Defensive semiotic strategies in government: a multimodal study of blame avoidance

In this article, I argue that when officeholders try to avoid blame, they often engage in defensive performances which can be analysed in terms of how they exploit various multimodal semiotic resources to ward off (potential) criticism: the setting, appearance, and manner chosen for a particular interaction with an audience; and both verbal and non-verbal ways of arguing, legitimising, framing, and representing social actors and actions. I apply these analytic categories to interpret the data gathered during fieldwork at a major training event of British government communicators. By combining insights from multimodal discourse analysis, discourse-historical studies of organisational behaviour, and recent research into blame avoidance in public administration, I demonstrate how certain semiotic strategies used by officeholders have an effect of backgrounding the ideas about any possible norm violations that government communicators may have been associated with in the eyes of critical audiences, such as lying, spin doctoring, and using tax money for propaganda campaigns that may not actually serve the interests of the public. I suggest that analysts of government communication should pay more attention to the defensive practices of government insiders, and study in great detail how these practices are incorporated into everyday behaviour through professional training.     

Be like bees - the politics of mobilizing farmers for development in Tigray, Ethiopia

Based on long-term ethnographic research, this article analysesthe relations between local politics and farmers’ participationin rural development in Tigray (Ethiopia). It takes an actor-orientedapproach and focuses on local government officials and farmerrepresentatives, who mediate between the government agenciesthat undertake rural development programmes and the farmerswhom they address. To reach the target numbers of programmebeneficiaries, these local development brokers ‘mobilize’farmers to participate. They capitalize upon the historicallegitimacy of the 1975–91 revolution against the militaryDerg dictatorship in which the Tigray People's Liberation Front(TPLF), now heading the national government, and Tigray's ruralpopulation successfully joined forces. They revitalize farmers’collective memory of this alliance and reinvent the revolutionarygrassroots institutions through which it was realized. The effectsof mobilization on participation in development are most evidentamong farmers who are members of the TPLF. A TPLF-developmentnexus arises, structuring local political career opportunitiesalong the lines of development. The case study attempts to contributeto an empirical understanding of the entanglement of local politicsand local development brokerage in rural African societies.     

Isolated viable rat cardiac myocytes as a tool for evaluating histochemical methods for diagnosis of myocardial ischemia. I. Mitochondria-bound oxidoreductases — A preliminary report

A pilot study has been performed to evaluate the usefulness of isolated viable rat cardiac myocytes in the evaluation of histochemical oxidoreductase methods for estimating cellular anoxic damage. Data are presented in support of the use of succinate dehydrogenase and β-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase for evaluating different degrees of cellular damage. It appears that upon anoxia biochemical signs of membrane leakage do occur earlier than positive histochemical reactions. However, trypan blue staining occurs at a later time point. Probably the histochemical reaction-rates are limited by the penetration of both the substrate and the electron acceptor, in this case nitro blue tetrazolium, into the cells and the mitochondria.     

Development of a harmonised method for the profiling of amphetamines VI: Evaluation of methods for comparison of amphetamine

Amphetamine samples were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and the peak areas of 33 target compounds were transformed by applying various pretreatment techniques. The objective was to optimise the ability of a number of distance metrics to establish links between samples of amphetamine originating from the same batch (henceforth referred to as linked distances). Furthermore, partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to evaluate the effects of various pretreatment methods on separation of amphetamine batches synthesised by the Leuckart reaction, reductive amination of benzyl methyl ketone, and the nitrostyrene route. The most efficient way to pretreat GC-MS data varied for the different distance metrics, although best results were obtained when data were normalised to the sum of peak areas, and either the fourth root or a logarithm was applied to the normalised data. When pretreating normalised data by fourth root transformation, Pearson correlation was the distance metric that was most successful at finding linked samples. Normalisation and the use of fourth root also represented the best method of pretreating data when employing PLS-DA to separate samples synthesised by different routes. To achieve a faster and more user-friendly procedure for evaluating chromatograms, experiments were performed in which the number of target compounds used to compare samples was reduced. The effect of each compound that was removed was studied by applying PLS-DA and by using Pearson correlation to calculate linked distances as well as unlinked distances (between samples from different batches of amphetamine). Considering both links between samples from the same batch and separation of samples synthesised by different routes, the best results were obtained with the data set comprising 26 compounds. Finally, it was found that the profiling method developed in this work was superior to an existing technique with respect to separating linked and unlinked distances.