Self reference in interpretive performance

Self reference, the capacity of language to “talk about itself”, provides a useful paradigm for understanding, directing, and performing oral interpretation. An analysis of the various relationships and interactions within this art form reveals dimensions of self reference, that feature of language which transforms a system of discursive symbolism into a presentational literary art form. To the degree that oral interpretation capitalizes on this reflexive power of language, the transformation is most complete in this literary art form.     

For public (and recontextualized) sociology: The promises and perils of public engagement in an age of mediated communication

This article argues for the analysis of public engagement as an essentially mediated activity. Although recent studies note that academic knowledge is increasingly available for consumption by nonacademic audiences, they tell us little about how it gets recontextualized while passing through the hands of media professionals on its way toward such audiences. In Burawoy’s (2005) influential call for the rebirth of public sociology, as in the debates his work provoked, the media is treated solely as a means for the transportation of knowledge. But as this article demonstrates, the media does not simply transport knowledge; it also, and at the same time, translates that knowledge in various, rhetorically consequential ways. Focusing on the mediated trajectory of an attempt by a group of academics to connect with audiences beyond academia, their initial contribution is compared to its subsequent translation(s) across various British newspapers. A discursive analysis reveals the techniques via which a classic form of public sociology came to be recontextualized such that, remarkably, these authors were left appearing to voice nothing but their own petty prejudices. The article concludes by noting that where public engagement involves mediation, public sociology should pay more attention to the recontextualizing affordances of media discourse.     

Evaluating Legal Information Retrieval Systems: How Do the Ranked-Retrieval Methods of WESTLAW and LEXIS Measure Up?

Abstract

This article contends that the relative effectiveness of Lexis and Westlaw should be measured by their ability to find and rank relevant documents. It contains an evaluation of Boolean systems and includes discussion of the Blair and Maron and the Dabney studies in which high recall was the goal of online searches. It then suggests that when other means of discovering relevant cases are available, the need for high recall is diminished. Finally, the article examines and presents performance test results of Lexis' Freestyle and Westlaw's Win natural language search engines.     

Web Cites: When Courts Cite to URLs: A Study of Washington and New York Cases

ABSTRACT

Courts are citing to websites within reported judicial opinions—primary authority that attorneys rely on. If a website no longer exists—or has been updated so as to no longer reflect the content the court reviewed—what does that do to an attorney's ability to make an argument or analogize and distinguish? This article reviews published Washington and New York opinions, noting the types of websites cited, examining the viability of links, and analyzing how websites are used in opinions. The author contends that website permanence is not the only problem; lawyers and courts need to be trained in information literacy so that only authentic and credible Internet sources are cited as authority, and encourages librarians to aid in this effort.     

The Gospel According to: A Theory of Transformative Discursive Allegory

The battle between secular culture and conservative religion is one that pervades modern society. In the face of this vehement clash, a curious collection of books has emerged that attempt to provide a means of reconciliation between faith and popular culture. The Gospel according to book series by Presbyterian publisher Westminster John Knox (WJK) Press pairs seemingly controversial artifacts of popular culture such as The Simpsons with the gospel message. These books function in a way that is similar to allegory but lacks allegorical form. This essay argues for the existence of a distinctive rhetorical strategy called transformative discursive allegory that functions to create an allegorical relationship between a secular and a sacred text. WJK's The Gospel according to book series is shown as an example of how transformative discursive allegory functions to allow the faithful to participate in popular culture while simultaneously affirming one's ideological beliefs as omnipresent in the world. The findings suggest that allegorical function and form are separate elements and that one can create an allegorical relationship without allegorical form or intent.     

Legitimating TV journalism in 60 Minutes : the ramifications of subordinating the visual to the primacy of the word

–The television news magazine genre carries with it an implicit bias that began in an earlier stage of television's dissemination when TV journalism sought to be legitimized by using standards of objectivity handed down from newspapers and magazines. This article contends that this legitimation was attempted by valorizing the rhetorical power of the spoken word and effectively ignoring that visual images carry independent persuasive power–persuasive power, moreover, that often contradicts the verbal and escapes the containment of the objective word. In support of this contention, the essay examines several episodes of 60 Minutes programming. Particular attention is paid to verbal and visual juxtapositions in which the visual imagery and editing choices subvert the stated intentions of the verbal elements. The aim is two-fold: to contribute to critical rhetorical analyses that seek to comprehend the impact of the visual in verbal or print-oriented contexts; and to uncover some of 60 Minutes' ideological underpinnings by casting light on the particular version of reality it constructs, and the beliefs, attitudes, and values it shapes.     

Performative face theory: A critical perspective on interpersonal identity work

Power operates not only through ideological and institutional control, but also through everyday interpersonal communication practices that sediment what is and ought to be. However, critical theorizing about power remains scarce within the sub-fields of interpersonal and family communication. To answer questions about operations of power in interpersonal identity work, performative face theory is set forth, which places Erving Goffman’s theorization of face in conversation with Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. Performative face theory suggests that discursive acts cited or repeated in negotiations of face constitute and sometimes subvert naturalized identity categories. Four theoretical principles are provided and an empirical example of childbearing identity is presented. Finally, implications of this novel critical interpersonal and family communication theory are discussed.     

The effects of gender‐role expectations upon perceptions of communicative competence

Several researchers have proposed that power, rather than gender, accounts for women using more powerless language than men. The present study examined the specific interaction context of bargaining and compared power with gender as potential predictors of the use of threats, one particular form of powerful language. Grounded in an interactional/social exchange view of power as dependence in social transactions, this study represented a marked departure from past studies of gender‐based language. The results largely supported power rather than gender as the best predictor of the use of powerful language in an interactional context involving bargaining.     

Gendering Graphics in Indian Superhero Comic Books and Some Notes for Provincializing Cultural Studies

With a focus on the Hindi language superhero comics produced by Raj Comics since the 1980s, this article investigates instances of “modernities in the backyard” and their implications for studying postcolonial popular culture. The graphic narratives in the comic books are neither simply Westernized or transgressive, nor necessarily framed by a mythicized or Orientalised discursive framework. Instead, they register a distinctive heritage combining vernacular and mythic prototypes with hypermodern visions with which to imagine new powers for Indian men and women, even though women may continue to be shaped by the masculinist, desirous gaze and modulated by patriarchal expectations to do with female docility and marriageability. The enquiry provides unique material to chart out the lineaments of postcolonial culture, gender, and power in order to provincialize the scope of cultural studies.     

A brave new world?—Understanding U.S.-China coproductions: collaboration,conflicts, and obstacles

The unprecedented growth in U.S.-China film coproductions and Chinese companies’ high-profile investment in Hollywood studios and U.S. cinemas signal a shift in global power relationships and a reshaping of the global media structure. Combining textual and document analysis with interviews of policy makers and film professionals in China and Hollywood, this article explores the implications of U.S.-China coproduction for global communication. The article proposes three ways of understanding coproductions: as a market-driven and profit-seeking partnership, as a policy and power negotiation, and as a brave experimental adventure. This article contends that the current state of U.S.-China coproduction manifests the contradiction between desire and reality. Although coproductions have the potential to create a space for a new global culture, to develop innovative communication models, and to achieve a China-U.S. consensus, the fulfillment of these potentials will require a steadfast effort and the commitment of more than one generation of filmmakers from both China and the U.S.A. Nevertheless, a global culture and a reshaping of the global media structure are in the making.     

Intertextuality and nationalism discourse: a critical discourse analysis of microblog posts in China

As an important dimension of contentious politics, online political discourse reveals crucial issues related to ideology, power, and identity in times of political struggle. Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s intertextual analysis approach within the paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis in an online discursive context, this study examines the role of intertextuality in the discursive construction of social movements. It does so by analyzing how different social actors employ discursive tools to construct the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in their online commentaries. Focusing on discourse, genre, and style, this study demonstrates how online texts draw from different intertextual resources and how they echo the broader nationalist discourse in China. In addition, this paper also uncovers how the circulation and combination of these intertextual resources in an authoritarian context form specific constructions of the Umbrella Movement.     

Public Libraries as Rhetorical Devices: Reimagining Print,Dewey, and Memory as Invention in the Digital Age

This article frames the public library and its system of organization as rhetorical tools. By providing an historic overview of libraries and their formation, the author recognizes the severed connection between library systems and the field of rhetoric, specifically the rhetorical canon of memoria. He seeks to reconnect memoria to the public library by recognizing the place-based nature of both classical memoria and library classification systems. The implications, he contends, run deep in libraries as seemingly neutral entities shape collective memory and education. Finally, the author provides a section that focuses on how digital-age libraries could be shaped, maintained, and managed in a way that recognizes memory as a rhetorical tool that aids in knowledge formation.     

图片新闻中图像符号的多模态批评性分析——以《时代》杂志图片新闻《家中的达赖喇嘛》为例

以时代杂志图片新闻《家中的达赖喇嘛》为例,通过整合视觉语法、社会实践分析法理论建立新的理论框架,并在之基础上对图片新闻中的视觉符号的多模态批评性分析做了实证研究。研究可以将传统批评语言学分析的视野扩展到多模态符号的研究。通过理论构建和实证研究,我们不仅可以"阅读"图片,而且能"批评"图片。同时,通过对某些西方媒体利用图片新闻的方式刻意美化达赖、歪曲事实本来面目之行径的揭露,为我国应对某些西方国家在国际传媒领域的意识形态操控提供实证性的参考。     

The Next Forty‐Nine Years

This article is expanded from a commencement address delivered by author Wes Jackson to graduating seniors at Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, May 20, 2007. It adds detail to his longstanding argument that the environmental majority is mendaciously optimistic in suggesting that new—and sometimes still uninvented—technology will solve the world's food and energy problems. Jackson lays out statistics on how fast the world is using up its energy sources, noting that biofuels such as agriculture‐based ethanol will provide insufficient energy to power U.S. cars and trucks even if we use all of the food in the world to produce motive power. Jackson's previous article, “Conceptual Revolutions: Who Needs Them? Why?” was published in Public Library Quarterly 24‐3 (2005). The two articles form an intertwined statement on world resource limitations and opportunities. These articles were selected for inclusion in PLQ for the fundamentally different view they offer library professionals on the biofuels‐and‐ecology debate, in the hopes of balancing competing points of view in library collections.     

Role regulation and normative expectations: the discursive erasure of Middle Eastern forced migrants in U.S. news outlets

ABSTRACT

This thematic analysis of 510 news articles – spanning the leftist-rightist ideological spectrum – examines media rhetoric surrounding President Trump’s 27 January 2017 Executive Order (EO) 13769 barring immigrants and refugees from U.S. resettlement. In this article, I examine how both liberal and conservative news media rhetoric reinforce respectability politics that create a hierarchy of victimhood for those affected by the EO. Interrogating U.S. civil society’s discursive construction of the forced migrant, I expose expectations for appropriate roles for these communities seeking asylum, though these roles are often veiled by normative U.S. mythology. As this analysis illustrates, the news media articles’ discursive erasure of Syrian, Iranian, Sudanese, Iraqi, Libyan, Somali, and Yemeni immigrants and refugees elide forced migrant self-representation and neglect the political/historical reasons for fleeing from their nations of origin.     

A molecular view of powerful and powerless speech styles: Attributional consequences of specific language features and communicator intentions

Two studies are reported. The first study examined the extent to which seven forms of language were perceived as powerful and effective when used by an interviewee in a hypothetical job interview. Results suggested a five‐level model of linguistic power and effectiveness, which is independent of communicator sex. The second study examined the same seven linguistic features but in this case two dissimilar intentions were attributed to the interviewee: desire to appear sociable versus desire to appear authoritative. Results indicated that power of style interacted with communicator intention, qualifying to an extent the five‐level model suggested by Study 7. Again, effects were independent of communicator sex. Results of both studies showed that respondents made rather fine discriminations among powerful and powerless language forms, that these discriminations were quite stable, and that some ostensibly powerless forms were judged to be relatively powerful in fact.     

论高校图书馆员与读者的非语言交流行为

非语言交流是人际交往的重要形式,对于正确处理高校馆员与读者双方关系具有重大意义。本文论述了非语言交流行为中形体语言、空间沟通、副语言等表达方式以及在图书馆服务工作中的应用。     

科技编辑的察形法

探讨科技编辑怎样从形式出发把握科技文稿的内容.在分析各类形式的基础上,归纳出所有形式的共性特点和不同形式所具有的个性特点,提出运用形式时所需遵循的基本准则;得出通过形式认识内容的一般步骤,并建立起科技编辑考察形式的方法,简称为"察形法".研究表明,"从形式到内容"是科技编辑审读文稿的重要认识途径,科技编辑可以而且应该成为形式方面的专家.     

Digital records as relational objects–Yuk Hui’s concept of digital objects applied to archival science

The writings of Yuk Hui, bringing together both technical and philosophical insights, present a new way of dealing with the digital. The aim of this article is to assess the use of Hui’s theories on digital objects as a critical reframing, looking at the concept of digital records in particular. Two types of ontology are needed in order to understand digital objects according to Hui: (1) ontologies which relates to the technical language and hierarchies of knowledge representation, like metadata; (2) Ontology, which is a question of being-in-the-tradition of Heidegger’s phenomenology, the understanding of what it is to be in the world. Both are needed to account for the nature of the digital object. Further, digital objects are produced and constituted through their relations, which can be divided into discursive (technical and logical) and existential (the understanding of being-in-the-world) relations. Different conceptions of digital records are discussed, in order to find commonalities and possibilities in relation to Hui’s theory. The digital record as a process of becoming, information as affordance, and temporality are related to and structured through the application of Hui’s perspective. The article ends with the contribution of a possible redefinition of digital records: a digital record is constituted and concretised as material by discursive and existential relations that taken together function as a persistent representation. Hui’s theory is suggested as a set of coordinates for further thinking and a method for critical reading of digital records.