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- Volume 9, Issue, 2010
Journal of Language and Politics - Volume 9, Issue 3, 2010
Volume 9, Issue 3, 2010
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Society, polity, and language community: An enlightenment trinity in anthropological perspective
Author(s): Michael Silversteinpp.: 339–363 (25)More LessHow do the social institutional agglomerations we call societies interact with levels of political groupness up to and including states and beyond? In the modern First World and more widely, the post-Lockean Enlightenment has brought denotational language itself to the fore as the salient vehicle of mediation — presumed upon by theorists as well as by politicians — by which stable polities have depended upon the existence of social institutions of various sorts. Reciprocally, such mediation has underlain ideological consciousness of what a language community should normatively be like, to wit, a polity-in-potentia able to assert “language rights” in a politics of recognition in a wider social order. This political culture has shaped some of the more salient forces on language communities within the social institutional order of complex, plurilingual speech communities in which people actually live.
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Gender-specific constructions of the ‘other religion’ in French and Austrian discourse on Turkey’s accession to the European Union
Author(s): Karin Bischof, Florian Oberhuber and Karin Stögnerpp.: 364–392 (29)More LessThis article presents results from a qualitative analysis of religious and gender-specific ‘othering’ in Austrian and French media discourse on Turkey’s accession to the EU (2004–2006). A typology of arguments justifying inclusion and exclusion of Turkey from Europe or the EU is presented, and gender-specific othering is placed in the context of differing national discourses about Europe and diverging visions of secularisation and citizenship. Secondly, various topoi of orientalism are reconstructed which play a crucial role in both national corpora, and it is shown how various historically shaped discourses of alterity intersect and produce gendered images of cultural and religious otherness.
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Bird flu hype: The spread of a disease outbreak through the media and Internet discussion groups
Author(s): Iina Hellsten and Brigitte Nerlichpp.: 393–408 (16)More LessBird flu, otherwise known as avian influenza, has attracted widespread public and global attention. The H5N1 avian influenza virus was first documented as infecting humans in Hong Kong in 1997 and many of those infected died subsequently from the virus that had been transmitted from poultry to humans. It took several years, however, before a hyped up type of public debate about bird flu began in around 2004. This article examines the hype surrounding public debates about bird flu in medical journals, newspapers and public discussion forums from 1997 to 2006. The article focuses on the development of the frequencies of published texts, and the terminology used in the three databases. The quantitative results will be accompanied by a hermeneutic interpretation of the main sub-topics within the debates. These (preliminary) results contribute to research dealing with the emergence of hypes and the spread of public debates more generally.
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Between Orient and Occident: Tradition, politics and the limits of criticism in the Scholem-Arendt exchange
Author(s): David Kaposipp.: 409–432 (24)More LessThis paper revisits the fabled yet substantially neglected public exchange between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem in the wake of Arendt’s publication of the book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Analyzing the central concept of the correspondence, Ahabath Israel, the paper investigates what may be considered two diametrically opposed constructions of Jewish identity and politics. Scholem’s particularistic “politics of continuity” is analyzed in terms achieving continuity or even unity between past and present, the sacred and the secular. This construction is supported by his ultimate dividing line being between the Jewish and non-Jewish, where his correspondent’s place is constructed outside the boundaries of the group. In turn, Arendt introduces the rigidly universalist constitutive categories of post-Enlightenment liberal democracies, where the firm demarcation is drawn exactly between the sacred and secular, the religious and the politics. Consequently, the intrusion of a religious tradition is understood by her as an attempt by Scholem to render otherwise earthly objects beyond the limits of criticism, manifesting not only a racist but a downright totalitarian tendency. Having presented these radical positions — Occidentalism and Orientalism, respectively —, the paper will conclude with pondering the possibility of their reconciliation.
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Political grammar: The name Palestine as discussed at the Academy of the Hebrew Language
Author(s): Yair Adielpp.: 433–448 (16)More LessThe Academy of the Hebrew Language is considered the supreme institute for the Hebrew language in Israel, a status which is also expressed legally in Israeli law since 1953. Its members are known and distinguished linguists, poets, writers and translators. In the years 1994–1995 the Academy plenum devoted three meetings to discuss the question of how to pronounce, spell and use the name “Palestine” in Hebrew. The protocols of those discussions are the corpus studied in this article. A close examination of the discussions reveals significant, subtle, and sometimes paradoxical relationships between the political and the linguistic. In addition, the article traces the way in which the inevitable question regarding the possibility of distinguishing between these two facets permeated the debates. The article points out correlations between answers to this question, local political positions, and linguistic theories. It suggests that in addition to critical discourse analysis methodologies, in order to address this question an integration of some notions from the Derridian linguistic critique is indispensable, and by using them renegotiates the nature of the zone between the linguistic and the political. It is within the same blurred, ungraspable zone between the political and the linguistic, the zone from which the very wish to give a name arises and motivates the discussions, that this wish is also, at its peak, exhausted, interrupted, bringing the discussions to their indecisive conclusion.
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If both opponents “extend hands in peace” — Why don’t they meet?: Mythic metaphors and cultural codes in the Israeli peace discourse
Author(s): Dalia Gavriely-Nuripp.: 449–468 (20)More LessThis article offers a preliminary and partial mapping of some cultural misconceptions inherent in the Israeli peace discourse. It focuses on one of the central mythic metaphors belonging to this discourse: “We extend our hand in peace.” First articulated in “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” (1948). After more than six decades of endless repetition in speeches made by Israeli political leaders, the metaphor has become a fertile arena for learning about Israel’s cultural codes and cultural heritage relating to peace: While expressing the sincere will to make peace, use of the metaphor simultaneously demonstrates moral superiority, feelings of deprivation, latent threat, and recognition of its efficiency for creating a positive image abroad. A discursive analysis of the metaphor reveals four barriers to the effective continuation of a peace process: Images of the Arab opponent, Israel’s self-image, relationships between opponents in addition to the opponents’ readiness to achieve peace.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 24 (2025)
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Volume 23 (2024)
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2015)
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Volume 13 (2014)
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Volume 12 (2013)
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Volume 11 (2012)
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Volume 10 (2011)
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Volume 9 (2010)
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Volume 8 (2009)
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Volume 7 (2008)
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Volume 6 (2007)
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Volume 5 (2006)
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Volume 4 (2005)
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Volume 3 (2004)
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Volume 2 (2003)
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Volume 1 (2002)
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