Limits to a cyber-threat

This paper reveals the limits to representing cyberspace as a threat. In contrast to more conventional threats, the suggestion is that the not-immediately-apparent consequences of a cyber-attack make it largely reliant on official practices of representation. Exploring the implications of this reliance, the paper outlines how attributing meaning and culpability – always contested practices – are amplified in the potential absence of a readily apparent attack. Given these limits, does the cyber-threat then require a different lexicon of danger to both educate and engender a sense of caution? Examining the discursive construction of the cyber-threat, the paper demonstrates how this threat draws upon an established economy of danger – likening it to warfare and terrorism – but also suggests a limit to these representations. Specifically, by engaging post-structuralist literature the paper illustrates that these limits are best understood through an appreciation of the performative and the constitutive ‘lack’ in signification. It thus concludes that the value of the cyber-threat is not determined by transparently representing a cyber-attack. Rather, it is drawn from processes of hyper-securitization and through the establishment of institutions like the NATO Center of Excellence in Cooperative Cyber Defense that retroactively bring into existence the very object it purports to defend against.     

The Future of British Political History: Concluding Remarks

These concluding remarks reflect, in the light of the preceding articles, on two themes that recur throughout the collection. First, how can historians maintain an effective presence in public debate about politics in Britain? Second, how should political historians position themselves within the discipline, at a time when—it is suggested—political history is losing ground among British academic historians? It is argued here that, in each case, they should reflect on what they can most distinctively contribute, either as historians or as political historians; and that they should frame their interventions accordingly.     

Context from a social semiotic perspective: a discourse analytical study of the children TV show,Bubble Guppies

In mainstream linguistics, context is either entirely ignored or dominantly viewed as an objective property of the external world. For instance, in sociolinguistics or pragmatics, scholars frequently attempt to learn about the meaning of words or sentences given certain social context. The social semiotic method presented in this paper challenges the objectivity of context and explores the dynamic between content and context from the perspective of Peircian semiotics. An episode of a children animations series, Bubble Guppies, where human-like mermaids learn about the mysteries of ancient Egypt, is used as a point of departure to show that content and context recursively co-construct with viewers’ participation. For instance, while there is little physical similarity between where the Guppies meet in the show’s story and a typical classroom, the context of a classroom is clearly established through the way the Guppies interact with each other and with objects they encounter. Additionally, the results indicate that learning is an important product of such context-construction, as TV viewers must constantly elaborate on events and link interactions that are perceived not as objects but as signs entangled in a growing web of symbolic system.     

"大学英语语篇阅读教学实验"研究报告

传统阅读教学较多关注单词、句子、语法等微观单位的分析、理解,未能从语篇的高度分析、理解文章,影响了学生阅读能力的培养和提高.语篇阅读教学着眼于语篇,高屋建瓴地引导学生学会把握单词之间、句子之间、段落之间的关联,从而实现对文章结构及含义的深刻理解.     

More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization

This paper revisits the concept of refugee labelling I elaboratednearly two decades ago. In radically different conditions, thecontemporary relevance and utility of the concept are re-examinedand re-established. Formulated at a time of regionally contained,mass refugee migration in the south during the late 1970s andearly 1980s, the paper argues that the concept still offersvital insights into the impacts of institutional and bureaucraticpower on the lives of refugees in a globalized era of transnationalsocial transformations, mixed migration flows, and the continuingpresence of large scale refugee migration. The core of the paperargues that the ‘convenient images’ of refugees,labelled within a co-opting humanitarian discourse in the past,have been displaced by a fractioning of the label which is drivenby the need to manage globalized processes and patterns of migrationand forced migration in particular. The paper re-evaluates theconcept using the three original axioms—forming, transformingand politicizing the label ‘refugee’. The core argumentis that in the contemporary era: a) the formation of the refugeelabel reflects causes and patterns of forced migration whichare much more complex than in the past, contrasting with anessentially homogeneous connotation in the past; b) respondingto this complexity, the refugee label is transformed by an institutional‘fractioning’ in order to manage the new migration;c) governments, rather than NGOs as in the past, are the pre-eminentagency in the contemporary processes of transforming the refugeelabel, a process driven by northern interests; d) the refugeelabel has become politicized by the reproduction of institutionalfractioning and by embedding the wider political discourse ofresistance to migrants and refugees.     

文化差异对外语写作中语篇构建和思维模式的影响

本文以国外学者对语篇构建以及思维模式的论述为对照,对四川外语学院三个班的本科一年级学生和一个研究生班的学生进行分组调查。统计结果分析表明,文化差异对学生的思维模式以及他们在写作过程中的语篇组织都有很大的影响。要以此来使学生注意到这种差异,从而对西方的思维模式和语篇构建方式进行有效的模仿,才能写出更地道的英语作文。     

The Croatian Diaspora in North America: Identity, Ethnic Solidarity, and the Formation of a “Transnational National Community”

As I attempt to reveal in this article, Croatian Diaspora's press in North America plays a crucial role in ethnic mobilization and formation of attitudes among members of Croatian Diaspora community toward their home society—Croatia and construction of transnational national community. Discourse analysis employed when examining writings published between 1980–1995 in the most influential Croatian Diaspora's journal—the Fraternalist—builds on the idea that not only news from both the host and home countries are provided, but they are also used to constantly reproduce elements of group identity among Diaspora's community. This study explores the main trends in different stages of ethnic homogenization and mobilization of Croatian Diaspora in North America, which progressed in response to political changes in the home country, reaching its peak with the commencement of the war in Croatia in 1991.     

Discourse Categories in Encounters Between Palestinians and Israelis

The discourse in encounter groups between Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens was analyzed to investigate factors that promoted or hindered understanding between conflict groups. A typology of seven categories, ordered on a scale from monologues that do not meet to affective and cognitive understanding, was used. A histogram presented percents of speech categories per encounter. Qualitative and quantitative methods exposed factors influencing group processes. Changes in speech categories were chaotic, as opposed to linear. Analysis showed an interaction between the pressure of the conflict reality outside and the internal group process. This article addresses the theoretical question of the goal of intergroup encounters.