Search results for "diskurs"
showing 10 items of 994 documents
Scholarly discussion as engineering the meanings of a European cultural heritage
2016
The vague concept of a European cultural heritage is frequently referred to – but rarely explicitly defined – in scholarly discussion. The use of the concept in academia constructs a European cultural heritage as a category in research and explicitly and implicitly produces its focuses and outlines. Thus, the use of the concept can be considered as scholarly engineering of a European cultural heritage. To be able to have a scholarly discussion about a European cultural heritage, the meanings and uses of the concept need to be clarified. This article examines the meanings and uses of the concept in recent scholarly articles published in various disciplines. In the study, the concept analysi…
Categories and boundaries in Sámi exhibitions
2019
This article examines the construction of ethnicity in the permanent exhibitions of two Sami museums: Siida, the National Museum of the Finnish Sami and a Nature Centre of Metsahallitus, and ajtte, the Swedish Mountain and Sami Museum. The aim of the article is to find out how ethnic categories and boundaries are created by the exhibitions, and how the museum presentations relate to contemporary public discussions about Sami ethnicity. The presentations are analysed within the framework of discourse analysis. The findings suggest that the two museums, with a few possible exceptions, tend to produce a clear and stable ethnic boundary between the Sami and other ethnicities. Like the Sami ethn…
Negations and negativity as linguistic devices in policy discourse of intercultural cities
2015
International audience; Intercultural cities – a joint initiative launched in 2008 by the European Commission and the Council of Europe – aims to develop a model supporting intercultural integration within diversified urban communities. This article examines, using methods of applied linguistics and discourse analysis, how intercultural urban policy is linguistically produced in the initiative. The examination indicates that the intercultural urban policy in the initiative is ‘negative politics’: the policy rhetoric commonly outlines the content of interculturalism by describing what is not included in it and what the policy is not about. The language used in the intercultural urban policy …
Semiotics of pride and profit: interrogating commodification in indigenous handicraft production
2014
This study investigates the shifting terrain of pride, profit and power relations in minority language communities under contemporary globalisation. While “pride” associates linguistic-cultural heritage with identity and preservation, “profit” views these as sources of economic gain. In contemporary late capitalism, “pride” seems to be increasingly giving way to “profit”. Arguing that this transformation needs to be interrogated in terms of complexity and that a detailed, multilayered semiotic analysis can open a privileged window for such an inquiry, this study combines critical multimodal discourse analysis and an ethnographic approach to analyse processes of semiotic commodification in h…
‘Culture’ as a discursive resource in newspaper articles from Le Monde about secularism : constructing ‘us’ through strategic oppositions with religi…
2017
Building on research highlighting the complex webs of relations between secularism, culture, and religion, this study investigates how the concept of culture was utilized in discourses of laïcité from the newspaper le Monde. Articles (N = 76) published between 2011 and 2014 were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results revealed the agency associated with the use of culture as it was strategically – rather than systematically – used in opposition to religion. Overall, culture – and the practices it defined – tended to be represented as normal and invisible. On the other hand, religion tended to be constructed as a disruption to secularism and the corresponding cultural reality. T…
“Stop whining and be a badass”: a postfeminist analysis of university students' responses to gender themes
2021
PurposeThis paper critically examines how female students at a Finnish business school understand gender in management.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on female students' learning diaries from a basic management course.FindingsThe findings show how students respond to the topic of gender inequality through a neoliberal postfeminist discourse. The students' discourse is structured around three discursive moves: (1) rejecting “excessive” feminism, (2) articulating self-reliant professional futures and (3) producing idealized role models through successfully integrating masculinity and femininity.Originality/valueThis article contributes to current understanding of the role of…
Cosmopolitan internationalism: UNESCO’s ideological ambiguity and the difference/diversity problematic
2022
This article addresses the ways in which UNESCO’s ideological engagements are negotiated in the difference/diversity discourse as they are transferred from the international standard-setting level to the national and local contexts. It proposes the discursive construction of cosmopolitan internationalism as a framework for analysing the intersections of difference, located in the practicalities of internationalism, and diversity, tied to the ideals of cosmopolitanism, as they are manifested at the level of both the implementation of UNESCO’s Diversity Convention and urban policy making in the city of Sydney. The analysis suggests that ruptures challenging the homogenising diversity discours…
Touring the magical North : Borealism and the indigenous Sámi in contemporary English-language children’s fantasy literature
2017
Discourses of exotic Lapland with its indigenous inhabitants, the Sámi, are widely circulated in the tourist industry and also surface in contemporary English-language children’s fantasy fiction. In contrast to the ‘self-orientalism’ of discourses of tourism, where places and people are represented as exotic to a tourist gaze, the portrayals of the North and its inhabitants gain different symbolic meanings in fictional texts produced by outsiders who rely on earlier texts – myths, fairy tales and anthropological accounts – rather than on their own lived experience of the North or indigeneity. This article applies the concept of Borealism to examine cross-cultural intertextuality and discou…
Care and gendered work in reception centers in Finland
2019
PurposeThis paper focuses on how gendered processes of working life are (re)constructed and are also challenged discursively in paid and volunteer care and work in reception centers. The purpose of this paper is to show how caring work with asylum seekers can both enhance the traditional gender order and challenge it through enabling men to have opportunities to care.Design/methodology/approachThe data were produced through qualitative interviews among paid workers and volunteers in reception centers, and analyzed through a discourse analysis approach.FindingsThree discourses of care and work were identified: a discourse on solidarity and care; a discourse on control and order; and a discou…
“A Shameless Ideology of Shameless Women”: Positioning the Other in Social Media Discourse Surrounding a Women’s Rights Movement in Pakistan
2022
This study analyzes social media (YouTube) discourse related to Aurat March 2019, a women’s rights movement in Pakistan. Using a discourse analytical approach that draws on the premises of Positioning theory, the analysis reveals the following two major storylines from the data: “The women who stray from the path, and the men who will return them to it,” and “Islam under threat from the outside.” Social media platforms allow their users to express opinions in online spaces, often resulting in polarization and clustering of like-minded people in so-called echo-chambers. This study demonstrates how social media users actively participate in the discursive construction of the “other,” and how…