Framing hostage negotiations: analysing the discourse of the US government and the Islamic State

Since August 2014, there has been a marked increase in the violence perpetrated by the Islamic State against Western hostages. Videos released by the Islamic State depicting the brutal executions of hostages have been circulated widely on social media. This has prompted a dialogue about governments’ policies regarding negotiation with terrorist organisations to secure the release of their citizens held overseas. The United States and Britain, two non-negotiating countries, have faced significant criticism for this policy, which has led to the beheadings of several American and British citizens. This article analyses the discourse of two spokesmen – White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, and British hostage John Cantlie – in framing the issue of hostage negotiations on behalf of their organisations. A grounded theory approach informed by framing analysis is utilised in order to identify dominant discourses employed in White House press briefings and John Cantlie’s videos and articles. This article concludes that, through the deliberate use of discourse, the US government and the Islamic State shape public perception of hostage negotiations in pursuit of distinct policy goals.     

British Muslims and the discourses of dysfunction: community cohesion and counterterrorism in the West Midlands

This article analyses how British discursive representations of Muslims during the last decade were utilised in a local context during the planning stages of a proposed mosque in the West Midlands town of Dudley. Locating the central narratives in dominant national discourses of community cohesion and counterterrorism, this article analyses how correspondents to a local newspaper re-articulated national representations of Muslims as culturally dysfunctional in a local context and used these representations to argue against construction. By critically analysing the local expression of dominant national discourses of threat and blame, in terms of both inherent contradictions and ideological effects, this article highlights the ways in which these discourses worked to exclude Muslims while simultaneously reprimanding them for failing to integrate into a national and local culture that regarded them as inherently ‘other’.     

This violence good,that violence bad: normative and state-centric discourses in British school textbooks

ABSTRACT

Under the statutory obligations of the Prevent strategy, British schools have greater responsibility to counter terrorism and extremism than ever before. However, research has yet to fully explore how schools tackle such a complex issue in the classroom. This research critically examines the discourses of terrorism and extremism found within British secondary school textbooks to deepen understanding of how terrorism and extremism are taught in schools. This article deploys a mode of critical discourse analysis to assess and critique the ways in which the political realms of terrorism and extremism are constructed. I argue that these discourses construct an ethical proximity between the text, the reader and the state, while rendering voiceless both the “terrorist” and the civilian living in states prioritised by British foreign policy. As such, this article argues that British school textbooks construct a normative perspective through which the violence of states is sanitised and normalised. It raises concern regarding the role of contemporary schooling in perpetuating a global politics of violent foreign policy.     

The Politics of Universalisation: Establishing National Health Services in Southern Europe

Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain have enacted reform laws during the last 20 years with the intention of turning their health insurance systems into national health services. Universalisation of access to public health care was at the centre of the political debates which led to the passing of the reform laws. This article analyses the policy-making processes that allowed for such institutional change, as well as achievements and shortcomings of the implementation processes that followed. The analysis draws on the insights of the actor-centred neo-institutionalist approach in the policy sciences.     

Problems and opportunities in Polanyian analysis today

Abstract

The three books under review in this article all demonstrate the beginnings of a shift in the tone of literature on or derived from the work of Karl Polanyi. On one hand, the authors all show a willingness to admit a variety of problems and weaknesses in his work. But on the other hand, it is precisely this degree of critical introspection that enables the authors under review to identify some of the most important and contemporarily relevant aspects of Polanyi's thought. In the two main sections of this article – on Polanyi's concepts of ‘embeddedness’ and ‘double movement’ – I define the problems highlighted in previous iterations of Polanyian literature, moving on to examine how the texts under review address those problems, laying particular emphasis on the ideational components of Polanyi's thought. I conclude by suggesting future directions for Polanyian scholarship, mooting the possibility of a distinctively ‘post-Polanyian’ perspective in which ideas, discourse and framing are placed centre stage.     

International news as a reflection of cosmopolitan ideology: Coverage of the Ivorian crisis by CNN and the BBC

Abstract

International news discourse is often framed with ideological underpinnings. Ideology as a system of ideas or beliefs or ways of thinking not only helps, defines and explains, but also makes value judgements about that world (Croteau 2012; Van Dijk 1995). The author 's aim was to find out to what extent international news discourse reflects a cosmopolitanist ideology. The article looks at the extent to which the discourse of international news meets Tomlinson's (1999) postulation that cosmopolitanism should involve an intellectual and aesthetic stance of ‘openness’ towards people, places and different cultures – especially those from different ‘nations’. Using framing theory and critical discourse analysis as the theoretical basis for examining international news, the aim is to determine whether international news encourages or discourages a cosmopolitanist outlook during periods of political crisis. The author argues that Western media reportage on events in Ivory Coast to a large extent reflected a cosmopolitanist outlook.     

Analysing legislative performance: a plebeian perspective

Legislative performance can be understood in terms of results (the quality of the laws enacted) or in terms of the literal performativity of legislators (the quality of their appearances on the public stage). This article examines two different ethical frameworks for evaluating legislative performance in this latter, performative sense: a deliberative model, which restricts just political performances to deliberative exchanges among citizens, and a plebeian model, which expands just political performances to include those where political and economic elites endure special burdens as a condition of their elevated status. Given certain drawbacks of the deliberative model and parallel advantages of the plebeian model, I endorse the plebeian approach to political performativity. The article concludes by elaborating one of the key contrasts between the two models with regard to political communication, namely the plebeian model's embrace of a distinct form of legislative disruption. Beyond the way deliberation itself disrupts non-communicative forms of power and beyond the way protests physically disrupt governmental processes, plebeianism invokes a third kind of disruption – non-deliberative speech – intended to rebuke and humble leaders rather than reach mutual understanding about issues.     

Ritual,strategy, and deep culture in the Chechen national movement

This paper probes the dichotomy between strategic performance of cultural text and a strong approach to culture that sees fundamental texts as encompassing and determining social action. The central question posed is whether the paradigmatic emphasis on strategy in cultural analysis of protest and social movements misses the compelling influences that cultural texts may exert under certain conditions. Regarding protest movements and political contention, I am especially interested in the ‘deep textual grammar’ of the conflict, which can strongly constrain and guide social action. By identifying and analysing the deep cultural text of the Chechen nationalist movement for the period 1989–1999, this study shows that, in addition to strategic decisions, movement trajectories are sometimes strongly – almost ritualistically – culturally determined. As a first step towards reconceptualising the role of culture in social movements and to spur further investigation, this paper offers several propositions derived from the Chechen case about the relationship of deep culture and mobilisation.     

谈高职英语语篇教学方法的优化——基于语篇分析理论

语篇分析就是从具有完整思想内容的篇章的结构分析入手,从微观和宏观两个方面展开对语篇内容的研究。语篇分析教学是对传统的语法分析教学的否定,可以帮助我们解决传统英语教学中"单纯教语言"的问题。依据语篇分析理论,教师应充分重视非语言信息在语篇学习中的积极作用,改革创新语篇教学方法,从而使学生提高阅读水平,提高阅读课的教学质量。     

Dealing With Breast Cancer： The Journals of Audre Lorde

This paper analyzes how Caribbean-American poet and activist Audre Lorde textualizes the experience of breast cancer in her journals. Lorde confronts the narrative of the female body provided by the biomedical approach and challenges the passive role she is expected to play as a sick person. She deplores misinformation to patients and the insistence on reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy. Lorde denounces the discursive aggression toward women that is the result of the hidden patriarchal impositions insidiously operating within medical practices. She believes medical discourse has often been used to implement many of the precepts that underlie a male-centered society, shaping the gendering of women in line with a patriarchal worldview. This paper examines how Lorde faced with such a hostile situation, managed to overcome it, by speaking up and putting her fears and her hopes into words. Her personal diaries, The Cancer Journals （1980） and A Burst of Light （1988）, constitute today a fundamental point of reference and an important contribution to the feminist cause.