Practical reasoning in political discourse: The UK government's response to the economic crisis in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report

This article focuses on practical reasoning in political discourse and argues for a better integration of argumentation theory with critical discourse analysis (CDA). Political discourse and its specific genres (for example, deliberation) primarily involve forms of practical reasoning, typically oriented towards finding solutions to problems and deciding on future courses of action. Practical reasoning is a form of inference from cognitive and motivational premises: from what we believe (about the situation or about means—end relations) and what we want or desire (our goals and values), leading to a normative judgement (and often a decision) concerning action. We offer an analysis of the main argument in the UK government’s 2008 Pre-Budget Report (HM Treasury, 2008) and suggest how a critical evaluation of the argument from the perspective of a normative theory of argumentation (particularly the informal logic developed by Douglas Walton) can provide the basis for an evaluation in terms of characteristic CDA concerns. We are advancing this analysis as a contribution to CDA, aimed at increasing the rigour and systematicity of its analyses of political discourse, and as a contribution to the normative concerns of critical social science

An examination of global university rankings as a new mechanism influencing mission differentiation: the UK context

Since their emergence a decade ago, global university rankings have become a powerful force in higher education internationally. The majority of research studies on global rankings have examined the effects at institutional and national levels. This study offers a valuable perspective on the ways rankings (and other international benchmarks) are deployed at the intra-sector level, by UK higher education ‘mission groups’, to support different policy positions. The concept of object in activity theory is used to problematize the analysis. Critical discourse analysis is used as a methodological orientation to study the ways global rankings mediate the object in this context. The findings contribute to the current debate on whether rankings are promoting isomorphism in higher education sectors nationally, illustrating a differentiated engagement with rankings in the UK context. The relevance of the findings for policy-makers and institutional managers is discussed

‘It’s just taking our souls back’: discourses of apartheid and race

Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data include four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other as historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of discursive strategies so as to resist being positioned in the historical positions of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Our paper reflects on these findings as well as what they offer us as we attempt to chart new discourses of the future.Department of HE and Training approved lis

Religious Vehicle Stickers in Nigeria: a discourse of identity, faith and social vision

This study focuses on analysing the ways in which vehicle stickers construct individual and group identities, people’s religious faith and social vision in the context of religious assumptions and practices in Nigeria. Data comprise 73 vehicle stickers collected in Lagos and Ota, between 2006 and 2007 and are analysed within the framework of the post-structuralist model of discourse analysis which views discourse as a product of a complex system of social and institutional practices that sustain its continuous existence (Derrida, 1982; Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1995; Foucault, 1972, 1981). Results show that through stickers people define their individual and group identities within religious institutional practices. And as a means of group identification, they guarantee social security and privileges. In constructing social vision the stickers help mould the individual aspiration about a future which transcends the present. Significantly, stickers in the data also reveal the tension between Islam and Christianity and the struggle to propagate one above the other. KEY WORDS: assumption, discourse, discursive, practices, religion, stickers

Mind the gap? The persistence of pathological discourses in urban regeneration policy

Urban regeneration policy has historically framed policy problems using a discourse that pathologises areas and spatial communities. Since 2001 in England, and 2002 in Scotland a structural change in policy has occurred where citywide partnerships are now meant overcome structural spatial inequalities, countering pathological explanations. This paper uses historical and discourse analysis to evaluate one of the major community regeneration strategies developed by the Scottish Executive in 2002: Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap. It seeks to ask whether structural change in policy was paralleled by discursive change; what discursive path dependence is evidenced? The text is placed in the historic context of UK urban renewal policies dating back to the launch of the Urban Programme in 1968 and particularly the policy discourse created by the influential Conservative government policy of 1988 New Life for Urban Scotland and the wider discourses of poverty and neighbourhood renewal policy created by Labour governments since 1997. The close textual analysis of the text shows that Better Communities in Scotland continues to pathologise spatial communities. Although this suggests a degree of historical path dependency, the historic breadth of the analysis also problematises simple historical determinism

Assessment, technology and democratic education in the age of data

This paper contends that powerful techniques to manipulate data, enabled by technological and economic developments, can be easily co-opted to serve the restrictive frameworks of hyper-controlling, managerial accountability that characterise current cultures of summative assessment in education. In response to these challenges, research is urgently needed to increase our understanding of the impact that assessments have on individuals and society. The paper concludes that social research ought to contribute to the identification of responses – educational, technological and political – that can minimise inequalities and potential abuses through the encouragement of data literacy across society

Press protest and publics: the agency of publics in newspaper campaigns

Campaign advocacy is a common but rarely researched practice in British tabloid journalism. Newspaper campaigns give an account of ‘public opinion’ to politicians, make explicit claims to speak for ‘the public’ and authentically represent them, and also address readers in an unconventional way in order to recruit their support. This article therefore examines the effect to which agency is attributed to readers and other publics in two such campaigns, and argues that publics were portrayed as active only in relation to the newspaper’s activity, and as primarily as reacting emotionally to the problem. The campaigning press promote themselves commercially and politically as quasi-representatives who challenge distant and ‘out of touch’ political representatives with the populist impulses of ‘public’ demands, but without enhancing the democratic process, or publics’ position within it

News discourses on distant suffering: A critical discourse analysis of the 2003 SARS outbreak

News carries a unique signifying power, a power to represent events in particular ways (Fairclough, 1995). Applying Critical Discourse Analysis and Chouliaraki's theory on the mediation of suffering (2006), this article explores the news representation of the 2003 global SARS outbreak. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have covered the international outbreak of SARS. By looking into the mediation of four selected discursive moments, underlying discourses of power, hierarchy and compassion were unraveled. The analysis further identified the key role of proximity in international news reporting and supports the claim that Western news media mainly reproduce a Euro-American centered world order. This article argues that news coverage of international crises such as SARS constructs and maintains the socio-cultural difference between 'us' and 'them' as well as articulating global power hierarchies and a division of the world in zones of poverty and prosperity, danger and safety

Building professional discourse in emerging markets: Language, context and the challenge of sensemaking

Using ethnographic evidence from the former Soviet republics, this article examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved in the International Business (IB) literature phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets. We link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations reflecting lack of experience with the market economy. This hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities, adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression, and complicates cross-cultural adjustments causing multi-national companies (MNCs) financial losses. We contribute to the IB literature by examining cross-border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study. We argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of business environment in post-communist economies for some time and therefore should be factored into business strategies of MNCs. Consequently, we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects

Handling missing items in the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS): a simulation study

Additional file 1: Appendix S1. Individual results