The Populist Surge in Post‐Democratic Times: Theoretical and Political Challenges

Populism has often been described as a great challenge and threat to Western democracies. Not surprisingly, at a time in which we are witnessing a significant rise in populist actors in Europe and the US, scientific analyses and commentary regarding populism have become particularly popular and, indeed, necessary. My aim in this article is to offer a brief yet comprehensive overview of the ongoing debates in a bid to problematise the supposed ‘imminent threat’ of populism in light of recent developments within the political systems and societies of established democracies, especially under conditions of crisis. I understand populism as a specific type of discourse, and thus as a way—among others—of doing politics and appealing to groups of people. Thus, I highlight the varying orientations that populist movements might take, depending on the ideological traditions with which they are closely articulated and the sociopolitical environment in which they manifest. Last, I relate the ‘populist surge’ to discussions regarding post‐democracy.     

Writing Workshops for First Year Law: my contribution as an applied linguist

“Law schools should focus more on teaching writing – not some Procrustean monstrosity called ‘legal writing,’ but the ordinary techniques of constructing a sentence and telling a story” writes Roosevelt in his review of Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary by Posner. The Australian Threshold Learning Outcome expects law graduates to be effective, appropriate and persuasive as communicators when interacting with both legal and non-legal persons. We also know that embedding learning outcomes or graduate attributes throughout a programme encourages progressive learning. Furthermore, the whole of degree curriculum design undertaken from a shared perspective reflects industry and student requirements better than individual subjects can. In the absence of any whole of degree curriculum, the semester-long series of Writing Workshops for First Year Law (WWFYL) was created. Building on the success of past collaboration (Curró and Longo), WWFYL reflect a move away from a solitary, silent teaching culture to open sharing of practice. The widening participation and skills agendas remind us of the need to focus on the integration of academic literacies into law. If law is language, can applied linguistics make a contribution to the literacy needs of students from diverse linguistic backgrounds? As an applied linguist, my objective is to raise awareness of the elements and features of legal writing and demystify the specialised discourse and textual features. In this paper I present my theoretical framework borrowed from socio-constructivist theories, focusing on how students learn specific subject matter in particular contexts: “a teaching and learning process that makes transparent the practices and discourses of the subject area” (D. Warren, “Curriculum Design in a Context of Widening Participation in Higher Education” (2002) 1 Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 85, p. 88). Two snapshots of my classroom discourse demonstrating the practical application of my teaching are presented, as well as evaluation data supporting my approach.     

From Kosovo to Syria: the transformation of NATO Secretaries General's discourse on military humanitarian intervention

The civil war in Syria began approximately four years ago and has resulted in the murder of thousands by the Assad regime and the flight of millions to neighbouring countries. The international community's reluctance to intervene to halt the ongoing massive human rights violations has been explained in geopolitical, military-strategic, diplomatic, and legal terms. Yet, what does this imply normatively? And does the weakening of the military humanitarian intervention (MHI) norm support arguments regarding the poverty of constructivist security studies? This article examines these two questions and demonstrates the weakness of the MHI norm, especially in light of the new interpretations and meanings which authoritative agents ascribe to its key conceptual components in changing strategic, social and political contexts. Yet, the article employs constructivist tools to explore the endogenous challenges to the MHI norm while proving the added value of constructivist security research, not only for explaining “norm evolution” but also “norm decline”. Taking discourse as a reflection of social norms and an arena for encouraging new intersubjective interpretations of concepts, it examines the above assertions by analysing the discourse of NATO Secretaries General from 1999 (Kosovo crisis) to today.     

NGO partnerships in Haiti: clashes of discourse and reality

This paper analyses the existing and perceived rules and restrictions of the global development dispositif working to maintain inequalities in the interactions of international NGOs (INGOs) and Haitian organisations. It does so by exploring constructions of partnership and their clashing realities. Development organisations and agencies have influenced the fabric of Haitian society and politics not only by their mere presence but also by the rules they impose. The paper identifies positions of power and decision making by drawing on Foucauldian tools of discourse analysis. The analysis is based on empirical fieldwork carried out in Haiti between 2012 and 2014. It identifies a narrative of trickle-down pressures that INGOs draw upon to position themselves as intermediaries in the larger development system. By questioning these narratives, the paper provides the starting point for the development of alternatives that would enable international NGOs to assume a role that supports rather than weakens.     

Unstable Antistatism: The Left, the Right, and The Outlaw Josey Wales

This essay is an examination of the diverse origins of modern conservative antistatism in the United States through an analysis of the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the book on which it was based. The consolidation of a conservative politics in the 1970s was achieved in part by the Right's appropriation of New Left antistatism via older forms of racial discourse. This emphasis on New Left influence helps explain the rise of the New Right in a way that is missed in conventional accounts, while demonstrating more generally that political discourse is always contingent and unstable, and open to unintended articulations.     

THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF CONFLICT IN DIVORCE LITIGATION: A DISCURSIVE CRITIQUE OF “PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME” AND “THE ALIENATED CHILD”

In high‐conflict divorce litigation involving custody and access, mental‐health professionals are often used to assess the case and make recommendations. Using Foucauldian theories of discourse, this article suggests that these assessments, which are intended to resolve the conflict or offer profitable information, often participate in the conflict by constructing assessments and diagnoses that fit with legal discourse, and thus with the outcomes of adversarial‐styled rulings and ideologically driven interests. This article suggests that so long as such professionals are driven by the privileged discourse of law and psychology/psychiatry, the best interests of those at the center of the conflict can have their experience co‐opted by the iatrogenic features of these discourses.     

A shifting enemy: analysing the BBC’s representations of “al-Qaeda” in the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks

This article seeks to explore how the BBC made sense of the al-Qaeda phenomenon in its flagship “News at Ten” bulletin during the aftermath of the September 11^th 2001 attacks. Using Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis, it shows how the BBC’s representations function as a dynamic and continually shifting site upon which a range of fears, identities, discourses and forms of knowledge and power struggle and contend, and through which a number of different “al-Qaedas” manifest themselves. In particular, three shifting modes of visual and verbal representation are identified within the BBC’s coverage which each correspond to a separate understanding of al-Qaeda: the “Islamic” mode, the “Personalised” mode and the “Elusive” mode. These representations both draw upon and challenge the dominant discourses surrounding Islam, non-state terrorism and the identities of terrorist suspects, providing audiences with a variety of often conflicting ways of seeing and speaking about this entity. As such, the article provides insight into the complex nature of the BBC’s representations of al-Qaeda during its coverage of the September 11^th 2001 attacks, and shows how such complexity serves, albeit inadvertently, to legitimise the far-reaching counterterrorism policies that were enacted in the aftermath of these attacks.     

Discourse Ethics and the Normative Justification of Tolerance

Abstract

The following paper considers the extent to which discourse ethics can adequately respond to Habermas' own call for normative justification for the expectation of tolerance. It concludes that discourse ethics is able to lend its services to the flagging fortunes of the idea of toleration, not by seeking to underscore this idea with rationally compelling argumentation, but by offering insights into the possibilities opened up to a life which accepts this principle.     

中美英语新闻的批评语篇分析——以玉树地震报道为例

批评语言学认为,任何语言运用都具有意识形态意义。随着人们对语言和意识形态关系的深入研究,越来越多的人开始使用批评语篇分析的手法来分析媒体语篇的语言特征。从语言学的角度,运用批评语篇分析手法对比分析China Daily和The New York Times关于玉树地震的报道,从词汇分类、转换、情态系统三方面探讨这两家媒体对于该事件报道中的语言运用的差异以及产生原因,可以揭示中西方媒体所蕴含的不同意识形态。