Habermas and the Holy Grail of reason: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity between theatre and theory

A critical discourse analysis of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity demonstrates that Habermas's discourse on modernity is theoretische Fiktion (a term Freud used to describe a given theory for which no evidence can be found and no arguments validated). Theatrical narrative strategies from drama are identified that not only organise the logic of the text, but also position readers. The choice of mise en scene—the Oedipal cross‐roads where older and younger protagonists meet in conflict—is seen to position readers as mere spectators. The choice of the narrative trope of the romance of lost opportunity (the road open but not taken) is not merely illustrative, but necessary for the claim that Habermas has redeemed the enlightenment project.

The paper critiques Habermas's theorising on discourse ethics because it distinguishes categories of discourse into scientific/analytical, moral/interpretive and aesthetic/expressive, which operate in three different spheres of value. In particular, it challenges the notion of an “inner logics” for what, in Habermas's stable of discourses, he labels the scientific/analytical. Readers of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the paper demonstrates, are not so much pulled along by the force of the better argument, but seduced by that unbridled beast: the aesthetic/expressive.     

Linguistic and visual strategies for portraying immigrants as people deprived of human rights†

The majority of news items on sub-Saharan immigrants in the Spanish press refer to their arrival by jumping the fences of Ceuta or Melilla or landing in small boats at the Spanish coast. The data in this article consist of all the news items published on the arrival of sub-Saharan immigrants in Spain by jumping the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, items that appeared in the digital editions of the two most popular Spanish newspapers, El País and ABC, from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2015. The principles of critical discourse analysis and visual grammar are used to deconstruct the linguistic and visual portrayal of sub-Saharan immigrants when they try to enter Spain by jumping the fence. This research reveals that the immigrants jumping the fence at Melilla are represented as wild and dangerous. There is no reference to their human rights. The study thus aims to provide a visual analysis of the way in which the arrival of these immigrants is represented visually in two serious newspapers. In this way, the study aims to unveil visual ways of negative representation of immigrants, who are portrayed as dangerous invaders.     

“They might read a fly speck”: musical literacy as a discursive resource in Louis Armstrong's autobiographies

Jazz has been described as a music in which the “oral” element plays a crucial role, in opposition to Western “classical” music, seen as a chiefly “written” tradition. Although such an image is frequently advocated by critics and musicians themselves, it is also true that it can generate ambivalence and negative outputs, such as the persistent myth of “primitivism” and “naivety,” often associated with jazz music. Building on Social Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims at analyzing how the representations of “orality” and “literacy,” that emerge in some autobiographical narratives by Louis Armstrong, are generated, and how they can work as semiotic and discursive resources. It argues that the different depictions of musicians, and the attitude displayed toward musical literacy, are sensitive to the historical, societal, and political context in which texts have been produced and published, as well as to the narrator's willingness and ability to resist or subvert dominant discourses. Moreover, the characterization of a musician (or a category of musicians) as able or unable to access musical literacy can also serve local purposes, such as expressing the narrator's stance toward narrative characters.     

“If it doesn't make sense it's not true”: how Judge Judy creates coherent stories through “common-sense” reasoning according to the neoliberal agenda

This study examines the American court show Judge Judy. Drawing on both conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to show how ideological assumptions about how to be a “good citizen” manifest themselves at a turn-by-turn level in the interactions on Judge Judy and how they contribute to the co-construction of a new version of events. The microanalyses reveal how Sheindlin's strategic use of “common-sense reasoning” sets up a context and characterization of the opposing litigants. Sheindlin reframes complex issues as simple black-and-white stories. These new stories have a plain narrative line without the contingencies of everyday life and with clearly moral and immoral characters allowing her to pass a judgment that only seems fair.     

“The Long and Winding Road”: A Comparative Policy Analysis of Multilevel Judicial Implementation of Work‒Life Balance in Spain

ABSTRACT

This article studies how processes of policy implementation and the impact of a multilevel European legal order shape social policies. By using an interdisciplinary approach to comparative policy analysis that investigates policy implementation through the critical study of judicial litigation, the article analyses the case of García Mateos on work?life balance in its different stages before Spanish and supranational courts. It shows that the implementation of work?life balance policy through litigation in Spain is a “long and winding road” paved with discursive and material opportunities and obstacles. While multiple pressures, actors, and framings at different governmental levels contributed to a favourable judicial decision on gender equality, norms about the gendered division of labour limited its transformative potential.     

“Our biggest killer”: multimodal discourse representations of dementia in the British press

A recent (2016) Office for National Statistics report stated that dementia is now “the leading cause of death” in England and Wales. Ever fixated with the syndrome (an unfailingly newsworthy topic), the British press was quick to respond to the bulletin, consistently headlining that dementia was the nation’s “biggest killer,” while (re)formulating other aspects of the report in distorting and emotive metaphorical terms. In this paper we examine how the media, through use of a recurring set of linguistic and visual semiotic tropes, portrayed dementia as an agentive entity, a “killer,” which remorselessly attacks its “victims.” Such a broadly loaded and sensationalist representation, we argue, not only construed dementia as a direful and pernicious disease, but also, crucially, obscured the personal and social contexts in which the syndrome is understood and experienced (not least by people with dementia themselves). This intensely lurid type of representation not only fails to address the ageist misinformation and common misunderstandings that all too commonly surround dementia, but is also likely to exacerbate the stress and depression frequently experienced by people with dementia and their families.     

中产阶层对于自身政治参与有效性的评价——比较中国与越南中产阶层的政治效能感

本文认为,对于市场经济转型国家,新兴中产阶层政治效能感强弱与国家放权让利的程度有关:国家权力收缩,会增强其政治效能感;当国家给予中产阶层参政议政的空间较小时,专业技术型中产因为远离权力架构,会在政治效能感上弱于管理型中产。     

A multimodal discourse analytic approach to the articulation of Martini’s “desire” positioning in filmic product placement

Product placement constitutes an amply used tactic in a marketer’s Integrated Marketing Communications roster. Its merits in circumventing negative attitudes to advertising and in integrating brand values in sociocultural narratives in TV and cinematic filmic discourses have been repeatedly stressed. However, little attention has been placed thus far in the idiosyncratic mode that is scrutinized in this paper, that is product placement by leveraging uncertainty, surprise, postponement and displacement as defining characteristics of the discourse of desire. The analysis of the discourse of desire that unravels in a flirting sequence from the blockbuster movie “Hitch” demonstrates that although the concerned brand (Martini) is minimally visible in the analyzed scene, yet it attains to appropriate as part of its core DNA in “stealth” mode the above characteristics of desire by demarcating the cultural field of flirtation. The offered cultural analytic addresses this idiosyncratic product placement mode by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and multimodal discourse analysis.     

多模态话语分析理论的课堂教学研究

随着经济全球化、信息技术化、交际多模态化的转变,越来越多的中国大学英语教师认识到多模态的重要性,并将多模态教学方式应用于教学中。大学英语课堂不再局限于单一模态的语言教学,而是应用多种模态,包括音频、视频、PPT、互联网、模拟实验室等,给予学生多样化的课堂学习氛围,很大程度上激发了学生的学习兴趣。文章探讨多模态话语分析理论在课堂教学中的应用情况。