The other country: A father's journey with autism

The memoir The Other Country and the essay Inspiration is Power examine i) contemporary experiences of autism and ii) the representation of autism disorder in scientific and autobiographical writing. The Other Country is a memoir of four years in the life of its author Michael Whelan, and his family, in the care of his son, Charlie. In February 1998, Charlie was diagnosed with autism, and in that moment Michael and his family's lives changed. The memoir describes in four parts a four-year journey through a father?s experiences: - Part 1, Welcome to Holland, the family's feelings of fear, grief and dislocation following diagnosis; - Part 2, Look at Me, the chaotic process of research and treatment, and intense early intervention programs; - Part 3, The Enchanted Cottage, the slow process of recovery that the family went through, and; - Part 4, The Long Way Home, the transformation of Charlie, Michael and his family and notions of home and normalcy. The title, The Other Country, in this context refers to the largely invisible parallel society inhabited by anyone who lives outside the mainstream. The accompanying critical essay, Inspiration is Power, examines the influence of the discourses of biomedical science and parental pathology on the representation and understanding of autism. Specifically, among autism narratives, the medical voice has an overwhelming authority and power in characterizing autistic disorder and experience for the lay reader. This discourse contests the moral authority of parental autobiographical writing, which, by contrast, characterizes autism as a personalized invading other and thief of their child. Through a critique of specific aspects of identity, narrative, evidence and authority, the essay suggests a register of rhetorical moves that may be employed to influence, and consequently empower, the reader of autism narratives.

There is 'hope for you yet': The female drug offender in sentencing discourse

Language and gender research has, in recent years, emphasised the importance of examining the context-specific ways in which people ‘do gender’ in different situations. In this paper, we explore how women involved in drug offences, specifically methamphetamine manufacture offences, are constructed within the language of the courts. Thirty-six sentencing transcripts from the New Zealand courts were examined to investigate how such offences, committed by women, are understood. In order to explore the representation of female offenders, a critical discourse analytic approach was adopted. Such an approach recognises that linguistic modes not only create and legitimise power inequalities but also embody a specific worldview. Three gendered discourses were identified in the sentencing texts: (i) the discourse of femininity, reinforcing the socially prescribed female role; (ii) the discourse of aberration, concerning women who breach traditional gender role expectations, and; (iii) the discourse of salvation, presenting aberrant women with an opportunity to become ‘good’ women once again. The findings illustrate the ways in which processes of gendering take place within a specific community of practice: the courtroom.

A Story of Organized Crime: Constructing Criminality and Building Institutions

This is a narrative about the way in which a category of crime-to-be-combated is constructed through the discipline of criminology and the agents of discipline in criminal justice. The aim was to examine organized crime through the eyes of those whose job it is to fight it (and define it), and in doing so investigate the ways social problems surface as sites for state intervention. A genealogy of organized crime within criminological thought was completed, demonstrating that there are a range of different ways organized crime has been constructed within the social scientific discipline, and each of these were influenced by the social context, political winds and intellectual climate of the time. Following this first finding, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals who had worked at the apex of the policing of organized crime in Australia, in order to trace their understandings of organized crime across recent history. It was found that organized crime can be understood as an object of the discourse of the politics of law and order, the discourse of international securitization, new public management in policing business, and involves the forging of outlaw identities. Therefore, there are multiple meanings of organized crime that have arisen from an interconnected set of social, political, moral and bureaucratic discourses. The institutional response to organized crime, including law and policing, was subsequently examined. An extensive legislative framework has been enacted at multiple jurisdictional levels, and the problem of organized crime was found to be deserving of unique institutional powers and configurations to deal with it. The social problem of organized crime, as constituted by the discourses mapped out in this research, has led to a new generation of increasingly preemptive and punitive laws, and the creation of new state agencies with amplified powers. That is, the response to organized crime, with a focus on criminalization and enforcement, has been driven and shaped by the four discourses and the way in which the phenomenon is constructed within them. An appreciation of the nexus between the emergence of the social problem, and the formation of institutions in response to it, is important in developing a more complete understanding of the various dimensions of organized crime.

Exclusive consumers: The discourse of privilege in elite Indian school websites

This chapter undertakes a study of how elite schools in India have a historical, colonial legacy while incorporating global, market oriented, international agenda to fit in with present times. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of elite schools and Foucault’s theory of discourse, a qualitative analysis is undertaken of 21 elite schools. The primary argument advanced is that the websites of the schools contain the discourses of privilege and distinction along with the discourses of inclusion and exclusion, market ideology and individual merit with the aim being to promote a local, global elite ascendancy.

From workplace to profession: New focus for the information literacy discourse

The present paper suggests articulating the general context of workplace in information literacy research. The paper considers distinguishing between information literacy research in workplaces and professions. Referring to the results of a phenomenographic enquiry into web professionals’ information literacy as an example, it is indicated that work-related information literacy in particular contexts and depending on the nature of the context, is experienced beyond physical workspaces and at professional level. This involves people interacting with each other and with information at a broader level in comparison to a physically bounded workspace. Regarding the example case discussed in the paper, virtuality is identified as the dominant feature of the profession that causes information literacy to be experienced at a professional level. It is anticipated that pursuing the direction proposed in the paper will result in a more segmented image of work-related information literacy.

Critical Discourse Analysis research methods for the English classroom

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach to analysing the discourses that operate in social contexts, such as classrooms in schools, and their material effects on people, such as teachers and learners. CDA offers a range of ways of engaging with the relationship between texts in context and the power they exercise. In this article, I overview key approaches and provide detail of Fairclough’s (1992, 2003) textually-oriented, linguistic method of CDA, with an example from my own research. I offer a challenge for English teachers, as researchers, to ‘make strange’ the familiar world of their classroom work, and in so doing, identify possibilities for productive change.

With the best of intentions: A critical discourse analysis of HPE curriculum materials

Much of physical education curriculum in the developed world and specifically in Australia tends to be guided in principle by syllabus documents that represent, in varying degrees, some form of government education priorities. Through the use of critical discourse analysis we analyze one such syllabus example (an official syllabus document of one of the Australian States) to explore the relationships between the emancipatory/social justice expectations presented in the rubric of and introduction to the official syllabus document, and the language details of learning outcomes that indicate how the expectations might be satisfied. Given the complexity and multilevel pathways of message systems/ideologies we question the efficacy of such documents oriented around social justice principles to genuinely deliver more radical agendas which promote social change and encourage a preparedness to engage in social action leading to a betterment of society.

Understanding teachers: The potential and possibility of discourse analysis

Understanding the ways in which teachers make sense of what they do and why is critical to a broader understanding of pedagogy. Historically, teachers have been understood through the thematic and content analysis of their beliefs or philosophies. In this paper, we argue that discourse analysis (DA) involves a much finer-grained analysis of the ‘lifeworlds’ of teachers and, in our view, provides a more detailed canvas from which inferences can be made. Our argument is structured in four parts. We begin by locating DA within the physical education (PE) literature and discuss what others have referred to as its relatively modest use. Following our location of DA, we outline a conceptual framework that we regard as useful, which contains six interrelated principles. We then introduce the idea of interpretive repertoires, which we consider to have particular explanatory power as well as being a sophisticated way to represent the subjectivities of PE teachers. Finally, we discuss the methodological strengths of interpretive repertoires. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and practical merits of adopting DA to analyse problems within PE.

Dressing up Tinderella: Interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder

Mobile dating applications (‘apps’) have increased in popularity over recent years, with Tinder among the first to break into the mainstream heterosexual market. Since mobile dating intensifies the need to confirm that potential dates are not misrepresenting themselves and are safe to meet in person, Tinder’s success indicates that it has allayed these concerns regarding the authenticity of its users. This article combines Giddens’ conceptualization of authenticity, as the ability to reference a coherent biographical narrative, with Callon’s sociology of translation to investigate Tinder’s framing of authenticity within mobile dating. Applying a walkthrough method that interrogates Tinder’s technological architecture, promotional materials, and related media, this hybrid theoretical framework is used to identify how Tinder configures an actor-network that establishes its app as the solution to users’ concerns, enrols individuals in using its features in authenticity claims, and popularizes Tinder’s framing across public discourse. This network of human and non-human actors frames authenticity as being established through one’s Facebook profile and adherence to normative standards relating to age, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. However, user discourses on other social media identify and challenge negative outcomes of this framing, with normativity fostering discrimination and Facebook verification failing to prevent abusive behavior. This case study of Tinder paves the way for future investigation into user responses to its framing. Further, it demonstrates the efficacy and broader applicability of this theoretical approach for identifying both human and technological influences on the construction of authenticity with digital media.

A discourse of ‘abnormality’: Exploring discussions of people living in Australia with a deafness or hearing loss

Adopting a social constructionist framework, the authors conducted a synthetic discourse analysis to explore how people living in Australia with deafness construct their experience of deafness. An online forum facilitated access and communication between the lead author and 24 widely dispersed and linguistically diverse forum contributors. The authors discuss the productive and restrictive effects of the emergent discourse of deafness as abnormal and the rhetorical strategies mobilized in people’s accounts: fitting in, acceptance as permission to be different, and the need to prove normality. Using these strategies was productive in that the forum respondents were enabled to reposition deafness as a positive, socially valued identity position. However, the need to manage deafness was reproduced as an individual concern, disallowing any exploration of how deafness could be reconstructed as socially valued. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the deafness as abnormal discourse.