Professionalisms as components of the vocabulary of forensic examination

The vocabulary of forensic examination, diverse in its composition, requires a multifaceted study. Promising and linguistic characterization of professionalisms as one of the categories of functionally specialized vocabulary of forensic examination is promising. The purpose of the article is to identify and characterize the features of the use of professionalism in the vocabulary of forensic examination, to determine their role in the professional communication of forensic experts. Professionalisms in the vocabulary of forensic examination are unofficial short words that duplicate the established and fixed terms of the specified field, which call the realities, as well as convey the actual production information. The article defines a range of special concepts, which are called professionalisms, namely: types of examinations, subjects that conduct examinations, names of objects, their properties, stages of production and professional processes, etc. It is established that professionalisms, which are used as synonymous doublets in the oral speech of specialists, are almost not recorded in dictionaries of various types, but sometimes able to penetrate into written speech while covering current issues in professional publications. The peculiarities of the differences of forensic professionalisms from forensic terminology, which are connected with emotional coloring, stylistic expressiveness, imagery, are clarified. It is established that the main means of creating professional vocabulary of forensic examination is the implication of the analytical term (reception of language economy), which is mostly associated with the word-forming modification of the basic component of the analytical term. It is determined that the semantic way of creating professional jargons mostly consists in the metonymic name of specific subjects.

The performative effects of diagnosis

In this article, I suggest the performative effects of diagnosis as an analytical tool to explore the transformations in people’s intimate lives that being diagnosed brings with it. As an analytical term, I understand the performative effects of diagnosis to describe trajectories in people’s intimate lives that emerge in the interplay between a person’s intimate sense of self, that is, their gendered and sexualed self-perceptions, and the logics and norms contained in medical diagnoses. I develop this term in the context of ethnographic research on Danish war veterans’ understandings of and experiences with intimacy and extrapolate it conceptually in this article through scholarship in feminist theory, trans studies, STS, and medical anthropology and sociology. The argument that I make throughout is that the performative effects of diagnosis allows scholars to explore transformations in people’s intimate lives without a foreclosure about the normative dimensions of these transformations. In that sense, rather than only asking how biopolitical and cis- and heteronormative normalcy constitutes itself, the performative effects of diagnosis provide the opportunity to explore how these dimensions are (re)configured and (un)done in and through medicalized intimacies.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter makes that case that the concept of “enthusiasm” presented in this study might be useful as an analytical term, to be applied in further study beyond the confines of the religious context. Conviction about something always enlists the body and emotions for its maintenance and reinvigoration, which is to say that it is always also enthusiastic—but this enthusiasm takes on different styles due to a combination of ideology (what emotions are and how they work) and taste or preference, which is linked to social context. Observing that a reactivated reticence toward political emotion in Germany in response to the rise in right-wing populism reprises many of the patterns from debates over religious enthusiasm from previous centuries, the chapter reflects on the relations between a number of terms which, in binary constellations, find themselves on the other side of “rationality,” which has led us to think of them as naturally grouped together: emotion, belief, religion, and—recalling Weber—charisma, enchantment, presence. The chapter suggests that enthusiasm is one of these terms, one that captures how conviction enchants people.

Resisting the ‘populist hype’: a feminist critique of a globalising concept

The purpose of this article is to offer a feminist critique of populism, not as a distinct mode of politics, but as an analytical and political concept. As such, it seeks to redirect our attention away from populism, understood as a politics ‘out there’, towards the academic theoretical debates that have given this analytical term a new lease of life and propelled it beyond academic circles into the wider public discourse. In this context, the article develops two broad arguments. The first is that the two prevailing conceptions of populism are marred by anaemic conceptions of power, collective agency and subjectivity and, as such, are unable to present us with a convincing account of why this form of radical politics emerges in the first place, who its protagonists are, and how they come together in collective struggle. The second is that our current frenetic deployment of the term as a blanket descriptor for radical politics of all persuasions does not bode well for feminism politically. For both reasons, I conclude that feminists need to resist the current ‘populist hype’.

Daoing Medicine: Practice Theory for Considering Religion and Medicine in Early Imperial China

This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly discourse in 1995 and has now become so widely used that it is seen as representing an undisputed “historical fact.” It demonstrates that the term has no precursor in the pre-modern record, and critiques two substantive attempts to set up “Daoist medicine” as an analytical term. It reviews earlier scholarship on Daoism and medicine, or healing, within the larger context of religion and medicine, and shows how attention has shifted, particularly in relation to the notion of overlap or intersection of these historical fields of study. It proposes that earlier frameworks grounded in epistemology or simple social identity do not effectively represent the complexity of these therapies. Practice theory, on the other hand, provides a useful analytic for unpacking the organisation and transmission of curing knowledge. Such an approach foregrounds the processes and dynamics of assemblage, rather than theoretical abstractions. The article concludes by proposing a focus on the Daoing of medicine, that is, the variety of processes by which therapies come to be known as Daoist, rather than imposing an anachronistic concept like Daoist medicine.

Pop-up Mosques, Social Media Adhan, and the Making of Female and LGBTQ-Inclusive Imams

The last few decades have seen the appearance of a number of mosques that do not constitute buildings; they are mosques without bricks. This article therefore defines a new concept, the pop-up mosque, as an analytical term for the temporary conversion of an other-purposed space into a mosque, which is used for Islamic rituals such as Friday prayer and marriages. The pop-up mosque can produce religious leaders such as female imams and it thereby becomes the stage on which nonconformist discourses such as Islamic feminism are embodied and enacted. The article also investigates the relation between social media and the pop-up mosque and defines the concept of ‘social media adhan’ as a prayer call that goes out through various channels on the internet. The article is based on field work and interviews conducted primarily in Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

Synonymy and Antonymy of Ukrainian Meteorological Terms

The article analyses the system relations, in particular synonymy and antonymy, in Ukrainian meteorological terminology basing on the materials of the Russian-Ukrainian meteorological dictionary and textbooks on meteorology and related sciences. Special attention is paid to synonymy in general language and terminology. Types of synonyms of Ukrainian meteorological industry are determined on the bases of term synonyms classification: lexical and syntactic synonyms are singled out as well as analytical term units with synonymic components. According to another classification, pairs of meteorological terms that are full synonyms are singled out. Among the synonyms of meteorological sphere, cognate paronyms are given as a separate group. Thematic groups of synonymous term units of meteorological sphere are named. The semantic structure of antonymous terms is commented on, the possibility of general language oppositions or terminological oppositions is accentuated as feature of term antonyms. Contradictory, contrary, complementary and conversion antonyms are singled out in meteorological terminology. Meteorological term antonyms are divided into lexical and derivative ones, their origin is determined as well as part-of-speech and thematic group. The scarce antonyms of the meteorological industry that are opposed to parts of compound words are given. The correlation of etymologically Ukrainian and borrowed meteorological terms and term elements with opposite meaning is established. The models of analytical (two-, three- and multicomponent) meteorological terms that enter into antonymous relations are described. The filling of such models and the theme groups of the opposed components of analytical meteorological combinations are looked into.

Can ‘Non-territorial Autonomy’ Serve as an Analytical Term? Between ‘Thick’ and ‘Thin’ Approaches

Non-territorial autonomy (NTA) has acquired a variety of meanings ranging from a vague principle (a ‘thin’ approach) to a distinct structural feature of an organization (a ‘thick’ approach). Almost all these interpretations rest on an uncritical reification of such notions as ‘group’ and ‘community’. It leads to an uncritical categorization as NTA of numerous different arrangements and practices, that duplicates the existing terminology and brings no added value to the study of these phenomena. Attempts to outline institutional settings for communal self-organization based on the same premises involve negligence of potential scenarios and outcomes. The author concludes that the interpretations of NTA based on groupist assumptions significantly limit analytic perspectives. Interpretations resting on a non-groupist approach can serve analytical purposes, but their application is optional and barely instrumental. Beyond this, NTA shall be regarded and studied as a category of practice and a matrix for framing diversity issues among policy-makers.

Carol Zemel, Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. 198 pp.

This chapter reviews the book Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora (2012), by Carol Zemel. In Looking Jewish, Zemel explores normative historical accounts of “Jewish art.” She probes a “diasporic position” between the Scylla and Charybdis of the nation and the modern, offering a detailed analysis of an array of visual artifacts and their creators. The book features “pictures by Jewish artists that deal with the status and character of Jews in modern diasporic communities.” The art and artists are characterized by the notion of standing on a threshold—at the edge of place, on the cusp of time. Through her meticulous and engaging readings of images in their historical context, Zemel examines the notion of diaspora as an analytical term and its particular meaning for Jewish studies.