Linguists and other animals

Book reviewed in this article:
Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation     

A sociolinguistic application of Bakhtin's authoritative and internally persuasive discourse

Through the use of two central Bakhtinian concepts, authoritative and internally persuasive discourse (word), this paper examines the tension between the ideology of linguistic hegemony as a source of power in the Greek public sphere and the condition of language shift faced by the Albanian‐speaking communities of modern Greece. I argue here that a cautious application of these two notions, which are relevant to linguistic ideology, can reveal crucial aspects of two processes: that of subordination to and that of questioning of the dominant linguistic ideology by local Albanian‐speaking communities. Thus, in language shift contexts, it is possible that no simple relations obtain that place social agents in unquestionable and easily predictable positions. Such an approach proves useful for the sociolinguistic study of threatened language communities.     

反思全球化背景下的“传统”和“话语霸权”

传统不是器物遗迹,也不是一成不变的精神规定,传统是在现代文化运行中生成的事实和意义的复合,是由不同时代的变异体组成的连续体。传统在中国现当代文艺和文艺学中并不存在截然的断裂。所谓话语霸权在当代中国也只具有十分有限的意义。中国当代文艺中也有在全球化背景下化全球的典范。传统的生成类似于基因的生成,但基因制约性在当代条件下的受到限制,为我们敲响了警钟。应对全球化冲击,我们的文艺学应具有无为和有为相统一的智慧和策略。     

An Interview with Georg Lind

Georg Lind is being interviewed by Helen Haste about his work in moral psychology. In the interview, he discusses the meaning and measurement of moral competencies, which he sees as crucial to bridge the gap between moral ideals and action, and to maintain modern democracies, which rely on the enactment of shared moral ideals. Lind has carried out and inspired one of the largest research programs in moral psychology, including longitudinal, cross-cultural, intervention, and experimental studies. His new methodology, the Moral Judgment Test, has been translated and adapted into many languages. Lind has also contributed much to the improvement and dissemination of educational methods to foster moral competencies. The intellectual and biographical roots of his interests are explored.     

Hearts and Minds and Morality: Analyzing Moral Vocabularies in Qualitative Studies

A strategy of analyzing the moral vocabulary of a social movement or subculture is proposed by which ethnographies and other qualitative works may place the moral and ethical concepts used by respondents into a broader sociological context. Through examining the moral resources, the status hierarchy which the specific moral resources within a given moral vocabulary form, and the historical and cultural contexts within which these moral resources exist, it is argued that it becomes possible to analyze and anticipate the moral claims and form of discourse which will be produced by a specific movement and/or subculture. It is also argued that this method may be used to predict how the opposition to a movement and/or subculture is perceived through the formation of an antithetical moral vocabulary.     

网络动态海报《随传随到》的多模态话语分析

作为数字传播时代的新兴产物,动态海报具有画面表现力强、传递信息量大、受众参与度高等特征,已广泛应用于网络广告领域。研究基于多模态话语分析综合理论框架,辅之以视觉语法理论,解析网络动态海报《随传随到》运用多模态符号资源实现的积极广告传播效果。研究发现：文化层面,意识形态是理解动态海报和实现广告传播效果的必要前提;语境层面,语境因素是动态海报产生特征和积极广告传播效果的动因;内容层面,广告传播效果取决于多模态资源在意义构建中的运用;表达层面,GIF格式文件为动态海报达到积极广告传播效果提供了技术支持。研究结合广告学知识探索了多模态话语分析在网络动态海报中的应用,旨在为动态海报的广告传播效果提供语言学解释。     

SPECIAL ISSUE： ONLINE LITERATURE IN CHINA： PRESENT SITUATION AND THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS Online Writing in the Course of Discourse Transformation： A Review of Ten Outstanding Online Novels of the Past Decade

中国当代文学阅读层面上的价值认同正在经受前所未有的挑战。特别是新世纪以来,新的写作群体、写作方式不断涌现,使固有的理论批评体系遭到撞击、被撕裂,从而导致理论批评不时出现失语现象。随着网络文学的迅猛发展,非主流文学在阅读与消费环节中的影响日益增强,这就使得上述问题转化成了新的矛盾——互相不能包容的阅读隔膜。十多年来,网络上产生了海量的小说文本,逐渐形成了二十多种类型;本文兼顾时间跨度和创作类型,遴选了十年中不同类型的十部佳作,并针对它们区别于纸质媒体的艺术审美和创作特点进行了述评。     

Fearing yellow,imagining white: media analysis of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a watershed event in the context of race, nation, and the law because it denied Chinese immigration into the USA for over 80 years. This paper analyses the media coverage of the Chinese in the San Francisco Chronicle during the year of the Act's passage. The theoretical framework of ‘Purity and Danger’ provides a starting point in analyzing how whiteness and nation are constructed as ‘pure’, while Chinese immigration is constructed as a ‘danger’ within a symbolic, racial and political manner. Discourse analysis was applied to the data for an intersectional investigation of race, class, gender, and nation, to determine how the discourse is organized thematically, as well as uncover ideological meanings in relation to how ‘fearing yellow’ also reflected ‘imaging white’ in media discourse.     

Will to love,will to fear: the emotional politics of illegality and citizenship in the campaign against birthright citizenship in the US

Anti-immigration activists argue that the broad inclusivity of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is a national security concern that enables criminalized migrant mothers to give birth to citizens who can later harm the US through violence and resource consumption. Seeing this argument as representative of the problem of inclusivity inherent to citizenship in a liberal democracy, this essay asks how the children of undocumented and temporary migrants are constructed as what Mae Ngai calls ‘alien citizens.’ Drawing from Sara Ahmed's affective economy of emotion, I find that affect and emotion figure prominently in how citizens are made ‘alien.’ Specifically love and fear function as pivot points in the anti-birthright citizenship argument, wherein the ‘real citizen’ is ‘willed’ to love and be loved by the nation and to fear the nation's Others. Moreover, the emphasis on national feelings does not evacuate white supremacy or heteronormativity from its imagination of citizenship, but instead displaces these loci of power into feeling and affect. Thus, this essay claims that the birthright citizenship argument illustrates how national love and fear work in tandem to uphold, naturalize, and expand the racial and sexual exclusions inherent to citizenship in a nation-state.