Television and Material Culture: Mediating the Temporal and Consumerist Practices in Pre-liberalised Kerala

The introduction of television in Kerala was an event marked by the encounter between spatial practices, discursive structures and visual paradigms. As a result, it becomes important to contextualise television’s presence in Kerala in the socio-economic conditions that defined the region in and around the time when television was introduced. This would provide some seminal cues about the mutual imbrications between television and its politico-discursive context. The present paper tries to look into the ways in which television fashioned new spatio-temporal practices and embodied various consumerist tendencies in pre-liberalised Kerala to argue that television is an artifact grounded in the region’s cultural values and material aspirations. The first section looks at how television-viewing and the socialities formed around the act were ‘timed’ by television. In the second section, the paper studies the popular advertising strategies employed to market television as a ‘tamed’ object that is representative of the consumerist aspirations that defined the region.

A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context

<p>Political identity is a complex phenomenon that is generated within a rich sociocultural context. This thesis examines political identity in informal talk which is situated within a relatively under-explored context, New Zealand’s capital city and political centre, Wellington. Grounding the study within the critical realist model of stratified reality provides the philosophical motivation to explore multi-layered discourses alongside the extra-discursive referents that underpin them. The analysis centres on a model of identity, contra postmodernism, which shows that identities, while socially recognised in discourse, are articulated in reference to physical and social structures. I adopt a comprehensive multi-layered approach to discourse by examining the macro sociocultural influences that appear to pattern interaction across the country, the meso-level subnational discourses that influence dialogue at a more situated level and the micro-level interactional stances taken up in everyday communication. Discourse at all levels is implicated in the identities I examine in this thesis and it is against this backdrop that I unpack political identity into its indexed discourses and constitutive stance acts. Framed by my ethnographic immersion in the study context and drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-six individuals, I explore the way in which discourse and stancetaking are implicated in the genesis of the participants’ political selves. I first consider the extra-discursive context, including the geographical, economic and cultural structures that underlie New Zealand discourses. This is followed by detailed analysis of sociocultural discourse as it appears in talk. I identify egalitarianism and tall poppy as two related discourses which are embedded within the historical context of the country. I also explore four subnational discourses relating to Wellington city, including the political town, left-wing and small town discourses, which occur alongside a discourse of contrast. These sociocultural and subnational discourses influence much of the talk that occurs in reference to politics in Wellington and are thus implicated in political identity as it is generated in moment-by-moment interaction. To explore this in further detail I examine the micro-level of interactional discourse, more specifically the processes of stancetaking, in two detailed case studies. The two focus participants demonstrate prominent stance processes which I argue are central to much identity work: intersubjectivity, in which the stances of all those involved in the discussion interact in complex ways; and multiplicity, when participants take numerous stance directions that appear to contribute to different aspects of their identities. The intensive focus on the case studies, alongside analysis of the full discursive and extra-discursive context, provides a multi-layered and philosophically anchored approach that seeks to contribute to current understandings of and approaches to the study of discourse and identity.</p>

A Critical Realist Study of Political Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Materiality, Discourse and Context

<p>Political identity is a complex phenomenon that is generated within a rich sociocultural context. This thesis examines political identity in informal talk which is situated within a relatively under-explored context, New Zealand’s capital city and political centre, Wellington. Grounding the study within the critical realist model of stratified reality provides the philosophical motivation to explore multi-layered discourses alongside the extra-discursive referents that underpin them. The analysis centres on a model of identity, contra postmodernism, which shows that identities, while socially recognised in discourse, are articulated in reference to physical and social structures. I adopt a comprehensive multi-layered approach to discourse by examining the macro sociocultural influences that appear to pattern interaction across the country, the meso-level subnational discourses that influence dialogue at a more situated level and the micro-level interactional stances taken up in everyday communication. Discourse at all levels is implicated in the identities I examine in this thesis and it is against this backdrop that I unpack political identity into its indexed discourses and constitutive stance acts. Framed by my ethnographic immersion in the study context and drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with twenty-six individuals, I explore the way in which discourse and stancetaking are implicated in the genesis of the participants’ political selves. I first consider the extra-discursive context, including the geographical, economic and cultural structures that underlie New Zealand discourses. This is followed by detailed analysis of sociocultural discourse as it appears in talk. I identify egalitarianism and tall poppy as two related discourses which are embedded within the historical context of the country. I also explore four subnational discourses relating to Wellington city, including the political town, left-wing and small town discourses, which occur alongside a discourse of contrast. These sociocultural and subnational discourses influence much of the talk that occurs in reference to politics in Wellington and are thus implicated in political identity as it is generated in moment-by-moment interaction. To explore this in further detail I examine the micro-level of interactional discourse, more specifically the processes of stancetaking, in two detailed case studies. The two focus participants demonstrate prominent stance processes which I argue are central to much identity work: intersubjectivity, in which the stances of all those involved in the discussion interact in complex ways; and multiplicity, when participants take numerous stance directions that appear to contribute to different aspects of their identities. The intensive focus on the case studies, alongside analysis of the full discursive and extra-discursive context, provides a multi-layered and philosophically anchored approach that seeks to contribute to current understandings of and approaches to the study of discourse and identity.</p>

DIALOGIC INCONGRUITY IN MOMADAY’S THE INDOLENT BOYS

From the perspective of interpretive sociolinguistics, this paper offers a stylistic assessment of dialogic incongruity in Scott Momaday’s play The Indolent Boys. The mismatches between utterances and the discursive context reflect the protagonist’s psychosocial fragmentation attributable to the consequences of forced assimilation. Employing an expanded ethnography-of-speaking approach which incorporates sociocultural as well as psychological meanings of the text, the analysis of selected conversational exchanges reveals the continued significant role mythic texts play in recovering and strengthening Native identities. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0946/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Systems of Communication: Aspects of Culture and Structure in Speech Surrogates

The practice of speech surrogacy is used for communication across many cultures. Previous work has historically engaged with the study of speech surrogates as part of anthropological or ethnomusicological inquiry; more recently, scholars have explored aspects of the formal relationship between spoken and surrogate linguistic structures. How speech surrogates function as systems of communication is not yet well understood. Based on evidence from an interdisciplinary corpus of documentation, characteristics of culture and discourse, as well as features of linguistic structure, are shown to play a role in fostering communicability in speech surrogates. Cultural constraints are linked to the development of a speech surrogate-mediated discourse within a community of practice, facilitating comprehension of the surrogate system. Moreover, specific structures including formulas, enphrasing, and framing devices are identified as common to various speech surrogate traditions, suggesting a common function as aids to communication. This analysis points to the need to investigate speech surrogates as linguistic systems within a discursive context.

L’EXPRESSION DE L’EXTRÊME. FORMES ET FONCTIONS DE L’INTENSITÉ DANS MANON LESCAUT

Nous prenons comme point de départ l’extraordinaire profusion des marques d’intensité insérées dans L’histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux afin d’analyser leurs différentes fonctions communicatives en tenant compte de leur inscription dans un contexte discursif déterminé pour étudier ensuite leur rôle dans quelques stratégies narratives spécifiques. Nous nous intéressons d’abord à la relation entre l’intensité et le registre pathétique qui traverse les genres littéraires au XVIII siècle, puis aux valeurs sémantico-pragmatiques de la construction consécutive intensive et aux effets de généricité signalés par Adam (2011) pour d’autres genres de discours. Finalement, nous analysons les stratégies d’intensification mis en œuvre dans le roman afin de capter l’intérêt du lecteur et de générer des situations plutôt humoristiques. Based on the extraordinary profusion of marks of intensity in L’histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux, we will analyse the different communicative functions of intensification in Prévost’s novel based on its inscription in a specific discursive context, so as to end the relationship between such linguistic operation and several, more specific narrative strategies. Thus, it will be examined the relationship with the register of the pathetic that crosses the XVIII century literary genres, as well as the semantic-pragmatic values of the intensive consecutive construction and the effects of “genericity” noted by Adam (2011) in relation to other discursive genres. To conclude, it will be analysed the intensification strategies in the novel, destined to capture the interest of the reader and to generate humorous situations. Nous prenons comme point de départ l’extraordinaire profusion des marques d’intensité insérées dans L’histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux afin d’analyser leurs différentes fonctions communicatives en tenant compte de leur inscription dans un contexte discursif déterminé pour étudier ensuite leur rôle dans quelques stratégies narratives spécifiques. Nous nous intéressons d’abord à la relation entre l’intensité et le registre pathétique qui traverse les genres littéraires au XVIII siècle, puis aux valeurs sémantico-pragmatiques de la construction consécutive intensive et aux effets de généricité signalés par Adam (2011) pour d’autres genres de discours. Finalement, nous analysons les stratégies d’intensification mis en œuvre dans le roman afin de capter l’intérêt du lecteur et de générer des situations plutôt humoristiques.

Can the Chinese Diaspora Speak?

The Chinese diaspora is compelled either to prostrate to an edifying project of assimilation to U.S. liberal democracy, or be branded as illiberal "Red Guards" unfit for serious political discourse. This discursive context has long mobilized overseas Chinese to affirm the universalism of Western liberalism in opposition to a Chinese despotism defined either by dynastic backwardness or communist depravity. Can overseas Chinese speak for themselves in the face of the West's "hegemonic right to knowledge?" Or will all such speech that challenges U.S. presuppositions of liberal selfhood and Chinese despotism simply be tuned out as illiberal noise?

Introduction to “City as Landscape” (1970) by Matsuda Masao (1933–2020)

This introduction to Masao Matsuda’s essay, “The City as Landscape,” provides an outline of the essay’s role in the emergence of a radical discourse of landscape, known as fūkei-ron in Japan. In addition to illuminating crucial aspects of the political and discursive context of Matsuda’s writings, the introduction orients contemporary readers to this essay’s contributions to an expansion of the global imaginaries and aesthetic genealogies of the radical left.

Die Rückkehr der Religion in die politische Öffentlichkeit

The politicization of religion in armed conflicts is a global challenge that is being intensively researched within political science debates. But why do Western societies find it so difficult to engage in critical and differentiated forms of debate about religious justifications of violence? Based on a corpus-analytical longitudinal analysis of Western conflict debates (460,917 newspaper articles), the empirical findings show for the first time how religious identities become primary reference categories for describing non-Western collectives after the end of the Cold War. In this overall discursive context, religious justifications of violence unfold their particular impact.