Critical Discourse Studies

While the role that language policies play in the dialectical construction of national identity is well established, this process has not always been widely visible in the United States. (Tollefson, 2000). Yet, as seen in the recent Official English proposal in Nashville, Tennessee, the assertions of cultural control over the social imagination that adhere in such policies have both symbolic and material impact on minority language speakers and thus need to be better understood (Ricento, 2000).
As such, this paper critically examines the discourse of Nashville Official English proponents. First, I examine the sociocultural backdrop of English Only movements against which the Nashville proposal was made (Ricento, 2000). Next, using critical discourse analytics (Fairclough, 2001; Wodak, 2001), I analyze the use of metaphor and topoi in the policy statement of U.S. English, the powerful English Only advocacy group that supported the Nashville proposal.  I then compare this text to the position statement made by the leading proponent of the Nashville initiative along with a New York Times article about the proposal published in the days preceding the vote.  Finally, I analyze a selection of readers' comments made in response to the Times article.
In doing so, I show that coherence achieved through metaphor, syntactical relations, and interdiscursivity in official English arguments works to normalize a xenophobic ideology as common sense logic in an effort to sustain Anglo-centric hegemony through language policy (Fairclough, 1989).  In addition, I show how Nashville Official English proponents exploit the kairos of the current economic crisis as a subterfuge for advancing an anti-immigrant political agenda.  This study also contributes to understanding the processes of discursive formation and uptake in public sphere deliberation surrounding such language policy proposals as well as the role that Official English initiatives play in wider U.S. language policy debate.

In the western port city of Patras, the locals use the word erēmēni (erimin) in abundanceii. And yet should you ask, most of them ––yours truly included–– would struggle to explain the word’s actual meaning. Erimin is just erimin, would be the most often encountered response; shrouded shoulders and an admission of something of a self-defeat: there isn’t, really, a meaning to it. This is precisely where the wonderful thing lies about the word. The locals’ inability to attribute erimin a meaning might very well stem from the fact the word is used to connote an event so strange that we can no longer fully comprehend, or conceive it––an event, in other words, that lies outside our existent system of logic.

I was invited to give a session on blogging and social media at the University of Roehampton on 6 May 2014. The talk was intended to introduce researchers to the ‘nuts and blots’ of blogging and the utility of other social media platforms as research applications or devices, such as twitter, facebook and academia.edu.

"This article seeks to stimulate new thinking about learning disabilities, different than is customary in the local Israeli literature. previous educational and psychological studies concerning learning disabilities have regarded them as objective categories with formal definitions and criteria accepted in the scholarly literature. contrary to this, the present article explores the various conceptions, constructions and meanings of learning disabilities comprising the narrative descriptions and explanations of didactic diagnosticians. for this purpose 50 in-depth intyerviews were conducted.
The article contains four sections. Part one lays out the theoretical and methodological background of the sociological and discursive debate about learning disabilities. Part two explores the various main thematic aspects and narrative strategies used by diagnosticians in their construction of their purportedly 'objective', 'a-historical', 'a-political' experts' narrative. Part three reveals the polyphonic multifaceted nature of the learning disabilities construct.
The interviewees' narrative undermines the objective and homogenous definitions in the literature by uncovering learning disabilities' heterogeneous meaning repertoire. This repertoire consists, among others, of conceptualizing disability as a 'disease', a 'symptom', a 'genetic defect', a 'disorder', an 'educational difficulty', a 'variance' and even a 'gift'. It is revealed that the interviewees' narrative deconstructs the 'scientific factual nature' of the clinical categories. Part four explains the current popularity of the LD diagnosis in Israel."

This article seeks to uncover the various textual techniques through which binary representations of 'parenthood' are constructed and produced in the framework of  professional discourse of Israeli learning difficulties experts. Historically this discourse has constructed two contrasting parenthood representations: 'parenthood of learning disabled children' on the one hand, and 'parenthood of cultural deprived children' on the other hand.
The article posits the following main questions: Which textual representations of 'parenthood' were constructed in the framework of the aforementioned discourses? Which affinities can be identified between the textual representations and the contextual characteristics of social class, culture, ethnicity and educational capital? And which affinities can be identified between these representations and the explicit or implicit normative messages of 'blame', 'responsibility' and 'agency' embedded in the texts? 
A rich textual corpus of professional literature was assembled in order to answer these research questions. This corpus constitutes of academic and professional literature of Israeli experts of learning difficulties. The corpus spans the historical period between the 60' till the late 80' of the 20th century.
Critical historical discourse analysis was implemented in order to uncover the mutual and contradictory construction processes of parents of 'learning disabled' children (who were represented as 'normative') and of parents of 'cultural deprived' children (who were represented as 'others' and 'problematic'). The analysis also reveals the stereotypical imputation of 'normative' parents with a well-off, well-educated and western origin population, as well as the stereotypical imputation of 'problematic' parents with a low class, little educated and eastern origin population. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that the 'normative' parents were regarded as important and active partners of the experts in the processes of promoting their children's education and care, while at the same time the 'other' parents were regarded as an hindering factor to those processes, and even as guilty, to a large extent, in generating their children's 'problems'. The article also exposes the various rhetorical strategies through which the two profiles of  'parenthood' are mutually constructed. 
Lastly, the summary interprets the analyzed texts by situating them in the social and historical context of their formulation: The processes of psycho-cultural Othering which operated on low class, little educated  and eastern origin parents are interpreted on the background of the class and ethnic hierarchical structure of the Israeli society in the historical period under discussion. The summary also raises a conjecture regarding a rising new 'Othering' potential, a potential which was already implicitly embedded in the analyzed historical texts.
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This paper aims at reviewing the content of Buen vivir as an emergent discourse within the “gravitational field” of sustainable development: its genesis, its foundations and its singularity. First, we consider the criticisms to the development discourse and to its direct descendant: sustainable development. Next, we review the position of Latin America in the global discursive field of sustainable development and the situation of Buen vivir facing the debates therein. Drawing on the traditional repository of the aboriginal cultures of the continent, this new discourse has been theorized in the academic sphere and translated into normative principles that have permeated the political sphere, which is especially visible in the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia. In this article we refer to “Buen vivir” as the contemporary reelaboration of the quechua concept Sumak Kawsay, and other similar concepts from other indigenous nations. It includes both the idea of interdependence between society and its natural environment, as well as a conception of the universal as plural. Lastly, beyond its implications for environmental debate, Buen vivir also involves an imperative for the redefinition of relations between the citizenry, the state and the market.

While taking a political stance in social work necessarily involves a close historical examination of the role of social and economic structure as well as the context which constitutes relations of domination it also involves formulating an ontology of the political subject. We maintain that the proper conceptual space for understanding the possibility of taking a political stance is that of political ontology. In articulating this space we attempt to bring together structure and agency to outline a nuanced strategical framework for radical social work. We ask against which standards and concepts a radical social work stance must be judged? We also question the extent to which radical social work can be positioned within the disciplinary and professional field as a counter-strategy to both neoliberal capitalism and mainstream liberal social work? In doing so the paper attempts to plot the implications, the context and account for the existence, of significant meanings and realisations of the term new politics of social work, which is conceived as a "New Social Work Left".

Neoliberalism has become the dominant political economic arrangement in our world today. If proponents of neoliberal ideology are to be believed this signals a rising tide that lifts all boats towards a harmonious global village. Yet there is considerable room for skepticism, as embedded within such promises of utopia are the dystopian realities that exist in a number of countries, like Cambodia, where neoliberalization has not resulted in a movement towards peace, but in a profound and unmistakable encounter with violence. Contra the commonplace Orientalist renderings that suggest an inherently violent and authoritarian culture underpins Cambodia’s failure to consolidate peace and democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition in the early 1990s, Violent Neoliberalism advances an alternative interpretation wherein the mundanity of neoliberalism is exposed as malevolent, having hindered the potential for social justice. Employing a series of empirically informed theoretical dialogues, the book examines the intersections between development, discourse, and dispossession in Cambodia’s existing political economic landscape, where each of these three thematic frames is considered as a moment to reveal the violence that continues to be meted out against everyday Cambodians in an ostensibly ‘post-conflict’ context of deepening neoliberalization. The failings of development under a patronage system linked to a democracy with no real substance, the discursive obfuscations that demonize local culture while cultivating ‘proper’ subjects of market rule, and Cambodia’s ongoing encounters with primitive accumulation through forced eviction and a new regime of property are all revealed to inform the exceptional and exemplary violence of neoliberal reform. In both Cambodia and beyond, a critical appraisal of neoliberalism’s capacity for violence is imperative to opening political imaginations to the possibility of a transformative and peaceable politics. By establishing the necessary theoretical understanding and empirical grounding to enable such an emancipatory project, Violent Neoliberalism illuminates the multiplicity of ways in which the processes of neoliberalization have become suffused with violence.

"""This article explores the representation of the Greek national elections in a British broadsheet newspaper and their recontextualisation through the prism of crisis. I focus on speech representation as a recontextualisation device that serves as a bridge between speech production and text consumption. The represented speakers, namely the social actors who are represented as speaking, the actions in which they are involved and the power role relationships established between them are discussed in order to address the discursive framing of crisis. I argue that a polarised image of crisis is constructed and that the framing of the Greek elections in this particular broadsheet results in double-voicing that positions Greece as either dependent on or independent of Europe. This double-voicing seems to contribute to the maintenance of domination and social control and helps sustain dominant discourses circulating in the broader socio-cultural context."""