The ontic interconnectedness and interdependence of language and communicative actions

Abstract

An analysis of the interconnectedness of different functional domains within reality opens up the possibility to account for the multivocality of terms and for an analysis of the multifaceted meaning of language and communicative actions – their intertwinement with the integral meaning-coherence of reality. Therefore, the focus of this follow-up article is directed at the interdependent nature of communicative (i.e., socially disclosed) language use. Reflection on the problem of unity and diversity guides the discernment of the dualism present in Habermas's view and the assessment of the definition of communication in terms of the idea of a transition and/or sharing of meaning. Crucial ideas of Saussure, Derrida and Habermas are related to the mutability and immutability of the sign before the significance of the distinction between entity and function is applied to the conditions for and inter-functional connections of language and communicative actions. A discussion of the multifaceted coherence in which communicative actions are embedded subsequently receives attention. Finally, in view of the distinction between principles and their application (form-giving, positivisation) conventions, construction and the idea of autonomy are briefly assessed.     

Democracy and minority language recognition: tyranny of the majority and the conditional effects of group size

What explains minority language recognition? Why are some governments more responsive than others to minority linguistic demands? While there are reasons to believe democracies – as protectors of civil liberties – are generally more likely to recognize minority demands, I argue only those without a sizable majority extend such recognition to the highest levels. This is because the dominance of one large linguistic group electorally impedes a democratic government’s ability to grant such benefits to the smaller ones. I test this argument by using a newly constructed measure of minority language recognition. This variable identifies whether a minority language is used in public education, and if so, it differentiates between instruction of and instruction in a minority language. I find that while democracies are indeed more likely to acknowledge minority languages, the effects are conditional: only those without a majority are able or willing to accommodate minorities to the fullest extent. Otherwise, when there is a tyranny of the majority, democracies behave no differently than their dictatorial counterparts. The results – robust to different measurements of majoritarian politics – hold important implications for our understanding of democracy and its ability to satisfy demands in divided societies.     

National Unification and Mistrust: Bargaining Power and the Prospects for a PRC/Taiwan Agreement

Can states that mistrust each other as much as the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan reach unification agreements? Unification agreements are most feasible when one of two conditions holds: the unification bargain does not independently erode the bargaining power of the weaker state, or the more powerful state can commit credibly not to use its increased bargaining power to restructure the agreement ex post. Our argument accounts for two historical cases—the nineteenth century Argentine and German unifications—and helps to explain why the PRC has found it difficult to make progress on achieving a peaceful bargain with Taiwan. We describe several possible future scenarios for cross-Strait relations and show that democratization in the PRC is not a necessary prerequisite for a unification agreement between the mainland and Taiwan.     

Kawabata's views of language and the postwar construction of a literary genealogy

Abstract

This paper shows the ways in which, in the immediate post-war period (1945–1951), Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) reflected on his earlier, pre-war literary career and re-envisioned his postwar literary trajectory by constructing a new genealogy of the modern novel in Japan, in relationship to the intricate issues of the literary styles of the modern novel, ‘national language’ (kokugo), and the literary tradition. By examining his Shin bunshō tokuhon (New Guide to Literary Language, 1950), which presents Kawabata's past and present views of literary language, I will argue that Kawabata's changing views of language and literary style must be understood in the context of contemporary debates over national language policy and language reform movements. I will show the manner by which Kawabata formulated his views of language in dialogue with his two rival writers: Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947) in the prewar period and Tanizaki Junichirō (1886–1965) in the postwar period. As we shall see, the death of his close literary colleague Yokomitsu in 1947 and Tanizaki's unflagging literary exploration during and following the war prompted Kawabata to position himself in a genealogy of modern Japanese literary writers as well as in relationship to the linguistic and literary tradition of Japan.     

Language visibility and language removal: A South African case study in linguistic landscape change

Abstract

Some changes of an evolving language regime are moderate in nature as they do not necessarily entail the removal of a language from the linguistic landscape. They can be deemed less moderate when a former prestigious language is removed, as is the case in post-Soviet countries where former bilingual signs are physically replaced by new, predominantly monolingual signs, no longer displaying Russian. South Africa's constitutional language requirements do imply the re-profiling of public signs in order to feature an African language; changes that seem compatible with a moderate approach to linguistic landscaping. Do the different policies that regulate the linguistic landscape – and the resulting changes themselves – actually reflect this moderate approach? This article analyses two aspects of linguistic landscape change: language visibility policy and linguistic landscape data collected in three towns in the Kopanong Municipality, Free State Province. A central finding is that it is left to provinces and municipalities to promote bi- or multilingual language visibility and that the Kopanong Municipality plays a conservative role in this. Significant changes in the linguistic landscape are being introduced by external role-players such as national government agencies. The removal of Afrikaans from the linguistic landscape may be linked to the latter.     

The meaning of post-apartheid Zulu media

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between certain South African media corporations, growing post-apartheid Zulu media platforms, the size and diversity of Zulu-speaking media consumers, and the historical socio-cultural construction of ‘Zuluness’. This relationship, this author observes, manifests largely through media corporations’ increasing recognition of Zulu people's pride in Zulu (i.e. the language) and ‘Zuluness’ – all of which are historical products of various forms of socialisation. Coopting this pride, profit-driven media corporations are commodifying Zulu and ‘Zuluness’. This commodification via the establishment of Zulu media outlets is paradoxical: 1) it is a transformation of a public and open Zulu cultural sense of ‘being’ into institutionally determined commodities exchangeable for revenue, for the ultimate benefit of media owners other than the masses of Zulus themselves; 2) it is a form of commoditisation that gives Zulu a linguistic profile that has historically been accorded only to English and Afrikaans. This article's argument is further briefly articulated through various intellectual frames: Graham Murdoch and Peter Golding's conceptualisation of critical political economy of communications and culture (2005); John and Jean Comaroff's anthropological analysis of commercialisation of ethnicity (2009); and, for South African specificity and precedent, through Herman Wasserman's reading of Afrikaans media corporations’ commercialisation of Afrikaans language and identity. Then the question is: What does the explored relationship mean for South Africa's multilingualism?     

Social cleavages and electoral competition in India

Given the great diversity in language, ethnicity, and caste in India, and the resulting millions of possible winning electoral combinations, why is it that in contemporary India we see large state-wide and inter-state political coalitions built around categories such as “Bahujan” or “Backward Caste” instead of thousands of separate caste parties competing at the regional or zila (district) level? This question is the focus of Christophe Jaffrelot's India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in India, Pradeep Chhibber's Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India, and Anirudh Krishna's Active Social Capital: Tracing the roots of development and democracy. This review assesses how these works address the question of political organization and social cleavages in India, examining the differences in approaches and discussing what still needs to be addressed.     

Communicating on the edge of chaos: a transformation and change management perspective

SUMMARY

‘What is chaos, that we should be mindful of it?’ (Josepth Ford).

Chaos will always be a mystery. Perhaps the ultimate, allencompassing mystery. To paraphrase Churchill's famous remark, it is a paradox hidden inside a puzzle shrouded by an enigma. It is visible proof of existence and uniqueness without predictability.

In the Greco-Roman tradition philosophers used logic and introspection to impose mental order on the universe. Newton, Francis Bacon and the scientists of the Renaissance chose a different path when attempting to find truth and understanding nature. In the twentieth century Einstein, Bohr and others (with quantum physics and mechanics) changed the path again, making reality even more subtle and complicated. Then, in the past twenty years, along came chaos theory. This theory, and the ways that natural processes move between order and disorder, brings us closer to understanding the planetary orbits, the shape of clouds, that phenomena never repeat themselves exactly, and even the complexity of changing and learning organisations. It is the insights and extensions of chaos theory that could carry us technologically, philosophically, socially and individually into the Age of Aquarius and possibly through our own African Renaissance.

Most managers are naturally susceptible to wishful thinking. They believe what they want to believe in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary. They try to forcefully manage and control to create balance and order in the workplace. The time has arrived for South African business leaders, managers and corporate communicators to buy into the notion that a butterfly stirring the air in Johannesburg can create a twister in New York!

This article describes chaos theory and examines how it can be utilised to provide insights into managing and communicating during times of change in chaotic organisations.     

‘Ryk,ryker, Rykie’: A first exploration of the journalistic contribution of a journalist extraordinaire

Abstract

This article will, as a first exploration, attempt to put some aspects of the Afrikaans journalist Rykie van Reenen into perspective with the aim of understanding her contribution to South African journalism and the extent of her oeuvre. Van Reenen was referred to as 'undoubtedly the most outstanding Afrikaans journalist of the [twentieth] century' (Giliomee 2003, 564). In the Afrikaans rewritten version of this book, it is qualified with the word 'waarskynlik' – (probably) (Giliomee 2004, 470). Although her journalism, according to sources, contributed in a significant way to the eventual political change from an Afrikaner Nationalist-governed country to a democracy, very little is known about the journalist. This initial recording of van Reenen's oeuvre is part of a more extensive study of this journalist who has set a standard in South African Afrikaans journalism in terms of subject matter and writing style. This article can thus also be regarded as a contribution in a small way to a more complete South African media historiography, which, in general, lacks significant scholarly attention.     

When one might not see the wood for the trees: the ‘historical turn’ in democratization studies,critical junctures,and cross-case comparisons

In a 2010 special issue of Comparative Political Studies, Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt introduced a new, historically oriented research agenda to the study of democratization. This agenda challenged an older, ‘classical’ tradition, inaugurated by Barrington Moore, by emphasizing diffusion, non-class structures and, most importantly, contingent choices of actors during critical junctures. In this article, I identify two problematical aspects of Capoccia and Ziblatt's intervention. First, methodologically, I argue that the focus on contingency and actors' choices in individual cases is worth little in the absence of controlled comparisons. Second, and empirically, I show that it is very difficult to see how unconstrained choices during critical junctures might have brought into existence such a systematical variation as that encountered in the case of European democratization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On this basis, I issue a warning against accepting the new research agenda across-the-board, arguing that this would have detrimental consequences for comparative historical analysis of regime change.     

Transaction Costs and the Establishment of the European Security and Defense Policy

This article explains the establishment of the European Union's Security and Defense Policy (esdp) in 1998–99 and its institutional design. I argue that both the soft balancing explanation and the “second wave” of approaches fall short. In contrast, the article shows that liberal-institutionalist thought and transaction costs economics offer a heuristically promising perspective. Most crucially, the pivotal concept of asset specificity provides explanatory leverage. The combination of risks of opportunism and the non-specificity of esdp's ultimate assets explains why and how the major European powers designed the eu's security and defense pillar in 1998–99. Empirically, I trace how the United Kingdom and France were gradually confronted with not fully credible commitments within nato for crisis management in Europe. Based primarily on the signals sent by us domestic politics, they were increasingly concerned about isolationism and questioned the American commitment to European security. Therefore, they were searching for another institutional option for providing security on a long-term basis. Although this assessment of ex post transaction costs triggered the initial establishment of esdp, ex ante transaction costs were responsible for its more specific design. Given the indirect American threat of disengagement when faced with Europe's aspirations for autonomy, esdp had to be designed in a compatible way with nato. Non-specific, and thus redeployable, military assets represented the institutional solution to the conflict between European autonomy and NATO's primacy. In other words, asset specificity as the key analytical concept of transaction costs economics is what differentiates this argument from previous accounts and provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding both the establishment and design of esdp in 1998–99.     

Organizing for Resistance: How Group Structure Impacts the Character of Violence

How does the way in which a group organizes change the lethality of the group's attacks? In this article, we argue that groups organized vertically as hierarchies are likely to conduct more lethal attacks. We build our argument around three advantages inherent to centralized structures: functional differentiation, clear command and control structures, and accountability. We argue that each of these characteristics positively impacts an organization's ability to deliver an effective lethal blow. To test our argument, we use a mixed method approach, drawing on empirical evidence and support from a time-series case study. Our large-N analysis examines the trends in more than 19,000 attacks. In this test we develop a novel proxy measure for hierarchy based on a group's bases of operation and non-violent activities. To complement the empirical work, we examine the history of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist group. Over several decades of violent operations, this group's structure has changed dramatically. We analyze how these shifts impacted ETA's ability to maximize the effectiveness and damage of their attacks. In both the case study and large-N analysis, the more hierarchically organized the group, the more easily the group can orchestrate lethal attacks.     

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING: (RE)CONSIDERING THE EXCELLENCE OF ACTIVISM IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT

One of the greatest changes organisations in South Africa experienced through the country's democratisation is the introduction of ‘legitimate’ activism in organisational settings. Organisational communication literature – specifically as manifest in the excellence theory – compounded this through views on the potentially positive impact activism could have on organisations by ‘pushing’ them beyond equilibrium to a state of dynamic equilibrium – mediated through strategic and effectual communication. This view, however, is somewhat fouled by occurrences such as those at Marikana, and concomitant strikes in the country's platinum industry, which have held the economy ‘captive’ in various ways. Organisations – especially the mining industry – need to ask ‘How much activism is too much activism?’ and organisational communication practitioners need to introspectively consider whether this theoretical contribution should not perhaps have come with greater guidance in terms of the chary (if not restrained) implementation of this potentially positive, yet almost insidiously dangerous, communicative feature. this article aims to explore activism in the mining industry of South Africa, specifically from the vantage points of industry heads, as it concerns the changed communicative landscape in this industry post-marikana. to this end, the article will report on seven qualitative, semi- structured interviews – along with existing literature on the topic – as it offers up six considerations in applying the aspect of excellence and ‘positive activism’ within organisations in South Africa's mining industry.     

The daiku phenomenon: social and cultural influences of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Japan

In the rude awakening of western colonisations in Asia during the nineteenth century, Japan drastically embraced the ‘better and more modern’ western values towards the end of that century—which began with the Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin [ ]). Since the nation began frantically learning everything Western—while keeping its traditional values at heart, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony ‘Choral,’ or daiku as it is known in Japan, has been present throughout the turbulent twentieth century. The social and cultural phenomenon known as nenmatsu-no daiku ([ ] A countless number of annual year-end Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony concerts held throughout Japan each year.) is the subject under scrutiny in this paper. Japan’s almost desperate pursue toward westernization and the much-debated Japanese cultural trait, the ‘groupism’ mentality would make the existence of the daiku phenomenon appear to the bewildered outsider as a horrendous mix of the two elements, but is that simply so? Evidently, the sudden influx of western cultures and ideologies from Europe and the U.S.A. is in great part accountable for the continual and prevalent existence of the daiku in modern Japan. However, we must not overlook the underlying home-grown factors, which have kept the phenomenon well and alive even today. This paper intends to discuss the historical background leading to this phenomenon and present a summary of what daiku is, giving examples of different types of performances as a result of the phenomenon. An attempt will also be given to examine the significance Beethoven’s Ninth has for the Japanese in both social and cultural contexts.     

A Multimodal Interaction Analysis of Selected 2015 Nigerian Election Campaign Adverts

ABSTRACT

Politics is intrinsic to the human societal structure and the exploration of language in politics has attracted the attention of social scientists and discourse/linguistic analysts. The role of mass media in framing political discourse has also been explored, particularly as the media is often exploited as a resource for influencing the audience. With the proliferation of the Internet and its democratising potentials, graphics and audio have become veritable tools for courting political patronage and maintaining positive perception by politicians. The present study analyses campaign videos from the two dominant parties during the 2015 Nigerian election. Six videos—three for each party—were selected and downloaded for the study. Employing the Multimodal Interaction Analysis theory as its framework, the research accounted for embodied and disembodied communicative modes in linguistically constructing and infusing meanings as campaign strategies to win the confidence of the voting public. The study identified history, declaratives, subtle imperatives, and linguistic tagging as discursive strategies used in political campaign videos. The study concluded that multimodal political advertisements strengthen Nigerian politics and engender positive citizenship participation in democratic practices.     

Reproduction Versus Transformation: The Case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

ABSTRACT

This article offers a constructive critique of Fehl and Freistein's argument that international organisations (IOs) significantly affect international stratification, either producing, reproducing or transforming inequality. It suggests that without reference to the specific purposes which individual IOs pursue and the forces driving global change, it is impossible to predict either when the goals of IOs and states might diverge, or when a particular IO might promote the reproduction of inequality on the one hand, or its transformation on the other. In particular, divergence between states on the one hand and IOs charged with the management of the global economy on the other is explained by the fact that the IOs concerned are committed to the reproduction of capital on a global scale, and therefore to the continuous transformation of global hierarchies. The argument is supported by a case study of IO support for China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).     

‘Papa don't preach’: Fatherhood in a South African Christian men's magazine

Abstract

The first international men's lifestyle magazine to enter South Africa was Men's Health in 1997, followed by FHM and GQ. Not unlike their international counterparts, these magazines have been extolled in the publishing sector for their commercial success and disparaged in academia for their potentially negative influence on the sensitive gender politics of the new South Africa. In 2001, a new breed of men's lifestyle magazine emerged in South Africa: one that catered to a particular cultural or racial niche market that presumably was not satisfied by the generalising tone of the mainstream men's lifestyle magazines. The Afrikaans Christian magazine MaksiMan is the subject of this analysis, as much for what it signifies in terms of the presence of vernacular masculinities in post-apartheid South Africa as for the texture that it brings to the genre of men's lifestyle magazines. Mainstream men's magazines typically refuse to include reference to the role of father that certain of their readers might occupy. MaksiMan breaks this trend through articles and features centred on fatherhood. This article comprises an analysis of the representation of fatherhood within this niche men's lifestyle magazine.     

Regimes of Cooperation in the Western Hemisphere: Power, Interests, and Intellectual Traditions

The 1994 Summit of the Americas marked a high point in hemispherism—our label for the active attempt by the nations of the Western Hemisphere to form regimes of cooperation with one another. To explain why hemispherism has not been a more powerful trend in the last 200 years, structural, interest, and cultural variables are relevant but insufficient factors. An important and often overlooked obstacle to hemispherism has beencontrarian ideas. Specifically, constellations of intellectual traditions that question the value of hemispheric cooperation have dampened both the demand for and supply of such regimes. Only when these antihemispheric intellectual traditions were in retreat—the late nineteenth century, the mid twentieth century, and the early 1990s—has hemispherism flourished. We posit three mechanisms through which intellectual traditions can decline, thus generating amodified cognitivist argument that can supplement power-based and interest-based explanations of regime formation and robustness.     

Does the State Promote Communal Violence for Electoral Reasons?

It has often been alleged, most recently in the recommendations of India's National Advisory Council (NAC), that the Indian state promotes, or is complicit in, Hindu-Muslim violence for political or electoral reasons. But the evidence for the claim has historically been sketchy. In StevenWilkinson's work, Votes and Violence, the argument is that the evidence supporting state complicity is systematic.We examine this argument and find it to be fundamentally flawed.