Constructing “Hmong American Youth”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of 25 Years of Academic Literature on Hmong American Youth

Hmong American youth have been in the United States for 40 years, and yet research still suggests a binary portrayal of their experiences—model minorities or struggling delinquents. In this study, we use critical discourse analysis to examine academic literature and the construction of “Hmong American youth.” We examine academic literature discursive practices and power in controlling the discourse on Hmong American youth and shaping practices and policies. Using critical discourse analysis, we call attention to academic literature and its power, and challenge researchers to reconstruct a more complex discourse of Hmong American youth that captures their histories, possibilities, and desires.     

Implementing the human right to water and sanitation: a study of global and local discourses

This article explores global and local discourses on how to implement the newly recognised human right to water and sanitation (HRtWS). We analyse the potential limitations of the human rights frame in the context of critiques that human rights are a liberal, Western discourse that does not reflect the lived experiences of non-Western countries. Through two case studies we find that there are two discourses emerging on how to implement the HRtWS. At the global level, as seen in the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on the HRtWS, we find a hegemonic discourse that is state-centric and market-friendly. In Bolivia, a country currently implementing a human rights-based approach to water services, we find a counter-hegemonic discourse on implementation. We argue that the hegemonic discourse is incomplete and does not fully address barriers to fulfilment of the right, such as state corruption and the needs of peri-urban residents.     

Biologising Paternity,Moralising Maternity: The Construction of Parenthood in the Determination of Paternity Through the Courts in Portugal

This article explores how the Portuguese legal system’s efforts to determine paternity of children born outside legal marriage, automatically initiated by the Registry Office when a birth registration does not indicate the father, reveal cultural models which reinforce the naturalisation of the differences between mothers and fathers, with significant effects on the social construction of parental roles and on expectations of family organisation and female sexual behaviour. The article relies on ethnographic data drawn from direct observation of court proceedings for the determination of paternity, as well as interviews with judges and prosecuting counsels all over the country. It is argued that judicial practices in the specific context of courtroom investigations of paternity reinforce gender inequalities in two interrelated ways. On the one hand, they are strengthened in the discursive practices performed during the course of the interactions between judges, prosecuting counsels and the mother of the child, as well as the alleged father. On the other hand, the normative model of family life and the dominant ideology of women’s and men’s relationships, which emphasise women’s socially subordinate position, are revealed by the selective use of DNA testing in paternity cases, based on the judge’s evaluation of the mother’s sexual behaviour. The article argues that legal attempts to establish the paternity of children born outside marriage—though based on novel technical and supposedly objective procedures—tend, nevertheless, to reproduce the prevailing patriarchal structures.

European elites and the narrative of the Greek crisis: A discursive institutionalist analysis

This article examines elite European discourses during the Greek financial crisis from its pre-history in September 2008 up to the arrival of the SYRIZA government in January 2015. The article employs the conceptual literature on Discursive Institutionalism (DI) and Historical Institutionalism (HI). Having coded 1,153 unique quotes drawn from a dataset of 15,354 news wires from Reuters, the authors argue that the communicative discourse of 63 senior European (and IMF) officials on the Greek crisis during that period demonstrates significant volatility. Four distinct narrative frames are identified: ‘neglect’, ‘suspicious cooperation’, ‘blame’ and ‘reluctant redemption’, punctuated by three discursive junctures in 2010, 2011 and 2012, which reflect the content of the changing communicative discourse of the Greek crisis. The article's contribution is twofold: empirically, it is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the protagonists’ communication of the Greek crisis; and theoretically, it combines DI and HI in an effort to conceptualise an important part of our understanding of ‘bail-out politics’ throughout the Eurozone crisis.     

当代中国法治话语体系的构建

近十余年来,社会各方面对中国法治的应有形态及理想图景认识出现了一定分歧。形成这种分歧的实质原因是,在"什么是法治"的问题上,人们更多地受到西方自由主义法治理论的影响。自由主义法治理论所建构的法治模式以及所描绘的法治的某些特征,一定程度上已成为人们对于法治的深刻记忆,并成为认知和评判我国法治现实的依据。为此,应当在充分揭示和深刻认知自由主义法治理论乖谬的基础上,加强我国法治意识形态的自主化建设,以社会主义法治理念为基础构建中国特色法治话语体系。在此过程中,应注重社会主义法治理念与法学传统理论及知识谱系的对接,把社会主义法治理念转化或体现为具体的法律思想、法学理论、法律原理、法律文化、法律知识以及法律思维,藉以确立社会主义法治理念作为我国法治的"元理论"和"元知识"的权威地位。     

霸权衰落与“泛安全化”：基于美国的个案分析

衰落是霸权的宿命,但霸权国既不会主动放弃国际政治中的主导地位,也不会静待霸权体系崩溃。处于衰落阶段的霸权国期待维持与崛起国之间的权力差距,以延长霸权的寿命。然而,权力转移等国际关系结构性因素的变化导致离岸平衡和军事打击等传统手段难以在衰落阶段奏效。相比之下,“安全化”为霸权国家的霸权护持行动与选择——如领域撤退或强制惩罚——提供了合法性依据。同时,由于霸权的同心圆特性,核心利益被触动会引发霸权国在核心和外围领域的全方位的打压,进而泛化议题和对象。衰落中的霸权国通过“危机感知”—“构建并接受安全化诉求”—“泛安全化”的传导路径,将维持霸权地位的诉求以泛安全化的形式展现出来。然而,美国霸权衰落的经验事实表明,泛安全化作为衰落阶段的霸权护持手段不仅与理论预期相反,而且成效也不尽人意。面对美国霸权的泛安全化,中国应当保持战略定力,坚守并贯彻总体国家安全观。     

Kazakh power distance dimension in business discourse

The article is considered to be of current interest, because it is a relatively new area for research. This paper focuses on measuring Hofstede’s power distance index for different countries, particularly in Kazakh culture. A novel technique is proposed, where verbal index is calculated from the analysis of publically available texts delivered by representatives of different cultures. The authors analyzed public speeches made by leaders of various countries. From these texts, a verbal index was derived, which closely correlated with Hofstede’s power distance data. As a result, the authors were able to obtain a power distance index for Kazakhstan, which was previously unavailable. Furthermore, this method can be used as a cheaper alternative to conducting surveys in estimating Hofstede’s power distance indexes for different cultures.     

“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.     

Apostolic Minds and the Spinning House: Jane Ellen Harrison and Virginia Woolf's Discourse of Alterity

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) are two of the most iconic figures in British feminist history whose enduring influence have helped create and sustain a multitude of feminist discourses. Interestingly, both produced their landmark feminist studies in Cambridge when it was, arguably, the most aggressively anti-feminist institution in Britain at that time. Evidence of the kind of institutionalized disciplinary control Cambridge historically exercised on women can be found in the three Committals books (1823–1894) of the Spinning House (1631–1894) in the University archives. So called because the inmates were given wool to spin, the Spinning House was a penitentiary for young girls who were judged to be compromising the morals of the undergraduates. The Spinning House had its basis in the legal authority of the University which declared ‘That the University by virtue of their Charter sanctioned by Act of Parliament, have an undoubted right to cause the Public Street to be inspected, and loose and disorderly women to be taken up and sent to the Spinning House or the house of correction’. Against the background of the culture encapsulated by the Spinning House, women academics, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, were making tremendous efforts to bring about intellectual equality. And though the two—the spinner and the woman student—occupied mutually exclusive spaces, they were nevertheless held on the margins of the power structure that produced both. This paper examines the socio-historical context and the puritan intellectual politics of Cambridge against which feminist theories of Harrison and Woolf were produced to identify some of the methods with which they negotiated masculine orthodoxy and structured their feminist discourse of alterity.     

Brexit Means Brexit—or Does It? The Legacy of Theresa May's Discursive Treatment of Brexit

With the looming reality of Brexit drawing closer, it is the intention of this article to explore Theresa May's post‐referendum communicative behaviour on Brexit—the very issue that came to define her premiership agenda—and uncover what legacy it has left behind. Building upon, extending and updating the emerging literature on May's discourse, the inquiry helps us understand how May acted through language in order to influence and change other people's attitudes towards and ways of looking at Brexit. The article argues that there are at least seven ways, closely interrelated and feeding into each other, in which her discursive construction of Brexit has left a somewhat bitter legacy, contributing to the Brexit political paralysis and inspiring substantial levels of confusion and exasperation, both within the UK and abroad.