Language and Power

"La notion de norme et de référence à la norme est absolument fondamentale pour qui s’intéresse aux langues humaines. Langues, dialectes, parlers et accents suivent tous des règles rigoureuses, que l’observation permet de déterminer. Il n’y a pas de langue sans grammaire : la langue est une norme.
Cependant, les langues du monde ne jouissent pas toutes de statuts égaux. Dans certains États, le ou les idiomes parlés par la majorité de la population sont normés (pourvus d’une norme de référence) et normalisés, c’est à dire soutenus par un appareil administratif et éducatif conséquent.
À l’inverse, de nombreuses communautés linguistiques, minoritaires ou trop pauvres, sont obligées d’utiliser d’autres langues que leur langue maternelle pour avoir accès à l’enseignement ou aux services publics. La normalisation des langues vernaculaires de ces groupes laissés pour compte est souhaitable pour deux raisons : 1. la préservation de la diversité culturelle de la planète ; 2. l’établissement de systèmes éducatifs et d’information plus performants, parce qu’utilisant la langue maternelle des communautés considérées.
Fixer la norme d’une langue peu décrite est loin d’être une sinécure, comme le montre l’exemple capverdien. Et en fin de compte, cette nouvelle norme n’aura d’utilité que si les pouvoirs publics favorisent sa normalisation, à savoir sa diffusion systématique auprès des populations concernées. L’aventure de la normalisation des langues vaut cependant la peine d’être vécue, en particulier dans nombre de pays du Tiers-Monde. En normant et en normalisant, le linguiste a un rôle essentiel à jouer dans les processus de développement économique."

International Communications has been largely concerned with investigating the fields of propaganda, advertising, and political campaigning. The Israeli-Lebanese conflict of 2006 is used, as a case study, in support of the current research... Finally, the process of propaganda as a form of public diplomacy, mass communication and political manipulation is examined as a platform of instrumentality and social identity projection. 

"Key experiences are short and intense instructional episodes that students remember to have had a decisive effect on their lives and are usually equated with a sense of self-direction and empowerment.
This study analyzes gender differences in the narrations of key educational experiences of Palestinian Israeli students"

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic, tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic and that to redress this tendency appraisers should make explicit, empirically based adjustments to the estimates of a project’s costs, benefits, and duration. HM Treasury recommends that these adjustments be based on data from past projects or similar projects elsewhere, and adjusted for the unique characteristics of the project in hand. In the absence of a more specific evidence base, HM Treasury has encouraged departments to collect data to inform future estimates of optimism, and in the meantime use the best available data. In response to this, the Department for Transport (henceforth DfT), has contracted Bent Flyvbjerg in association with COWI to undertake the consultancy assignment "Procedures for dealing with Optimism Bias in Transport Planning". The present Guidance Document is the result of this assignment.

As megaprojects have become ubiquitous, their real benefits and costs have come under increased scrutiny. We interviewed Bent Flyvbjerg, who has extensively studied megaproject development. Flyvbjerg has found systematic problems in the development process: by intentionally misrepresenting information and deliberately disregarding risks, proponents instigate projects that result in fewer benefits and higher costs than promised.

The development of courtly lyric in Occitan courts during the eleventh and twelfth centuries is still a subject of study for literary criticism. Some of the essays that have dealt with this matter have linked the success of courtly lyric to its apparently innovative features, such as the exaltation of human love and the depiction of women in a position of power. However, this argument is less than convincing: on the one hand, it ignores the extraordinarily varied love casuistry in troubadour lyric; on the other hand, it obviates the presence of such literary motifs in previous and contemporary poetic traditions. This paper shows that the success of courtly lyric is not owed to these aspects, but to a different set of features that were truly new and exclusive to the courtly milieu. It is also argued that the alleged sovereignty of women in courtly lyric is actually false. Examples from Provençal, Catalan and Valencian lyric texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries are quoted in support of these ideas.