuality in two sample texts. The findings are discussed in the light of discursive shifts between pre‐ and post‐coming‐out phases and clashes between coming‐out stereotypes and the coming‐out experiences of Latino gay men.