State narratives of ‘foreignness’ and ‘criminality’ in South Africa

This article brings the notion of transfiguration to bear on the study of the ‘unspeakable’ identity of African migrants living in South Africa, in the context of state language games on violence perpetrated against these migrants. The significance of these discourses is explored, in particular how official and not-so-unofficial discourses on violence in South African media combine to make migrants simultaneously visible and invisible. Speaking about violence involving black non-South Africans, state functionaries tend to downplay the ‘xenophobic’ element while overplaying the link with motiveless crime. Nevertheless, the sense that the migrant, labelled ‘foreigner’, is to blame for all the problems is never far from the surface of these language games. The migrant is therefore enlisted into a discourse where s/he is transformed and subsequently forced to recognise him/herself as subject. As a victim of violence, the migrants find themselves inhabiting zones of discursive indistinction, where they are both victim and victimiser, criminal and crime victim.     

Medicalisation,pharmaceutical promotion and the Internet: a critical multimodal discourse analysis of hair loss websites

This study conducts a critical multimodal discourse analysis of commercial hair loss websites. Specifically, I focus on eight sites which provide information about and promote the pharmaceutical hair loss treatment Propecia, a widely available medication marketed to treat male pattern baldness. I identify four salient discursive strategies through which the websites depict male hair loss and the Propecia treatment, namely (1) representing the balding man as type and outcast, (2) promoting the attractiveness and self-assurance of the hirsute man, (3) situating male hair loss in a scientific discourse and (4) encouraging consumers to self-evaluate their hair loss. By inducing insecurities in men experiencing hair loss and encouraging them to embrace pharmaceutical remedies as a viable response to male pattern balding, these discursive-semiotic strategies help to reproduce the contemporary sociocultural practice of medicalisation, the phenomenon whereby the natural processes of life are treated as medical problems. The findings of this study suggest that these promotional discourses play a role in transforming ordinary, benign ailments into illnesses, reconfiguring them as treatable disorders for commercial gain.     

The body as a form of representation

This article explores some discursive constructions of slums and the narrative foundations that sustain them. In such discourses, the distancing function of language demarcates a slum-line that defines and creates a “natural” separation between slums and the rest of urban populations to the extent that some see that the modern concept of slum opens an urban dimension of Orientalism. Slum discourses generate narratives that, after repeated exposure, accrue to become history, culture and knowledge. Drawing from Bruner's work on narrative accrual, this article studies how slum-narratives accrue according to specific agendas that determine lines of socio-political action on slum-dwellers.     

Affect-ing discourse: towards an embodied discourse analytics

The contemporary retheorisation of affect is impacting on an increasingly wide range of disciplines/inter-disciplines in the human sciences. Of particular relevance for this paper are, on the one hand, the emphasis on embodiment and, on the other, the ideas of “flow”, “intensity” and “contagion”. Together, these challenge traditional views of affect as equivalent to emotion, emanating from the self and ending at the boundary of the self. Discourse studies has not yet been significantly influenced by the “affective turn” now taking place within social and cultural theory. It has largely maintained, albeit implicitly, the traditional view of affect. Yet, if all human interaction is inflected with affect, in the sense indicated above, a different model of discourse seems called for. This paper aims to make a contribution to the development of a new “affect-ed” discourse analytics by identifying a variety of linguistic and discursive phenomena that could contribute to such a project. We draw primarily on the work of linguistics, bringing to notice a range of phenomena that may be unfamiliar either because of their technicality or because of the problematic status of linguistics in much cultural theory. The paper proceeds via a brief genealogical account of current affect theory to note a range of language phenomena that have been or can be read in terms of individual feeling and suggests an analysis of several forms of interaction re-read in terms of affective contagion. This section of the paper constitutes a preliminary inventory of components of an affect-ed discourse analytics.     

Encounters with panaceas: reading flyers and posters on ‘traditional’ healing in and around Johannesburg's Central Business District

Informed largely by the Critical Discourse Analysis framework, this article analyses flyers and posters that advertise traditional/alternative healing distributed and posted respectively in and around Johannesburg's Central Business District. Paying close attention to text and context, the paper analyses the advertising of medicines and practices referred to as traditional/alternative. The advertising, which employs modern media and advertising techniques, is as complex as the multiplicity of religious, secular and corporeal interventions offered by the healers. The ubiquitous presence of flyers and the continued pasting of posters onto city structures, despite warnings by the city of Johannesburg, are an expression of resistance to city authorities. The paper posits that what may appear to be downright charlatanism by the advertisers might in fact be a viable alternative to biomedicine, especially in Johannesburg's context of high in-migration with its attendant plethora of social and health problems. Thus the healing services that the healers advertise pose a challenge to allopathic medicine, suggesting that illness needs to be understood in a broad sense.     

中国美学研究的当代走向

当代学术界有关中国美学的研究既有一定的成绩,又存在一定的误区。中国美学资源的发掘、中国美学话语的重建、中国美学经验的阐释,三种思路各有得失。只有以当代中国的艺术与审美经验为理据,解决当代中国的美学问题,中国美学才能完成其现代建构,真正做到既是中国的,又是世界的。     

全球化时代比较文学的历史承担--论比较文学的学理立场和策略立场

严守中立一直是比较文学作为学术"志业"的基本立场,但是随着消费体制的基础化和普世化,各文明的文化学术已先导性、前提性地介入了世界经济空间的争夺和占取.在这种情况下,必须警惕所谓"纯学理立场"中所隐含的西方中心主义,强调"中国论述"的本位意义,换言之,必须考虑作为跨文化交流之前沿学科的比较文学在学理立场和策略立场之间的制约、协调和互动.     

党和国家话语与农村女性的声音--以白茆山歌为例的观察(1956-1966)

本文以江苏常熟的白茆山歌为例,考察在1958年的新民歌运动中,国家、女性、民间文艺三者之间的复杂关系。国家以民歌这种传统民间文艺形式动员农村妇女参加社会主义劳动,但女性仍然可以通过积极回应、消极对抗和反面形象的言说等三种策略利用民歌来拓展女性空间,彰显女性意识。     

会话话语的审美再分析

会话语境是会话话语审美研究中的一个重大课题。会话语境包含言辞内语境信息和言辞外语境信息,其直接影响到会话话语审美关系的形成:会话语境可以使会话生成音响形象及其情感意味之美,并可补充话语信息含量从而引发审美意象;会话语境可以扩大、弱化或模糊会话话语的所指意义,使会话话语具有审美意味;会话话语可以因言辞内语境因素的影响发生变异而获得美感;在会话语境信息的作用下,一级所指可以发生变异,转化为二级所指而获得审美优势;会话话语的审美在历时性的传承中,因历史文化、社会心理等语境因素的影响,会不断地被建构、解构和重构。