scholarly journals The English language in academia: Identifying power structures, denaturalizing daily choices. ECREA 2018 special panel report

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Sousa
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
Special Session ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Critical Reasoning ◽  
Panel Report ◽  
Specific Dimension ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Media And Communication

Media and communication research has been dominated by the Anglo-American paradigm and English has become the lingua franca of academic life. The 2018 ECREA conference focused on centres and peripheries, inclusions and exclusions, cores and margins in the field. In line with the programme, this special session on Language in Academia tried to respond to contemporary critical asymmetries, analysing a specific dimension often taken for granted: the English language hegemony. The centrality of the English language is often assumed without questioning or critical reasoning.

scholarly journals Academic traditions in communication: Expanding the field and redrawing the boundaries. ECREA 2018 special panel report

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Schwarzenegger ◽  
Katharina Lobinger ◽  
Gabriele Balbi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
General Outline ◽  
Panel Report ◽  
The Many ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Over Time

The main conference topic for the ECREA conference in Lugano addressed the many ways in which centers, cores and peripheries, and also mainstreams and alternatives are dealt with in academic media and communication research. The premise of this panel was to apply this general outline of the conference for academic introspection and to recount the many shifting centers and peripheries of communication research over time and discuss the redrawing of the contours of our expanding field. Less than two decades back, the question what the main subjects of media and communication inquiry were would have highlighted the centrality of (already slowly declining) mass media as the main pillars alongside journalism and public communication. Since then, the very notion of mediated communication has become less clear and has expanded to nearly all areas of the human experience and encompasses a variety of technologies, tools, platforms and intermediaries for communication.

Legal Principles, Constitutional Principles, and Judicial Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-930
Author(s):  
Han-Ru Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
English Language ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Logical Connection ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Law ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract Principles form part and parcel of our law and legal discourse, so much so that we seldom think of what they are and what they entail. For centuries they have been invoked daily to interpret and argue about the law. But when it comes to matters of constitutional law, principles are further called upon to perform a perennially controversial function: to help police the boundaries of state action. In most common law jurisdictions with a written constitution, this function of principles runs against the generally accepted view that the exercise of judicial review must ultimately be governed and restricted by the terms of the national constitution. This Article argues that the exercise of judicial review based on principles is not confined to that view, once the relationship between principles and the constitution is unpacked and recontextualized. While the English-language literature on principles over the past half-century has been dominated by a select group of Anglo-American scholars, there is a wealth of untapped insights from other parts of the world. One of the major contributions by continental legal theorists even predates the earliest modern Anglo-American writings on the subject by more than a decade. Overall, the law literature in common law and civil law systems reveals a significant degree of commonalities in the basic characters of principles despite the absence of initial evidence of transsystemic borrowings. The wider conceptual inquiry also displays a shift in the focus of the debate, from the protracted search for a clear-cut distinction between rules and principles towards a redefinition of principles’ relationship with “written” law, be it in the form of a civil code or a constitutional instrument. From this inquiry reemerge “unwritten” principles not deriving from codified or legislated law although they have been used to develop the law. Translated into the constitutional domain, these unwritten principles bear no logical connection with the terms of the constitution. Their main functions cover the entire spectrum from serving as interpretive aids to making law by filling gaps. The theoretical framework fits with an ongoing four-century-old narrative of the evolution of constitutional principles and judicial review across most common law-based systems. Constitutional principles are another area where Anglo-American law and legal discourse is less exceptional and more universal than what many assume. Throughout modern Western history, legal battles have been fought and ensuing developments have been made on the grounds of principles. Our law and jurisprudence remain based on them.

scholarly journals Rethinking the Rethinking

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran Eriksson
Keyword(s):  
Critical Realism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Oriented Research ◽  
Media Audience

Abstract During the last few decades, the possibilities and limitations of qualitative media audience research have regularly been discussed in media and communication research. Quantitatively oriented researchers have claimed that qualitatively oriented research is incapable of producing general knowledge. From a ‘radical ethnographic’ point of view it has been stated that such knowledge is more or less useless, while other qualitatively oriented researchers have approached the question of generality in a more balanced way, and argued for the necessity to interpret specific events within a framework of more general theories. But these solutions are not satisfactory. The aim of this article is to suggest an alternative conceptualisation of generality. From the meta-theoretical viewpoint of critical realism, this article states that generalisations have to take into consideration the domain of the deep structures of reality. Qualitative media audience research should aim at producing general knowledge about the constituent properties or transfactual conditions of the process of media consumption.

scholarly journals The Significance of Nordicom and the NordMedia Conference to Nordic Media and Communication Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (s1) ◽  
pp. 18-28
Author(s):  
Kaarle Nordenstreng ◽  
Kirsten Frandsen ◽  
Rune Ottosen
Keyword(s):  
Communication Research ◽  
Media And Communication

The English Department as Imperial Commonwealth, or The Global Past and Global Future of English Studies

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-176
Author(s):  
Joe Cleary
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
English Department ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Global English ◽  
English Departments ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American

Though canons and faculty have greatly diversified in recent decades, English departments around the world fundamentally prioritize English and American literatures. To this extent, they resemble the Anglo-American imperial commonwealths that some toward the end of the nineteenth century advocated for in order to stave off the decline of the British Empire and to shore up a permanent Anglo-American supremacy against all threats. Still, as the English language becomes “global,” English departments today founder for a variety of reasons and convey a persistent sense of crisis. Has the time come radically to decolonize the English department, not only at the level of curriculum but also in terms of its basic organizational structures to facilitate the study of anglophone literatures now planetary in reach? If so, how might this best be achieved in the British and American core countries and also in the more peripheral regions of Anglophonia?

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