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Hesni, Samia. "Normative discourse and social negotiation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122428.
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Thesis: Ph. D. in Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This dissertation lies at the intersection of philosophy of language, social and political, and feminist philosophy. The first half of the dissertation is primarily about the ways language can be used to stereotype, denigrate, oppress, or otherwise harm. The second half is about how language can be used to resist and undermine those harms. In the four chapters of my dissertation, I examine the ways in which language can shape the social world. Language allows people to reinforce social norms and systems like sexism, racism, and oppression more broadly. But it also allows people to disrupt these systems. I argue that it is worth looking seriously at the linguistic mechanisms by which individuals can do both, and the social and political systems in place that enable such language use in the first place. Only by combining the two can we start to get the full story about language, oppression, and power.
Within this broad research program, I am specifically interested in implicit discourse: language that indirectly or implicitly communicates one thing while explicitly stating another. Implicit language is extremely important to understand various mechanisms of linguistic harm and oppression. Chapter 1 examines normative generics like 'boys don't cry,' whose utterances often carry with them an injunction that boys not cry, or a condemnation of crying boys. When someone utters a normative generic like 'women stay at home and raise families,' they are reinforcing a harmful social norm without explicitly using any evaluative terms like 'should, good, right.' In Chapter 2, I problematize philosophical views on silencing, and introduce a new concept of linguistic harm, illocutionary frustration, that occurs when a hearer treats a speaker as though she does not have standing to say what she is saying.
In Chapter 3, I give a meta-philosophical analysis of socially informed philosophy of language. In it, I argue that in the service of intellectual inquiry and social justice, we would do well to incorporate types of social situatedness into our methodological frameworks.. I end in Chapter 4 by reviewing the ways in which social scripts play pivotal roles in enabling interpersonal subjugation, and offer a way out.
by Samia Hesni.
Ph. D. in Linguistics
Ph.D.inLinguistics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
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MacDonald, Malcolm. "The social construction of medical discourse." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1994. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3980/.
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The social construction of the discourse of medical institutions is analysed, drawing on both speech act and structural theories. Discourse is defined as a symbol system which has an ideological effect. This effect is linked to the maintenance of the interests of hegemonic social groups. Michel Foucault's archaeological method accords primacy to the relations which exist between institutional and social processes in the formation of discursive relations. Foucault's genealogical method also describes how the identity of the modern subject is constituted within the power nexus of coercive institutions. Medical discourse is paradigmatic of Basil Bernstein's model of pedagogic discourse. Pedagogic discourse is constructed according to the intrinsic grammar of the pedagogic device. This comprises distributive, recontextualizing and evaluative rules. These operate in three institutional contexts: the field of production, the field of reproduction and the recontextualizing field. M. A. K. Halliday's systemic linguistics defines three metafunctions of the text which operate in relation to its context of situation: the textual, ideational, and interpersonal. The textual characteristics of three principal modalities, or genres, of medical text are described in relation to their institutional contexts: the medical research report within the field of production, the medical interview within the field of reproduction and the medical textbook within the recontextualizing field. As a medical text shifts from the field of production to the recontextualizing field, certain transformations take place in the ideational options of tense, transitivity and process and the interpersonal options of modality. These syntactic transformations, organized by codes of the pedagogic device, symbolically authorize the recontextualized medical text.
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Gallagher, Ryan. "Disentangling Discourse: Networks, Entropy, and Social Movements." ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2017. http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/724.
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Our daily online conversations with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers weave an intricate network of interactions. From these networked discussions emerge themes and topics that transcend the scope of any individual conversation. In turn, these themes direct the discourse of the network and continue to ebb and flow as the interactions between individuals shape the topics themselves. This rich loop between interpersonal conversations and overarching topics is a wonderful example of a complex system: the themes of a discussion are more than just the sum of its parts.
Some of the most socially relevant topics emerging from these online conversations are those pertaining to racial justice issues. Since the shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, the protest hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has amplified critiques of extrajudicial shootings of Black Americans. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, other online users have adopted #AllLivesMatter, a counter-protest hashtag whose content argues that equal attention should be given to all lives regardless of race. Together these contentious hashtags each shape clashing narratives that echo previous civil rights battles and illustrate ongoing racial tension between police officers and Black Americans.
These narratives have taken place on a massive scale with millions of online posts and articles debating the sentiments of "black lives matter" and "all lives matter." Since no one person could possibly read everything written in this debate, comprehensively understanding these conversations and their underlying networks requires us to leverage tools from data science, machine learning, and natural language processing. In Chapter 2, we utilize methodology from network science to measure to what extent #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter are "slacktivist" movements, and the effect this has on the diversity of topics discussed within these hashtags. In Chapter 3, we precisely quantify the ways in which the discourse of #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter diverge through the application of information-theoretic techniques, validating our results at the topic level from Chapter 2. These entropy-based approaches provide the foundation for powerful automated analysis of textual data, and we explore more generally how they can be used to construct a human-in-the-loop topic model in Chapter 4. Our work demonstrates that there is rich potential for weaving together social science domain knowledge with computational tools in the study of language, networks, and social movements.
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Roscoe, Karen D. "Social work discourses : an exploratory study." Thesis, University of Chester, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10034/613313.
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This study aims to critically analyse and explore how social workers (operating in the adult social work practice domain) draw on wider social (and social work) discourses in accounting for the work that they do. Utilising purposeful samples of students and qualified social work practitioners, this exploratory study of discourses analyses the implications this has on the construction of the social work identity, role and practice (action). Driven by a series of research questions, the objectives of this research were: 1) To critically analyse and explore the discourses on which students and social work practitioners draw on in their accounts of social work practice; 2) To identify and critically analyse the subject positions and discursive practices (collective ways of speaking) of social workers in respect of these discourses; 3) To critically analyse how and in what way social workers at different stages of the career trajectory draw differently upon these discourses; 4) To critically analyse and evaluate the implications for practice and service users of the respondents’ subject positioning and the discursive practices that they employ; 5) Develop a critically reflexive method (model) for social work education and research in order to make recommendations for research, education and critical social work practice (in the context of self-awareness). As this study involves several people in the exploration of adult social work (Community Care policy context), it will contribute to knowledge of the meaning given to contemporary social work. It does so by expanding the concept of discourse analysis to the wider social context in which the overall narrative (story) is ‘told’. This research aims to understand how respondents draw on discourses in particular ways and includes an analysis of the contradictions and gaps within the overall narrative of social work. Stemming from wider pre-determined narratives that are available in social work cultures, this study not only analyses the words themselves by utilising discourse analytic tools, but demonstrates new ways in which to apply critical discourse analysis in the exploration of accounts of social work. In this examination, this research critically analyses and evaluates the implications these discourses can have on identity construction (personal and professional self), as well as on those social work intends to benefit (service users).
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Lahlali, El Mustapha. "Morroccan classroom discourse and critical discourse analysis : the impact of social and cultural practice." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2003. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/451/.
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The aim of this study is to display the important contribution which a critical analysis makes to our understanding of students/teachers relationship through the analysis of their discursive practices. The work focuses specifically on interaction within Moroccan classrooms at the secondary school level, involving students aged between 12-14 years old. The data source consists of transcripts of audio-recordings of classroom lessons in which both teachers and students are engaged in the interaction, which is supplemented by interviews with teachers. In order to examine power relations between teachers and students, this research presents a detailed analysis of the linguistic features used by teachers. Such discourse features are IRF patterns, modality, politeness, Q/A and interruption. Although the analysis of the discoursal features of such interactions is of interest, it alone does not explain the nature of the relationship between pupils/ teachers. For this to be achieved, one may go further to conduct a structured interview analysis to explain such relations and establish a dialectic relationship between institutional practice and social practice (Fairclough 1992b). The effects which are traceable in the discourse of participants are not only related to the teacher/student relationship but also reflect the social order of which the educational institution is a part. The social order has impact on the educational institution which in turn affects the student/teacher relationship. This relationship in turn confirms the social order (Candlin 1997). The research provides a detailed analysis of the discursive practice and describes specific ways in which teachers dominate students' interaction. It traces teachers' control and dominance of the classroom practices to the overwhelming social beliefs of the participants. It concludes that specific social practices on the part of students and teachers produce particular discourse practices in the classroom. These discourse practices hinder the ongoing interaction. Both students' and teachers', assumptions and social beliefs of the classroom practices contribute to creating an atmosphere of control and dominance in the classroom. This research provides suggestions to overcome this crisis. It believes that a change in the classroom practice requires a change in the social practice and vice versa.
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Hately, Warren. "The discourse of conflict." Murdoch University, 2003. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20090423.135734.
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This dissertation deals with two problems central to contemporary philosophy: the unacknowledged bias of structuralist theory towards linguistic signs and the lack of a coherent theorisation of social conflict. In order to address these conundrums, I reconcile Saussurean and Peircean semiotics and then use Ruthrofs corporeal pragmatics to break from the verbocentric idea of language as a closed system, showing instead that verbal meanings originate from the body, its senses and its imagination, as informed by the deixis of individual communities. With the transformation of linguistic semiotics into corporeality, Foucaults notion of discourse and the neglected category of discursive practice are then reworked to show how statements based on nonverbal signs might function discursively.
The culmination of the 1970s Northern Irish prison war in the events of the 1981 hunger strikes offers a study that unites the focus upon nonverbal discourses with the examination of conflict. In exploring the ways in which republican hunger strikers struggled for legitimacy with the prison authorities, I am able to show how previous notions of conflict, especially Lyotards différend, are thrown into disrepute by a corporeal perspective recognising the intersemiotic and heterosemiotic character of communication. The availability of diverse semiotic media such as the visual, the haptic, the proximic, etc., offers positions in which conflicts may be regulated without ending in the stalemate that Lyotard describes. The division of semio-discursive phenomena into verbal and nonverbal elements, and the tracing of the effects that these elements have upon ideational and pragmatic planes of action, also reveal a variety of strategies related to conflict that are superposable upon other instances. As a result, the thesis suggests that the role of political violence in politics and the meanings associated with the taking of life can be approached from a new angle.
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Tsatsaroni, Anna. "Re-writing professional discourse." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1991. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10018617/.
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The following thesis is concerned with what I have termed professional discourse. I have used the term to call attention to two elements. With professional, I have indicated a recent move in educational analysis and research on teachers and other practitioners which represents a shift to a concern with practical activities, a tacit or explicit resistance to theory, and an attempt to displace the cognitive paradigm of research and theorizing. With the notion of discourse, I have indicated that, in order that the as yet limited debate on professional activity be opened up, it has to be linked with the discourse on practice. By the latter, I mean the opposition between practice and theory at the analytical level, and its most recent unfoldings and manifestations. The thesis identifies a vocabulary of practice, implicating such concepts as reflection, repetition, judgment, skill, example, exemplar, and a series of oppositional terms, such as saying/showing, competence/performance, explicit/implicit knowledge. These serve as a link between the professional and the practical. The problematic of the theory/practice relation in its various formulations is, then, explicitly addressed in the work of Dreyfus, Habermas, Lyotard and Derrida. The thesis claims that (a) it is Dreyfus' thesis on exemplarity that makes the link possible between the professional and the practical, but (b) it is only with Habermas, Lyotard and Derrida that the professional/practical discourse can take its linguistic turn. Then the thesis addresses the implications of the linguistic turn. It argues that it is only through an examination of the metaphysical presuppositions of the linguistic turn that the claim of professional discourse to be free from the determinations of theory can be assessed; in particular, the research methodologies of professional discourse have not made a decision concerning metaphysics and thus they are reduced to methodological technicity.
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Gerlach, Neil (Neil Allen) 1963 Carleton University Dissertation Sociology and Anthropology. "'Flexible' social governance; interrogating 1990s business restructuring discourse." Ottawa, 1995.
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Lea, Susan J. "South African racial discourse : a social psychological study." Thesis, Loughborough University, 1995. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/32912.
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This study examines South African racial discourse within what may be described as a 'critical social science' framework. Despite South Africa's long racist history, research which provides a thorough understanding of racism is limited. Consequently, this study aimed to explore the ideological nature of young 'white' South Africans' commonsense understandings of 'race' and racism through a discursive and rhetorical analysis. Twenty-five young, 'white' South Africans were interviewed on a wide range of topics relating to the category of 'race' and the phenomenon of racism. Interviews were loosely structured and lasted between two and four and a half hours. The analysis was oriented to identifying the key discourses participants used in the construction of their accounts, as well as the linguistic devices and rhetorical strategies employed in negotiating the "dialectic of prejudice" (Billig et al., 1988: 100). Three principal discourses were identified: the discourse of biologism, the discourse of cognitivism, and the discourse of constructivism. However, not all participants drew equally upon all three of these discourses. The declared political affiliation of the speaker (Nationalist, Liberal or Left-wing) was related to the selection of discourses and the nature of the linguistic resources and rhetorical devices used in the production of accounts. For example, Nationalist speakers tended to construct accounts in terms of the discourses of biologism and cognitivism, but not in terms of the discourse of constructivism. These findings are discussed in the light of contemporary research on the "the language of racism" (Wetherell and Potter, 1992), and their theoretical and pragmatic implications are considered.
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Emejulu, Akwugo. "Community development as discourse : analysing discourses, identities and social practices in the US and the UK." Thesis, University of Strathclyde, 2010. http://oleg.lib.strath.ac.uk:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=12387.
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The aim of this thesis is to reconceptualise community development as a discourse and understand how various discursive repertoires influence the available identities for practitioners and community groups taking part in community development activities. Community development is rarely thought of as a discourse and it is from this gap in knowledge that my research is positioned. Throughout this thesis, I analyse how community development discourses are formed, structured and operationalised and I investigate whether the dominant discourses of community development live up to their ‘radical’ claims by exploring the identity constructions of practitioners and local people. In order to analyse the discourses of community development, I operationalised a post-structuralist discourse analysis methodology as developed by Hansen (2006). Post-structuralist discourse analysis is concerned with understanding the construction and reproduction of identity within a particular discourse through the analysis of texts. Using Hansen’s methodology and method, I selected and analysed 121 American and British community development texts dating from 1968 to 1997. As a result of my discourse analysis of texts, I argue that there is a serious problem embedded in the discourse of community development. Community development, despite its dominant presentation of itself as unproblematic and essentially ‘radical’, constructs suspect identities for professionals and local people. Throughout this research, I make one original contribution to knowledge. I demonstrate that community development, since at least 1968 in both the US and the UK, reproduces identities that invest the community development professional with agency and construct local people as a passive and often incorrigible Other. This binary persists whether a community development discourse defines itself as either ‘radical’ or ‘conservative’. This research finding calls into question dominant contemporary portrayals of community development. Rather than being a self-evident good, community development, more often than not, subjects local people to patronising and unequal identities that reinforce rather than undermine negative stereotypes about the political nous of marginalised groups
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Prior, Lindsay Francis. "The social organisation of death : medical discourse and social practices in Belfast." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1985. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/R?func=search-advanced-go&find_code1=WSN&request1=AAIU361809.
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This is a study of the manner in which death is organised in the city of Belfast. It is concerned with the analysis of the principles, practices, and forms of knowledge which serve to organise the dead from the moment at which physical death is pronounced until the moment of disposal. The thesis is presented in two parts. Part One is entitled Public Bodies. It focuses, in the main, upon the discourse through which individual deaths in particular, and mortality patterns in general, are explained, described, and analysed by state agents and agencies. Chapter One examines the principles according to which causes of death are discovered and allocated. Chapter Two switches attention to modes of death, and examines the use of categories of natural and unnatural death. Chapter Three focuses upon the discourse of modern pathology as it operates within the confines of the city mortuary. And, Chapter Four, concentrates upon the General Register Office, and the principles according to which it collects, collates, and produces data on Belfast mortality patterns. The second part of the thesis is entitled Private Death. Here, the point of focus shifts to the examination of the activities and forms of thought which operate outside of, and beyond the official state agencies. Chapter Five presents an investigation of the organisational principles through which death is ordered within the cemetery, the city, and the hospital. Chapter Six, investigates the ways in which sentiments of the bereaved are structured in relation to the dead. Whilst Chapter Seven focuses upon the organisation of body, soul, and social being during the phase of disposal. The final chapter examines the interpenetration of Belfast politics and political ideologies with the social practices which surround the disposal of the dead. The methodological basis of the study is outlined in Appendix A.
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Barnard, Amy Grace. "Lesbians' experiences of depression: Linking experience to social discourse." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280674.
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Depression is being diagnosed worldwide at rapidly increasing rates. The World Health Organization has identified depression as the second leading cause of disability worldwide. Women are diagnosed with depression at twice the rate of men. Although much research has been conducted on depression in women, there is very little research on depression in lesbians. The impact of living within a heteronormative society upon lesbians' experiences of depression is unknown. The purpose of this study was to explore lesbians' subjective experiences of depression. Critical ethnographic methods were used to study the ways that lesbians construct their experiences of depression. Twelve self-identified lesbians participated in up to three in-depth interviews conducted over an eight month period. Social constructionism and critical theories underpinned the study's methodology. Thematic analysis led to a schema of themes, domains, and categories that described the participants' experiences. The analysis found no commonalities across the narratives linking being a lesbian with experiences of depression. However, many patterns did emerge describing the ways that the participants construct their experiences of depression. Four themes were identified: Being depressed: Describing the experience, The roots of depression: Emotional dissonance, Managing depression: Desire for relief, and Explaining depression: Needing to know why . The dominant discourses of depression forwarded by psychiatry and psychology have penetrated the popular culture and shaped the participants' understandings of their feelings of depression. These discourses assist in the maintenance of social hegemonies. Further analysis of the study themes led to the discovery that experiences of depression are class-mediated, with study outliers offering glimpses into alternative class-based constructions of depression. The participants shared a number of constructs in formulations of their sexuality. Lesbian identity and radical-cultural feminist discourses underpinned the participants' narratives of identity. Class privilege was identified as significant in these women's abilities to comfortably negotiate their marginalized sexuality within a heteronormative society. Implications of the study for nursing practice, education and research include the formulation of new understandings of lesbianism and sexuality. Findings indicate future depression research must explore of the ways social class influences experiences and perceptions of depression.
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Saucedo-Delgado, Odra Angélica. "Moral discourse in social policy interfaces : a Mexican case." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2011. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/34309/.
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Lewis, Sian Elisabeth. "The social construction of depression : experience, discourse and subjectivity." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1996. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1842/.
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The thesis shifts the explanatory framework of depression from the currently predominant clinical model which explains depression as a problem located in the individual, to a social psychological approach which explains depression in terms of its meaning to the individual, as an experience of self, evolved through relationships with others. Theoretically, the thesis draws on Mead's (1934) theory of social hehaviourism, and symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969). An innovative and interpretative qualitative methodology, "Thematic Analysis", is developed for the analysis of interview accounts acknowledging the perspectives of participants. Analyses are presented as the subjective interpretations of the researcher but accounts are approached as partial representations of real experiences. The methodology of thematic analysis is developed through the research, drawing on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and discourse analytic techniques (Potter and Wetherell, 1987). The thesis comprises four separate studies to investigate subjective experiences of depression and the meaning of the term "depression", based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Study I, an exploratory study with a university population (not necessarily depressed), identifies themes and discourses in accounts of depression. Study II investigates subjective experiences of depression from patients' perspectives, based on accounts of psychiatric out-patients and patients of general practitioners who had been diagnosed as depressed, and identifies the power of the medical discourse in legitimating problems as depression. Study III discusses medical discourses of depression, as used by psychiatrists, general practitioners and clinical psychologists in interview accounts which emphasised the importance of organisational context. Study IV investigates women's experiences of motherhood and depression from participants' perspectives and based on their subjective accounts, and discusses gender identity and the social construction of motherhood as part of their experiences of depression. The analysis indicated that for most respondents depression is both a subjective and a socially constructed experience. The powerful construction of depression as a clinical problem located in the individual may legitimate problematic experiences, hut it is insufficient to explain subjective experiences of depression, which are better understood in terms of the construction of subjectivity through social interaction. The research has implications for more helpful professional and personal approaches to understanding the experience of depression.
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Elzie, Catherine M. "Social work, religion and sexual orientation a discourse analysis /." abstract and full text PDF (free order & download UNR users only), 2008. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:1453586.
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Dick, Penny. "The social construction of policing : discourse, gender and identity." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2000. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.749022.
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Barkley, Candice. "School Leader Use of Social Media for Professional Discourse." VCU Scholars Compass, 2012. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2701.
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The purpose of this case study was to explore how a group of principals from diverse backgrounds and different locations create and perpetuate a virtual community of practice. This investigation is a case study of Connected Principals, a group that has come together to create a regular blog on significant issues within education and the principalship. In addition, this group regularly disseminates pertinent information on Twitter via a hash tag. The study includes a content analysis of the blogs posted by Connected Principals as well as social network analysis of the group’s Twitter network and of the key players within the Twitter network. In addition, the investigation includes interviews with six of the key blog and Twitter contributors in order to triangulate the information gleaned from the other analyses. The results of the study provide a thorough description of Connected Principals. While the study set out with the framework of a community of practice, the findings led to the idea that what was actually created by this group is an affinity space. In addition, the results give indication that the members of the group generate social capital within their field. Overall, the study contributes to the literature by providing an in-depth look at a relatively new field in education.
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Nkurikiye, Sylvestre. "The pragmatics of Kirundi marriage discourse : speech acts and discourse strategies." Virtual Press, 1991. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/833004.
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This dissertation is a descriptive study of speech acts encoded in Kirundi marriage transactional discourse and the strategies used by the participants to encode them and attempts to understand the interrelationships between the speech acts and the strategies.Chapter 1 states the objectives and describes the data to be studied and the approach to go about it. Chapter 2 provides the reader with some background information on Burundian society and culture in the area of matrimony.Chapter 3 explores the conversation activities and the management of the interactions between the interactants in the sociocultural context of marriage transactions. Formality participation status are discussed and shown to be crucial factors for the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of the participants' verbal contributions. Chapter 4 investigates the nature and the function of the speech acts performed by the interactants. The speech act identification and categorization are based on the social aspects of linguistic action and on the conventionality and contextuality of discourse. Chapter 5 inquires into the strategies applied by the interactants to encode and decode them. Chapter 6 is a summary and conclusion.Department of English
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Backlund, Rambaree Brita. "Contextualising Constructions of Corporate Social Responsibility : Social Embeddedness in Discourse and Institutional Contexts." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Sociologiska institutionen, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-136009.
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‘Corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘socially responsible investment’ (SRI) have become predominant frameworks connecting business to society that have spread across the globe. They comprise a shared set of ideas and practices, such as those promoted in global reporting standards and by international organisations such as the UN Global Compact. Nonetheless, both are constructed and reproduced by companies in relation to context-specific social institutions, including norms and conventions shaping company engagement in social issues. Using a neo-institutionalist theoretical framework, the thesis examines constructions of social responsibility in discourse and within institutional contexts, across regions that are not often compared in the research terrain: two West European welfare states (Sweden and the UK) and two emerging African economies (South Africa and Mauritius). The purpose of the thesis is to add to the literature on CSR and SRI with a sociologically informed perspective that is comparative and connects institutional theory with social constructionism and a Foucauldian perspective on power. The thesis analyses how perceptions of CSR and SRI are constructed in relation to the social institutions that encase companies’ engagement with social issues, such as national level welfare configurations and the institution of financial investments. The main argument in this thesis is that CSR and SRI need to be seen as contextually constructed, in discourse and practice, in ways that draw the boundaries and set the conditions for company engagement with social issues. The thesis comprises three articles. Article 1 is a content analysis of company self-reporting on CSR and the article examines how the content given to CSR relates to broader welfare configurations and as such differs in four national settings across the divide between emerging African economies and Western welfare states. Article 2 is a discourse analysis that examines interpretative repertoires occurring in company self-reporting across the same set of four countries. The interpretative repertoires are analysed as discursive practices where power intersects with the production of knowledge on CSR. Article 3 focuses on SRI and examines responsible investing as a form of institutional work that institutional investors engage in. Based on an interview study with institutional investors in Sweden, the article analyses institutional work as a process that has the effect of both institutional creation and maintenance and it connects these institutional processes to the construction of meaning on SRI. In its entirety the thesis contributes a sociological perspective on how prevailing understandings of corporate social responsibility come into being and are reproduced.Uppfattningar om företags samhällsansvar har begreppsliggjorts i huvudsak genom idéer om ’corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) och ’ansvarsfulla investeringar’. Under de senaste decennierna har dessa begrepp utvecklats till att bli vanligt förkommande och har spridits över världen. Som globala koncept medför de en gemensam uppsättning av idéer och metoder, såsom de som förs fram i internationella standarder för företags CSR rapportering, och utav internationella organisationer såsom FN:s Global Compact. Ändå skiljer de sig åt mellan olika kontexter och är konstruerade och återges av företag i förhållande till sociala sammanhang. Begreppen ges mening i relation till sociala institutioner i form av normer och konventioner som redan omger företag och sociala frågor. Baserat på nyinstitutionell teori undersöker avhandlingen konstruktioner av samhällsansvar och ansvarstagande, i diskurs och i institutionella sammanhang, över regioner som inte ofta jämförs i forskningen kring skillnader i företags samhällsansvar: två Västeuropeiska välfärdsstater (Sverige och Storbritannien) och två tillväxtekonomier i södra Afrika (Sydafrika och Mauritius). Syftet med avhandlingen är att bidra till litteraturen kring CSR och ansvarsfulla investeringar med ett sociologiskt perspektiv som är jämförande och för samman institutionell teori med social konstruktionism och Foucaults perspektiv på makt. Avhandlingen analyserar hur föreställningar om CSR och ansvarsfulla investeringar konstrueras i förhållande till de sociala institutioner som omger företags engagemang i samhällsfrågor, och belyser speciellt vikten av samhällets välfärdssystem och konventioner kring finansiella investeringar som betydelsefulla för dessa begrepp. Huvudargumentet i denna avhandling är att CSR och ansvarsfulla investeringar måste ses som kontextuellt skapade, i diskurs och praxis, på ett sätt som drar gränserna och skapar förutsättningarna för företags engagemang i samhällsfrågor. Avhandlingen omfattar tre artiklar. Artikel 1 är en innehållsanalys av företags självrapportering om CSR och artikeln undersöker hur innehållet som ges till CSR i självrapporteringen relaterar till hur samhället i övrigt hanterar välfärd och sociala frågor. Artikeln visar på hur CSR på så sätt skiljer sig åt mellan fyra olika länder där två är tillväxtekonomier i södra Afrika och två är Västeuropeiska välfärdsstater. Artikel 2 är en diskursanalys som undersöker språkliga repertoarer (interpretative repertoires) som förekommer i företags självrapportering om CSR, i samma uppsättning av fyra länder. Repertoarerna analyseras som tillämpandet av diskurs och de synliggör hur makt är av betydelse i skapandet av diskurser kring CSR. Artikel 3 fokuserar på ansvarfulla investeringar och undersöker detta som en form av aktivt skapande och återskapande av samhällsinstitutioner. Baserat på en intervjustudie med institutionella investerare i Sverige analyseras ansvarfullt investerande som en process som på samma gång innebär både skapande av en ny social institution, ansvarsfulla investeringar, och återskapande av en existerande institution, finansiella investeringar. Skapandet av nya idéer inom ramarna för en existerande institution påverkar innebörden i ansvarsfulla investeringar. I sin helhet bidrar avhandlingen med ett sociologiskt perspektiv på hur uppfattningar om företags samhällsansvar skapas och återskapas.
At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.
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Oliveira, Marcos Antonio Morgado de. "Fight the power oppositional discourse in african-american popular music." Florianópolis, SC, 1999. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/80856.
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Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão.Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-18T20:07:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0Bitstream added on 2016-01-09T03:28:41Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 171639.pdf: 2377897 bytes, checksum: 64aec4a25c4c71fcb9a8ecf2e9d57146 (MD5)
Análise do discurso de oposição nas letras de músicas populares Afro-Americanas dos Estados Unidos. Este estudo identifica os elementos textuais que caracterizam o discurso como de oposição e os relaciona às representações de relações sociais e identidades sociais das elites e da minoria Afro-Americana. A investigação do discurso Afro-Americano revela como as relações sociais e as relações de identidade são reproduzidas, desafiadas e/ou transformadas e como relações de poder e dominação, e oposição a estas, são construídas neste discurso.
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Brokensha, Melissa. "The South African exodus : a social constructionist perspective on emigration." Diss., Pretoria : [s.n.], 2003. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-09022005-141949.
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Chan, Lit-chung. "Discourse of justice in Hong Kong." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2006. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/HKUTO/record/B3955871X.
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Persdotter, Sigrid, and Terese Björlin. "Discourse analysis of the swedish integration politics." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för hälsa och samhälle (HS), 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-25081.
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This essay is a discourse analysis of the integration politics of the different partiesin the Swedish parliament and the non-parliamentary party ‘the SwedishDemocrats’, as it is presented on their respective web pages. The overall purposeis to problematize and shed a light on how the current discourse(s) aboutintegration are constituted. Also of interest is how these construct our knowledgeand experience of the phenomena. We furthermore want to illustrate the socialconsequences of such discourses on the construction and organization of identitiesand groups, and, as a result, the courses of action that becomes available. Ouressay has a methodological and theoretical foundation that is based upondiscourse theory – an approach with a view of the reality as both sociallyconstructed and as communicated by linguistic organisation. Unsurprisingly then,it is our ontological standpoint that it is language that constructs and gives ourreality a meaning, rather than a naturalistic objective and value-free reflection ofthe world. The analysis identifies some general themes that could be viewed uponas the foundation of the integration-discourse. We find that this discourse isorganized around a mythical idea of the Swedish society, which is identified as abroader discourse about the concept of the nation. The ideational process worksthrough the construction of a separation from other nations, and thus an indirectcreation of a group (Swedes) belonging to the own nation and community. As aresult a division is made between those who belong to the society and those whodo not (immigrants). In order to get access to the Swedish society, in other wordsto integrate and escape alienation, the excluded must get an employment. Thevarious discourses differ on reasons behind the failing integration, a finding thatwe discuss and problematize around in the study. The overall conclusion is thatthe discourses is unable to contribute to integration process and insteadconsolidates the divide between immigrants and Swedes.
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Christianopoulos, Victor Steve. "A media discourse analysis." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3014615X.
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Niskanen, Johan, and Andersson Joakim Gröndal. "The Eastern Link : A sustainable discourse?" Thesis, Department of Water and Environmental Studies, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-19311.
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The local newspapers in Sweden are often used as an arena where groups of different political leanings try to frame current events to suit their purposes. Therefore how the news media presents the discussed issue and how it relates to sustainable development are important for a democratic process. One of the largest infrastructural projects in Sweden currently is the Eastern Link and there are many economical, social and ecological concerns when constructing such a large infrastructural project. It is therefore important to look at how sustainable development is represented in the local news media when concerning this infrastructural project. The aim of this thesis is to study how the local media presents the Eastern Link project in relation to sustainable development and how it affects democracy. This thesis critically discusses the different parts of sustainable development; the impact of and on economical issues, social issues and ecological issues in relation to the study material. Both a quantitative approach and a qualitative approach are used as a method. The thesis also links the results of this study to previous research on communication and theories on sustainable development. The results show that neither of the newspapers Folkbladet or NT is presenting the Eastern Link in a balanced way from a sustainability perspective. A majority of the articles are focusing on the social discourse; this differs from previous research where the focus is on the economical discourse.
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Walsh, Clare. "Gender, discourse and the public sphere." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2000. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/3155/.
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This thesis aims to develop an analytical framework that will combine the insights of critical discourse analysis and a range of feminist perspectives on discourse as social practice. This framework is then employed in an investigation of women's participation in a number of 'communities of practice('Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992) previously monopolised by men. Comparisons are also made with women's involvement in organisations where they are in a majority and where a feminist ethos prevails. I argue that women often find themselves at odds with the masculinist discursive norms that masquerade as gender-neutral professional norms. This, in turn, has implications for the way in which women are perceived and judged by others, as well as for the roles they are assigned within the public sphere. With reference to selective transcripts of in-depth structured interviews with women in each of the domains under investigation, I suggest that the complex negotiations in which they engage in order to manage contradictory expectations about how they should speak and behave cannot easily be accommodated within a dichotomous model of gendered linguistic styles. Nonetheless, this is precisely how their linguistic behaviour is often 'fixed' and evaluated by others, especially by the mass media. I make reference to a wide range of texts from a variety of media in order to illustrate the role the media, in particular, play in mediating the perception of women's involvement in the public sphere and in (re)producing normative gender ideologies. The first case study focuses on women Labour MPs in the House of Commons. It includes a detailed analysis of the media coverage of Margaret Beckett's bid for the Labour leadership in 1994. It also considers whether the record increase in the number of women MPs in the wake of the 1997 general election has helped to make the Government's policy priorities more woman-friendly and/or has changed the culture of the House. The second case study on women's involvement in devolved politics briefly considers their contribution to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, before focusing in detail on the contribution made by the Northern Irish Women's Coalition to framing the Good Friday Agreement and to the structures of the new Northern Irish Assembly. The third case study compares the structure and rhetoric of the London-based Women's Environmental Network and those of male dominated environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace and the relative media coverage these groups receive. The final case study compares women's involvement in the Church of England as outsiders, campaigning for women to be admitted to priesthood, and as recently ordained insiders, whose subordination within Church structures is sanctioned by canon law. A central thesis of this study is that both the institutional constraints with which women have to negotiate and the stereotypical evaluations of their performance of public sphere roles have contributed to a process of discursive restructuring, whereby the gendered nature of the public/private dichotomy has been reproduced within the public sphere. However, women are not passively positioned in relation to the institutional and other discursive constraints that operate on them. I suggest that, they, in their turn, have helped to promote a counter tendency whereby the discursive boundaries between the traditional public and private spheres are becoming increasingly weakened and permeable. The study concludes by arguing for a more socially situated theory of language and gender to account for the constant tension that exists between the freedom of individuals to make choices within discourse and the normative practices that function to limit these choices.
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Koller, Veronika. "Metaphor clusters in business media discourse : a social cognition approach." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2003. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/26683/.
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Porter, Marissa Sue. "Demosthenes' social discourse the economics of politeness and subject position /." Digital version:, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p.
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Chettle, Christine Elisabeth. "Transrealism as a discourse of social change in Victorian fiction." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2013. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/7544/.
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This thesis considers the use a range of writers in the early to mid-Victorian period have made of interplays between the fantastic and the mimetic modes in their texts. I respond to critical assessments of the role of fantasy writing within Victorian fiction, and develop new articulations both of this role and of the nature of fantastic-mimetic interplays. In doing so, I interrogate Stephen Prickett’s categorization of Victorian fantasy writing as an unconscious creative force and Rosemary Jackson’s detailing of ‘Victorian fantasy realism’ as an evocation of negative tensions within Victorian culture. I transpose Julia Kristeva’s theories of transformative poetic intertextuality into the context of intertextualities between pairings of a fantasy and a realist text by four different Victorian authors. Chapter One explores how uncanny textualites in Charlotte Brontë's juvenile novella, The Spell (1834), and her mature work Jane Eyre (1847) represent the fragmented nature of aesthetic identities in nineteenth-century artistic, religious and authorial contexts, and how this representation suggests ways of negotiating resolution. Chapter Two investigates the use of polyphonic textuality (combinations of fairy tale and ghost story motifs) in Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) and A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens dramatizes the emotional complications of disability in terms of a wide spectrum of social exclusion. Chapter Three examines how astronomical imagery and cognitive dissonance represent educational reform in George Eliot's The Lifted Veil (1859) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Chapter Four traces the extended interrogation and transcendence of emotional deprivation in George Macdonald's Adela Cathcart, developed by a heteroglossic voice through the fairy tales 'The Light Princess', 'The Shadows' and 'The Giant's Heart' (all first published in 1864). I propose that these critical interrogations can best be understood through an adaptation of Damien Broderick’s theory of modern transrealism, adapted to the historical context of the Victorian period.
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Clément, Adèle. "La construction de la subjectivité dans la société française contemporaine : analyse de la dialectique entre Dire et discours dans les champs de la politique, du sujet et du lien social." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018USPCC055/document.
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Nous interrogeons l’impact des discours contemporains sur la subjectivité, les résistances qui apparaissent de façon visible, c'est-à-dire qui sont représentées, et plus particulièrement les formes extérieures qui viennent produire un renversement interne de ces discours et/ou la mobilisation de nouvelles pratiques qui ne cherchent pas à s’y faire reconnaitre. Parmi les discours dominants, nous développons les discours de la valeur économique, le discours des technosciences et le discours du risque. Nous y analysons les articulations, particulièrement au niveau de la réflexivité produite dans le sujet, avec les discours lacaniens de l’analyste et du capitaliste. Des affections émergentes, qui ne sont pas associées à des représentations, peuvent se manifester au niveau de la politique, du sujet, et du social. Les affections émergentes sont précisément ce qui se manifeste à partir du corps et ne peut trouver de représentance dans le social. Elles se distinguent des affects en ce que ces derniers sont associés à des discours, produisant des objets de savoir qui les conditionnent. De ces affections, il pourra y avoir répression, nomination (Dire), ou rattachement à des affects existants. L’événement discursif au niveau de la politique mobilise une représentation homogène pour produire des affects communs à partir des affections émergentes : la pluralité des sites de pouvoir laisse amoindrie l’autorité discursive instituée. Sur le plan du social, la production de savoir est à la fois invisibilisée dans la norme, mais elle est aussi, comme désir de savoir, productrice de liens : l’affection émergente trouve une forme de constitution pratique qui ne passe pas par la reconnaissance discursiveWe question the impact of contemporary discourses on the subjectivity, the visible resistances - meaning the one that are represented - and more particularly the external form that come to produce an internal reversal of these discourses and/or the mobilization of new practices which do not seek to be recognized. Among the dominant discourses, we expand on the discourse of economic value, the discourse of technosciences and the discourse of risk. The interconnections are analyzed, particularly in terms of the reflexivity produced in the subject, with the Lacanian discourses of the analyst and the capitalist. Some emergent affection, which is not associated with ideational representative, may occur at the level of politics, subject, and social. Emergent affections are precisely what occurs itself from the body and that can not find any instinctual representative in the social. They are distinguished from affects as they are themselves associated with discourses, producing objects of knowledge that condition them. From these affections, there may be repression, appointment (Say), or attachment to existing affects. The discursive event at politic level mobilizes a homogeneous representation to produce common affects from emerging affections: the plurality of power places leaves the established discursive authority lessened. In social terms, the production of knowledge is both invisibilised in the standard, but it is also, as a desire to know, a producer of links: the emerging affection finds a form of practical constitution that does not go through discursive recognition
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Hardin, Pamela K. "Women, bodies, and self-surveillance : recovery from anorexia : a discourse of social analysis and an analysis regarding discourse /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7366.
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Quintero, Gilbert A. 1964. "The discourse on drinking in Navajo society." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289167.
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This dissertation adopts a discourse-centered approach to culture in order to explore the local meanings attached to alcohol and drinking in contemporary Navajo society. Against a backdrop of drastic cultural transformations, Navajo discourse reveals a wide range of accounts in which drinking is situated within the context of individual experiences and histories. Alcohol and drinking are connected to personal memories of important events, emotions, and relationships. Beyond the level of individual stories, these narratives help organize collective accounts of the Navajo as a people by providing comprehensive evaluations and commentaries on drinking. A number of collective meanings are embedded in narratives about alcohol that reference cultural sentiments and prominent moral values and offer a social commentary that defines what is, and is not, Navajo. Further insights are offered by an examination of aging-out, a salient pattern of Navajo drinking. Former problem drinkers who have aged out and no longer experience alcohol related difficulties offer narratives that frame drinking in certain set ways. The discourse on aging-out among the Navajo not only provides detail on a category of drinker that is largely ignored in accounts of Native American drinking but also illustrates some of the values and meanings attached to drinking cessation and personal change. The discourse of alcoholism treatment provides other understandings regarding Navajo conceptions of alcohol, including the character of this substance and the effect it has on people--especially Native Americans. Consideration of this set of discourse reveals insights into the treatment process as well as commentaries and evaluations of treatment effectiveness and other related issues. This study suggests that Navajo narratives of alcohol and drinking provide important idioms for expressing moral and self-identity, individual experience, collective history, and cultural degeneration. The discourse on drinking in Navajo society reveals a social world of polarization, contention, and intergenerational conflict.
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Portuese, Marina. "Traumatisme psychique et lien social." Thesis, Toulouse 2, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015TOU20027.
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Le traumatisme est par excellence ce qui rend compte de la rencontre du sujet avec sa division structurelle. Le discours capitaliste menace de suturer cette division en faisant du sujet, qu’il prétend compléter de son objet, un individu. D’où la tendance de son partenaire, le discours de la science, à faire taire le sujet en le réduisant à son organisme pour en construire un savoir objectif, ou de certaines psychothérapies d’en faire une pure victime qui n’y serait pour rien dans la mauvaise rencontre, entendue comme purement contingente. Qu’est-ce que c’est véritablement le traumatisme ? Quelle est la spécificité de son appréhension par la psychanalyse lacanienne ?, tel est l’enjeu central de notre thèse. Si pour Freud le débordement de l’angoisse est ce qui définit la situation traumatique, pour Lacan l’angoisse est l’index du réel. La psychanalyse lacanienne étant une pratique orientée par le réel, ni l’angoisse, ni le trauma, ni la répétition ne sont des pathologies à guérir, mais des voies d’orientation vers le réel qui constitue la singularité radicale du sujet. Pouvoir loger ce radical de sa singularité dans un « être ensemble » passera pour le sujet par la réinvention de son rapport au lien socialTrauma is by excellence that which reflects the meeting of the subject with his structural division. The capitalist discourse threatens to suture this division by making of the subject, that it claims to complete of his object, an individual. Hence, the tendency of its partner, the scientific discourse, is to silence the subject by reducing him to his organism, in order to build an objective knowledge, or for certain psychotherapies to make of him a pure victim who would be for nothing in the bad encounter, understood as merely contingent. What truly is trauma? What is the specificity of its apprehension by Lacanian psychoanalysis? ; This is the central issue of our thesis. If for Freud, an overflow anxiety is what defines the traumatic situation, for Lacan, anxiety is the index of real. Since Lacanian psychoanalysis is a practice guided by real, not anxiety nor trauma nor repetition are diseases to cure, but referral pathways to the real, which is the radical singularity of the subject. To lodge his radical singularity in a "being together", the subject will need to reinvent his relation to social ties
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Campbell, Isaac. "Discourse Analysis of Sustainable Consumption." Thesis, Karlstad University, Faculty of Social and Life Sciences, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-340.
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In the following C-Level Thesis, the geographically isolated consumer society that has evolved in the developed world is examined through discourse analysis. This research frames the issue of material consumption in a historical context and then interrogates the modern task of sustainability. Through review and analysis of current discourse in the sociopolitical field of sustainable consumption, this paper critically analyzes the development of modern consumer culture. The concept of ecological citizenship is presented and inspected as an effective strategy for the realization of sustainability and is viewed as a unifier of the many conflicting discourses on sustainable consumption. The dominant institutional discourse of ecological modernization is presented through a review of UK policy documents, and the opinions as well as alternative solutions touted by critics is noted. This paper finds that ideal of ecological citizenship has not yet been reached, but positive steps have been taken to achieve the goal of sustainability through curbing consumptive habits. In this presentation of sustainable consumption discourse it is important to recognize that there may be no absolute answer or right way to live on this planet, but rather, many ways which can, together, bring about a sustainable society.
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Kopf, Susanne. "Content policies in Social Media Critical Discourse Studies: The invisible hand of social media providers?" CADAAD, 2019. http://epub.wu.ac.at/7109/1/01%2DKopf.pdf.
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This paper complements theoretical and methodological considerations regarding social media in critical discourse studies as it addresses social media content policies as a key contextual element. Specifically, this paper argues that - and why - the exploration of content policies and their enforcement is indispensable when approaching social media platforms and social media data in particular from a critical perspective.
A number of researchers have already begun to identify contextual elements that require particular attention when viewing social media and social media data through a CDS lens. However, social media sites' content policies, as pervasive contextual element, have not received adequate research attention yet.
Drawing on Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) and recent developments in Social Media CDS (SM-CDS), this paper first demonstrates the existing gap in research. Then, it contends that social media sites' content policies deserve more detailed attention in SM-CDS, argues why this is the case and elaborates on the different aspects of content policies and policy enforcement that require examination. After detailed theoretical discussion of this, empirical evidence to support this argument is presented in the form of a case study of Wikipedia and Wikipedia data.
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Chan, Lit-chung, and 陳烈忠. "Discourse of justice in Hong Kong." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2006. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3955871X.
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Davidson, Paul. "Metaphor in contemporary British social-policy. A Cognitive Critical Study Of Governmental Discourses On Social Exclusion." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5348.
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This thesis explores the ideological role of metaphor in British governmental
discourses on ¿social exclusion¿. A hybrid methodology, combining approaches
from Corpus Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and cognitive theories of
metaphor, is used to address how social exclusion and other metaphors are deployed
to create an ideologically vested representation of society. The data consists of
linguistic metaphors identified from a 400,000+ word machine-readable corpus of
British governmental texts on social exclusion covering a ten year period (1997-
2007). From these surface level features of text, underlying systematic and
conceptual metaphors are then inferred. The analysis reveals how the interrelation
between social exclusion and a range of other metaphors creates a dichotomous
representation of society in which social problems are discursively placed outside
society, glossing inequalities within the included mainstream and placing the blame
for exclusion on the cultural deficiencies of the excluded. The solution to the
problem of exclusion is implicit within the logic of its conceptual structure and
involves moving the excluded across the ¿boundary¿ to join the ¿insiders¿. The
welfare state has a key role to play in this and is underpinned by a range of
metaphors which anticipate movement on the part of the excluded away from a
position of dependence on the state. This expectation of movement is itself
metaphorically structured by the notion of a social contract in which the socially
excluded have a responsibility to try and include themselves in society in return for
the right of (temporary) state support. Key systematic metaphors are explained by
reference to a discourse-historical view of ideological change in processes of
political party transformation.BISA and CSV
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Paré, Anthony. "Writing in social work : a case study of a discourse community." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=70189.
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Over the past decade, the theoretical basis for composition research and pedagogy has expanded. A social perspective on writing has been added to the cognitive view which dominated composition studies throughout the 1970s and early 80s. This social perspective has radically altered conceptions of the writing process. Whereas cognitive theory placed a creative and isolated individual at the centre of the writing act, social theory locates the writer in community, and shifts much of the control of discourse from the individual to the group.This research takes the form of a case study of social workers attached to Quebec's Youth Court system. The specific focus within that setting is the preparation of reports about adolescents in trouble with the law. Data were collected through "think-aloud" protocols and interviews, including discourse-based interviews. The study offers a detailed description of the complex and dynamic relationship between the individual writer and the community, and provides a new perspective on the concept of "audience" and the notion of genre as social action.
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Bohman, John, and Henrik Malmrot. "Liberal discourse – An invisible hand in free trade research? : An investigation into how global trade discourse is created through discourse interaction within research." Thesis, Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping, HLK, Globala studier, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-36562.
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This paper uses a quantitative content analysis informed by a critical realist framework to study the patterns of international political economy discourse prevalence within research articles concerning free trade. Once categorized, there are observable differences in the extent to which articles in the different categories address other discourses. Analyzing these patterns using concepts from discourse theory, we suggest that the liberal discourse constitutes a regime of truth to which the other discourses must relate. It is also found that articles published in higher ranking journals are less likely to address other discourses. We argue that this could be explained as being an effect of the larger readership of those journals.
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Jordan, Emilie. "Forcing people to be free? A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Political Discourse on the Danish Ghettos." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23833.
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The aim of the thesis is to examine the political discourse related to the Danish ‘ghettos’, and if and how this discourse can be related to ‘securitization of migration’ and ‘repressive liberalism’. The point of departure is the salient explanation in previous research, that the political discourse is deriving from a movement towards nationalism. The findings of the thesis show that the political discourse entails a securitized agenda towards social cohesion, aimed at protecting the liberal core values of the Danish society, even if this requires the use of illiberal means. However, constructing the Danish society as ‘only for liberals’ is excluding (illiberal) immigrants from the social fabric, and the intended objective of the ‘Ghetto Plan’, social integration, is counteracted by the very means proposed to promote it. The thesis thus contributes with an alternative understanding of the political discourse, which is seen to derive from liberalism itself, though it turns into a tougher and more substantial form, where membership of Danish society is ‘granted’ based on attitudes and beliefs.
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Carbou, Guillaume. "Les médiations symboliques à l'œuvre dans les débats de société : l'exemple de l'accident nucléaire de Fukushima dans les commentaires d'actualité sur le web." Thesis, Toulouse 2, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015TOU20118/document.
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Cette thèse entend contribuer à la construction d’un dispositif théorique méthodologique pour l’analyse des médiations symboliques à l’œuvre dans l’espace public lors des débats de société. Dans un premier temps, nous proposons de discuter les conditions épistémologiques de l’analyse des discours circulant dans l’espace public pour dégager des formes idéologiques (au sens large). Nous montrons dans un second temps que les discussions entre internautes à propos du nucléaire, sur les sites de presse en ligne, après l’accident de Fukushima, sont structurées par un nombre limité de grands cadres d’intelligibilité que nous appelons « modes d’appréhension ». Ces modes d’appréhension n’apparaissent jamais vraiment sous leur forme canonique, mais se retrouvent par bribes dans la parole individuelle des internautes. Ils peuvent alors être reconstruits, dans une optique d’analyse argumentative du discours, par le regroupement de « topoï » épars en micro-univers de sens relativement consistants et cohérents. La mise au jour de ces divers modes d’appréhension, construits et perpétués dans la circulation discursive, permet à la fois de faire apparaître une partie des médiations symboliques de la communication sociale sur le nucléaire après Fukushima, de faire émerger les points critiques de la réflexion politique et philosophique sur le sujet, et d’observer quelques-unes des sédimentations idéologiques dominantes de notre modernitéThis thesis aims to contribute to the construction of a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of symbolic mediations which occur in the public sphere during public debates. Firstly, we discuss the epistemological conditions of a search for ideological forms shaped by the circulation of discourses. Secondly, we show that conversations about civil nuclear power among internet users on comment boards of online news websites are structured by a limited number of frames of intelligibility that we call "modes of apprehension". These modes of apprehension never occur in their canonic form: they only appear by fragments in the speech of individuals. Hence, an argumentative analysis of discourse can be used to rebuild them by reordering the multiple "topoï" in consistent and coherent universes of meaning. Bringing out these modes of apprehension, forged and perpetuated by the circulation of discourses, has three main interests : we highlight some of the symbolic mediations of the social communication about civil nuclear power after Fukushima ; we underline some of the main political and philosophical issues of the question ; and we examine some of the dominant ideological sedimentations of our modernity
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Aasprong, Marius Lervåg. "Uncovering Corporate Social Responsibility : Deparadoxation of power in the CSR-discourse." Thesis, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Institutt for sosiologi og statsvitenskap, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-17542.
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In this study I analyze how 70 academic articles concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) deals with questions of power. Based on Michel Foucault’s discursive theory and Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, I present a conceptualization of CSR as a discursive system. I claim that paradoxes of power are central in the development of CSR, and that second order observation is vital for the identification of such paradoxes. My analysis shows that articles published in journals related to management theory are much less aware of problems relating to power, as well as being less critical towards such issues. Nonmanagement- articles are found to identify more paradoxes, but they have lesser impact on the CSR-discourse. Power created by social order as well as power created by system bias, are found to be core issues relating to the division of power between corporations and society at large. Also frequently found to be a concern, is power created by systems of thought, indicating both a critique towards the cultural and normative influence of large corporations, as well as a strong focus on developing knowledge within the CSR-discourse. If CSR is to function as a correction of the development of corporations and society, a critical focus on all aspects of power-creation in the CSR-discourse is an important counterweight to the extensively managerial focus.
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Veitch, Michelle H. "Social discourse in the media interpretation of Christiane Pflug's doll paintings." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ39498.pdf.
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Mayouf, Mayouf Ali. "Social construction of the elderly in Libya : perception, communication and discourse." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/631.
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The thesis investigates the social status of the elderly in Libya and how it is coconstructed in the way elderly fathers interact and communicate with younger sons, elderly peers, and healthcare providers. In the Libyan society in Sebha (a city in the Southern part of Libya, Arab, Muslim and Bedouin) the elderly occupies significant familial and societal roles and posts. The research sample consists of 13 elderly fathers and 16 younger sons who were employed in structured interviews. Another group of 6 elderly fathers and their 6 younger sons participated in semi-structured interviews. Naturally occurring conversations were tape-recorded between each elderly father and his younger son. The third group contains 3 groups of elderly peers whose conversations were taperecorded. Moreover, a group of 3 elderly patients and 3 younger physicians was interviewed and tape-recorded conversing separately with each other. The Conversation Analysis method (CA) supplemented by the social constructionist approach was adopted as a method of data analysis in this study. The findings reveal that elderly fathers are perceived by their younger sons as the family backbone, leader, advisor and decision maker. In contrast, elderly fathers perceive their younger sons as always independent, regardless of their (fathers and sons) health, wealth, and literacy. The findings also show that the large size of Libyan families provides a better chance for elderly fathers to live in extended families, and hence have more familial integration, interaction, and activation. The analyses of the elderly father/younger son conversations unveiled that elderly fathers talk more (timespan) than their younger sons. They also use considerable overlap and interruption to I seize their turns. Elderly fathers address their younger sons with the least preferable repair strategy (other-initiated other-repair), and adopt bald and unmitigated utterances when producing their refusals. They prefer to produce their requests to their younger sons in `order' and/or `order then explain' styles. In comparison, younger sons very rarely overlap, interrupt, or raise their voices when conversing with their elderly fathers. Furthermore, they do not produce verbal rejections to their elderly fathers' demands. Interestingly, sexual and romantic issues could not be raised between elderly fathers and their younger sons. In contrast, elderly - elderly conversations may include romantic issues and poetry. Elderly interactants freely perform overlap, interruption, quarrels, and raising voices when interacting with each other. Finally, elderly patients as well as their younger physicians tend to socialise their institutional settings by avoiding producing medical or colloquial terms that may relate to sex, i. e. sexual organs. Moreover, they summon each other with social labels (hajji/son) rather than institutional labels (sir/doctor). The thesis concludes that the elderly in Libya interact and communicate in accordance to their social status and perception. Elderly fathers, younger sons, elderly peers and healthcare providers coconstruct the elderly status in their everyday talk-in-interaction settings. This research throws new light on the language and discourse of the elderly when they are perceptually and interactionally integrated in their families and societies. This research can be regarded as a pioneer in exploring interaction and discourse of the elderly in society. The research contributes to a variety of different disciplines. Sociolinguists and psycholinguists can be interested in this research as it provides data and analysis purely relevant to their area of study. Sociologists and policy makers can also benefit from this research and see what they should do with the elderly mistreatment and disintegration phenomena prevalent in many societies.
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Prechter, Sabine. "The significance of discourse markers in the development of social roles /." Trier : WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verl. Trier, 2001. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb392593798.
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Garralda, Ortega Ángel. "The social construction of the Spanish nation : a discourse-based approach." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4989/.
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This thesis analyses Spanish nation-building from a social-constructionist perspective assuming that nations are historically evolving social constructs and that nationhood is a largely modern phenomenon with pre-modern antecedents. A theoretical model for studying nationhood is proposed based on a critique of nationalism theories, Giddens’s social structuration model (Giddens 1984) refined by Sewell (2005); modernisation theories and discourse analytical approaches. A discourse-oriented methodology is proposed: Spanish nation-building, conceptualised as semiotically-mediated social action situated across time-space, is analysed nomothetically and ideographically, both in its broad historical context and in connection with recent narratives extracted from a large purpose-built corpus of newspaper articles. Several factors behind Spain’s problematic nation-building are identified in the socio-historical analysis: an unyielding geography inhibiting communications, a long history of political and cultural fragmentation, a late and uneven modernisation and the lack of hegemonic national narratives in the context of a long history of confrontation between different identities. The corpus-based discourse analytical approach employed in the latter part of the analysis illustrates the potential offered by corpus-assisted discourse studies in social research, revealing that a widely-accepted Spanish identity discourse from the centre’s perspective has not yet emerged.
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Tsiveriotis, George. "Everything is awful : snark as ritualized social practice in online discourse." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/111293.
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Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-96).
This thesis explores a mode of collective meaning making at the intersection of humor, insult, and jest that increasingly occupies social media conversations, online comment sections, and Internet writing far and wide: for lack of a better word, snark. Though akin to the similarly maligned practices of irony and sarcasm, snark is more unwieldy and less refined. To accuse others of snark is to question their intentions, their sincerity, even the validity of their claims. Snark is often seen as destructive. Per the subtitle of critic David Denby's book on the matter, "it's mean, it's personal, and it's ruining our conversations."' In the following pages, I investigate the role of snark in online discourse and attempt to salvage it from its bad reputation. I define and historicize snark as a humor- and insult-based social practice rooted in oral rather than written traditions. I argue that snark can adopt a pro-social role in online environments whose architecture tends to reward vapid or deceptive content (which, per former Gawker writer Tom Scocca, I call smarm and situate within Harry Frankfurt's concept of bullshit). After a discussion of the differences between politeness and civility, I define pro-social snark as impolite yet civil. Lastly, I analyze snark's affective qualities, and specifically its close relationship with paranoia. Utilizing Eve Sedgwick's notions of paranoid and reparative reading, I advocate for a reparative practice of snark that gives back to the culture it ridicules.
by George Tsiveriotis.
S.M. in Comparative Media Studies
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Yasmin, Ibrahim. "The role of regulations and social norms in mediating political discourse." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.503410.
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Costantini, Andrea. "The European Security And Defence Discourse And The Role Of Arms Companies : A Critical Discourse Analysis On European Security Policies Post-2016." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk historia och internationella relationer, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-193770.
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Paul, Davidson. "Metaphor in contemporary British social-policy : a cognitive critical study of governmental discourses on social exclusion." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5348.
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This thesis explores the ideological role of metaphor in British governmental discourses on 'social exclusion'. A hybrid methodology, combining approaches from Corpus Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and cognitive theories of metaphor, is used to address how social exclusion and other metaphors are deployed to create an ideologically vested representation of society. The data consists of linguistic metaphors identified from a 400,000+ word machine-readable corpus of British governmental texts on social exclusion covering a ten year period (1997- 2007). From these surface level features of text, underlying systematic and conceptual metaphors are then inferred. The analysis reveals how the interrelation between social exclusion and a range of other metaphors creates a dichotomous representation of society in which social problems are discursively placed outside society, glossing inequalities within the included mainstream and placing the blame for exclusion on the cultural deficiencies of the excluded. The solution to the problem of exclusion is implicit within the logic of its conceptual structure and involves moving the excluded across the 'boundary' to join the 'insiders'. The welfare state has a key role to play in this and is underpinned by a range of metaphors which anticipate movement on the part of the excluded away from a position of dependence on the state. This expectation of movement is itself metaphorically structured by the notion of a social contract in which the socially excluded have a responsibility to try and include themselves in society in return for the right of (temporary) state support. Key systematic metaphors are explained by reference to a discourse-historical view of ideological change in processes of political party transformation.