Language as Criticism: Assessing the Merits of Speech Acts and Discursive Formations in International Relations

Much has been written of late about language as a critical tool of research in international relations. Among critical international relations scholars, constructivists and poststructuralists have been the main proponents of using of language as a challenge to structural realist assumptions about world politics. Yet, it is not always clear why these critical scholars decide to turn to linguistic methodologies. This article reveals that there are compelling reasons for choosing language as a critical tool of analysis. But, contrary to current beliefs, it is important to note that constructivist and poststructuralist strategies of language are not always equivalent and compatible. This essay sorts out the divergent epistemological and political stakes involved in one's choice of a linguistic strategy. Different uses of language offer different critiques of mainstream international political practice. To illustrate this argument, the April 2001 US-China diplomatic crisis over the collision between a surveillance plane and a fighter jet is showcased. It is shown that constructivist and poststructuralist linguistic analyses provide challenging but not always complementary interpretations of the policies, diplomatic procedures, and verbal exchanges that took place during this confrontation.     

Articulating language oppression: colonialism,coloniality and the erasure of Tibet’s minority languages

ABSTRACT

Roche’s article discusses ‘language oppression’ as a form of domination that is coherent with other forms of oppression along the lines of ‘race’, nation, colour and ethnicity. Scholars have defined language oppression as the ‘enforcement of language loss by physical, mental, social and spiritual coercion’. It is part of an evolving suite of concepts from linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology that examines issues of language discrimination, or ‘linguicism’. Roche explores one aspect of linguicism—language erasure—and how it relates to language oppression, focusing on Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He examines how language oppression is produced through practices of erasure: the ways in which certain populations and their languages are systematically rendered discursively invisible. He argues that the erasure of certain languages in the Tibetan context is systematically reproduced by two otherwise opposed political projects: the colonial project of the PRC state; and the international Tibet movement that seeks to resist it. He refers to the contingent cooperation between these two opposed projects as ‘articulated oppression’. In concluding the article he examines how the disarticulation of this oppression is a necessary condition for the emancipation of Tibet’s minority languages, and discusses the broader significance of this study for understanding language oppression, and its relation to other forms of oppression.     

Timespacing competence: multilingual children's linguistic worlds

Drawing on Kramsch's conceptualization of the multilingual subject and the symbolic self, in this paper, we explore how multilingual children re-signify three intertwined myths about the bilingual student, linguistic diversity and language competence, when, in the researcher-generated activity My linguistic world 2014, they are invited to map and talk about their lived experiences as multiple language users seen in the light of place and movement. By demythifying themselves and their linguistic worlds, the children also raise important questions about the notion of linguistic competence. By perceiving competences from a subjective child perspective, we learn how children do what we call timespacing competence. On that basis, we suggest paying attention to how children themselves timespace competence by focusing (more consistently) on the subjective, social, spatial and temporal dimensions of (knowing) language.     

Lingua franca fever: sceptical remarks

The policy push in favour of fostering a global lingua franca has shed overtly imperialistic underpinnings and been recast, but many of the same objections can be levelled at new attempts to justify an old policy. Efforts to explain the impetus towards linguistic uniformity through rational choice theory obscure the power dynamics behind choice of language in multilingual contexts. Invoking democratic engagement as a benefit of uniformity overestimates the role of linguistic diversity as a drag on participation and ignores more important forces. A focus on equality of opportunity and social mobility through lingua franca competence as justification for the policy reveals a shallow conception of equality and underplays the long-term consequences for non-lingua franca communities were equality of opportunity for individuals to be taken seriously. Finally, seeing the justice issues that arise out of competition between languages as one of ensuring adequate compensation to the losers underscores how thin is the conception of equality animating the approach; it purchases an inadequate level of equal opportunity for individuals at the expense of inequality amongst language communities.     

Interdependence,interaction and metaphor in multisemiotic texts

Systemic frameworks for discourse analysis of visual/verbal and mathematics texts are used to examine the functionality of language? visual display and mathematical symbolism, and the meaning arising from interaction and interdependence between these semiotic codes in joint constructions. The nature of the interaction between options, classified as unmarked or marked, determines the meaning made in that instance and, more generally, provides an impetus for the expansion of the meaning potential of each semiotic. The phenomenon where semantic shifts occur when functional elements are reconstrued in another semiotic is called semiotic metaphor. Rather than the notion of an overlay of meaning typically associated with grammatical metaphor, the potential exists here for more dramatic forms of semantic shift. Examples of semiotic metaphor categorised as ‘parallel semiotic metaphor’ and ‘divergent semiotic metaphor’ are given in the text analysis.     

Globalisation and the Theorisation of Language

If we wish to understand how the processes of globalisation affect language, the paper argues, we need a theory of meaning capable of demonstrating how precisely cultural practice can be said to be inside language. Corporeal semantics offers such a theory of meaning, according to which culturally overdetermined nonverbal sign clusters activate empty signifiers to produce meaning. A special focus of the paper is concealed, cultural deixis, which is responsible for fundamental modifications of discursive surfaces.     

Discriminating language rights and politics in the post-Yugoslav states

ABSTRACT

Pupavac examines the rise of linguistic human rights advocacy and its approach in a case study of language politics in the post-Yugoslav states. A core concern of contemporary linguistic rights advocacy has been to tackle ethnically based discrimination and promote ethnic diversity. It does not only seek to prevent states from discriminating against those who speak minority languages. It expects states to take positive steps to preserve their diversity of languages. However, strategies affirming distinct linguistic identities may become complicit in perpetuating ethnic discrimination and ethnic divisions, as is evident in the language politics of the post-Yugoslav states.     

Beyond the One-Dimensional University: A Marcusean Critique of Outcomes Assessment

Abstract

In August 2013, US president Barack Obama announced a plan to link federal financial aid to college performance. This plan, it is argued, will allow students, parents, and federal lenders to avoid paying tuition for an ultimately meaningless credential. It identifies relevant educational outcomes as rates of graduation, the earnings of graduates, and the attainment of advanced degrees after graduation. The president’s plan is part of a much larger trend toward “accountability” and “transparency” in education, an important feature of which is the proliferation of the language and programs related to assessment of student learning outcomes. In this essay, I show that outcomes assessment is a form of “one-dimensional thought” as this concept is developed in One-Dimensional Man and that it suffers from the defects identified by Marcuse there. Outcomes assessment, therefore, codifies ways of thinking about education that undermine its role in the development of liberated forms of consciousness and emancipatory praxis.     

The colonization of consciousness in South Africa

This essay documents an early phase in the colonization of consciousness, and the consciousness of colonization, among a South African people. Here, as elsewhere, European domination was as much an attempt to seize control of the signs and practices of everyday life as an exercize in material coercion. Nineteenth-century evangelists in the South African interior relied on techniques of persuasion, seeking to introduce an existential ‘state of colonialism’ which anticipated the colonial state. Whatever else it might have been, the history made on this frontier was one of struggle over power and meaning. We trace the attempt of the civilizing mission to invade three domains of African life: its natural resources, techniques of production, and language. We argue that, in order to grasp how new hegemonies were laid down amidst local resistance, it is necessary to distinguish two levels of operation in colonizing cultures. For while its ideological message was widely rejected, the mission enmeshed local peoples in the underlying forms of the European system - the commodity form, linguistic forms, and so on. Thus was initiated the process that incorporated many African peoples into the political economy of Empire.     

试论英汉思维的互相影响

随着全球化的发展,英语学习已成为热潮。汉语对英语学习的影响也越来越受到关注。迁移理论、中介语理论以及中式英语的出现都说明母语对外语学习的重要影响,其本质则为思维的影响,而外语学习对母语的影响则很少被人关注。熟知英汉思维的相互影响,有助于学习者更好地交替使用这两种语言。     

英语虚拟语气运用的探讨——从隐喻角度看虚拟表达法

虚拟语气是英语学习的重点和难点,许多学习者甚至有些教师只是死记英语语法书上虚拟语气的用法,却不知道虚拟语气为什么要这样用。本文从隐喻的角度来分析虚拟语气中时态后移和WERE的使用等问题,指出制造"距离"是虚拟语气的重要方式。     

Schleiermacher and Post-Metaphysical Thinking

Abstract

Schleiermacher rarely features in the now widespread discussion of the relevance of the German Idealist and Romantic traditions for contemporary philosophy because he has mainly been regarded as a theologian and theorist of textual interpretation. This essay shows that his most important philosophical work, the Dialectic, involves many ideas concerning truth and language which are generally regarded as belonging to what Habermas terms ‘post-metaphysical thinking’. Schleiermacher's views of truth and language are contrasted with those of Habermas and Rorty, and are seen as being of more than merely historical interest. His reflections on self-consciousness are shown to raise important questions for contemporary accounts of the relationship of the subject to language.     

中学英语词汇学习策略

词汇是语言的基本材料。要掌握一门语言,必须掌握其词汇。总结概括了一些常用的英语词汇学习策略,如语音法,重复法等多种学习策略,供学习者尤其是中学生参考。     

A Topography of Civil Service Laws

ABSTRACT

We offer a comparative study of the differences in civil service laws across countries in order to observe how these systems relate to one another. We compare the civil service laws of 26 countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and eight non-OECD countries from Central and Eastern Europe to identify how different configurations of civil service systems are revealed through their shared attributes. Our data are drawn from the contents of civil service legislation and the status of those civil servants covered by the civil service laws of these countries. We use cluster analysis to identify several groups of countries whose civil service systems share similar features. We find that the estimated topography, or similarity among systems, depends on both subjective decisions about the number of groups and the variables used to estimate the space. However, we draw key conclusions about the value of certain cases, like the United States, for learning about other systems, and the need for expanded knowledge of systems from Central and Eastern Europe.     

The Moral Efficacy of Aesthetic Experience: Figures of Meaning in the Moral Field

Abstract

This paper proposes to analyse the process that makes paths of action meaningful. It argues that this process is one of "figuration". The term "figuration" intends to outline how the experience of moral meaning is one that already positively marks out a field and to identify and analyse the mechanisms used for such marking and selection. It is my contention that these mechanisms predate the persuasion to a moral path; they are the process through which this path is constructed as meaningful. This thesis is elucidated through an analysis of the tactics of meaning in Kant's moral theory. Kant turns to aesthetics as a means of corroboration for his moral theory, but he also attempts to limit the scope of the interactions between his aesthetic and moral theory. For instance, when he writes on the topic of form in aesthetic taste or outlines the technical specifications of aesthetic judgment, it is arguably the arcane peculiarities of his system that are met. For this reason, Kant insists on the merely analogical relations between beauty and morality. However, it is also possible to see how certain aspects of Kant's aesthetic theory execute wider, and potentially more important, functions for his practical philosophy, such as providing meaningful orientation for the ascetic moral attitude of his duty-ethics. In this respect, certain figures of Kant's aesthetic theory may well be viewed as complementing the dependence in his moral philosophy, in the important sections on moral pedagogy and methodology, on appeals to heroic models and stories as ways of shaping and inculcating the moral disposition. This paper considers these aspects of interaction between Kant's aesthetic and moral philosophies as both (1) a problem for the consistency of his philosophy given his avowed exclusion of aesthetic and religious elements of meaning in his duty-ethics; and (2) as a case study for the new, schematic analysis of "moral figuration" outlined in the paper.     

Political Marketing Research in the 2000 U.S. Election

Abstract

It is not news that polls and other forms of marketing research are regularly employed to craft political strategy. What is new is that the 2000 U.S. election represented a turning point where political marketing research seems to take center stage. The print and broadcast media employed polls and other forms of research at levels far beyond anything ever seen before. At times, it appeared as if almost as much attention was being given to polls as was being given to the political candidates and the issues. This was clearly a new and important posturing of the role of political marketing research. With this as a backdrop, the current article compares polls and other forms of political research-focusing on what went wrong and what was right in terms of the use of polls, focus groups and Internet research during the 2000 U.S. election. The article ends with the presentation of some exploratory research that examines insights about respondents' opinions regarding the impact of political polls.     

Organizational Learning Capacity and Its Impact on the Results in a Government Agency in Chile

ABSTRACT

Rising demand for quality, efficiency, and openness in the management of collective problems and their solutions has prompted successful government agencies to consider knowledge as a key resource. Government agencies make intensive use of human capital and knowledge in the performance of their duties. Knowledge represents the most important strategic resource, and its skillful management is a key capability in institutional performance. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze the relationship between the learning capability of an organizational system, characterized by the dynamic interaction of stocks and flows of knowledge, and its impact on performance. Our results support the view that learning capability, especially knowledge flows and stocks, has a positive impact on the performance of public institutions.     

The problem with English(es) and linguistic (in)justice. Addressing the limits of liberal egalitarian accounts of language

Van Parijs’s Linguistic Justice for Europe and the World furthers a nascent examination of multilingualism within political philosophy, drawing on continental European contexts where multilingualism is the norm. Van Parijs argues, in effect for linguistic cosmopolitanism via English as the current world language, and this seems ostensibly to be a considerable improvement on ‘the untrammeled public monolingualism’ of Anglo-American political theory. However, Van Parijs’s account is flawed in four key respects. First, there is the fundamental problem of his reductionist account of language – by which language is viewed only in terms of its communicative uses and reach and not in relation to its symbolic and identity functions. Second is his simplistic advocacy of English as a global lingua franca, which ignores issues of power and inequality, along with related delimited access to high-status English language varieties. Third are the inherent limitations associated with his advocacy of linguistic territoriality, which recognizes state-sanctioned languages but little else, thus failing to mitigate existing linguistic hierarchies. Finally, the wider argument for English as a global lingua franca is inevitably underpinned by a monolithic/hegemonic view of English itself. This monolithic conception of English stands in contradistinction, not only to the actual plethora of Englishes in the world today, but also, more importantly, to their widely varying status and use in furthering cross-communication and related notions of social and economic mobility. The latter thus fatally undermines Van Parijs’s central argument linking social and economic mobility ineluctably to access to English.     

Postwar Reconstruction,the Reverse Course and the New Way Forward: Bis Repetitas?

Abstract

While comprehensive studies on UN peacebuilding assert that ‘learning has not … been one of the strengths of the United Nations’ (Chesterman 2004, p.256), research so far has largely ignored the UN's institutional infrastructure for learning. This essay seeks to contribute to closing this gap by surveying the evolution of the UN's learning infrastructure from the early 1990s to the present. Despite some progress in recent years, the lack of resources, coordination and political will means that turning the UN bureaucracy into a learning organization is unfinished business at best. Rather than focusing all attention on the new Peacebuilding Commission, policymakers and researchers alike should invest additional resources in analysing and strengthening the learning capacity of the UN peacebuilding apparatus.