Discursive Acts

Language, Signs and Selves applies conversational analysis to the discourse of everyday life and its roles in social behavior. The explanation offered of the complex elements and processes of language use is theoretically and empirically grounded, synthesizing European post structuralist theory and semiotics with American pragmatist currents.This book parallels work done under other rubrics sociolinguistics, conversation and discourse analysis, and ethnomethodology. This work, however, presents the same matter from a different standpoint. While enthnomethodology and sociolinguistics focus on certain formal properties of conversations, they have pursued the quest for these properties with great methodological rigor, while avoiding questions about intentions. In their work, as in that of many structuralists, discourse has become depersonalized, with the linguistic form itself becoming an independent entity sealed from the world of selves, interaction, conflict, and suffering. Perinbanayagam's interest is in displaying the dialogic properties of such discourses, conceiving each element in them as pragmatic and directed.In many ways Language, Signs and Selves is an enlargement and exemplification of themes discussed in the analysis of language, interactions, and social relationships. The author takes dialogue to be the central event of human being and doing and argues that it is the defining principle of all actions and interactions. Drawing from a variety of sources, he seeks to construct a theory of interaction between humans that is dialectical in all senses of the word; that is to say, a theory concerned with dialects and double processes, as well as with speaking and the logic of relational processes.

Language, Signs and Selves applies conversational analysis to the discourse of everyday life and its roles in social behavior. The explanation offered of the complex elements and processes of language use is theoretically and empirically grounded, synthesizing European post structuralist theory and semiotics with American pragmatist currents.This book parallels work done under other rubrics sociolinguistics, conversation and discourse analysis, and ethnomethodology. This work, however, presents the same matter from a different standpoint. While enthnomethodology and sociolinguistics focus on certain formal properties of conversations, they have pursued the quest for these properties with great methodological rigor, while avoiding questions about intentions. In their work, as in that of many structuralists, discourse has become depersonalized, with the linguistic form itself becoming an independent entity sealed from the world of selves, interaction, conflict, and suffering. Perinbanayagam's interest is in displaying the dialogic properties of such discourses, conceiving each element in them as pragmatic and directed.In many ways Language, Signs and Selves is an enlargement and exemplification of themes discussed in the analysis of language, interactions, and social relationships. The author takes dialogue to be the central event of human being and doing and argues that it is the defining principle of all actions and interactions. Drawing from a variety of sources, he seeks to construct a theory of interaction between humans that is dialectical in all senses of the word; that is to say, a theory concerned with dialects and double processes, as well as with speaking and the logic of relational processes.

This book provides readers with the latest research on the affective aspect of online interactions between doctors and e-patients in the context of China from a poststructuralist discourse analysis perspective. At the heart of this book is the presentation of four chapters which address (1) indirect negative emotional acts by e-patients and empathic acts by doctors (constituting “affective practice”), (2) the interactional discursive features involved in the affective practice, (3) discursive positions of e-patients and doctors within the affective practice context, and (4) power relations that are reflected in the positionings. This book sheds light on the importance of examining the affective facet of medical consultation, when it comes to identifying non-traditional positions and power relations in doctor-patient communication. It also provides the implication that e-healthcare platforms, especially those with an e-commercialized model for healthcare services, have potential to produce a type of neo-liberal discourse—the e-commercialized medical consultation discourse—in which patients and caregivers, who are acknowledged as the less powerful group in the traditional healthcare activities, are empowered and privileged.

How do we construct national identities in discourse? Which topics, which discursive strategies and which linguistic devices are employed to construct national sameness and uniqueness on the one hand, and differences to other national collectives on the other hand? The Discursive Construction of National Identity analyses discourses of national identity in Europe with particular attention to Austria.In the tradition of critical discourse analysis, the authors analyse current and on-going transformations in the self-and other definition of national identities using an innovative interdisciplinary approach which combines discourse-historical theory and methodology and political science perspectives. Thus, the rhetorical promotion of national identification and the discursive construction and reproduction of national difference on public, semi-public and semi-private levels within a nation state are analysed in much detail and illustrated with a huge amount of examples taken from many genres (speeches, focus-groups, interviews, media, and so forth). In addition to the critical discourse analysis of multiple genres accompanying various commemorative and celebratory events in 1995, this extended and revised edition is able to draw comparisons with similar events in 2005. The impact of socio-political changes in Austria and in the European Union is also made transparent in the attempts of constructing hegemonic national identities.

The basic idea of the particular way of understanding mental phenomena that has inspired the "cognitive revolution" is that, as a result of certain relatively recent intellectual and technological innovations, informed theorists now possess a more powerfully insightful comparison or model for mind than was available to any thinkers in the past. The model in question is that of software, or the list of rules for input, output, and internal transformations by which we determine and control the workings of a computing machine's hardware. Although this comparison and its many implications have dominated work in the philosophy, psychology, and neurobiology of mind since the end of the Second World War, it now shows increasing signs of losing its once virtually unquestioned preeminence. Thus we now face the question of whether it is possible to repair and save this model by means of relatively inessential "tinkering", or whether we must reconceive it fundamentally and replace it with something different. In this book, twenty-eight leading scholars from diverse fields of "cognitive science"-linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy- present their latest, carefully considered judgements about what they think will be the future course of this intellectual movement, that in many respects has been a watershed in our contemporary struggles to comprehend that which is crucially significant about human beings. Jerome Bruner, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Boden, Ulric Neisser, Rom Harre, Merlin Donald, among others, have all written chapters in a non-technical style that can be enjoyed and understood by an inter-disciplinary audience of psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and cognitive scientists alike.

'Becoming Subjects' is an interdisciplinary reference for those who are working with or studying young people and sexuality, looking at the educational discourses with which they are commonly associated.

This state-of-the-art volume offers a comprehensive and accessible examination of perspectives within the field of discourse analysis on the processes and conditions of second language learning, teaching, and use. Led by Brian Paltridge and Matthew T. Prior, this collection brings together leading global researchers in the field to guide readers through background theories, theoretical paradigms, methodological issues, and pedagogical implications by synthesizing current and past work, and setting a future agenda for discourse-oriented second language research. The book is a critical resource which will be indispensable for scholars and advanced students of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, education, and related fields.