Disorderly Discourse

This volume contains eight essays that are at the intersection of two important areas within linguistics: conversational analysis, and the use of narrative in the creation, mediation and resolution of conflict. The contributors e×plore these issues in a variety of cultures and languages.

This volume contains eight essays that are at the intersection of two important areas within linguistics: conversational analysis, and the use of narrative in the creation, mediation and resolution of conflict. The contributors explore these issues in a variety of cultures and languages.

Throughout most of the eighteenth century and particularly during the religious revivals of the Great Awakening, evangelical women in colonial New England participated vigorously in major church decisions, from electing pastors to disciplining backsliding members. After the Revolutionary War, however, women were excluded from political life, not only in their churches but in the new republic as well. Reconstructing the history of this change, Susan Juster shows how a common view of masculinity and femininity shaped both radical religion and revolutionary politics in America. Juster compares contemporary accounts of Baptist women and men who voice their conversion experiences, theological opinions, and proccupation with personal conflicts and pastoral controversies. At times, the ardent revivalist message of spiritual individualism appeared to sanction sexual anarchy. According to one contemporary, revival attempted "to make all things common, wives as well as goods." The place of women at the center of evangelical life in the mid-eighteenth century, Juster finds, reflected the extent to which evangelical religion itself was perceived as "feminine"—emotional, sensional, and ultimately marginal. In the 1760s, the Baptist order began to refashion its mission, and what had once been a community of saints—often indifferent to conventional moral or legal constraints—was transformed into a society of churchgoers with a concern for legitimacy. As the church was reconceptualized as a "household" ruled by "father" figures, "feminine" qualities came to define the very essence of sin. Juster observes that an image of benevolent patriarchy threatened by the specter of female power was a central motif of the wider political culture during the age of democratic revolutions.

This volume is a research monograph analysing the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from an ethnographic/linguistic point of view. The central proposition of this book is that the TRC can be regarded as a mechanism that leads to the hegemony of specific discourses, thus excercising power. The analysis illustrates how, through a certain type of reconciliation discourse constructed at the TRC hearings, a reconciliation-oriented reality took shape in post-TRC South Africa. Basically, the study points to the long-term implications a truth commission can exert on a traumatised post-conflict society. The book is unique on several levels: TRC discourse is explored in-depth on the basis of personal stories from TRC testifiers; a combination of Poststructuralist and Critical Discourse Analysis approaches form the theoretical foundations; and an extensive bibliography provides an impressive database of TRC publications.

Based on the author's in-depth research with children diagnosed with behavioural difficulties, this book provides a thorough critique of today's practices and explores the effects of this epidemic, questioning whether what we're doing is right for the child and right for society.

The book provides a new angle for the study of otherwise amply discussed discourse and interactional phenomena. The new perspective consists in addressing the interconnections between resonance, stance, represented discourse and joking in Mexican conversational discourse. In so doing, it contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between collaboration, intersubjectivity and emergence, among other relevant issues. Scholars and advanced students concerned with dialogic syntax theory, stance theory and Spanish, will find the present analysis interesting and innovative. However, the writing and methodology, based on clearly discussed and presented examples from selected conversational excerpts, including graphic representations of linguistic and discourse data, makes the analysis easy to follow also to non-specialists. The book is thus interesting to a broad circle of readers, whether they are concerned with any of the issues dealt with or with their mutual connections, whether they are specialists or not.

This volume presents a combination of practical, empirical research data and theoretical reflection to provide a comparative view of language and discourse in the courtroom. The work explores how the various disciplines of law and linguistics can help us understand the nature of "Power and Control" - both oral and written - and how it might be clarified to unravel linguistic representation of legal reality. It presents and examines the most recent research and theories at national and international levels. The book represents a valuable contribution to the study and analysis of courtroom discourse and courtroom cultures more generally. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in the areas of language and law, legal theory, interpretation, and semiotics of law.

A crucial aspect of any discourse is what the writer or speaker thinks about his/her topic - in other words, how the writer or speaker evaluates the topic. Evaluation in Text brings together work from many different perspectives, providing a unique profile of this important topic which will be essential reading for any student or researcher of Discourse Analysis. - ;This is an accessible and wide-ranging account of current research in one of the most central aspects of discourse analsysis: evalution in and of written and spoken language. Evalution is the broad cover term for the expression of a speakers - or writers - attitudes, feelings, and values. It covers areas sometimes referred to as stance, modality, affect or appraisal. Evaluation (a) expresses the speakers opinion and thus reflects the value-system of that person and their community; (b) constructs relations between speaker and hearer (or writer and reader); (c) plays a key role in how discourse is organized. Every act of evalution expresses and contributes to a communal value-system, which in turn is a component of the ideology that lies behind every written or spoken text. Conceptually, evaluation is comparative, subjective, and value-laden. In linguistic terms it may be analysed lexically, grammatically, and textually. These themes and perspectives are richly exemplified in the chapters of this book, by authors aware and observant of the fact that processes of linguistic analysis are themselves inherently evaluative. The editors open the book by introducing the field and provide separate, contextual introductions to each chapter. They have also collated the references into one list, itself a valuable research guide. The exemplary perspectives and analyses presented by the authors will be of central interest to everyone concerned with the analysis of discourse, whether as students of language, literature, or communication. They also have much to offer students of politics and culture. The editors open the book by introducing the field and provide separate, contextual introductions to each chapter. They have also collated the references into one list, itself a valuable research guide. The exemplary perspectives and analyses presented by the authors will be of central interest to everyone concerned with the analysis of discourse, whether as students of language, literature, or communication. They also have much to offer students of politics and culture. -