The Crisis of Confessionalism: Lebanon between Tradition and Modernity

This article contains the analysis of the Lebanese protests that started in October 2019 and attempts to explain their background. The main argument is that the Lebanese consociational system is undergoing a deep crisis. There is a growing disparity between the existing political system and ongoing social changes. The article argues that the reason for the socio-political tensions lies in the clash between two distinctive and competing discourses about the future shape of the Lebanese political system: the confessional discourse and the secular or reformist discourse.

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE: PRAGMATIC PRESUPPOSITION IN MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH WITHIN DISCOURSE AND ITS RELEVANCE OF MOTIVATION IN TEACHING LEARNING PROCESS TO REACH GOALS

This research was taken from online media in the form of a speech on a YouTube channel called the English Speeches Channel featuring an inspiring woman named Muniba Mazari Baloch. She is a Pakistani artist, model, activist, motivational speaker, singer, social reformer, and television host. Her motivational speech is titled we all are Perfectly Imperfect. This research accompaniment three research questions by analyzing the types of presuppositions contained in Muniba Mazari's speech and determining the type of presupposition in his speech that comes up with the confession discourse function, then knowing how far her confessions influences her audiencess through what he delivers. The research method used in this research is descriptive qualitative by analyzing several utterances in her speech, through two approaches of theory pragmatic presupposition and confessional discourse analysis. The results showed that Muniba Mazari used all types of pragmatic presuppositions (Existential, Factive, Non-Factive, Lexical, Structural, and Counterfactual). Through this type of presupposition, Muniba Mazari also brings out the function of confessional discourse. The function of confessional discourse contained in her speech is a therapeutic, didactic, and interrogatory function. During the research, researchers found the main threat from the combination of these two theories is the strength of Motivational Assertion. The main threat that became the main idea as the direction of Muniba Mazari's speech in motivating her audiences. Then, this main thread also asserts how powerful Muniba Mazari's speech was. In this context, the results bring about optimism, achievable objectives, passion, and confidence. Finally, Muniba Mazari's speech entitled We Are Perfectly Imperfect which contains many moral messages can be said to be a motivational speech. It can be manifested in learning-teaching process. The result of combining these two theories produces the main thread that can be applied by several teachers in motivating their students in the learning-teaching process.

RELIGION LITERACY AS A FORMATION CONDITION KAZAKHSTAN'S CIVIL DISCOURSE

The formation of a civil community takes place in the process of statehood formation and involves the development of a system of communication between communities and social groups that have different characteristics of economic, ethnic, linguistic, confessional, settlement, and demographic plans. In the light of the above, one of the most important functions of the state is to promote the formation of a civil discourse that is understandable to all social groups without exception. Depending on the characteristics of the community, the civil discourse can coincide with the national, confessional discourse or represent a supra-corporate, supra-group integral. Since the 2000s, in Kazakhstan (which also reflects the global trend), concepts that set the principles of orientation of modern man in the post – secular world-a world in which a large-scale return of religion to everyday life and the practices of individuals, social communities and institutions began to actively penetrate into civil discourse. To fully participate in the communications conditioned by the discourse of this type, individuals need religious literacy. The request for its formation is received by the education system, which acts as an instinct for the socialization of individuals. The article examines the transformation of Kazakhstan’s civil discourse from the point of view of the presence in it of concepts reflecting the principles of state-confessional relations at various stages of Kazakhstan’s development over the years of independence. The authors undertake a special analysis of what challenges the education system faces and how it solves them in the context of the formation of civil discourse.

A Genealogical Analysis of the Medical Model of Problem Gambling

By applying Foucault’s genealogical approach, this article understands the ascension of the medical model of problem gambling as a happenstance and contingent effect of a new form of social control (biopower). The investigation reveals the cumulative effect of some of the heterogeneous components surrounding the medical model’s creation: discourses; institutions; laws; regulatory decisions; administrative measures; scientific proposition, and philanthropic, moral, and philosophical arguments. In the process, it becomes apparent that the medical model is an effect of a form of control that is embedded in the population itself as a norm and follows the schemata of confessional discourse. This power is disciplining individual bodies and regulating populations towards normality by making problem gamblers critically examine themselves and discursively reveal the results. However, the present subjectivity for problem gamblers (i.e., how they understand themselves and how they are understood by those who would improve them) is an effect of the type of power contained in the confession as well. A certain form of subjectivity is created by admitting ‘I am powerless over gambling.’ While the language problem gamblers use to describe themselves is a mere effect of power, it nevertheless determines how they think of themselves and their relationship with gambling.

Troubled Origins: Accounting for Oneself (Derrida with Botho Strauß and Didier Eribon)

Even after the concept of ‘origin’ has been called into question, a troubling wish to speak of origins persists, especially in the narrative act of accounting for one's own origins in confessional discourse. Here, the self encounters the limits of its narratibility, even as it interrogates how, in the Nietzschean sense, it became what it is. This essay explores the question of troubled origins by placing Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is and Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin in syntactical relation with Didier Eribon's Returning to Reims and Botho Strauß's Herkunft ( Origin). The essay meditates on the ways in which a world-oriented longing for identification persists long after the ideas of identity and self-identity have been bid farewell. If there is a kind of survival to be espied in textual acts of confronting one's troubled origins, such survival would have to travel through a language that unfolds on the far side of any conventional identity-thinking. By the same token, this language could never simply resist the conceptual and rhetorical temptation powerfully exerted by the seductive processes of identification. Derrida, Strauß, and Eribon, each in their own idiomatic way, implore us to question just what such textual acts of commemorative survival imply for a thinking to come.

HEDGES EXPRESSIONS IN CONFESSIONAL DISCOURSE OF IDA CRADDOCK’S SUICIDE NOTES

Some people commited suicide tried to express what they felt and left message explaining the causes of why they committed suicide. The suicide note was written by the person who commited suicide as a purpose to give a sign to other people. One of those people was Ida Craddck who was a 19th century American. She advocated freedom of speech and women rights who committed suicide because of inappropriate decision from the judge. Her books were prosecuted by Anthony Comstock as obscene literature. This study was aimed to examine the hedges expressions that maintained the functions of confessional texts which were used by Craddock. The results found that hedges were used on her confessions to support her criticism and wish to the public. Those criticism and wish were confessed by Craddock to aware the public about people’s freedom condition. Her confessions had function to tell her personal story that led her to suicide which could be learnt by other people so that they could have a better life. Finally, hedges were used to express her uncertainty of the truth of what she confessed about her cause of death.

Tabloid female sex confessions and everyday pro-sex feminism: The case of the Apple Daily Taiwan

This article construes the reader-contributed female sex confessions of a Taiwanese tabloid newspaper as contingent cultural instruments, looking into how these confessions are implicated in the formulation of sex-positive feminism. The confessional discourse is interpreted as autobiographical acts with dialogic overtones. The article argues that the highly commercial and communal form of the tabloid confessions fortuitously facilitates positive discourse of female sexuality in a society in transition. It is demonstrated that part of the pro-sex feminism promoted by cultural elites, especially post-feminist discourse of entitlement, is echoed in the confessions. However, dealing with life situations of ordinary people, the community-based tabloid feminism differs from the model discourses in its pragmatism. Although female sexual desires are fully justified, they are balanced in consideration of other necessities, such as security, stability, or romantic love.

Uppståndna igen ifrån de döda: Kristna motiv i nyare skandinavisk barnlitteratur

The chapter discusses representations of Christian practices, religious experiences and biblical motifs in recent Scandinavian children’s and young adult literature. It is claimed that after an almost one hundred-year hiatus, during which overt Christian symbols, stories and experiences have been absent from mainstream children’s publishing, we are now witnessing a return of such religious expressions in fictional and aesthetic form. The books under scrutiny are from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and include critically acclaimed picture books as well as young adult fiction and crossover literature. It is argued that it is once again possible to bring up Christian motifs and stories in our post-secular societies, not because of increased faith in the general population, but because religious issues to a greater degree have become part of contemporary non-confessional discourse.

History of social and political thought of Russia

The book presents the model development of national socio-political thought from the oldest manifestations of ethno-confessional discourse to the completion of the Soviet ideological project in connection with the collapse of the USSR. Special attention is paid to the state ideology of Russia and power representation at different historical stages. Political theories are considered in their relation to the Russian civilizational identity and in the context of the historical conflict "Russia-the West". The matrix of Russian social science consciousness reproduced by periods of national history is reconstructed. It is focused on use in educational process in higher educational institutions at preparation of the bachelors trained in the directions of pedagogical education, historical profiles, history and political science.