This introduction to a Special Issue of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) – dedicated to showcasing scholarly research into the language of conflict and peace, describes the general conceptual character of language in conflict initiation as well as in peace process. It further examines the potentials of linguistic representation in the construction of social and political realities that have strong implications for conflicts not only at the interpersonal level but also have consequences in terms of national and (...) global security. It argues that critical discourse analysis provides sufficient and interesting methodological resource for analyzing conflict and peace discourses. Then, it briefly summarizes the various topics covered in the Special Issue highlighting the approaches adopted by the authors. Drawing from different contexts and scenarios, the authors demonstrate how methods in linguistics and discourse studies are applied to analyzing conflict and peace processes. Hence, this introductory piece, shows how this Special Issue contributes to scholarly understanding of the roles of language within the context of conflict or peace, as well as illustrate in some interesting extent, how to research the language of conflict and peace in discourse studies. (shrink)

This book is characterized by its attention to the crisis communication in Ukraine from the discourse-analytical perspective, particularly focusing on the political situation in Ukraine and its com...

In this book, Barbora Moormann-Kimáková analyses the possibility of finding an optimal language regime in multinational and multiethnic countries - either by defining the contents of an optimal language regime, or with the help of a criterion enabling to evaluate whether a language regime is optimal or not. The process of the selection or change of a language regime often becomes a matter of a language-related conflict. These conflicts are mostly accompanied by other political (...) or social conflicts, as for example in Ukraine or former Yugoslavia, which render solutions - and their evaluation - difficult. The author claims that language regimes can be evaluated based on the increase or lack of their legitimacy in the eyes of the relevant actors. This is demonstrated in four language regime studies on the European Union, Soviet Union, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and South Africa. Content The search for the optimal language regime The conflict potential of multilingualism Actors in language-related conflicts The dimensions of language-related conflicts Monolingualism Multilingualism without and with a lingua franca Target Groups - Lecturers and students of the social sciences, humanities and sociolinguistics. - Readers interested in language-related political issues and diversity politics. About the Author Barbora Moormann-Kimáková received her doctorate in political science from the Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. (shrink)

This book maps out the lexico-conceptual articulation of Greene's narrative dramatization of ethical situations. This main aim issues from three working hypotheses: in the first place, a reduced set of terms such as peace, despair, pity or commitment have a striking lexical recurrence in Greene's texts. They are considered here as keywords that articulate his discourse at a conceptual level. In the second place, those keywords are invested with narrative potential. They have the capacity to generate narrative situations and developments. (...) In the third place, they articulate a particular narrative pattern. Such lexico-conceptual articulation is shaped mainly as ethical conflict dramatized in narrative form. Drawing on contemporary theories of community and ethics developed by Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, J. Hillis Miller or Derek Attridge, this book sets out to explore a recurrent narrative pattern in Greene's work, emerging from his personal use of the language of ethics and community. (shrink)

The Western musical tradition has produced not only music, but also countless writings about music that remain in continuous—and enormously influential—dialogue with their subject. With sweeping scope and philosophical depth, _A Language of Its Own_ traces the past millennium of this ongoing exchange. Ruth Katz argues that the indispensible relationship between intellectual production and musical creation gave rise to the Western conception of music. This evolving and sometimes conflicted process, in turn, shaped the art form itself. As ideas entered (...) music from the contexts in which it existed, its internal language developed in tandem with shifts in intellectual and social history. Katz explores how this infrastructure allowed music to explain itself from within, creating a self-referential and rational foundation that has begun to erode in recent years. A magisterial exploration of a frequently overlooked intersection of Western art and philosophy, _A Language of Its Own_ restores music to its rightful place in the history of ideas. (shrink)

‘If it bleeds, it leads’, events characterised by fatalities, are likely to attract high levels of media coverage. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate public discourses on the MH17 tragedy in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. First, corpus-based discourse analysis was employed to explore the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy MH17 in four selected Malaysian and British newspapers. In addition, an attitudinal study examining 50 Malaysian and 50 UK nationals’ perceptions of the tragedy was conducted. Keywords analysis (...) revealed an overall tendency for the news media to construct the air tragedy through classifications between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Specifically, important ‘Us’ and non-important ‘Other’ in the Malaysian newspapers, versus good ‘Us’ and evil ‘Others’ in the British newspapers. The attitudinal analysis shows, for both the Malaysian and the UK respondents, the most salient associations with the MH17 tragedy related to ‘conflicts’. (shrink)

Despite globalization and the rapid development of information technology, cross-cultural dialogue did not become any easier. The physical and non-physical confrontations are intensified by the differences in basic values and interest of cultures, which can be seen by the increasing number of wars, extreme localism, and mistrust between people. Rationality, which has long been regarded as the best and the only common language among different cultures, fails to facilitate communication and collaboration. Rationality’s limitation was revealed among others in Alasdair (...) MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Unlike what ancient Greek philosophers suggested, there is not a single type of supreme rationality that everyone will and should follow. The only consensus perhaps is about the instrumental rationality suggested by Max Weber, which is futile in promoting cross-cultural dialogues as it addresses the various means rather than the ends of different cultures. In this paper, I argue that emotion is a better language for universal dialogue than rationality in two senses. First, the psychologists and anthropologists provide solid evidence to prove that certain emotions are basic and universal among all human beings. For instance, based on his study of facial expression of the Fore people in Papua New Guinea, Ekman proposed that anger, fear, surprise, disgust, sadness, and happiness are six basic emotions that are universally shared. Other evidence includes studies conducted by Tomkins, Arnold, and Frijda. These basic emotions might serve as the foundation of cross-cultural dialogue because we are evolved to understand the causes and expressions of these emotions in others despite the cultural and social differences. Second, unlike instrumental rationality that focuses solely on how to achieve one’s end, certain emotions are non-egocentric by nature. For instance, compassion is “another-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of another person”. Chinese philosophy expresses a similar idea with the aid of the concept of Ren, which is the essence of human being, according to Confucianism. Love is another non-egocentric emotion that is constituted by care and concern of the well-being of one’s beloved for his or her own sake. That is, I love you not because loving you makes me happy, instead, it is because loving you makes you happy. Such non-egocentric emotions might encourage and motivate crosscultural dialogue despite the conflict of interest between cultures. While facing multifaceted contemporary problems and crisis, we do not lack rational and intelligent solutions. We lack mutual understanding, reciprocal tolerance, and sustainable collaboration. The role of emotion in establishing a platform of cross-cultural dialogue should not be overlooked. (shrink)

Over the last few years the diplomatic language of UN resolutions has repeatedly been questioned for the excessive presence of vagueness. The use of vague terms could be connected to the genre of diplomatic texts, as resolutions should be applicable to every international contingency and used to mitigate tensions between different legal cultures. However, excessive vagueness could also lead to biased or even strategically-motivated interpretations of resolutions, undermining their legal impact and triggering conflicts instead of diplomatic solutions. This study (...) aims at investigating intentional vagueness in Security Council resolutions, by focussing on the analysis of the resolutions relating to the second Gulf war. Using the qualitative Discourse-Historical approach (Wodak in Rhetorics of racism and antisemitism, Taylor & Francis Ltd., London [2000]) and quantitative analysis tools (Antconc and Sketch Engine), special attention is given to the historical/political consequences of the vagueness and indeterminacy used in that framework and to the study of vague ‘weasel words’ (Mellinkoff in The language of the law, Little, Brown & Company, Boston [1963]), modals, and adjectives contained in the corpus. The hypothesis of intentional vagueness is further reinforced through an analysis of the US legislation related to the outbreak of the war, to reveal how the US has legally interpreted UN legislation and to understand the purposes and consequences of vague language contained in it. The findings indicate that vagueness in resolutions has triggered the Iraqi conflict instead of diplomatic solutions with the overall legislative intent of using intentional vagueness as a political strategy. (shrink)

This article investigates how Latin American women who migrate to the US frame their language experiences through narratives told in sociolinguistic interviews. As narratives reflect and shape social realities and relationships, narrative analysis can illuminate how individuals position themselves relative to language obstacles and ideologies, thus providing insights into processes that are central to the migration experiences of millions of individuals. We found that women related two types of stories: language conflict narratives, in which language (...) was presented as part of a broader ethnic or social conflict, and language difficulty narratives, which focused on individual, personal problems with language experienced by protagonists. Our analysis illustrates how interviewers’ questions, and the interviewees’ language conflict narratives in particular, confirm, reproduce, but also contest central language ideologies and dominant discourses about migration in the US. (shrink)

This article posits a number of theoretical pointers towards a conceptual clarification of the concept of non-violence, in particular in relation to notions of conflict, pact, mediation, compromise, strength, benevolence, and truth. It sets them against the concept of violence and the behaviours which are associated with it, and is based on the thought of M. K. Gandhi and E. Weil. Finally it presents some pointers towards a strategy for non-violence and explains the sense of the principle of non-cooperation.

Kneller's main concern is that, "If we are to understand the problems, policies, and concepts of education, we must first examine carefully the language of educational discourse." This book is a sober and readable review of several problems in modern philosophy, in which are revealed some of the strategies used by the giants of language philosophy to analyze difficult philosophical propositions and paradoxes. Each chapter of historical exposition is paralleled with a chapter of applications to problems in educational (...) philosophy. The early part of the book is a review of John Dewey's central theses, plus a few words on research methodology in general, both of which are related to the conduct of classroom lessons; the second part of the book, which Kneller calls "Formal Analysis," is an exceedingly competent precis of work in the philosophy of science, especially Wittgenstein's and Carnap's, followed by a series of important caveats to educational researchers, reminding them of some of the serious problems of inference and generalization in the behavioral sciences; the third section, featuring Ryle, Austin, and Strawson, is called "Informal Analysis," and is principally a discussion of "ordinary language" philosophy, with applications to the familiar clichés and slogans of school administrators and politicians. Kneller favors this last group, since he feels that informal analysis is more "practical and humane," and his feelings are supported by some current conflicts between hard and soft educational research. The basic exhortation of this book, though, is that people who talk and think about education should be more philosophically competent about it, even if their philosophical blunders have not yet affected their ability to teach and make policy. He maintains that educational philosophy will not add anything new to the educational universe, but rather, clarify what is already there.—E. H. W. (shrink)

This paper employs Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia as a frame­work to interpret internal tensions within contemporary digital games. To that end, I propose to acknowledge the multimodal character of entertain­ment software, with audial, visual, haptic, spatiotemporal and systemic elements of a game in constant interaction. But to properly understand said tensions — frequently dubbed “dissonance” in game criticism — it is im­portant to acknowledge the complex multimodal structure of games that attempt to utilize culturally-rooted ways to describe the world, (...) sometimes trying to combine several such ways at once. As a result, ‚game-languages‘ are born: ways to utilize all game components to cover the specificity of certain narrative genres, to explain the nature of the world in terms con­sistent with its ideological stance. Quite often, one game combines several game-languages, and their mutually exclusive ideologies are a source of tension and dissonance. To illustrate the issue, I describe how three pri­mary game-languages of Uncharted 3 — the language of Adventure, the language of Heroics, and the language of the Traditional Game — compete to describe an armed conflict to the player. (shrink)

This paper discusses how it is possible to find, in the Islamic tradition, a universal concept of “humanity”. It insists on the concept of “ummah” as a peculiar Muslim way to define a comprehensive humanity, and try to point out its internal limits. It shows the communal implication of this concept and the ways it can, or cannot, be considered as constitutive of a we-group concept that may eventually lead to conflict and violence. It brings to the attention of (...) the reader some historical examples, focusing, among others, on Mohammad Iqbal’s contribution. (shrink)

Metaphors of medicine are common, such as war, which is evident in much of our language about health‐care where patients and healthcare professionals fight disease, or the game, which is one way to frame the nurse–doctor professional relationship. This study analyses six pilot episodes of American (Grey's Anatomy, Hawthorne, Mercy, Nurse Jackie) and Australian (All Saints, RAN) medical television programmes premiering between 1998 and 2009 to assess one way that our contemporary culture understands and constructs professional relationships between nurses (...) and doctors. Analysis shows that these popular television programmes frequently depict conflict, with games, civil war and mutiny between nurses and doctors over patient safety rather than professionals working collaboratively in teams to deliver health‐care. Although the benefit of this televised conflict is the implication that nurses are knowledgeable, skilled professionals, the negative connotations include a dysfunctional and dangerous healthcare system, and also ongoing power struggles. Given that popular culture can sometimes influence the public's understanding of real‐life nursing practice, it is important to explore what these metaphors of conflict are communicating about the nurse–doctor relationship. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. By John Van Seters. The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. By Samuel E. Balentine. Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by James L. Crenshaw. Ce Dieu censé aimer la Souffrance. By François Varone. Evil and Evolution, A Theodicy. By Richard W. Kropf. ‘Poet and Peasant’ and ‘Through Peasant Eyes’: A Literary‐Cultural Approach to (...) the Parable in Luke. By Kenneth Bailey. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. By Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller. New Testament Foundations of Ministry. By Colin Kruse. Church, Ministry and Unity. By James E. Griffiss. Theology of Ministry. By Thomas Franklin O'Meara. Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. By Colin E. Gunton. I believe in the Holy Spirit. By Yves Congar. Between Jesus and Paul. By Martin Hengel. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background. By Frances Young. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. By G.R. Evans. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. By Clarissa W. Atkinson. Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929. Edited by N. Macdougall. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution. Collected Essays, Volume II. By Frances A. Yates. Seven‐Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentury, 1483–1983. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Ökumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer. Luther's Ecumenical Significance, An Interconfessional Consultation. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, in collaboration with Carter Lindberg and Harry McSorley. States of Mind: A Study of Anglo‐Irish Conflict 1780 to 1980. By Oliver MacDonagh. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth‐Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter Reform. By Gregory L. Freeze. Pusey Rediscovered. Edited by Perry Butler. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell's Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. By Nicholas Sagovsky. The Concept of Glaubenslehre. By Walter E. Wyman, Jr. The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso. Faith and Reason. By Anthony Kenny. Logic and The Nature of God. By Stephen T. Davis. Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality. By Josef Fuchs. Morality and Conflict. By Stuart Hampshire. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. By Sabina Lovibond. Intentionality. By John R. Searle. Philosophical Papers, I: Practical Reason. By G.H. von Wright. Philosophical Papers, II: Philosophical Logic. By G.H. von Wright. A Model of Making: Literary Criticism and its Theology. By Ruth Etchells. The Return of the Goddess: Femininity, Aggression and the Modern Grail Quest. By Edward Whitmont. The Power of the Poor in History. By Gustavo Gutierrez, translated by Robert R. Barr. The God of the Xhosa. By Janet Hodgson. Our Hymn Tunes: Their Choice and Performance. By Donald Webster. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. By William Morgan. An Introduction to Plato's Laws. By R.E. Stalley. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. By Kenneth M. Sayre. Plato's ‘Parmenides’: Translation and Analysis. By R.E. Allen. Politics in the Ancient World. By M.I. Finley. (shrink)

This study attempts to show the role of translation in giving meaning to conflicts whether by reproducing the dominant political beliefs of a particular media society or by resisting counter-ideologies that come from foreign sources of information. It utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis as an effective method for the analysis of power relations behind news reporting. The research uses a corpus from international media and their equivalent texts into Arabic between 2013 and 2017. The data covers events on conflicts in Syria, (...) Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen, each article reporting issues about conflict and its impact on arenas of struggle. Through this case study of transediting, I will explore how textual analysis can unravel power relations and hegemonic orders of discourse. The study shows that translation is a site of conflict and has much to say about reasons for conflict and the complex relationship between language and power. The proposed tools of analysis in this study are based on functional language analysis and will show how language structuring, in particular transitivity analysis, articulates the logic created by the media outlet regarding reasons for conflict. The case study concludes that different media structure the current wars in the Middle East in different chains of causal dependence that can impact the reading positions of the readers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Language of the CaveA. Serge KapplerThe Language of the Cave, by Andrew Barker and Martin Warner; vi & 198 pp. Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1993, $54.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.The scholarly essays in this collection focus on the tension between Plato’s expressed views about style, poetry, and intellectual discourse on the one hand and his own practice on the other. Why does a man fiercely (...) hostile toward [End Page 266] literature and poetry write works that are themselves mimetic? Why does he repeatedly resort to story telling to make a point? Why do some of his works fail to fit his own prescriptions of clarity and unity? Six of the eight essays in this collection propose exonerating answers to these and similarly troubling questions.In stimulating counterpoint to this massive rescue operation, John Gould (“Plato and Performance”) argues that Plato’s attack on the irrationality of Greek literature and poetry has irrational roots in Plato himself. The reality defined by literary art, Gould suggests, is one of contradiction and conflict; its “incorrigible plurality”—the “drunkenness” of things as they are—is something that “Plato, at least in the puritanical mood of the Republic and the Phaedo, would not have wished to feel” (p. 25).Gould bases his contentions largely on a negative assessment of Plato’s arguments in the Republic. For him, the poverty and fierceness of those arguments strongly suggest an existential agenda at work. Implicitly supportive of this position, Penelope Murray (“Inspiration and Mimesis in Plato”) shows that the picture Plato paints of poets in the grip of irrational frenzy, in the Republic and elsewhere, far from being the traditional truth he purports it to be, is his own creation. It is a “far cry,” she convincingly argues, from the images of the poet that we find in pre-Platonic literature” (p. 46).The most original defense of Plato is offered by Mary Margaret McCabe in “Myth, Allegory and Argument in Plato.” She proposes that logical arguments in Plato’s text stand in a dialectical relation to stories and allegories elsewhere in the text. Mere logic presents too lean a picture of reality, while myths and allegories present one that is, from an Ockhamite perspective, too rich. The responsibility for finding the right theoretical balance lies with the reader.Now were it true that Plato’s famous images have no genuine heuristic value in the contexts in which they are offered, then McCabe’s thesis might be in some trouble. Yet that is precisely the claim of Manuela Teçusan (“Speaking about the Unspeakable: Plato’s Use of Imagery”), who reassures readers that because Plato resorts to poetic devices primarily in order to illustrate conclusions that are independently supported, he is not really guilty of an inconsistency needing to be explained away.If Plato’s complaints against literature are typically understood as presupposing extravagant metaphysical theses of his own, one possibility is to show that he is not actually committed to those theses. Christopher Rowe (“Reflections of the Sun: Explanation in the Phaedo”) and Michael Stokes (“Plato and the Sightlovers of the Republic”) weigh in with carefully argued versions of that time-honored project. Rowe can discover no reference in the Phaedo to the unhypothesized Good of the Republic, while Stokes discerns no genuine Platonic commitment to a two-world theory in Republic 5.Finally, Richard Rutherford (“Unifying the Protagoras”) diagnoses that dialogue’s notorious lack of unity as reflecting the disorganized minds and unsocratically competitive impulses of its Sophist participants, and Martin [End Page 267] Warner (“Dialectical Drama: The Case of Plato’s Symposium”) proposes that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, all of the Symposium displays both substance and unity.Reading these well-researched, engaging essays, one may find oneself wishing that their authors would occasionally wonder aloud whether Plato had any choice but to express himself through the poetic/dramatic medium which he criticizes. Perhaps he could have invented the straightforward philosophical prose style, but perhaps he was too busy building its conceptual and cultural foundations.A. Serge KapplerSkidmore CollegeCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

According to E. G. Lorenzen, the international theory of the conflict of laws rests almost wholly on fiction. The discipline of conflict of laws is created by a huge number of national internal laws and quite a large number of international instruments. Concepts used there are interpreted in many ways illustrating the variety of legal solutions and values. Some of the instruments facilitating the correct application of law are unregulated. One of them is qualification, which starts the process (...) of indication and application of the proper law and assists in its completion. (shrink)

This book is a survey of how law, language and translation overlap with concepts, crimes and conflicts. It is a transdisciplinary survey exploring the dynamics of colonialism and the globalization of crime. Concepts and conflicts are used here to mean 'conflicting interpretations' engendering real conflicts. Beginning with theoretical issues and hermeneutics in chapter 2, the study moves on to definitions and applications in chapter 3, introducing cattle stealing as a comparative theme and global case study in chapter 4. Cattle (...) stealing is also known in English as 'rustling, duffing, raiding, stock theft, lifting and predatorial larceny.' Crime and punishment are differently perceived depending on cultures and legal systems: 'Captain Starlight' was a legendary 'duffer'; in India 'lifting' a sacred cow is a sacrilegious act. Following the globalization of crime, chapter 5 deals with human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide. International treaties in translation set the scene for two world wars. Introducing 'unequal treaties' (e.g. Hong Kong), chapter 6 highlights disasters caused by treaties in translation. Cases feature American Indians (the 'trail of broken treaties'), Maoris (Treaty of Waitangi) and East Africa (Treaty of Wuchale). (shrink)

This work deals with principles determined by an Ottoman judge who lived in the 16th century about which of the contradictory verses should be chosen. İt is known that it is only possible with a good evaluation of the evidence presented to the court in order to reach a fair decision. Because one of the most important things to pay attention is to the evidence presented to the court and the judge tries to reach a fair decision by evaluating this (...) evidence. However, the main problem encountered at this stage is a presentation of contradictory evidence to the court by the parties of the case. In this case, reaching the right decision is only possible by choosing the method that will lead to the right decision among these conflicting methods. In this study, the preference principles that Vankulu Mehmet Efendi (D.1000/1592) discussed in his work called Tercihul’l beyyinat will be examined. As far as we can determine, this work is the first to deal with the principles of choice among evidence. Vankulu Mehmet Efendi was a scholar who lived in the XVI-century Ottoman Empire and held important positions such as muderris, mufti and kaddish in different regions of the Ottoman Empire. The author has worked in the field of fiqh and language. His work Tercîḥu'l-beyyinât is a work about which there is no work until today. In this work, it is explained which of this evidence should be chosen if there is contradictory evidence presented by the parties in a case. In addition, with this study, it will be tried to make determinations about the level reached in the judicial procedure during the period in which the author lived. Therefore, while dealing with the subject, beyond analyzing the principles determined by the author in detail, it will be tried to determine which sources the author has reached these principles by referencing. Thus, it will be tried to contribute to the understanding of the sources used by the Ottoman qadi of the period while determining the principles of judgment. (shrink)

In this article we, the authors, outline the thematic concerns of our special issue of the Journal of Global Ethics . We argue for a need to engage with notions of violence from an interdisciplinary and transformative perspective. The theoretical framework that provides such a perspective is critical theory, broadly construed. Critical theory has always been concerned with the relation between practice and theory, as well as notions of violence. It is therefore surprising to note that in the current critical (...) theoretical debates a sustained engagement with the theme of violence has largely been sidelined. We argue that critical theory is not only fruitful for the study of conflict and violence, but also that such practical issues can shed and help further develop critical theory itself. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from the contentWildenthal’s tightly written study of “human rights as a strategic political language” , part of the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series, presents the reader with a finely honed and extensively researched analysis that tells the stories of key, yet less well-known, people involved with the postwar development of West German human rights organizations. Wildenthal persuasively asserts that human rights are shaped more by people than by abstract norms. The actors she describes made (...) particular choices about how they would utilize the language of human rights in the very specific context of postwar West Germany, where she sees four particular usages of human rights emerging. First, organizations used the language of human rights to highlight the problematic Nazi past and to curb further abuses. Second, organizations appealed to human rights language to protect non-Jewish Germans . The first and second usages came into conflict in the immediate postwar – organizations. (shrink)

The novels of the Civil Rights Era are the place where voices speak the unspeakable, where the reader is showed from various angles the human character in times of conflict. The novels chosen for analysis—The Color Purple and Native Son uncover oppression and trauma, ways to cope with the ills of a society, and the forms of redemption or healing methods according to the case. The issues tackled are not just racial, they are human issues too. In every story (...) there are universal lessons for times of conflict when the power of reason should prevail. The message is to learn from history and thus prevent evil from reappearing. (shrink)

Reductionism and complexity theory are two paradigms frequently found in language research. There exist a number of conflicts in terms of concepts and methodologies between reductionism and complexity theory, which are not conducive to creating a unified language research framework. This paper starts by discussing the adaptability of complex dynamic systems and combines cognitive processing model and artificial neural networks to construct and verify an adaptive weight model, showing that the study of reductionism is induction of high-weight elements (...) and the study of complexity theory is a discussion of system complexity from adaptability, meaning that there is a good fit between the two frameworks. The adaptive weight model is conducive to developing a unified interpretation of language research results. (shrink)

These essays define transformation by blending the familiar with the conflicted and plural. Transformation refers to the shifting ground in our present culture between the familiar and the unfamiliar. These essays are viewed as examples of new intellectual 'genres' rather than 'theories.' If they do belong to a post-theoretical, intellectual genre of writing, it is because they blend philosophical vocabularies with expressions of curiosity, novelty and plurality.

The paper attempts to answer a very obstinate fundamental problem—is literary meaning determinable at all? Would it be determinable if it were constructed by the language of the text? Or is this meaning open-ended, constantly deferred or shifted as a result of the very nature of signification? In this paper, I argue that the levels of _dhvani-ṣ Avivakṣitavācya dhvani _ and_ Vivakṣitavācya dhvani_ and their sub-levels are far more comprehensive than the concept of ‘_differance_’, both based on the play (...) of meanings. Ānandvardhana seems to anticipate Derrida in postulating the infinite suggested meaning over and above the expressed literal meaning in the levels of _dhvani_, though the admission of any definite literal meaning itself goes against the deconstructive approach of ‘_differance_’. The paper also deals with the analysing a few literary works with the levels of _dhvani_ and also how meaning of a text is revealed to the _sahrdaya_ (reader). (shrink)

This paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of ‘environmental valuation', nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or ‘regimes') of engagement provides a sociological understanding of the unequal power of conflicting ‘languages of valuation'. This frame entails a shift from ‘values’ to ‘modes of valuation', and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of (...) incommensurability are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment. (shrink)

The relationship between bilingual language control and executive control is debated. The present study investigated the effect of short‐term language switching in a comprehension task on executive control performance in unbalanced bilinguals. Participants were required to perform a context task and an executive control task (i.e., flanker task) in sequence. A picture‐word matching task created different language contexts in Experiment 1 (i.e., L1, L2, and dual‐language contexts). By modifying the color‐shape switching task, we created different contexts (...) that do not involve language processing in Experiment 2 (i.e., color, shape, and dual context). Experiment 1 showed overall faster responses (in both congruent and incongruent trials) in the flanker task after a language switching context than after single (L1 or L2) contexts. This suggests that the language switching in a comprehension task affected general monitoring performance. By contrast, the nonlinguistic contexts in Experiment 2 did not affect flanker performance. This provides further evidence for the crucial role of language processing during switching to elicit short‐term adaptions on domain‐general conflict monitoring. Overall, our findings add to the previous studies by showing cross‐talk between bilingual language control and domain‐general conflict monitoring when language switching occurs in a comprehension task. (shrink)

All over the world, local languages are facing possible or probable extinction. The situation is nowhere more acute than for First Nations* in the regions now called the United States of America and Canada. In the face of this situation many people have become interested in studying endangered languages. Interest in threatened languages comes from many different sides: commercial, academic, scientific, religious, and more. The most immediately affected are of course the very speakers of the languages and the communities where (...) they live or have lived. (shrink)

Two groups of agents, G1 and G2, face a *moral conflict* if G1 has a moral obligation and G2 has a moral obligation, such that these obligations cannot both be fulfilled. We study moral conflicts using a multi-agent deontic logic devised to represent reasoning about sentences like "In the interest of group F of agents, group G of agents ought to see to it that phi". We provide a formal language and a consequentialist semantics. An illustration of our (...) semantics with an analysis of the Prisoner’s Dilemma follows. Next, necessary and sufficient conditions are given for (1) the possibility that a single group of agents faces a moral conflict, for (2) the possibility that two groups of agents face a moral conflict within a single moral code, and for (3) the possibility that two groups of agents face a moral conflict. (shrink)

Introduction: Ethical conflict is a phenomenon that has been under study over the last three decades, especially the types moral dilemma and moral distress in the field of nursing care. However, ethical problems and their idiosyncrasies need to be further explored. Aim: The objectives of this study were, first, to obtain a transcultural Portuguese-language adaptation and validation of the Ethical Conflict Nursing Questionnaire–Critical Care Version and, second, to analyse Portuguese critical care nurses’ level of exposure to ethical (...) conflict and its characteristics. Methods: A cross-cultural validation and descriptive, prospective and correlational study. The sample was made for 184 critical care nurses in 2016. Ethical Considerations: The study was authorised by Bioethics Commission of the University of Barcelona, the Associaçâo de Apoio ao Serviço de Cuidados Intensivos do Centro Hospitalar do Porto and the Sociedade Portuguesa de Enfermagem de Saúde Mental. Findings: The Portuguese version of the Ethical Conflict Nursing Questionnaire–Critical Care Version was a valid and reliable instrument to measure exposure to conflict. Moral outrage was the most common type of conflict. The most problematic situations were the ineffectiveness of analgesic treatments, the administration of treatments considered futile and the mismanagement of resources. (shrink)

Scientists of many countries in which English is not the primary language routinely use a variety of manuscript preparation, correction or editing services, a practice that is openly endorsed by many journals and scientific institutions. These services vary tremendously in their scope; at one end there is simple proof-reading, and at the other extreme there is in-depth and extensive peer-reviewing, proposal preparation, statistical analyses, re-writing and co-writing. In this paper, the various types of service are reviewed, along with authorship (...) guidelines, and the question is raised of whether the high-end services surpass most guidelines’ criteria for authorship. Three other factors are considered. First, the ease of collaboration possible in the internet era allows multiple iterations between the author(s) and the “editing service”, so essentially, papers can be co-written. Second, “editing services” often offer subject-specific experts who comment not only on the language, but interpret and improve scientific content. Third, the trend towards heavily multi-authored papers implies that the threshold necessary to earn authorship is declining. The inevitable conclusion is that at some point the contributions by “editing services” should be deemed sufficient to warrant authorship. Trying to enforce any guidelines would likely be futile, but nevertheless, it might be time to revisit the ethics of using some of the high-end “editing services”. In an increasingly international job market, awareness of this problem might prove increasingly important in authorship disputes, the allocation of research grants, and hiring decisions. (shrink)

This study examines the conflict strategies used in the highly adversarial and popular Arabic-language talk show broadcasted weekly on Al-Jazeera satellite channel, known as Al-Ittijah Al-Mu’aakis 'The Opposite Direction'. The study identifies the conflict strategies and verbal conflict expressions and approaches them in the light of Interactional Sociolinguistics. The analysis of three episodes debating three different topics shows that disputants used several types of strategies including "impoliteness", "aggravated impoliteness", topic restriction, lengthy holding of the floor, and (...) sarcasm. The speakers' bald-on-record expressions of disagreement are expected as a result of the controversial and polemical nature of the show, which creates fierce competition between the two guests to present their arguments in an aggressive way. (shrink)

Schmid analyzes the historical and recent controversies over language in the U.S., comparing it to two official multilingual societies: Canada and Switzerland. She also examines how people of different language communities co-exist in, or are divided by, a political community.

Vernacular language use in England throughout the later Middle Ages was a complex negotiation between English and French; that is, between the languages of English and French and the political identities of two peoples engaged in a long war. Clifford Geertz's famous analysis of “blurred genres” is used to think through the fuzzy properties of this period's bilingualism and to argue that to understand the boundaries between English and French as blurred is revealing of the linguistic and social tensions (...) that were the product of conflict between two closely intertwined cultures. This article is the first of a three-part contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on “blur,” each part corresponding broadly to Geertz's trifold instances of blur as involving “face-to-face interaction”, “collective intensities”, and “imaginative forms”. This first part takes as its main example a duel described by Jean Froissart in his Chroniques, in which a French knight is punished by his own king, Charles V, for fighting and injuring an English knight on the outskirts of Calais in 1383. (shrink)

The purpose of the presented paper is to showcase the links between Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s libertarian argumentation ethics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental pragmatics with a special reference to the consensus theory of truth proposed by the latter thinker. More specifically, the author contends that Hoppe’s theory is logically contingent on Apel’s views on truth in that some crucial gaps in Hoppe’s grounding of the so-called “a priori of communication and argumentation” are filled by Apel’s original arguments. Additionally, the paper provides a (...) case for interpreting Hoppe's ethics as a theory of rational conflict-freedom, which seems to cohere best with the transcendental-pragmatist approach. Finally, the author offers a few remarks on how the most common objections against Hoppe's theory can be overcome on the basis of the transcendental pragmatics and the conflict-freedom principle. (shrink)

Over the last decade, successive New Zealand governments have instituted social, political and economic changes that have fundamentally challenged nurses’ sense of themselves and their position in society. Major upheavals in the health service have occurred as a result of reforms promoting competition and contestability. This paper deals with the impact of one aspect of the reforms, that of the deregulation of the labour market through the Employment Contracts Act 1991. More specifically, the way in which discussions and decisions regarding (...) the withdrawal of nursing labour are shaped by the language available to those involved are considered. The intersection of ethics and union discourses may exacerbate feelings of ambiguity and confusion in nurses facing strike action. The result can be unnecessary and unproductive division and conflict: among nurses, between employers and employees, between unions, between nurses and the public, and between nursing organizations and the Government. An examination of some of the discourses of strike action may serve as a tool to elucidate the way nurses see themselves and their clients in the context of social change and social action. (shrink)

Due to its structure, language is open to change with the differentiation of time and events. The importance of language, which has a great importance in interpersonal communication, is much more privileged for Muslims who shape their civilizations according to the Qur’ān. Because the language in question in this medium is not only an element that completes human relations, but also the language of religion with divine characteristics, which communicates with people through revelation and belongs to (...) the supreme creator. It is normal for a language, which is considered to be a social phenomenon, to be constantly open to change due to meaning expansion, meaning narrowing or meaning distortions. It is possible to change the language in proportion to the development of the human mind. However, if the “language of religion” is in question, it is extremely important in terms of the universal messages it carries that the concepts it contains should not be expanded or distorted in order to preserve the purity of that religion. It is certain that the change that will occur in the words of the Qur’ān will affect its interpretation and thus religious life. In a realm where revelation is fixed and unchangeable, time and understanding are variable, what matters to us is how much we are in harmony with the first and essential meaning given to the concepts in our effort to understand the Qur’ān. In this article, with the revelation of the revelation, the expansion of the concept of mustad‘af to gain new political meanings, a case which almost all commentators have agreed on until today, has been analyzed, especially in the last century. The concept of mustad‘af, which is mentioned in four verses in the Qur’ān and is rarely included in the hadiths, basically represents the people who have not had the opportunity to migrate to live their faith, who were persecuted by deniers and oppressors and whose right to worship was taken away. The concept of mustad‘af, which basically means “weak, belittled and oppressed”, gained a religious content with Islam and preserved it. While the concept has been used in a narrow sense in the Sunni world until today and did not develop any meaning, it found a wide place in the Shiite world and underwent new meaning expansions. After the period of Hulefa-i Raşidîn, the Shiites accepted themselves as victims of the treatment they received by the political powers and named themselves as mustad‘af, and they produced a literature of victimization from there. This concept, which is used by Shiite scholars for people who sometimes do not fall into blasphemy and shirk, and sometimes believe in Allah and His Messenger, although they are not subject to the sect of shia, has been made available for new meanings with the change of world politics after the modern period. In the 19th century, the “social justice” and “equality” discourses of communism affected the Islamic world as well as the whole world. In addition to the establishment of many “left”-centered political parties in the Islamic world, contemporary Muslim thinkers were also influenced by this, and after a while many Islamic values started to be considered as left-wing. Especially before the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, the proletariat and bourgeois conflict was evaluated as an affiliate and mustad‘af, and it was hoped that the neglected masses would be converted to Islam with this new discourse. Those who have an imperialist and capitalist character, covet the wealth of third world countries and do all kinds of evil against them. Those who were left weak, exploited and stripped of their resources were regarded as mustad‘af. Again, the dictators who came to power against the will of the Muslims were evaluated as mustaqbir and the masses of the people as mustad‘af. It is possible to read a historical or religious text through any ideology. However, the fact that should not be ignored here is that if every word and concept in the Qur’ān loses its meaning in the medium and culture in which it descended, the language of religion and therefore all values belonging to religion will evaporate over time. (shrink)

Language is highly dynamic: It unfolds over time, and we can use it to achieve a wide variety of communicative goals, from telling a story to trying to persuade another person. One aspect of language that has gained increasing popularity among researchers in the last several decades is the individual language style (LS) represented by an individual’s use of function words (e.g., pronouns, articles). Previous approaches to LS mostly focus on LS of one individual in isolation, paying (...) less attention to the fact that language emerges from interaction with others. The aim of this paper is twofold: First, we integrate LS into a dynamical theoretical framework and present an innovative methodological approach. Second, this paper aims to address how interactive conversation—as an aspect of the communicative setting—changes an individual’s LS. We use recurrence quantification analysis to look at structure in patterns of LS in monologs and conversations of 118 participants. Our results showed that LS significantly differs from monolog to conversation, and post hoc analyses further revealed that the change in LS is greater for conflict than for friendly conversations. The difference between monologs and conversations is reflected more strongly in the dynamics (i.e., structure and complexity) of LS than the proportion of function words used. Theoretical implications and directions for future studies are discussed. (shrink)