The work is the talk: Collaboration and power in tertiary language advisory practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Vittoria Grossi ◽  
◽  
Caroline Wright-Neville ◽  
Laura Gurney ◽  
◽  
...  

The field of workplace communication has grown in the past 20 years to encompass the negotiation of identities and the role of power in collaboration. Nonetheless, identity struggles at work remain an underexplored phenomenon, particularly for emerging or marginalised professional groups such as tertiary language and learning advisors (TLAs) in higher education. In this article, we explore how challenges encountered in collaboration between TLAs and content specialist academics (CSs) in an Australian tertiary setting can impact the negotiation of professional identities as well as the success of the work. We draw on transcripts of meeting talk from two novice TLAs as they negotiate collaborative work with one CS in a postgraduate subject, and we use critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how power discursively manifests in the meetings. The study sheds new light on the complexities of collaborative work, manifested through interactions, in hierarchical professional environments.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Phillip Joy ◽  
Matthew Numer ◽  
Sara F. L. Kirk ◽  
Megan Aston

The construction of masculinities is an important component of the bodies and lives of gay men. The role of gay culture on body standards, body dissatisfaction, and the health of gay men was explored using poststructuralism and queer theory within an arts-based framework. Nine gay men were recruited within the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants were asked to photograph their beliefs, values, and practices relating to their bodies and food. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the photographs as guides. Data were analyzed by critical discourse analysis and resulted in three overarching threads of discourse including: (1) Muscles: The Bigger the Better, (2) The Silence of Hegemonic Masculinity, and (3) Embracing a New Day. Participants believed that challenging hegemonic masculinity was a way to work through body image tension.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Kojo Fenyi ◽  
◽  
Georgina Afeafa Sapaty ◽  

This study sets out to investigate, examine and understand the hidden ideologies and ideological structures/devices in the 2013 State of the Nation Address of President John Dramani Mahama. The study specifically aimed to (i) ascertain the ideologies embedded in the speech and (ii) investigate linguistic expressions and devices which carry these ideological colourations in the speech under review. It uses Critical Discourse Analysis as the theoretical framework to examine the role of language in creating ideology as well as the ideological structures in the speech. These hidden ideologies are created, enacted and legitimated by the application of certain linguistic devices. The researchers deem a study of this nature important as it will expose hidden motives that Ghanaian presidents cloth in language in order to manipulate their audience through their speeches in order to win and/or sustain political power. Through thematic analysis, it was revealed that Mahama projected these ideologies in his speech: ideology of positive self-representation, ideology of human value, ideology of economic difficulty, ideology of power relations and ideology of urgency. It also revealed that Mahama projects his ideologies through the following ideological discursive structures: pronouns, biblical allusion and metaphor. The study has shown that language plays a crucial role in human existence as a means of socialisation. Language has been revealed as a means of communicating ideologies and events of the world. In the tradition of CDA, this study has confirmed that text and talk have social and cultural character and that discourse functions ideologically.


Author(s):  
Jamil Salmi

In the past decade, however, accountability has become a major concern in most parts of the world. Governments, parliaments, and society at large are increasingly asking universities to justify the use of public resources and account more thoroughly for their teaching and research results. The universal push for increased accountability has made the role of university leaders much more demanding. The successful evolution of higher education institutions will hinge on finding an appropriate balance between credible accountability practices and favorable autonomy conditions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Donoghue

The work of Antonio Gramsci is important for the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis. However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within critical discourse analysis remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to critical discourse analysis of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently employed within critical discourse analysis and provides more detailed discussion on the import of these concepts for critical discourse analysis. The article also argues that introducing the Gramscian concepts of the war of position and spontaneous and normative grammars enables the further realisation of critical discourse analysis’ ambition to be an emancipatory tool in political and social science. In so doing, the article contributes to work on critical discourse analysis as a method in political studies, particularly concerning the role of discourse in reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical power relations between classes and social groups, and potential challenges to this.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veera Kangaspunta

The aim of this article is to approach one specific environmental topic and the public debate around this topic from a user-oriented perspective – through online news comments. The article analyses online news and comments sections from three Finnish online newspapers concerning the mining accident of Talvivaara company in November 2012. Discourse and discursive legitimation strategies are used as analytical tools with the focus of critical discourse analysis. The study aims to solve what kind of discourses the public debate contains and how these discourses are connected to certain legitimation strategies. In addition, the article also continues the conceptual deliberation about the concept of the public as a group of people participating in public discussion. The study shows that Talvivaara news and news comments consist four main strategies, authorization, rationalization, moral evaluations and mythopoiesis, used for legitimation, relegitimation and delegitimation. However, the parties differ in the way they utilize these strategies and different discourses. Consequently, online news commenting appears as a unique part of the public debate about the topic, rather than remaining marginal flaming. The users tend to absorb the role of the public as a part of the public showdown about the shared issue.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
István Győri ◽  
József Márton Pucsok ◽  
Melinda Biró

  The Hungarian Educational System, the Higher Education also Teacher Education have been constantly changing over the past decades. According to the results of international and domestic examinations, there is an increasing need for new standards and approaches,  in the entire Public Education, especially Teacher Education sector. The purpose of our study was to examine the key aspects of the mentoring process in physical education. We were trying to identify those special factors and identify new trends in the area of physical education. What is the role of these factors in the process of professional development of a teacher.  


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Thi Minh Trang Pham ◽  
Aiden Yeh

This exploratory study investigates politeness strategies employed by Vietnamese EFL learners when writing English request emails sent to foreign and Vietnamese professors and school staff. A corpus-based critical discourse analysis is used to analyze sub-elements of politeness including the degree of imposition, terms of address, request-giving strategy and lexicon-syntactic modifier. The results support the assumption that Vietnamese language pragmatic knowledge is deeply ingrained and has tremendous influence on students’ L2 email writing skills. The study also reveals that Vietnamese students applied a high level of imposition with formal term of address and salutation, directness strategies with the overuse of “please” and other hedges. While gender is not a determining factor, the inflexible adoption of fixed phrases and syntactic-lexical devices were attributed to the lack of sociopragmatic competence. Thus, apart from linguistic knowledge, the role of cultural awareness and socio-pragmatic knowledge should be highlighted in communicative English learning and teaching.


2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Anita Arvast

In 2002 a new Ontario college charter signaled a new era for higher education in Ontario. The charter was presumed to usher in a new way of doing higher education, one that provided greater freedom for Ontario colleges and presumably greater access for communities to higher education. Coupled with the Post-Secondary Choice and Excellence Act of 2000, which provided colleges the opportunity to offer degrees, the colleges appeared well set for the freedom they sought. With the decentralization of approval for curriculum comes an appearance of greater autonomy and authority at the local level; however, with steering mechanisms of funding, performance indicators, and discourses of the marketplace, globalization and performativity permeating curriculum processes, “freedom” remains strongly tempered. This paper uses Foucauldian and critical discourse analysis as a means of considering power and higher education in Ontario, and the limitations and opportunities for “freedom” within our existing discourses.  


Balcanica ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 165-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Zdravkovic-Zonta

Through perpetuating negative stereotypes and rigid dichotomous identities, the media play a significant part in sustaining conflict dynamics in Kosovo. Examining their discourse in terms of ideological production and representations is crucial in order to understand the power relations between the majority and the minority, the identity politics involved in sustaining them, and the intractability of the conflict. In an effort to provide a deeper understanding of the intractable conflict in Kosovo, and the role of the media in protracting it, this study uses critical discourse analysis to examine articles related to issues affecting the Serb community, published in Albanian language print media. The master narrative that comes out of the analysis is that of ?threat? - the threat that Kosovo Albanians continue to face from Serbs and Serbia; a threat that is portrayed as historical and constant. The discourse further strengthens the conflict dynamics of opposition, polarization and even hatred. This master narrative implies that Serbs are enemies, to be feared, contested, fought against; conflict is thus the normal state of affairs. The study also looks at the implications of media discourse for reconciliation efforts and the prospects of the Serb minority in Kosovo society, arguing that when the Other is presented as dangerous and threatening, fear of the Other and a desire to eliminate the threat, physically and symbolically, become perceived as a ?natural? response, and thus constitute a significant conflict-sustaining dynamic.


JALABAHASA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Herlianto A.

Penelitian ini menginvestigasi representasi feminisme pada lagu dangdut koplo Jawa. Tidak banyak yang mengkaji lagu dangdut koplo Jawa dari perspektif feminisme. Padahal, secara historis, Jawa memiliki agen-agen pergerakan untuk feminisme yang secara faktual seharusnya mempengaruhi kesusastraan dan kesenian Jawa. Ada lima lagu dalam bentuk transkrip sebagai data yang diperoleh dengan mentranskripsi lagu dangdut koplo Jawa dari YouTube. Data lalu dianalisis dengan menggunakan analisis wacana kritis van Dijk. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa lagu-lagu dangdut koplo Jawa merepresentasikan kesetaraan perempuan terhadap laki-laki. Peran perempuan diungkapkan tidak lagi sebagai second sex, yang sepenuhnya sebagai ibu rumah tangga, tetapi mereka memiliki kesempatan untuk memilih masa depan secara independen. Sementara itu, feminisme dinyatakan secara langsung dan tidak langsung di dalam lagu dengan menggunakan bahasa kiasan dalam bentuk metafora.This research investigated the representation of feminism in Javanese koplo dangdut song. These songs have got little attention in terms of feminism representation. Meanwhile, historically, Javanese society has factual agents of movement for feminism who should be influencing to the Javanese arts and literature.There arefive transcriptions of the songs as the data which collected by transcripting the songs from YouTube. The collected data were then analysed by applying van Dijk frame work of critical discourse analysis. The results show that most of the songs present gender equality between men and women. The role of women is not only presented as the second sex or as mainly a house wife, but they have opportunities to choose their own future life independently. This condition is suggested by using indirect language or using metaphoric expressions.


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