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When James Watson suggested that Africans are less intelligent that Whites in October of this year, he was quickly called 'stupid' and 'irrational.' In this paper, I argues that this characterization misses the structural elements at play and the social, cultural, and scientific conditions in which these comments are made. Specifically, this research examines the role of cultural and scientific discourse in genomics. While scientific research is built on a position of neutrality from the object of study, it is impossible to study race without common sense understandings of racial difference 'infecting' the purity of science. Scientific discourse is embedded in cultural assumptions about the nature of race and social order. Theoretically, this paper identifies four discursive frames that characterize race talk in contemporary society, drawing on the work of Bell, Bonilla-Silva, Gilroy, Hall, and Spivak. Through a textual analysis of interviews with participants from the next Human Genome Project and articles from biomedical and science journals, I show how these frames operate in the field of human genomics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homosexuality in Singapore is illegal and suffers from social stigmatization. The local media avoided the topic and homosexual activities had flourished without publicity through the years. Recent admission by a top-ranking official to an international news magazine that the Singapore government has revised its policy to prevent discrimination against homosexuals opened the floodgates for media publicity, with the international media began naming Singapore as Asia’s new pink capital. The public declaration of Singapore as a gay haven spooked the government, who sought a subtle approach to discipline and control the public behavior of homosexuals: through discourse about homosexuality in the national newspaper. This paper examines news coverage of a senior government official’s claim that the rise of HIV/Aids cases in Singapore is due to the promiscuous lifestyles of homosexuals and argues that Singapore’s national daily, in framing homosexuality as promiscuous and contrary to traditional values, served as a platform for the government to reestablish control and subvert homosexuality in Singapore. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applications of genomic technologies in medical practice marks a significant outcome of convergences between big data and health. This paper explores genomic literacy among oncologists in the Personalized Onco-Genomics (POG) cancer clinical trial. POG represents spaces of convergence between medical and computing sciences, as well as doctors and data scientists. The paper gathers data from a survey and semi-structured interviews with medical oncologists and other scientists at POG. Using this data I identified two challenges in applying genomics in clinical practice including lack of knowledge equivalence among different medical stakeholders and diagnostic uncertainty of genomic information. POG makes it possible to bridge these gaps. POG instantiates a pedagogical space where different medical stakeholders come together to co-construct and translate genomic data into clinical information through their communicative and discursive processes, as they learn more about genomics. As such, communication and discourse play an important role in improving genomic literacy among physicians and facilitating knowledge translation of genomics. Higher genomic literacy can influence clinical treatments for cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to recent calls to deepen the comprehension and study of alternative organizations, this paper addresses the following question: What are the processes through which an organization is constituted as an alternative? It does so by exploring how the "alternative" is constituted through the ongoing practices, interactions, and discourses of UPop, an alternative university based in Montreal. Drawing on Derrida's notion of différance, this paper offers an analytical framework based on two processes of differentiation, which oscillate between being different or similar and being oppositional or consensual. Applying this framework to a case study reveals that these processes of differentiation are key to positioning UPop as an alternative to normative and dominant paradigms (e.g., capitalism, corporatization of the university, and media corruption). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-communist Eastern Europe has been often represented from the outsiders' perspective as a hopeless region that is forever haunted by the lingering remnants of the Soviet era. This paper explores the emergence of certain cultural discourses articulated in artistic, architectural, and social spaces in rural Estonia. More specifically, the paper argues that the metamodern (Vermeulen & Akker, 2010) expressions in rural Estonia's art, architecture, and social movements serve as alternative spaces where the post- Soviet, postmodern urban hegemony and nihilism can be resisted. The utopian hope for a progressive country life expressed in these platforms keeps rural Estonians searching for something they may never find, which is why they never stop the search for it, and act as if (the better) rural life does exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the problem of knowledge posed by 'girls'. Apart from Girls Studies, girls are relatively scattered or absent in formal knowledge systems. But girls are all over the internet and social media, as producers, users and as representations in discourse. How might formal disciplines - scientific and cultural - integrate with social media to answer the questions: what are girls, where did they come from, and how do we know? The paper works through some of the issues at stake in order to set up a distinctive and hopefully useful approach for answering them. It is organised into two parts: 'Girls in the wild' and 'Girls in the world'. It concludes that girls are a culture-made group, evolving - not without struggle - into a self-organising, self-conscious, global class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration among organizations and institutions is increasingly required to develop approaches and solutions to complex problems. This paper adopts a definition of inter-organizational collaborations as relationships that leverage the differences among participants and balance divergent stakeholder concerns (Hardy, et al, 2005:58). The paper takes a discursive, constructionist approach in exploring a case of inter-organizational collaboration in dealing with conflict. The case data underscore the role of conversation, language, and talk. Contraversation, that is, dialectical and dialogical conversation, directed against one organization within the network, appeared to construct antagonisms and thwart collaboration. The studyÂ’s explorations add to propositions in recent research and theory concerning the role of conversations in developing discursive resources that create a collective identity and translate it into effective inter-organizational collaboration to deal with problematic concerns, in this case social conflict. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project aimed at theorizing the rhetorical practices by which artifacts are materialized in discourse and how this process can shape political interactions. It provides support for the idea that our ways of talking about technical artifacts and mobilizing them in discourse to perform actions are constitutive of the contemporary public sphere. Its originality lies in the articulation of two literatures, the social shaping of technology perspective and public sphere theory, to advance a theoretical framework that considers the discursive processes by which citizens constitute technical artifacts and the discursive practices by which they shape their collective future as inner connected. Through an argumentation analysis of a dialogue among technical designers, the paper identifies two key dimensions of the process by which artifacts are inscribed in public life. First, the artifacts appear in the interaction as a set of principles by which society and technology are, quite literally, held together in discourse. Second, these specific meanings ascribed to the artifacts are mobilized to authorize individual and collective actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, this paper examines the discursive structure of the digital divide debate as it is articulated among contemporary online users and non-users in the United States. The paper argues that the discourse of individualism serves as a filter that shapes and distorts all private and public conversations about the digital divide and thus limits public debate on the subject. We consider the ways in which secondary topics of technological determinism, educational benefit, and consumer choice are shaped through this filter of individualism. Finally, we explore the extent to which there exists what Jameson (1987) has proposed is a ?third language? that struggles for legitimacy against the first language of individualism: that of Marxist critique. We note that there are nascent hints of this ?third language? in the ways that the digital divide is discussed relative to the specific, lived situations of economic disadvantage among some respondents. Yet we conclude that the potential political power of this ?third language? is muted as it echoes rather than challenges the contradictions inherent to the promise of the digital era that are found at the heart of both corporate advertising and current social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines an alternate means by which women who engage in artistic endeavors create women-centered spaces to deal with male biases. Specifically, the paper addresses the role of women DJs and their positioning within electronic/dance music (hereafter, E/DM). First, I investigate the marginalization of women in E/DM DJ culture. Second, this paper looks specifically at the functions and purposes of the Sisterdjs listserv for its participants. Ultimately, I argue that the Sisterdjs listserv is an educating and encouraging space for its participants with no offline equivalent. My findings suggest that Sisterdjs is important to the identity construction of female DJs. Collectives such as this one provide support to women who are pursuing interests beyond the borders of their traditional gender roles. Such encouragement and reassurance works to break down beliefs in the necessity and naturalness of performing prescribed gender roles, both within and beyond the borders of E/DM communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of subaltern women or women of the South, women in positions of marginality in both the industrialized and periphery countries, has been troubled in a variety of Western discourses, including Western feminist discourses. This paper is an attempt to explore to what extent distinctly global feminist discourses have attempted to create an alternative "third space" allowing for the articulation of the visions and voices of subaltern women, to what extent global feminism is informed and shaped by this third space. The paper begins by charting the troubled position of subaltern women in a variety of Western discourses, including Western feminist discourses. It then proceeds to examine ways in which global feminisms are attempting to articulate a "third space" from which subaltern women might speak and shape the ideology and practices of the global feminist movement itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how dispersed individuals are constituted as a diasporic subject of the nation-state and, in turn, how the identity of the nation-state is reinvented in national discourses. To this end, the paper presents a discursive analysis of publications of the Association for the Polish Commonwealth established in 1990 to cultivate relations between Poland and its diaspora. The paper extends the framework of constitutive rhetoric by exploring transnational discourse flowing across borders. The analysis identifies a flexible subject as an ideological effect of constitutive discourse that aims to legitimate a diasporic form of collective engagement with the homeland across borders and from a position of national membership in another nation-state. This form of discourse enables the nation-state to reinforce its position and extend its influence beyond its political borders. The concept of flexibility directs attention to how identities and cultural meanings are negotiated and produced across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of reflexivity in interaction and, in particular, participation in political discourse. Specifically, the study explores the participation of Generation Xers on an Internet site dedicated to political discussion and the ways in which they position themselves in relation to the identity marker "Generation X." An emergent typology from participation suggests that participants' reflexive moves are motivated by the need to appropriate or repair the stigmatized generational label and fluctuate between individualistic and collectivist positions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance of a secure sense of place from which civic participation can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection and use of reference terms in discourse can do much to indicate whom a speaker is addressing and with whom he or she is aligning. This can be particularly problematic in public address, in that the selection of one descriptor or proterm over another can effectively include one category or population of persons in the audience and exclude others. Indeed, some seemingly generic or ambiguous references, when situated within public discourse, can be used to infer that differences or asymmetries are being implied between categories or populations of persons. In a speech exchange system whose design demonstrates a concern with inclusiveness, drawing boundaries between participants and their positions on issues under deliberation can be a sensitive matter, particularly if the issues are controversial, or potentially divisive. In this paper, we explore the sensitivity of managing alignment with others while maintaining one's differences with, or distance from, them, as evidenced in speakers' use of an ambiguously inclusive categorical reference term, "we." Our analytic site is in the speech of participants in a public meeting. The paper begins by reviewing what we know about "doing sensitivity" and gives background on the public meeting that is the paper's focus. Then we analyze the uses of "we" in the presentations of two participants at this meeting. We show that the indexicality and ambiguity of "we" and related terms are used by speakers to distance themselves from certain categories of persons and activities, while at the same time including members of the audience, and aligning themselves with categories of persons among them. These uses of "we," we argue, provide participants with a means of indexing yet obscuring the moral judgment of persons and/or moral implications of their actions. That is, we demonstrate how uses of "we" call attention to the matters under discussion, and the very discussion of them, as "sensitive," or potentially disruptive... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the impact of Euro crisis on European identity constructions in national media discourses. It states that euroscepticism in the European Union (EU) member states and distrust between the EU countries were impressively demonstrated during the 2015 migrant crisis. It informs that European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, presented a white paper on the future of the EU after Brexit.

Aligned with previous research on governance of communicative spaces this article is organised in two main parts. The first, theoretical, explores social media and geomedia enhanced demonstrations challenging the notion of public sphere. The circuit of devices, discourses and communicative practices forms an interface of political interactions, the communicative space, that critically defines the features of democracy. The second part of this article combines empirical findings to develop an already existing analytical tool designed for the understanding of the complexity of those communicative spaces. Research has provided tools and strategies to understand the role of representations of place; but the same findings have shown that this does not suffice to holistically and critically approach the configurations of space. This paper focuses on the structures of space that establish conditions for the information flows and channelling the debates. Results show three subcategories for the analysis of structures: barriers, shifts, and flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discursive role and positioning of arts journalism at a prominent Afrikaans language newspaper, Die Burger, in South Africa during a period of radical transformation in society in the 1990s. In this study, conducted within a critical-cultural paradigm, arts journalists are considered to be manufacturers of cultural capital, a term devised by Pierre Bourdieu as part of his comprehensive field theory framework. While Bourdieu uses cultural capital in the main to describe the role of education and culture in the maintenance of elite power hierarchies, this paper investigates how the nature of cultural capital at Die Burger was affected by power shifts when competing elites jostled for dominance in a post-apartheid dispensation. By drawing on Michel Foucault's theory of discourse, the focus of research further incorporates the discursive positioning of arts journalists in their coverage of arts and cultural events in the 1990s in relation to shifting configurations of power. The argument is that arts journalism at Die Burger can be situated within networks of power and thus contributed to the structuring of post-apartheid society. In the words of Antonio Gramsci, arts journalists became involved in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggles. Flowing from these theoretical departure points, the paper identifies critical discourse analysis (CDA) as an appropriate research method for textual analysis and adapts a fivephase model suggested by Teun van Dijk as part of his contextual CDA approach. To affect triangulation and enhance the textual analysis, the paper also employs semi-structured indepth interviews with arts journalists who were prominent at Die Burger in the 1990s. The paper found that arts journalists were at the intersection of different and often diverging and contradictory power-points in post-apartheid discourses at the newspaper. On the one hand, some arts journalists embraced a legacy of editorial independence at the arts desk and sometimes created oppositional discourses to the official political view of the newspaper: for instance on the issue of alleged "collective guilt" for Afrikaners and whether Naspers should appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to explain its role in supporting the National Party (NP) during apartheid. On the other hand, many arts journalists shared the editor's apparent aversion to the international cultural boycott supported by the ANC and harboured some of the same skepticism about the so-called Africanisation of society and resultant attacks on Eurocentrism in the arts. ANC and harboured some of the same skepticism about the so-called Africanisation of society and resultant attacks on Eurocentrism in the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how political subjectivity is framed and expressed through language use in television political interviews. The paper argues that Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field provide a useful framework for analyses of political subjectivity in news media interviews, but it also argues that the more sociological emphasis of Bourdieu's theory cannot sufficiently account for the constitutive importance of discourse in the agency of the habitus and the boundaries and authority of different fields. As such, the analysis also draws on the critical discourse analysis of Chouliaraki and Fairclough, to demonstrate how Prime Ministerial discourse involves negotiations of different constitutive features of an individual subjectivity, and also negotiations between a particular habitus and the exigencies of the journalistic and political fields. Through an analysis of interviews of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on influential Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) programmes, Insiders and the 7.30 Report, it is argued that the Prime Minister attempts to exercise political authority through an ensemble of discourses, initiating different relations with the interviewers, political colleagues and opponents, leading public figures in other fields, and the Australian public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as its point of departure the distinction between health advocacy and health activism this paper elaborates the differences in various communication strategies adopted by individuals and groups in relation to mental health and illness. A distinction is identified between more activist oriented tactics, employed by participants in the survivor movement, and advocacy aligned tactics that are more likely to be emphasized by those who operate within and according to the biomedical model in mental health. The paper draws from selected media coverage in Australia to illustrate some of the tactics used by activists and some of the shifts in thinking called for by proponents of 'postpsychiatry'. These media items are situated in the larger context of activism in the mental health field, from which the following themes are identified: reclaiming madness and using humour; elevating the first person voice and experience; and resisting medicalization and recognizing the harm of psychiatric labels. In this context, the paper identifies the limitations of the concept of 'mental health literacy' and the importance its advocates place on persuading people to adopt medicalized definitions of their experiences. We argue that this approach fails to recognize that many people either do not see their experiences in these terms or overtly resist medicalization and pathologization. We conclude that activism in the mental health field offers an exciting area of exploration for health communication and media studies scholars with a theoretical and practical interest in health activism and related issues of identity and power relationships. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I propose a move away from a simplistic representational analysis of media stereotypes towards a more complex theory of the mainstream Spanish and English-language media as globally situated social institutions of popular knowledge production about ethnicity, race and gender. The growing demand for multicultural women, their cultural labor and their lived stories is contextualized in this paper within the tumult of a decade defined by increasing tensions about immigration and associated changes in demographics, both of which are often perceived as threats to established definitions of U.S. citizenship and nation. Examining the tension between the cultural industries demands for ethnic female sexuality and the continuing backlash against ethnic and racial minority women, I theorize the position of Latina bodies in the mainstream media landscape as both culturally desirable and socially contested. Thus, the following questions guide the arguments of this paper: What is desirable and consumable about U.S. Latinas during the millennial era? Under what representational conditions are Latinas socially acceptable, dangerous or transformative to specific audiences? And what are the limits, possibilities and consequences of Latinas' contemporary global marketability? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the hegemonic intervention in Danish public discourse by the extreme Right in 1986. The far right?s campaign in mid-80s substantially changed the way social divisions are envisioned in Denmark, where culture, ethnicity and religion are now the signifiers of social distinctions rather than class, gender or other types of differences. What we are witnessing in Denmark and Europe is more than the normalization of racist views: it is about ethnicization of the whole field of social formations. Ethnicity/culture ? and specifically Islam ? has become the master signifier for the main controversy around which the issues of identity, globalization, and the welfare system are discussed and (re)articulated. The ?culturalization? of discourse pushed the entire political spectrum to the right.The question is: how did a single figure, S?Krarup, a priest known for his far right views, gain almost unlimited access to discourse and achieved a long-lasting influence on the ontology of the social? A big part of the answer lies in his construction of the Danish people ? the so-called silent majority ? against a dictatorial political elite who were about to destroy Denmark. The main argument is that the moral panics around the numbers of incoming refugees created a deep hegemonic crisis that provided an opportunity for Krarup to present himself as the representative of the ?silenced? masses. The paper is a discussion of the discursive environment that made possible his intervention. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on recent field work conducted in the New Zealand town of Matamata, home of the filming location for ?Hobbiton? in director Peter Jackson?s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Following a qualitative research programme of participant observation and in-depth interviewing, this case study offers a detailed history of Hobbiton?s creation as a film location and its continued evolution as a tourist site in a town previously unassociated with what might be termed the ?global popular.? Further, it explores the use of this story as a part of the location tour (which the titular quote references) and actors? articulation (in various terms) of the local/global cultural relationship. The paper connects its findings with the previous theoretical propositions of Couldry (2003, 2005) and Hoover, Clark & Alters (2004), who posit media as centering mechanisms in social life, either, in the first case, as a ?mediated center? of normativity, or, in the second, as a point of reference around which to create ?accounts of the media? which help define personal identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the hegemonic intervention in Danish public discourse by the extreme Right in 1986. The far right?s campaign in mid-80s substantially changed the way social divisions are envisioned in Denmark, where culture, ethnicity and religion are now the signifiers of social distinctions rather than class, gender or other types of differences. What we are witnessing in Denmark and Europe is more than the normalization of racist views: it is about ethnicization of the whole field of social formations. Ethnicity/culture ? and specifically Islam ? has become the master signifier for the main controversy around which the issues of identity, globalization, and the welfare system are discussed and (re)articulated. The ?culturalization? of discourse pushed the entire political spectrum to the right.The question is: how did a single figure, S?Krarup, a priest known for his far right views, gain almost unlimited access to discourse and achieved a long-lasting influence on the ontology of the social? A big part of the answer lies in his construction of the Danish people ? the so-called silent majority ? against a dictatorial political elite who were about to destroy Denmark. The main argument is that the moral panics around the numbers of incoming refugees created a deep hegemonic crisis that provided an opportunity for Krarup to present himself as the representative of the ?silenced? masses. The paper is a detailed analysis of the rhetorical strategies the extreme right?s intervention which granted them tremendous influence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to theorize contemporary celebrity consumption through examining the processes and structures of subjectivity that are fostered by popular celebrity discourses. Developing a late Foucauldian approach to celebrity consumption, I argue that consumers of celebrity are engaging in technologies of star testing. Ultimately, the paper is concerned to elaborate the ways in which celebrity consumption hooks up with larger discursive structures and thereby helps to materialize a re-constitution of the relationship between labor, government, and self necessary for the social reproduction of neo-liberal capitalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctors regularly work to generate rates of patients' alcohol use. One way patients resist this work is by using nonstandard temporal metrics (such as 'occasionally') to describe their alcohol usage. In this paper we demonstrate that and how patients and physicians treat this metric as specifically used in place of a 'rate of use.' Thus it can be seen as a method whereby one can obviate a 'rate of use,' thereby avoiding providing an abstract quantification of one's drinking practices. Fundamental to the methods for resisting quantification is the effort to invoke or appeal to the situated, lived context of one's practice. That is, most methods of resistance involve an assertion that a de-contextualized count is not an adequate or appropriate representation of one's habit. Thus these efforts of resistance are perspicuous displays of what has been termed the 'morality of cognition'. They are also demonstrations of the subtle contentiousness inherent in any institutional interaction, wherein institutional agents work to obtain abstractly rendered quantitative information from their public. The data for this paper are drawn from over 100 audio and video recordings of primary care interactions between doctors and patients, transcribed according to the Gail Jefferson transcription conventions, and are analyzed using conversation analytic methods. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of deliberative democracy is gaining more and more attention and support among researchers of political communication. However, it still lacks an empirical foundation and confirmation of many of its claims. This paper contributes to the empirical investigation of deliberation as a form of communication with a comparative analysis of nine cases of deliberation held on the Internet. It focuses on the question of how equal and symmetric deliberation is, and confronts the normative ideal with data from real-world political discourses. It is shown that all of the discourses are strongly distorted with respect to the contributions as well as the references in the debate. Furthermore, the interrelation of asymmetry of discourse and interactivity is analyzed. This gives rise to considerations of the positive functions of inequality of participation in large-scale discourses. Implications for the theory of deliberative democracy are discussed, as well as the need for further research. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two different concepts regarding the relation between organization members and their working environment are examined. The first concept is job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001; Wrzesniewski, Dutton & Debebe, 2003), and represents a paradigm shift in management theory from a passive attitude-bearing worker to an (en)active worker who, through reflection and interaction, crafts the images of his or her job, role and self in organizational contexts. The second concept is metaconversation (Robichaud, Giroux & Taylor, 2004), which unveils how the image of an organization emerges through the recursive nature of language. We will compare the concepts of job crafting and metaconversation to show parallels between the concepts, and explore ways in which the two different perspectives on these sensemaking processes can take advantage of the efforts and tools that are used in the study of the other perspective. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent theoretical work has argued that the organization emerges as a continuous process of discourse. The results of a year-long ethnographic study of a hotel kitchen this paper examines how humor constitutes and is influenced by the organization. Situated within incongruity and the tension of the workplace, a classification system of humor is created by examining the dialectical tensions of this workplace. This schema reveals five distinct types of humor, these types range from humor discourse used as control by management to uphold hotel policy and practice to humor discourse used as employee resistance to actively change management policy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working with the assumption that visual culture, specifically film, draws on wider hegemonic discourses circulating within the public space to construct its own narrative, this paper explores two Indian films from the 1990s when the Hindu nationalist movement had gained momentum, to identify the discourses that surrounded “maleness” during this time. A discourse and social semiotic analysis of the two films, Roja and Sarfarosh, revealed three key themes – “the centrality of home and duty,” “the link between an individual male’s biography and the nation’s narrative,” and “the nation and religion’s role in defining male identity” – which suggest that a certain form of masculinity had acquired hegemonic status in India in the 1990s. Even as Hindu nationalism defines India as a Hindu nation, neatly collapsing the terms “Indian” and “Hindu” and describes Islam as “alien” to the Indian nation, I argue that the forms of masculinity that became hegemonic during this period accorded primacy to patriotism, duty and virility and marginalized all other forms of masculinity not linked to nationalism and the nation in specific ways, including that of the Muslim male by delegetimizing them. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to research efforts exploring the impact of varied civic education approaches on students. A one-credit oral discourse course, designed as the intervention in a pre-experimental design, underscored the importance of collective political participation and attempted to strengthen the skills needed to engage in populist democratic politics. These included the communication skills of negotiation, compromise and persuasion. Findings from pre and post semester questionnaires indicate the course had limited effects on traditional measures of students’ internal and external political efficacy. Yet they also reveal improvements in assessments of social trust, the perceived effectiveness of collective political acts and the projected likelihood of participating in political activities. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gastric bypass surgery has been made popular by Carnie Wilson's internet broadcast of her own procedure. Since her public display of such a private moment, our discussion of her has been readily focused on how she is properly performing femininity (or not). When Al Roker also had the procedure done years later, the public response was much different. This paper analyzes the gendered differences in public discourse surrounding Wilson and Roker and how their obesity is framed by their gender. Further, after Roker's public outing regarding the surgery, Wilson enjoyed greater acclaim and praise for her procedure, rather than the criticism she received for bypassing traditional feminine responses to the inappropriate body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the "cultural turn" in development studies as a backdrop, this paper argues for a reconstruction of the development subject that has been deconstructed by the poststructuralist critique of the dominant development discourse. Focusing the tensions the poststructuralist debate entails, this paper compares the three templates featuring the relationship of the global and the local: "think globally, act locally," "think locally, act globally" and "think locally, act locally." It proposes a synthesis "think glocally, act glocally" as a better conceptual device in theorizing postdevelopment interventions. This reconceptualization balances poststructuralist tendency to retreat to the local with an emphasis on the normative concern of global capitalism. It also aims to reconstitute the designated subjectivity in the development discourse with materiality and corporeality by combining a cultural politics with political economy. The paper also engage in the "essentialization" discourse and argues for a postcolonial sensibility in development studies where the term "hybridity" offers a better understanding of the dynamics between the global and local. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the most recent coverage of China between 2002 and 2003 by the most prestigious mainstream newspaper of the United States, The New York Times. It finds that The New York Times stories have centered on the dilemma of China's "one party market economy," delineating a transitional China marked by rapid economic growth and social changes, yet besieged by serious social conflicts. With both a negative side and some positive signs, China is seen as a land of crisis and opportunities. This paper argues that The New York Times coverage of China indicates a subtle change in tone and in the way of framing, with a more neutral and objective stance as well as a more pluralistic perspective. All these suggest a tendency towards change in mainstream US media portrait of China. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the relationship between discourse and organization. It is a relationship of growing interest in organizational studies as organizations are increasingly framed as discursive constructions. However, such framing appears subject to at least three orientations. First, an organization may be cast as an already formed object with discourse central to the features and outcomes of organizing. Second, organizations may be seen in a perpetual state of becoming through the ways that the properties of discourse shape organizing. Finally, organizations and discourse may be cast as a duality that is mutually constituted. Moreover, each of these three orientations provides a different cast to the terms discourse and Discourses. We use these interpretations and different notions about discourse to explore the research traditions on language and social interaction. We contend that all three orientations are necessary and should operate simultaneously to reveal a complex view of the organizational-discourse relationship, one that is discerning of the strengths and shortcomings of discourse as a metaphor of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we assess scholarship about new media and organizational discourse from a practice perspective. While this scholarship in the last twenty years has yielded valuable contributions, we argue that its current innovative capacity lies behind that of both technology production and use. More precisely, we identify three issues which we believe a) are relatively under-developed in the current state of the literature, b) have become particularly problematic in the light of contemporary organizational and technological innovations, and c) may benefit from a practice perspective. These issues revolve around a relatively narrow characterization of context, an atomized view of communication processes, and a compartmentalization of technology's discursive potentials. Based on an analysis of these limitations, we outline a programmatic statement suggesting how a more practice-oriented understanding of the recursive interaction between people, new media, and organizational discourse contributes to overcoming these shortcomings. We contend that by focusing on the everyday activities of situated actors, a practice orientation can provide insights into the dynamic, emergent, and enacted nature of organizational discourse as it unfolds through a complex array of new and evolving media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now more than ever countries are interested in maintaining their national images. Scholars are increasingly turning their attention to this new and important site for public relations. However, just like other organizations, countries at times face threats to their image, crises that are capable of being addressed with image repair discourse. This paper applies Image Restoration Discourse to Saudi Arabia's attempt to repair its damaged reputation after the tragic events of 9/11. It was accused of supporting terrorism and of failing to support a possible U.S. attack on Iraq. Relying heavily on denial and bolstering, the image repair effort was partially successful at dispelling the first concern; was notably less effective in responding to the second accusation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with Foucault's (1977, 1980, 1994) ideas, I illustrate the importance of studying power in organizational conflict negotiations from a discourse perspective on a micro level by interpreting language use in a specific instance of labor-management bargaining in this paper. My aim with this study is to present scholars with an exemplar for conducting this type of micro-level critical discourse analysis. My analysis suggests that the meaning of certain key knowledge/truth constructs like "discipline," "company policy," "consistency," and "trust" are not as fixed in the negotiation as they appear to be, but are communicatively negotiated between labor and management during the course of the collective bargaining. My interpretation therefore supports Foucault's claim that power relationships are maintained, reinforced, or altered via discursive formations and suggests that a negotiation can truly be a negotiation over meaning (Putnam, van Hoeven, & Bullis, 1991). To conclude, I discuss my findings in light of previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given its dual role as both describer and producer of cultural realities, university-based social research warrants ethnographic study as a communication industry unto itself. A critical perspective on the practical ?doing? of research frequently focuses on abstract methodological arguments, such as those over qualitative versus quantitative research, rather than the lived experiences of researchers and subjects within the organizational constraints of research institutions. "Doing a survey,? either face to face or over the phone, is a particular social event for which there are tacit conversational rules. In this paper, I analyze face-to-face administration of closed-ended survey questions as unique speech events through which meaning is constructed and privileged. Using the methods of interactional sociolinguistics, I will analyze the interaction between researcher and subject in two taped examples of survey administration. Through discussion of these particular events, I will demonstrate that the practice of identifying and gathering data can be seen as the outcome of negotiation and collaboration between researcher and respondent. Once the answers have been agreed upon, they are encoded as research data, but the collaborative framework within which data was obtained is often disregarded. The regularities of this framework are what concern me here, and bringing theoretical perspectives from discourse analysis to bear to the survey research process is my goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I reflect on the question of justice for sexual minorities with respect to radical alterity and non-reciprocity. In particular, I’m interested in the tensions and interplay between recognition and the other vis-a-vis what Levinas calls the "pathos of liberalism" and the radical possibilities of pluralism. What might it mean to give recognition to an other without resorting to flattening differences and privileging same over other, as is so worn into the fabric of liberal political discourse? How can discourse ethics contribute to understanding the politics of identity, hatred of sexual minorities, and political discourse about incommensurate moral orders? More specifically, what implications do the possibilities of pluralism-without-the-limitations-of-liberalism have for recognition of others in transformative public discourse? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversation and writing are two communicative media that hold different cultural meanings in organizations as members have preferences for which media should be used in which situations. In this paper I examine how writing serves a textualizing function in the accomplishment of organizational change. The data set consists of conversational transcripts and written documents collected during a nine-month long study of a project team at a high-tech corporation. Results show that written forms that create general truths out of individual experiences help both to create a space for organizational change to occur and to create the change as an object to be distributed and consumed by organizational members. Writing down weaknesses opened a space for the team to refer to in later meetings as topics for change. Changes later discussed were themselves textualized in written form. The project suggests that writing is a significant stabilizing practice in the achievement of organizational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the last several decades, scholars have analyzed talk television to enhance understanding of mass communication and culture. As this form of television became more popular in the 1990s, programs evolved to serve a variety of additional audiences and created new genres of talk television. One of the programs emerging out of this time was "Politically Correct," a discussion-based television talk show mixing humor with current political issues. This paper looks at a series of episodes of "Politically Incorrect" to gain a better understanding the ways in which discussion panel members discursively navigate between the immediate panel members and the larger audience. Analyzing talk television using discourse analysis adds to the understanding of mass communication at the level in which participants engage. This study explores multiple ways in which Goffman?s (1967) concept of footing contributes to understanding of this show. The significance of this concept to mass communication studies of "Politically Incorrect" lies in the way in which panel members change footing to contribute to the television show?s goal, to entertain, while allowing the pursuit of their own goal of image maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we offer new interpretations of critical empirical analyses of identity construction processes at work and focus on the ways in which the dichotomy between the "real" self and the "fake" self is created and maintained through organizational talk, practices and theories, such emotion labor. We argue that marginalized members often label their organizational selves as "fake" and/or compartmentalize public and private selves, while more privileged employees are encouraged to align their seemingly "real" selves with the preferred or idealized organizational self. The dichotomy has several discursive and material implications for members and organizations. Specifically, it encourages strategized self-subordination, perpetually-deferred identities, "auto-dressage," and the production of "good little copers." We close by presenting the metaphor of the "crystallized self" as an alternative to the real self-fake self dichotomy and suggest that communication scholars are well-poised for developing alternative vocabularies and understandings of identity within the popular imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization cannot be discussed without dealing with the notions of nation, culture, and identity. Globalization both homogenizes and heterogenizes the world. The hegemony of the English language is tightly connected with the globalization process and creates tension, intensification, and modification in people's national identity. In January 2000, an advisory commission to the late Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi published a report in which they suggested that English be adopted as the second official language of Japan. The proposal triggered heated debates among Japanese people. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, the present paper explores how Japanese people express their national identity through an examination of the opinions posted on a Japanese national newspaper's website. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distance education has taken on a new shape with the introduction of new digital technologies that have made the process of interaction between the teacher and student a far more vibrant process. This change, and the fact that distance education often takes place with the use of text-based systems, leads to the re-thinking of the distance education "classroom" as a discursive space where the voices of the teachers and students take on unique qualities. Using the construct of "voice" this paper argues that the role of the teacher and the student is constantly changing as multiple voices can be heard in the discursive pedagogic space of distance education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I conduct a cultural discourse analysis of the communication within and surrounding the Canadian political satire, Talking to Americans. My data is derived from over six years of episodes and seven depth interviews with Candians living in the U.S. and Americans living in Canada. Drawing largely from the works of Donal Carbaugh and Gerry Philipsen, I apply the concepts of terms for talk, dueling structures, and critical voice to my data. I argue that the categories for organizing the discourse and the terms for talk provided by my interviewees give new life to Talking to Americans as not only a popular political satire but also as a metonyn for Canadian humor and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a study investigating friends' discussions of failure events. Following Goffman (1955, 1967), the primary challenge types, offerings, and evaluations were coded from these interactions and analyzed for differences in participants' judgments of attentiveness toward other-face. As well, we looked at perceptions of positive and negative face-attentiveness based on the complexity of offerings and acceptances. Although not every accounting form resulted in significant differences, most were perceived differently in some way by either the speakers or their partners, and in many cases, the judgments made by the speakers were not the same as those made by the partners. More complex account sequences were seen typically by offering elictors as less attentive to their own negative face. Qualitative analyses also revealed that a more direct form of facework might replace or work alongside accounts as a response to elicitations or offerings, requests for advice from the accounter may be related to judgments of greater negative other-face attentiveness by the accounter but less attentiveness by the listener. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the language of Israeli gossip columns. The style used by columnists attempts to recreate the intimate interaction occuring when sharing gossip among friends. Though this gossip is printed in the media, a good columnist is able to challenge readers and engage them in deciphering enigmatic gossip items. This is achieved by a variety of discourse startegies, including style and code mixing, direct address to the audience and a unique persona of the column itself. The result is a fake intimacy that replicate oral exchange of information and compensate for the lack of immediacy. A new media discourse has been created, waiting for thorough analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Sept. 12, 2001, the publishers of the two leading dailies in Italy and France headlined their front-page editorials with the same words: ?We Are All Americans.? Both meant more than sympathy for the American people ? the basic question this study seeks to answer is, what socio-cultural construct did these journalists associate with being American? Adapting a ritual view of communication, this paper studies the evolution of a discourse of the United States constructed by U.S.-based foreign correspondents for six Western European newspapers at the turn of the twenty-first century. It found two universal tenets?the acknowledgment, ranging from grateful to hateful, of the United States as the world?s sole superpower, whose isolationism is feared just as much as its meddling, and a stereotyping of Americans crystallized in the thorough dislike for President Bush. The construction of a common transatlantic identity was limited to the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, while the constructions of American and being American were unaltered by that tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass media images of gender, beauty and women have been at the heart of many feminist arguments about the need for change in our understanding of gender and the role it plays in our day to day existence. The role of a body, much like the role of a woman, is also negotiated between the pages and airways of our popular culture that precariously favors particular excessive behaviors and norms. A textual analysis of the popular press discourse surrounding two bodies demonstrates specific rhetorical strategies at work in the construction of the "appropriate" cultural body. This paper explores how these two bodies are positioned at the border of cultural intelligibility and how these bodies, acting as discourse themselves, speak to culture and reify their positions on the margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of information technology is increasingly becoming a part of NGO work. This paper seeks to examine the overall context and effects of discourse on information technology in India by analyzing themes in "I.T. Talk," as well as ways in which members of a particular NGO interpret and discuss their use of information technology. The study finds that while I.T. Talk is techno-optimist, in that it is characterized by themes of efficiency, centrality and inevitability, member discourse is characterized by themes of inevitability, support, potential and problems. Gramsci's concept of hegemony, interpreted in the context of institutional theory, is used to explain this difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]