Le jeu de stratégie; ou, Les échecs militaires.

Mode of access: Internet.

Agency as discursive practice: From nobody to somebody as an international student in Australia

As more and more students pursue an international education, there is a need to investigate how these students deal with the demands of their study programs in the new academic context. This paper introduces one such student, a Thai English teacher named Woody,2 and looks at the ways that he engaged with a Master of Education program in Australia. I analyse the transcripts of two interviews that I conducted with Woody in his first semester using Fairclough's model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The analysis is interested in the social and institutional demands that Woody identified as impacting on the course, and the strategic action that he took in response to them. I argue that by undertaking this action, Woody was “working” as an agent of his own change. The analysis highlights a proactive and strategic engagement on Woody's part, a point that has been missed in much of the literature on the international student experience in Australia.

Technologizing inhumanity: A discursive practice

A political interview intended to justify refugee detention in Australia is analysed using an interdisciplinary critical discourse method. Barthesian semiotic theory in which the 'Other' is the foundation of national myth provides a context for a close textual analysis using Hallidayan linguistics. The lexico-grammatical analysis identifies features associated with processes (verbs), grammatical metaphors, and nominals. Essentially, the effect is to blunt agency and distance the speaker, but, more importantly, create a classificatory system that allows humans to be treated in certain ways according to bureaucratic procedures. The discursive strategy is labelled technologizing the inhumane because it objectifies the subjective, turning profound human issues into technical issues. Analysed discursively, the interview reveals how discursive control is established and how democracy is represented as impeding the orderly procedure of 'objective' procedures.

Meeting the challenge on the path to democracy: discursive strategies in governmental declarations

The communicative practice in the ex-GDR was complex and diverse, although public political discourse had been fairly ritualized. Text-types characteristic of the Communist Party discourse were full of general (superordinate) terms semantic specification was hardly possible (propositional reduction). Changes in the social world result in changes in the communicative practice as well. However, a systematic comparision of text-types across cultures and across ideological boundaries reveals both differences in the textual macro- and superstructures and overlapping as well as universal features, probably related to functional aspects (discourse of power). Six sample texts of the text-type `government declaration', two produced in the ex-GDR, four in the united Germany, are analysed. Special attention is paid to similarities and differences (i) in the textual superstructure (problem-solution schema), (ii) in the concepts that reflect the aims of political actions (simple worlds), (iii) in the agents who (are to) perform these actions (concrete vs abstract agents). Similarities are found mainly in the discursive strategies, e.g. legitimization text actions. Differences become obvious in the strategies used for legitimization, and also in the conceptual domains referred to by the problem-solution schema. The metaphors of construction, path and challenge are of particular interest in this respect.

Taking the biscuit? A discursive approach to managing diet in type 2 diabetes

Adopting and maintaining a healthy diet is pivotal to diabetic regimens. Behavioural research has focused on strategies to modify/maintain healthy behaviours; thus 'compliance' and 'non-compliance' are operationalized by researchers. In contrast, discursive psychology focuses on the actions different accounts accomplish-in this case regarding diets. Using thematic discourse analysis, we examine dietary management talk in repeat-interviews with 40 newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients. Women in our study tended to construct dietary practices as an individual concern, while men presented food consumption as a family matter. Participants accounted for 'cheating' in complex ways that aim to accomplish, for instance, a compliant identity. Discursive psychology may facilitate fluidity in our understandings of dietary management, and challenge fixed notions of 'compliant' and 'non-compliant' diabetes patients. Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications.

Group work and cognitive style:a discursive investigation

This article investigates the relationship between work-group members’ cognitive style (as measured by Allinson and Hayes’s Cognitive Style Index), the group’s task and setting, and the way in which group members behave in the group. Behavior of a homogeneous analytic, a homogeneous intuitive, and a heterogeneous group was observed in a mechanistic setting and analyzed using discourse analysis. This study is discussed in light of a previous study in which homogeneous analytic and homogeneous intuitive groups worked in an organic setting. These two studies use different methodologies (quantitative approach versus qualitativediscursive). The benefits of methodological eclecticism are discussed.

Selling, resistance and reconciliation:a critical discursive approach to subsidiary role evolution in MNEs

Studies of political dynamics between multinational enterprise (MNE) parents and subsidiaries during subsidiary role evolution have focused largely on control and resistance. This paper adopts a critical discursive approach to enable an exploration of subtle dynamics in the way that both headquarters and subsidiaries subjectively reconstruct their independent-interdependent relationships with each other during change. We draw from a real-time qualitative study of a revealing case of charter change in an important European subsidiary of an MNE attempting to build closer integration across European country operations. Our results illustrate the role of three discourses – selling, resistance and reconciliation – in the reconstruction of the subsidiary–parent relationship. From this analysis we develop a process framework that elucidates the important role of these three discourses in the reconstruction of subsidiary roles, showing how resistance is not simply subversive but an important part of integration. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the micro-level political dynamics in subsidiary role evolution, and of how voice is exercised in MNEs. This study also provides a rare example of discourse-based analysis in an MNE context, advancing our knowledge of how discursive methods can help to advance international business research more generally.

Articulating discursive and materialist conceptions of practice in the logics approach to critical policy analysis

In this article it is argued that while Glynos and Howarth’s logics of critical explanation (LCE) offers an important and promising contribution to critical policy analysis, it, along with other approaches that focus on the meaning of social action, faces a growing challenge in the form of a so-called new materialist turn in social and political theory. The article argues that there is much to be gained for the logics approach in paying closer attention to the materiality of practices in terms not only of lending greater clarity to the conception and role of social practices in the logics approach but also in enabling it fully to deliver on its critical ambition. The article explores an alternative materialist approach to the study of social practices, which hails from the post-actor–networktheory tradition and which has ontological affinities with post-structuralism. The article begins with a brief analysis of the new materialist turn in its various guises. It then critically examines the logics approach, and, in particular its conception of practice. It then explores an alternative materialist and ethnographic reading of practice, focusing on medical and care practices. It concludes with an examination of the implications for a more materialist conception of practices for the LCE’s broad deconstructive, psychoanalytic and onto-political ambitions.

Collaborative futures:discursive realignments in austere times

This paper explores the future of collaboration in an era of austerity. Boundary object theory provides a framework to examine the significance and role of four key discourses in collaboration – efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness and cultural performance. Crisis provides a way of examining how and in what ways discourses realign. The exploration of discourses aids critical analysis of collaboration across sectoral, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, highlighting the importance of understanding the contextual roots of collaboration theory and practice, and the implications of local/global dynamics.

'If you had only listened carefully...':the discursive construction of emerging leadership in a UK all-women management team

Increasingly, feminist linguistic research has adopted a discursive perspective to learn how women and men 'do' leadership in gendered ways. 'Women' as a social category is made relevant to this study by virtue of the lack of female senior leaders in UK businesses (Sealy and Vinnicombe, 2013). Much previous research has analysed leadership discourse in mixed gender groups, relying on theories that imply comparisons between men and women. Using an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach, this study aims to learn more about how women perform leadership in the absence of men by analysing the spoken interactions of a women-only team who were engaged in a competitive leadership task. The analysis reveals that the women accomplish leadership in multiple and complex ways that defy binary gendered classifications. Nonetheless, there is a distinctive gendered dynamic to the team's interactions which, it is argued, might be disadvantageous to women aspiring to senior positions. © The Author(s) 2013.

'Your situation is critical...':the discursive enactment of leadership by business women in Middle Eastern and Western European contexts

Women remain in a small minority as business leaders in both Middle Eastern (ME) and Western European (WE) regions, and indeed, past research indicates that ME women face even greater challenges as leaders than their Western counterparts. This article explores sample findings from two separate case studies, the first of a ME woman leader and the second of a WE woman leader, each conducting a management meeting with their teams. Using interactional sociolinguistic analysis, we examine the 'contextualisation cues' that index how each woman performs leadership in their respective meetings. We found that both women utilise relational practices in order to enact leadership with their subordinates, but with varying results. Whereas the ME leader deploys a confident and commanding interactional style with her colleagues, the WE leader's style is evasive and uncertain. On the basis of these two cases, the WE leader appears to face greater challenges in a male-dominated business world than the ME leader. Whereas the ME leader can rely on long-established ties of loyalty and organisation-as-family, the Western leader, within an apparently more open, democratic context, has to negotiate overwhelming turbulence and change within her company. © 2014, equinox publishing.