Girls talk: authorship and authenticity in the reception of Lena Dunham's Girls

By examining the discourse around Lena Dunham's HBO comedy Girls (2012– present), this article argues that the programme served as a space to think through female authorship, televisual representations and cultural tensions surrounding young womanhood. Central to this discourse was the narrative asserting Girls' and Dunham's 'authenticity', originality and universality, which sought to legitimate her gendered authorship and interest in the comedy of female intimacy within HBO' s masculine prestige channel identity. Charting three cycles of discourse surrounding the programme's debut, this article explores the paratextual framing by promotional concerns, television critics and women' s websites. It highlights how journalists and critics furthered HBO's paratextual framing of Dunham, which was later countered by the networked spaces of niche online media, which used the programme as a space to productively work through industrial and cultural tensions; particularly those surrounding female comic authorship, autobiography and intersectionality.

Discourse and creativity

Discourse and Creativity examines the way different approaches to discourse analysis conceptualize the notion of creativity and address it analytically. It includes examples of studies of creativity from a variety of traditions and examines the following key areas, how people interpret and use discourse, the processes and practices of discourse production, discourse in modes other than written and spoken language, and the relationship between discourse and the technologies used to produce it.

Advances in Discourse Studies

Methods of approaching the study of discourse have developed rapidly in the last ten years, influenced by a growing interdisciplinary spirit among linguistics and anthropology, sociology, cognitive and cultural psychology and cultural studies, as well as among established sub-fields within linguistics itself. Among the more recent developments are an increasing ‘critical’ turn in discourse analysis, a growing interest in historical, ethnographic and corpus-based approaches to discourse, more concern with the social contexts in which discourse occurs, the social actions that it is used to take and the identities that are constructed through it, as well as a revaluation of what counts as ‘discourse’ to include multi-modal texts and interaction. Advances in Discourse Studies brings together contributions from leading scholars in the field, investigating the historical and theoretical relationships between new advances in discourse studies and pointing towards new directions for the future of the discipline. Featuring discussion questions, classroom projects and recommended readings at the end of each section, as well as case studies illustrating each approach discussed, this is an invaluable resource for students of interdisciplinary discourse analysis.

Constructing risk across timescales and trajectories: Gay men's stories of sexual encounters

This paper explores the way risk is constructed in the stories gay men tell of their sexual experiences. It focuses on how tellers use such stories to portray themselves both as rational actors and as legitimate members of their social groups by reconstructing the ‘orderliness’ of sexual encounters. An analysis of a corpus of stories derived from a diary study of gay male sexual behaviour in Hong Kong using current theories of discourse analysis reveals how narrators organize their experiences along two primary vectors of engagement: a sequential vector along which the trajectory of the sexual encounter is presented as a chain of occurrences, each occurrence contingent upon previous ones and warranting subsequent ones, and a hierarchical vector along which processes perceived on longer timescales are portrayed as exerting pressure on the ways processes on shorter timescales unfold. Examining how men portray these vectors in their accounts of risk behaviour can help us better understand both the situatedness of risk behaviour and the ways it is linked to larger social practices, identity projects and community histories

Topic- and mode-sensitive interaction strategies : Functions of ellipsis in oral communication

In this article, we discuss ellipsis as an interactive strategy by analysing the author’s textchat corpus and the VOICE corpus of English as a Lingua Franca. It is found that there were fewer repetitions in the textchat data, and this is explained as a consequence of the textchat mode. Textchat contributions are preserved as long as the chat is active or has been saved, and therefore users can scroll through and review the discussion, compared to the more fleeting nature of oral conversation. As a result, repetition is less necessary. The frequency of other functions identified could be attributed to the topic of discourse. Discussions involve much ellipsis used to develop discourse, although some were self-presentations with repetition used to confirm details. Back-channel support and comments were often low because speakers instead used forms like yeah as supportive utterances.

A problematização do lixo e dos catadores: estudos de caso múltiplo sobre políticas públicas sob uma perspectiva foucaultiana

Municipal government policies supporting recycling cooperatives at the start of the 1990s and in the first years of the current century have contributed to resemanticizing trash rather than improving the living conditions of the street scavengers in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This idea was based on multiple case studies conducted in three post-consumption recycling cooperatives which have resulted from such policies. Interviews were held with three municipal government managers and 66 scavengers between 2002 and 2004, during a period of field observation that varied from two to six months in each case. Following a Foucaultian analysis approach, in this thesis post-consumption trash is considered as a discursive production. For this reason, the discourses have been analyzed (through an archaeology and a genealogy) that animated this object as a target condition of public policies. Thus, problematization of the trash has been proposed ¿ characterized by the concomitance of discourses related to an environmental and economic issue surrounding it, which would have impacted the scavengers' work. This proposal made it possible to consider the conditions that enable the scavengers to participate in this discursive production concerning trash. Problematization means the social enhancement of trash (its resemantization as recyclable) and the government policies were an attempt to make the scavengers adapt to this conjuncture. The conditions have been investigated that enable the scavengers to participate in the construction process of the discourse concerning trash (preparation of the strategies), in consonance with public policies. According to the three organizations observed, the public managers assumed that it would be possible for the scavengers to participate in the rules of discourse on trash, when they achieved economy of scale and when they sold to middlemen. Through the findings of the studies, however, it has been concluded that the ways in which these three organizations were managed enabled the scavengers to accede to the rules of discourse regarding problematized trash only when they could control the strategies that allow them to attend what is set by such rules.

International civil society actors in Genetically Modificied Organisms as a field of struggle: a neo-gramscian study in Brazil and the United Kingdom

Since the international financial and food crisis that started in 2008, strong emphasis has been made on the importance of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) (or “transgenics”) under the claim that they could contribute to increase food productivity at a global level, as the world population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion in the year 2050 and food demand is predicted to increase by as much as 50% by 2030. GMOs are now at the forefront of the debates and struggles of different actors. Within civil society actors, it is possible to observe multiple, and sometime, conflicting roles. The role of international social movements and international NGOs in the GMO field of struggle is increasingly relevant. However, while many of these international civil society actors oppose this type of technological developments (alleging, for instance, environmental, health and even social harms), others have been reportedly cooperating with multinational corporations, retailers, and the biotechnology industry to promote GMOs. In this thesis research, I focus on analysing the role of “international civil society” in the GMO field of struggle by asking: “what are the organizing strategies of international civil society actors, such as NGOs and social movements, in GMO governance as a field of struggle?” To do so, I adopt a neo-Gramscian discourse approach based on the studies of Laclau and Mouffe. This theoretical approach affirms that in a particular hegemonic regime there are contingent alliances and forces that overpass the spheres of the state and the economy, while civil society actors can be seen as a “glue” to the way hegemony functions. Civil society is then the site where hegemony is consented, reproduced, sustained, channelled, but also where counter-hegemonic and emancipatory forces can emerge. Considering the importance of civil society actors in the construction of hegemony, I also discuss some important theories around them. The research combines, on the one hand, 36 in-depth interviews with a range of key civil society actors and scientists representing the GMO field of struggle in Brazil (19) and the UK (17), and, on the other hand, direct observations of two events: Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and the first March Against Monsanto in London in 2013. A brief overview of the GMO field of struggle, from its beginning and especially focusing in the 1990s when the process of hegemonic formation became clearer, serves as the basis to map who are the main actors in this field, how resource mobilization works, how political opportunities (“historical contingencies”) are discovered and exploited, which are the main discourses (“science” and “sustainability” - articulated by “biodiversity preservation”, “food security” and “ecological agriculture”) articulated among the actors to construct a collective identity in order to attract new potential allies around “GMOs” (“nodal point”), and which are the institutions and international regulations within these processes that enable hegemony to emerge in meaningful and durable hegemonic links. This mapping indicates that that the main strategies applied by the international civil society actors are influenced by two central historical contingencies in the GMO field of struggle: 1) First Multi-stakeholder Historical Contingency; and 2) “Supposed” Hegemony Stability. These two types of historical contingency in the GMO field of struggle encompass deeper hegemonic articulations and, because of that, they induce international civil society actors to rethink the way they articulate and position themselves within the field. Therefore, depending on one of those moments, they will apply one specific strategy of discourse articulation, such as: introducing a new discourse in hegemony articulation to capture the attention of the public and of institutions; endorsing new plural demands; increasing collective visibility; facilitating material articulations; sharing a common enemy identity; or spreading new ideological elements among the actors in the field of struggle.

O masculino em revista: mídia, discurso e modos de subjetivação afetivos-sexuais

This dissertation has the thematic of the sexual affection of the masculine subjectivity within texts of Universo Masculino and Men‟s Health magazines as object of analysis. The central objective was to describe and interpret the theme on the masculine subjectivity in discourses about the affection of sexuality materialized in discourse practices in those magazines. The main point of the research matters how the discourse structures of texts in those magazines make it possible to comprehend the meanings produced about the masculinity nowadays. On the perspective of the thematic trajectory what consists the main aspect that concerns the leading of corpus in the research under the French discourse analysis, we have searched, in reports of those magazines, an arch-genealogy of masculinity, from a specific sexual-affection disposable of our mediate culture. The analytic trajectory enables us to conclude that the thematic trajectory about the sexual affection of the masculine subjectivity produces a semantic way that confirms hegemony and hetero-normative ideals, rather than what proposes new performances on the masculine subjectivity experiences. In its real effects, such mediate discourse practice pursues to link certain sexual affection knowledge to the male individual‟s lifestyle today, from the thematic choices, enunciation modalities and discourse strategies which are specific to the masculine media

Um olhar sobre a indisciplina escolar: o que ela nos revela da educação moderna

Pós-graduação em Educação - FFC

A genealogia do patrimônio em São Luís: da Athenas a capital da diversidade

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Experiência, infância e cuidado de si: desafios aos atuais saberes e práticas escolares

This paper deals with the problem of experience and its possible languages between school knowledge and practices. Its objective is to find the different possibilities of thinking the experience in the educational praxis, based on the contemporary philosophical categories of event and childhood as well as on the genres of poetic language and testimony. In order to do so, it is reconstructed a genealogy of the transformation of educational praxis into pedagogical art in its relationships with childhood whether as a government goal or as a subject, revealing the domination states that constitute them and pointing out their potential of resistance to the actual one. It is also stated that this event breaks into in the aesthetic dimension of experience and concurs in order to interrupt the order of discourse, making subjects of educational praxis think about it and causing care of oneself to become an ethic attitude put together with an aesthetics of experience. Thus, this research aims at restoring the dignity of experience among school knowledge and practices.

Unfaithful narratives: methodological and affective notes about experiences of masculinity in a dating website for married people

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Habemus doctorem?: considerações sobre processos de subjetivação no campo acadêmico contemporâneo

Pós-graduação em Linguística e Língua Portuguesa - FCLAR

Psychology and psychoanalysis in Brazil - From cultural syncretism to the collapse of liberal individualism

This paper focuses first on cultural syncretism, used to characterize Brazilian culture. The other aspect of this socially and racially blended culture is the unfinished assimilation of liberalism in politics and the economy, which defines Brazilian society. The increased assimilation and dissemination of psychology may be linked with these in cultural and social aspects. During the military period (1964-1974) the major expansion in university-level studies in psychology contributed ideologically to the dissemination of psychology throughout Brazilian society. This introduced a type of psychology that was related primarily to clinical practice and developed in opposition to social work practice. This paper examines the ideological bases for this conflict between clinical and social work. Criteria for understanding the cultural dissemination of psychoanalysis are then discussed, and it is argued that cultural incorporation of psychoanalysis involves the development of discourse complexes to reflect particular aspects of Brazilian society. The criteria (a non-totalitarian society and the displacement of a magical and religious interpretation of mental disturbance by psychiatric interpretation) are evaluated in relation to the peculiarities of Brazilian syncretism. The paper argues that cultural syncretism and the incomplete assimilation of liberal ideology must be included as criteria in understanding the particular cultural incorporation of psychoanalysis in Brazil.

DELAY IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN PRISONS: THE EXPERIENCE OF INCARCERATED PATIENTS

This study analyzed the causes of delay in the diagnosis of tuberculosis in the prison system, according to the experience of incarcerated patients. The theoretical and methodological framework of the French school of discourse analysis was used, which seeks to comprehend the processes of meaning production, in the relationship of language with ideology and the development of subjects in their positions. Semi-directed interviews were conducted with seven incarcerated tuberculosis patients in a hospital of Joao Pessoa, Paraiba, Brazil, between August and October 2009. The delay in the diagnosis of tuberculosis was related to the naturalization of the lack of care for the prisoner, to the interpretation of the prison as a place of death and suffering and to the deprivation of the right to health for the detainees as a result of their position in the asymmetric power relationships and ideological effects.