Proselytism and Ostentation: a Critical Discourse Analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ Case Law on Religious Symbols

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 162-188
Author(s):  
Giulia Evolvi ◽  
Mauro Gatti
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
European Court ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article focuses on the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) case law about religious symbols (N=27) from 2001 to 2018, exploring the following questions: What discourses does the ECtHR employ in cases about religious symbols? How do ECtHR’s discourses about religious symbols evolve in time? The data is innovatively analyzed through critical discourse analysis and leads to two findings: first, the ECtHR tends to endorse ‘Christian secularism,’ considering Christian symbols as compatible with secularism but not Muslim symbols; second, ECtHR discourses occasionally become more favorable to Muslim applicants over time, but the evolution of case law is not linear.

scholarly journals In-between the Constitution and the European Court of Human Rights: Mobilizations Around Religion and Education in Greece

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (S1) ◽  
pp. S31-S54
Author(s):  
Margarita Markoviti
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Specific Field ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
European Court ◽  
Margin Of Appreciation ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis paper examines the impact of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decisions on the field of religion and education in Greece around the issues of the content and objectives of religious education, the exemption thereof, and religious symbols in school. The findings indicate that despite the relevance of ECtHR case law with the specific field in Greece, the Court's role in influencing such national debates is minimal. Drawing on empirical research and discourse analysis, the paper argues that this is due to the doctrine of the margin of appreciation, apparently linked to strategic references to and varying interpretations of the Court's judgments; the unwillingness of actors to litigate in a potentially sensitive, lengthy, and costly procedure; and to a shared belief in the perceived primacy of constitutional provisions on religion and education that precludes the formation of structured mobilizations.

Religion and culture in the discourse of the European Court of Human Rights: the risks of stereotyping and naturalising

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourdes Peroni
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Group Practices ◽  
European Court

AbstractThis paper critically examines the ways in which the European Court of Human Rights represents applicants' religious and cultural practices in its legal discourse. Borrowing tools from critical discourse analysis and incorporating insights from the anti-essentialist critique, the paper suggests that the Court has most problematically depicted the practices of Muslim women, Sikhs and Roma Gypsies. The analysis reveals that, by means of a reifying language, the Court oftentimes equates these groups' practices with negative stereotypes or posits them as the group's ‘paradigmatic’ practice / way of life. The thrust of the argument is that these sorts of representation are problematic because of the exclusionary and inegalitarian dangers they carry both for the applicants and for their groups. In negatively stereotyping applicants' practices and in privileging certain group practices over others, these types of assessment underestimate what is at stake for the applicants and potentially exclude them from protection. Moreover, these types of reasoning risk sustaining hierarchies across and within groups. The paper concludes by sketching out an approach capable of mitigating stereotyping and essentialising risks.

Långbro Hospital, Sweden—From Psychiatric Institution to Digital Museum: A Critical Discourse Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110665
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Punzi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Residential Area ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Digital Museum ◽  
Psychiatric Institution ◽  
Psychiatric Institutions

Sites of oppression might be remembered in ways that contribute to dialogues about human rights and justice, exemplified by Sites of Conscience. Oppression was commonplace in former psychiatric institutions, yet such institutions are often subject to strategic forgetting and transformed into business parks, hotels, or residential areas. This article concerns Långbro Hospital, a digital museum presenting the former psychiatric institution Långbro, Sweden, now transformed into a residential area. I discuss how the former institution becomes a digital nonplace in which patients tend to be objectified or excluded, and the park and the buildings in which oppression occurred are reduced to representing beauty and functionality. I relate the analysis to digital Sites of Conscience such as British Museum of Colonialism and Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance and, thereby, show that thoughtful digitization might recognize prior as well as current injustice and oppression and contribute to change.

American Vogue and Sustainable Fashion (1990–2015): A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Katie Baker Jones
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Product Features ◽  
Lifestyle Choices ◽  
Sustainable Fashion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach ◽  
Over Time

Discursive practices employed by American Vogue to recontextualize sustainable fashion between 1990 and 2015 were explored through the lens of a discourse-historical approach and multimodal critical discourse analysis. References to sustainably minded values and actions were found throughout the 26 years studied with notable peaks and valleys in coverage that, at times, contradicted changing social interest in the subject. Over time, Vogue recontextualized sustainable fashion discourses and encouraged a passive revolution by moving from a contentious positioning of either/or sustainable fashion to one that embraced a both/and positionality by narrowing focus to lifestyle and product features. Additionally, Vogue celebrated social actors engaged in sustainable behaviors though these were increasingly positioned as lifestyle choices rather than revolutionary collective action. Vogue continuously recontextualized the sustainable fashion discourse as “new” and desirable while neutralizing most negative considerations of fashion consumption through a variety of articulations and by drawing on well-established semiotic resources.

Ideological positioning in news translation

Target ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Pan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Appraisal Theory ◽  
Three Dimension ◽  
Chinese Reader ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Rights Issue

This article investigates the Chinese translations of several English news reports on China’s human rights issue carried in Reference News, a Chinese authoritative state-run newspaper devoted to translating foreign reports for the Chinese reader, and aims to establish how evaluative resources are resorted to by the translators to facilitate ideologically different positioning in presenting events and identifying participants in the translated news. The translations are compared with their English source texts using Appraisal Theory (Martin and White 2005) as the micro analytical framework and Fairclough’s (1995a, 1995b) three-dimension model of Critical Discourse Analysis as the explanatory framework.

scholarly journals ‘To me, fair friend, you can never be old’, William Shakespeare, ‘Sonnet 104’: ECHR at 70 Rudolf Bernhardt Lecture, 202

2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 895-916
Author(s):  
Başak Çalı
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Case Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
European Court ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Good Proxy ◽  
Mature Part ◽  
Over Time

This article undertakes a survey of the changes in the structure of the interpretive doctrines of the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) over time in an exploration of the aging of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR or the Convention) on its 70th anniversary. It argues that the Court’s interpretive doctrines that seek to give due deference to national rights traditions, canons and institutions have become increasingly pervasive in the Court’s procedural and substantive case law in the last two decades. This, in particular, has come at a loss for interpretative doctrines that interpret the Convention as a practical and effective living pan-European instrument. This argument is built in four parts. First it offers a defence of why a study of the interpretive doctrines of the Court over time is a good proxy for studying the ECHR’s ageing process. In the second part, it discusses the rich doctrinal forms of due deference and effective interpretation in the case law of the Court – both young and mature. Part three explains how the judicialisation and expansion of the European human rights system in late 1990 s transitioned to a more heightened and sophisticated focus on due deference doctrines in the Court’s case law. Finally, part four examines whether the recent judicial innovations under the Court’s Article 18 case law and the widely celebrated success of increased ownership of the Convention by domestic courts can act as counter points to the argument that the effective interpretation principle has suffered a loss as the Convention has aged, concluding that none of this may offset the fact that the Convention at 70 is more conservative in spirit than its younger self.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing “Race” and Racism in Health Disparities Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Vanidestine
Keyword(s):  
Health Disparities ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Over Time

Critically analyzing how language and discourse influence health policy agendas to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities (REHD) supports social work’s commitment to address oppression and marginalization. Various institutions construct health policy agendas regarding REHD without explicitly conceptualizing terms such as “race,” “racism,” “African American/Black,” “Latino/a,” “Asian,” and “White”, and their relationship to racialized health outcomes. However, there is limited research examining the inherent ideologies and meaning related to racial concepts, which rely heavily on conveying historical influences through discourse over time. The purpose of the current qualitative study is to explore how policy initiatives to address REHD conceptualized “race” and racism. By employing grounded theory (GT) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), the study examined the discourse underpinning city, state, and national policy agendas to eliminate REHD. The study’s findings highlighted how terminology, assigned meanings, and ideology are replicated over time to reproduce a non-critical analysis of “race” and racism. The resulting implications suggest that conceptualizing “race” void of understanding differential racial health outcomes as racism omits the structural, historical, and ethical characteristics of racial concepts. Within health disparities discourse, the meanings assigned to “race” and racism ultimately influence which interventions are identified to address REHD.

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