The discursive capacity of graphic design

The relationship between rhetoric and graphic design is presented in this article. The comparison between a classical orator and a graphic designer, between a discourse and a piece of design comes from the connections between with the communication and creativity. We will see how an application of the fundamentals of rhetoric can open new doors to the professional practice, the education of graphic design and the same theory of the rhetoric of the image.By the analysis of a design is exemplified the points of union that show how the arguments, operations, figures of discourse and rhetorical phases are present in the creative process of graphic design and how designers, perhaps unconsciously, use techniques that were traditional. In other words, graphic design is a rhetorical construction.There is then a transposition of a discourse model created by linguistic signs to a discourse model consists of visual and typographic signs, causing design is seen as a discursivediscipline that goes beyond the aesthetic component.

The discursive turn in policy analysis and the validation of policy stories

This paper is concerned with the language of policy documents in the field of health care, and how ‘readings’ of such documents might be validated in the context of a narrative analysis. The substantive focus is on a comparative study of UK health policy documents (N=20) as produced by the various assemblies, governments and executives of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during the period 2000-2009. Following an identification of some key characteristics of narrative structure the authors indicate how text-mining strategies allied with features of semantic and network analysis can be used to unravel the basic elements of policy stories and to facilitate the presentation of data in such a way that readers can verify the strengths (and weaknesses) of any given analysis – with regard to claims concerning, say, the presence, absence, or relative importance of key ideas and concepts. Readers can also ‘see’ how the different components of any one story might fit together, and to get a sense of what has been excluded from the narrative as well as what has been included, and thereby assess the reliability and validity of interpretations that have been placed upon the data.

Discursive Control, Non-Domination and Hegelian Recognition Theory: Marrying Pettit’s Account(s) of Freedom with a Pippinian/Brandomian Reading of Hegelian Agency

The aim of this article is to combine Pettit’s account(s) of freedom, both his work on discursive control and on non-domination, with Pippin’s and Brandom’s reinterpretation of Hegelian rational agency and the role of recognition theory within it. The benefits of combining these two theories lie, as the article hopes to show, in three findings: first, re-examining Hegelian agency in the spirit of Brandom and Pippin in combination with Pettit’s views on freedom shows clearly why and in which way a Hegelian account of rational agency can ground an attractive socio-political account of freedom; second, the reconciling of discursive control and non-domination with Hegelian agency shows how the force and scope of recognition become finally tangible, without either falling into the trap of overburdening the concept, or merely reducing it to the idea of simple respect; third, the arguments from this article also highlight the importance of freedom as non-domination and how this notion is, indeed, as Pettit himself claims, an agency-freedom which aims at successfully securing the social, political, economic and even (some) psychological conditions for free and autonomous agency.

'Regina v John Terry': The Discursive Construction of an Alleged Racist Event

This article explores the conformation in discourse of a verbal exchange and its subsequent mediatised and legal ramifications. The event concerns an allegedly racist insult directed by high profile English professional footballer John Terry towards another player, Anton Ferdinand, during a televised match in October 2011. The substance of Terry’s utterance, which included the noun phrase ‘fucking black cunt’, was found by a Chief Magistrate not to be a racist insult, although the fact that these actual words were framed within the utterance was not in dispute. The upshot of this ruling was that Terry was acquitted of a racially aggravated public order offence. A subsequent investigation by the regulatory commission of the English Football Association (FA) ruled, almost a year after the event, that Terry was guilty of racially abusing Ferdinand. Terry was banned for four matches and fined £220,000.

It is our contention that this event, played out in legal rulings, social media and print and broadcast media, constitutes a complex web of linguistic structures and strategies in discourse, and as such lends itself well to analysis with a broad range of tools from pragmatics, discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. Amongst other things, such an analysis can help explain the seemingly anomalous - even contradictory - position adopted in the legal ruling with regard to the speech act status of ‘fucking black cunt’; namely, that the racist content of the utterance was not contested but that the speaker was found not to have issued a racist insult. Over its course, the article addresses this broader issue by making reference to the systemic-functional interpersonal function of language, particularly to the concepts of modality, polarity and modalisation. It also draws on models of verbal irony from linguistic pragmatics, notably from the theory of irony as echoic mention (c.f. Sperber and Wilson, 1981; Wilson and Sperber, 1992). Furthermore, the article makes use of the cognitive-linguistic framework, Text World Theory (c.f. Gavins, 2007; Werth, 1999) to examine the discourse positions occupied by key actors and adapts, from cognitive poetics, the theory of mind-modelling (c.f. Stockwell, 2009) to explore the conceptual means through which these actors discursively negotiate the event.

It is argued that the pragmatic and cognitive strategies that frame the entire incident go a long way towards mitigating the impact of so ostensibly stark an act of racial abuse. Moreover, it is suggested here that the reconciliation of Terry’s action was a result of the confluence of strategies of discourse with relations of power as embodied by the media, the law and perceptions of nationhood embraced by contemporary football culture. It is further proposed that the outcome of this episode, where the FA was put in the spotlight, and where both the conflict and its key antagonists were ‘intranational’, was strongly impelled by the institution of English football and its governing body both to reproduce and maintain social, cultural and ethnic cohesion and to avoid any sense that the event featured a discernable ‘out-group’.

Religion and Transformation in South Africa? Institutional and Discursive Change in a Charismatic Congregation

A number of Christian churches in South Africa have proclaimed their commitment to reconciliation and the elimination of unjust inequalities. This study analyses how these commitments are being worked out at the micro-level of a congregation. Using an ethnographic approach, I explore how a charismatic congregation in Cape Town has changed from being nearly all-white to being more inclusive. I explore links between individual, cognitive identity change and institutional change; and consider the discourses which justify change, including their emphasis on 'unity in diversity' and 'restitution'. I outline the limitations of change, including the persistence of 'racialised' leadership structures and the discursive privileging of unity over restitution. This allows us to understand how micro-level changes take place, to explore their potentialities and limitations, and to apply these insights to other contexts.

Astrophysics: Cosmic explosions in the young Universe

The discovery of two superluminous supernovae at large distances from Earth pushes the frontier of supernova studies to just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and suggests that they may be common in the young Universe. See Letter p.228

The discursive construction of place-identity: british lifestyle migrants in the Algarve

Tese dout., Philosophy, Lancaster University, 2011

The discursive construction of Portuguese national identity in the media thirty years after the 1974 revolution

Tese dout., Philosophy, Lancaster University, 2010

‘A true feeling of authentic portuguese golf'? The discursive construction of the Algarve region in portuguese golf websites

In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, the need for golf destinations to differentiate themselves from competitors has become more critical than ever. This paper raises questions about the promotional strategies employed by the golf sector in the Algarve, focusing on internet communication strategies, since this medium has become the biggest driving force towards the commoditisation of all aspects of the tourism experience. By offering a complementary perspective to the field of (critical) tourism studies, and drawing on a qualitative, multi-modal discourse analysis, this work-in-progress looks at the particular ways that representations and images presented on the Algarve golf websites constitute and frame identities (of people and places) and socio-spatial relationships. This paper analyses a corpus of 45 texts collected from official websites of the 40 Algarve golf courses and from five entities which promote the Algarve as a golf destination, along with the golf images that are displayed alongside them. Findings point to salient discursive and visual representations of a global setting enjoyed by the global elite. Whereas the courses‟ positioning in relation to their regional competitors draws on similar discursive strategies which reflect those used in tourism advertising discourses in general – e.g. reiteration of explicit comparisons, superlatives and hyperbolic statements -, representations of local emplacedness are not salient; in some cases local place seems to have been almost intentionally suppressed.