The discussion of abortion in US political debates: A study in occasioned semantics

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-318
Author(s):  
Jack Bilmes
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Presidential Debates ◽  
Political Candidates ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Special Circumstances ◽  
Moderate Position

This article deals with the discussion of abortion in a number of US presidential and vice-presidential debates, from a scaling perspective. The interest in scales, as (co)constructed and negotiated by participants in the course of interaction, is a component of occasioned semantics. I found that, in the political debates that I examined, there are a number of different scales anchored by the contrast between ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ positions. These are as follows: (1) Stage of pregnancy, (2) Prescribed action, (3) Special circumstances, (4) Locus of enforcement and (5) Frequency. These scales are manipulated in various ways by the candidates to make their own stances seem reasonable and moral and their opponents’ unreasonable and immoral. A position may be made to appear more moderate by adding a more extreme alternative to the scale, which is then rejected (‘negative upgrading’). Also, common goals (in particular, reduction of abortion frequency) may be emphasized. The debaters also use ‘negative downgrading’ – rejection of a more moderate position – to suggest an opponent’s unreasonableness. It is noted that the availability of several scales affords various ways of formulating the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a particular position. The article continues with a close examination of an extended debate sequence, illustrating the crucial role of implicature in the manipulation of scales, the attribution of attitude, and the practice of argumentation, and the possibility of dealing with implicature within a conversation analytic framework. The discussion is, at all points, grounded in and illustrated by the actual talk of the political candidates. It is suggested that viewing specific occasions of interaction in terms of the creation and negotiation of scales can yield a unique and revealing perspective on what is taking place.

Umstrittene Expertise

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Controversial Nature

The current political debates about climate change or the coronavirus pandemic reveal the fundamental controversial nature of expertise in politics and society. The contributions in this volume analyse various facets, actors and dynamics of the current conflicts about knowledge and expertise. In addition to examining the contradictions of expertise in politics, the book discusses the political consequences of its controversial nature, the forms and extent of policy advice, expert conflicts in civil society and culture, and the global dimension of expertise. This special issue also contains a forum including reflections on the role of expertise during the coronavirus pandemic. The volume includes perspectives from sociology, political theory, political science and law.

Derrida and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Earlie
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Key Questions

This book offers a detailed account of the importance of psychoanalysis in Derrida’s thought. Based on close readings of texts from the whole of his career, including less well-known and previously unpublished material, it sheds new light on the crucial role of psychoanalysis in shaping Derrida’s response to a number of key questions. These questions range from the psyche’s relationship to technology to the role of fiction and metaphor in scientific discourse, from the relationship between memory and the archive to the status of the political in deconstruction. Focusing on Freud but proposing new readings of texts by Lacan, Torok, and Abraham, Laplanche and Pontalis, amongst other seminal figures in contemporary French thought, the book argues that Derrida’s writings on psychoanalysis can also provide an important bridge between deconstruction and the recent materialist turn in the humanities. Challenging a still prevalent ‘textualist’ reading of Derrida’s work, it explores the ongoing contribution of deconstruction and psychoanalysis to pressing issues in critical thought today, from the localizing models of the neurosciences and the omnipresence of digital technology to the politics of affect in an age of terror.

A Retrospect on the Limits of Postcolonial Studies

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benita Parry
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Purpose ◽  
New Form ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
Different Order

Benita Parry here examines the political horizons of postcolonial studies, arguing for the crucial role of Marxism in sustaining the revolutionary impetus of postcolonialist thought. Addressing the career of the late Edward W. Said, Parry points out that while Said's approach to criticism may initially have been philological, political purpose and direction were ‘thrust upon him’ through the situation of his native Palestine in the 1970s, together with the retreat from radicalism within academia. The Said of this period thus urged upon intellectuals the need to engage with injustice and oppression. Parry writes of Said's ‘circuitous journey’ that returned him, in his later works, to a critical approach that eschewed the political, and aimed to contain conflict through his notion of the ‘contrapuntal.’ While Said, with many postcolonial critics, did not subscribe to Marxism, Parry suggests that his work retained a thoughtful and complex respect for Marxists such as Lukács, Goldmann, Raymond Williams, and Adorno. For Parry, Said's repudiation of Marxism is ‘of a different order’ from that of other postcolonial critics who drag revolutionary figures such as Fanon and Gramsci into their own agenda by attempting to stabilise and attune their thought to the ‘centre-left’. Parry goes on to criticise the editors of The Postcolonial Gramsci, for positing Marxist thinking as a restricting framework from which the editors aim to liberate Gramsci's writing. For Parry, these reappraisals of revolutionary thinkers constitute a new form of recuperative criticism that she terms ‘the rights of misprision’. If this is a strategy for ‘draining Marxist and indeed all left thought of its revolutionary impulses and energies’, Parry insists, ‘it is one to be resisted and countered, not in the interests of a sterile rigour, but – in Benjamin's words – to rescue the past and the dead, and a tradition and its receivers, from being overpowered by conformism’.

The Origins of the Protest Movement Against Ethnic Hierarchy

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Gilles Riaux
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political System ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Resource Mobilization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Revolutionary Period

This chapter looks at the central role of entrepreneurs of mobilization. The study of different routes taken by entrepreneurs of the Azerbaijani cause has proven helpful when attempting to understand the genesis of the cause. These actors play a crucial role in the initiation and development of the movement, restructuring it throughout the revolutionary period and working toward the subversion of ethnic ranking. Indeed, resource mobilization highlights the decisive role played by intellectual figures from the educated middle classes. Based on their cultural and social capital, these entrepreneurs have specific resources that give them the ability to carry out a redefinition and enhancement of “turkishness” in its Azerbaijani specificity. The chapter then points out that Azeri elites with significant cultural capital tend to be integrated in the political system, whereas those with more “local” capital have been involved in setting up the Azeri rights movement.

scholarly journals Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng-Jie Wang ◽  
Kumar Yogeeswaran ◽  
Sivanand Sivaram ◽  
Kyle Nash
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Cycle ◽  
Political Candidates ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Spectrum

AbstractPrevious research investigating the transmission of political messaging has primarily taken a valence-based approach leaving it unclear how specific emotions influence the spread of candidates’ messages, particularly in a social media context. Moreover, such work does not examine if any differences exist across major political parties (i.e., Democrats vs. Republicans) in their responses to each type of emotional content. Leveraging more than 7000 original messages published by Senate candidates on Twitter leading up to the 2018 US mid-term elections, the present study utilizes an advanced natural language tool (i.e., IBM Tone Analyzer) to examine how candidates’ multidimensional discrete emotions (i.e., joy, anger, fear, sadness, and confidence) displayed in a given tweet—might be more likely to garner the public’s attention online. While the results indicate that positive joy-signaling tweets are less likely to be retweeted or favorited on both sides of the political spectrum, the presence of anger- and fear-signaling tweets were significantly associated with increased diffusion among Republican and Democrat networks, respectively. Neither expressions of confidence nor sadness had an impact on retweet or favorite counts. Given the ubiquity of social media in contemporary politics, here we provide a starting point from which to disentangle the role of specific emotions in the proliferation of political messages, shedding light on the ways in which political candidates gain potential exposure throughout the election cycle.

“Territories of Vast Potentiality,” 1919–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Luke Messac
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Debt Relief ◽  
The Political ◽  
Medical Facilities ◽  
John Owen

Chapter 2 details both the political economy of interwar colonial neglect of social services and the crucial role of moral commitments on the part of a few MPs in puncturing this neglect. The imposition of a burdensome loan for the uneconomical Trans-Zambesi Railway gave colonial officials an excuse to resist increased funding for health care. However, MPs with a commitment to colonial health care successfully argued for debt relief and increased funding for Nyasaland during the debate over the 1929 Colonial Development Act. As a result, the colonial physician John Owen Shircore authored a plan that, though never entirely realized, resulted in the establishment of dozens of new government medical facilities in Nyasaland during in the early 1930s. Still, these facilities were ill equipped and inadequately staffed.

Public Opinion and the Arenas of Debate

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Karen Piepenbrink
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Courts

Chapter 5 examines the role of public opinion in Athenian debates in philosophical circles, especially in arenas such as public assemblies and law courts. It begins with a discussion of the dêmos’ attitudes and positions that occur in speeches, particularly in the political speeches and the prosecution and defence speeches from public trials. More specifically, it considers the attitudes of the dêmos towards the social and political elite as well as its positions on day-to-day politics. It then analyses the competition between orators in political debates that are held in public assemblies and in the law courts. It shows that orators refer back to alleged views of the people in order to communicate their own suggestions or petitions successfully even as they attempt to discredit their opponents, but at the same time distancing themselves from the dêmos and representing the interests of individuals.

Rohith Vemula’s Revolutionary Suicide

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-248
Author(s):  
Abdul R. JanMohamed
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Social Death ◽  
Suicide Note

Abdul R. JanMohamed approaches the 2016 suicide of Dalit scholar and leader Rohit Vemula in India through a viewpoint informed by the phenomenology of the ‘touch,’ as elaborated by Edmund Husserl, Jacques Derrida and by JanMohamed’s own work on the political economy of death in the formation of slavery. JanMohamed analyzes Vemula’s suicide note in the context of untouchability as akin to slavery, noting Vemula’s targeting by Hindutva affiliates and university and government leaders. The article discusses the crucial role of touching in a mythical scene of ‘anthropogenesis’, of the birth of the human as a self-conscious species, and argues that Vemula’s suicide constitutes a liberating embrace of his own political ontology, transforming his ‘social death’ into a ‘symbolic death’ that resonated throughout society, in effect endowing him with a form of immortality.

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