Authoritarian legitimation: assessing discourses of legitimacy in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT

What are the sources of authoritarian persistence in Central Asia? This study explores the argument that authoritarian regimes persist through effective authoritarian legitimation. Drawing on the theory and analysis of discourse, it develops an approach to authoritarian legitimation and examines discursive appeals to legitimacy by the Kazakh and Uzbek presidents. The study also assesses the effectiveness of the presidential discourses of legitimacy for public perception of the governing regimes in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This research shows that by defining what constitutes legitimate power and presenting political rule as consistent with this definition, authoritarian governments can foster certain modes of reasoning and evaluation among citizens, and create possibilities for their acceptance of the regime as ‘right’ or ‘proper’.     

The discursive construction of intervention: selves,democratic legacies,and Responsibility to Protect in French discourse on Libya

This article analyses French executives' and lawmakers' legitimisations of the intervention in Libya with the aim of understanding the discursive construction of intervention. It investigates the arguments in favour of intervention and the oppositions they were confronted with. To these arguments belong a re-evaluated democratic legacy of France, an identification with the Libyan people, and a debate on Responsibility to Protect and the rule of law in world politics, which have a broader relevance for French actorness abroad. The article applies the Essex School discourse theory and techniques from Interpretive Policy Analysis on executive speeches and parliamentary documents for structuring the debate and for estimating the strength of ideas in their interdiscursive configuration. An ideal-typical explanation of the legitimisation of intervention and of the choice of one policy over another is made. The article argues that going to war in Libya equated to a question of cultural appropriateness.     

Communication in family court: financial remedy proceedings from the perspective of litigants in person

The article presents a rationale for communicative, conceptual, cognitive and procedural challenges experienced by litigants in person in financial remedy proceedings. The article also explores oscillation between written and spoken legal genres and narrative development strategies which litigants in person have to use throughout different stages (from the early stages of starting proceedings, filling in court forms and providing documentation, through the negotiation process to interaction in court). While legal professionals express themselves in paradigmatic legal mode influenced by legal acts and legislation, litigants in person tend to express themselves in narrative mode similar to everyday storytelling. The objective is to investigate obstacles litigants in person experience during the process originally designed by legal professionals for legal professionals. The article evaluates different options for empowering lay people involved in legal proceedings and argues for the need to provide more specific support for different stages of family proceedings.     

捍卫的代价——臧克家与当代文学权威话语

“第一次文代会”不容置疑地确立了毛泽东文学思想在新中国文学中的权威地位,并让入明显感受到解放区的文学权威话语对来自国统区作家的压力。正是这一历史背景,促使“出身”于国统区的臧克家选择了积极认同根据权威文学话语建构的当代文学规范,以马克思主义、列宁主义、毛泽东思想的阶级论,历史唯物主义、辩证法、革命功利主义美学的观念,重绘了中国新诗史的政治地图,加入了崇奉文化领导权的行列。感恩心理是他笃信革命伦理,坚决捍卫革命文学规范的动力源之一。     

Foreign corporate accountability: The contested institutionalization of mandatory due diligence in France and Germany

In the recent past, European states have adopted mandatory due diligence (MDD) laws for holding companies accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of their supply chains. The institutionalization of the international due diligence norm into domestic legislation has, however, been highly contested. Our contribution analyzes the discursive struggles about the meaning of due diligence that have accompanied the institutionalization of MDD in Germany and France. Based on document analysis and legal analysis of laws and law proposals, we identify a state-centric, a market-based, and a polycentric-governance discourse. These discourses are based on fundamentally different understandings of how the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights should be translated into hard law. By outlining these discourses and comparing the related policy preferences, we contribute with a better understanding of different ways in which MDD is institutionalized, with important consequences for the possibilities to enhance corporate accountability in global supply chains.     

作为话语仪式的忏悔——何其芳延安时期的诗歌话语分析

在延安时期的诗歌话语实践中,何其芳主要运用了一种双重性的忏悔话语策略,以此来认同并超越当时正日趋成型的革命文艺话语秩序。其中隐含了主流权力话语重塑或改造诗人主体的运作机制,即通过排除程序和提纯程序来制约主体的话语空间和话语方式。何其芳的话语困境植根于他的心理困境,也折射了当时面临创作转换的革命作家的普遍文化困境。     

乡村社会研究的难题与话语群的观察对策

话语群理论是在传统的乡村研究理论遇到一系列难题之后应运而生的,是对我国乡村研究中的长期模式,即关于乡村社会"传统—现代"的二元分割结构认知模式的突破,也是基于西方语言学方法遇到自身困惑,即语境建构出现泛滥趋势的基础之上提出来的。     

基于中国—东盟自由贸易区发展需求的口译听辨教学

随着中国—东盟自由贸易区的建成和进一步发展,对高水平口译人才的需求也在日益增长。为了满足自由贸易区发展对口译人才的需求,提高学生的口译听辨能力成为口译教学亟需解决的问题。本文提出从加强东盟国家语言变体听辨训练和加强背景知识积累两个方面,有针对性地解决口译员在中国—东盟自由贸易区背景下出现的听辨障碍。     

Buried voices: Mexican migrants’ views on the question of illegality

How do immigrant Mexican workers perceive the policies and social discourses that regulate their insertion into American society as noncitizens and illegals? Using ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, evidence is presented that unauthorized Mexican migrants do not consider themselves lawbreakers but rather moral actors responding to difficult socioeconomic conditions. Informed by a keen understanding of the social forces oppressing them, these migrants articulate a discourse of social justice that works as a powerful counterpoint to the hegemonic ideas of citizenship, belonging, and illegality. A careful analysis of migrant social reflexivity offers a much-needed corrective to the prevailing top-down perspective typically offered among contemporary scholars. By looking at the ways in which migrants make sense of immigration policies and articulate their right to have rights, this examination departs from the widespread tendency among scholars and policy makers of analyzing the migrant’s social and civic status as a matter of assimilation and immigration control.     

Values,imaginaries and templates of journalistic practice: a Critical Discourse Analysis

This article shows that templates are not only crucial for the ways in which journalists construct or structure the media discourse but also for how they perceive themselves and others in the process of journalistic practice. A Critical Discourse Analysis of interviews with Polish journalists on their practices related to reporting migration – a topic largely discarded and ignored by the Polish media – shows that the construction of practice in the journalistic field constantly negotiates the contradiction between “knowing-it-all”, a key element of the template of journalistic habitus/identity, and the frequent lack of experience or limited knowledge of practice and of journalistic work. The analysis reveals that, while often using a discursive strategy of pre-legitimation, journalists enact templates that blur the boundaries between discourses about experiences of journalistic work and imaginaries or scenarios of actions they would only potentially undertake. Journalistic discourses of practice thereby become increasingly displaced, that is, they run along similar templates of discourse of/about quasi-universalised ethics and values of journalism almost irrespective of media organisations of the informants. By the same token, it is emphasised that, rather than being limited by the ideologies and powers of media organisations, agency seems to be often self-constrained by journalists in their self-entrapment in values, templates and imaginaries of journalism.