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Kriittisiä diskursiivisia tutkimuksia arvoista, ideologiasta ja suomalaisesta tasa-arvosta
Get PDFRusten Menardin sosiaalipsykologian väitöskirja ”Critical discourse studies on social values, ideology and Finnish equality” tarkastettiin Helsingin yliopistossa 16.12.2017. Vastaväittäjänä toimi Gordon Sammut (University of Malta) ja kustoksena Anna-Maija Pirttilä-Backman (Helsingin yliopisto)
Doing equality and difference : Representation and alignment in Finnish identification
Get PDFUsing tools from critical discourse analytic approaches informed by systemic functional linguistics, this paper is an examination of how social values – specifically equality values in Finland – are given meaning by differently socially positioned Finnish citizens, and how those meanings are positioned in constructions of identities. The focus of my examination is on how respondents align with different meanings of equality using linguistic resources of ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION (James R. Martin and Peter R. R. White [2005], The language of evaluation. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan). I conduct my analyses on written texts that were elicited in response to open items on a questionnaire. Respondents include individuals recruited through a national random sample, and individuals with transgendered life experiences and/or Asperger’s diagnoses. I consider how being positioned in the margins by institutionalized norms may interact with representation and alignment of Finnish equality in identification. I also pay attention to how individuals strategically reconcile meanings of equality with other important yet potentially conflicting values, such as national identity, sameness and moderation. I discuss the implications of the study in relation to the historical path of equality, and in terms of how particular formulations of equality may contribute to building and maintaining relations of domination.Peer reviewe
Critical discourse studies on social values, ideology and Finnish equality
Get PDFThis dissertation makes methodological and empirical contributions to understanding how we represent and use values that are important in defining ‘us’, and who ‘we’ consider ourselves to be. It also contributes to our understanding of how particular values, which we might typically assume as enhancing societal wellbeing, can be formulated ideologically in the sense that they are discursive representations and tools for elevating ‘our’ identities and subjugating ‘theirs’.
The study material consists of written responses to open questions that were produced by people who are differently positioned in relation to institutionalised norms on “sociability” and/or “sex/gender”: People contacted through a national random sample, people diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and people with transgendered experiences. I therefore also consider how being explicitly marked as psychiatrically, medically and socially ‘abnormal’ might interact with how social values are negotiated in identification and in ideological work.
The perspectives informing this dissertation are interdisciplinary. I draw upon theoretical and methodological approaches to values, identification and ideology in social semiotics and critical discourse studies, critical and societal psychologies, semiotic sociology and cultural studies.
The first of two primary methodological contributions is in developing a framework for analysing social values as constructions that are formulated in dynamic identification processes. I specify analyses of social values firstly in relation to territorialising what ‘we’ consider to be important, desirable or obligatory; secondly in relation to formulating action programmes by positioning contents into relational participant roles; and thirdly in relation to evaluative positioning of oneself and others in relation to those territorialisations and action programmes. The second methodological contribution is in developing a framework for analysing ideologies as both structures and processes, from the perspective of modalities. Modality is amongst the discursive resources that function to connect and divide viewpoints, to build value projects and to build communities of shared values.
My empirical contributions in this dissertation deal with analyses of Finnish equality discourses; how equality is given meaning and used in identification processes. I also examine the extent to which equality as a concept is ideological such that its imbued meanings and uses work to produce and update relations of domination. I interpret four discourses on equality. I suggest that a network of ideological discourses on Finnish equality works to somewhat paradoxically produce and maintain symbolic and material inequalities. Integrating an historical analysis, I argue that this ideology is being constantly updated and maintained in part because of the interrelatedness in the historical path of equality with national projects on temperance, homogeneity, non-conflict and civil unity, the nation and sameness. Particular ways of continually referencing and integrating aspects of these projects into meanings and implementations of equality have been key to maintaining its ideological status. They are also key to understanding how ideological Finnish equality formulations might be transformed.Tässä väitöskirjassa lisätään metodologista ja empiiristä ymmärrystä siitä, miten representoimme ja hyödynnämme arvoja, jotka puolestaan ovat tärkeitä määriteltäessä “meitä” ja “meihin” kuuluvia. Tutkimus tarkastelee myös sitä, miten tietyt arvot, joiden tyypillisesti nähdään lisäävän yhteiskunnallista hyvinvointia, muuttuvat ideologisiksi siinä mielessä, että niistä tulee diskursiivisia työkaluja “meidän” identiteetin pönkittämisessä ja “heidän” identiteetin polkemisessa.
Väitöskirjan aineisto koostuu avokysymysvastauksista, joita kirjoittivat institutionaalisiin sosiaalisuuden ja/tai sukupuolen normeihin eri tavoin asemoituneet vastaajat: satunnaisotoksella poimitut vastaajat, Aspergerin syndrooma -diagnoosin saaneet vastaajat ja transsukupuolisuuden kokemuksia omaavat vastaajat. Näin ollen huomioni kohdistuu myös siihen, miten psykiatrinen, medikaalinen ja sosiaalisesti “epänormaali” yhdistyvät sosiaalisten arvojen, identifikaatioiden ja ideologioiden välisissä neuvotteluissa.
Tutkimusta ohjaa poikkitieteellinen lähestymistapa. Nojaan arvoja koskeviin teoreettisiin ja metodologisiin suuntauksiin, sosiaalisemioottisiin ja kriittisen diskurssitutkimuksen identifikaatiota ja ideologiaa koskeviin suuntauksiin, kriittiseen- ja yhteiskunnalliseen (sosiaali)psykologiaan, semioottiseen sosiologiaan ja kulttuurintutkimukseen.
Väitöskirjani ensimmäisenä metodologisena kontribuutiona kehitän viitekehyksen sosiaalisten arvojen analysoimiseksi konstruktioina, jotka muodostuvat dynaamisessa identifikaation prosessissa. Määrittelen sosiaalisten arvojen analyysin ensinnäkin suhteessa sen kartoittamiseen, mitä “me” pidämme tärkeänä, suotuisana tai velvoittavana; toiseksi suhteessa toimintaohjelmien muotoiluun asemoimalla sisällöt relationaalisiin osallistujarooleihin; ja kolmanneksi itsen ja toisen positioihin liittyvinä arviointeina, jotka kytkeytyvät territorialisaatioihin ja toimintaohjelmiin. Toisena metodologisena kontribuutiona kehitän viitekehyksen ideologioiden analysointiin sekä rakenteina että prosesseina modaliteettien näkökulmasta tarkasteltuna. Modaliteetti on yksi diskursiivisista varannoista, joiden puitteissa näkökannat yhdistyvät ja erottuvat, arvoprojektit rakentuvat ja yhteisöt jaettuine arvoineen muodostuvat.
Tutkimukseni lisää empiiristä tietoa suomalaisesta tasa-arvodiskurssista ja erityisesti siitä, millaisia merkityksiä tasa-arvolle annetaan ja miten sitä käytetään identifikaatioprosesseissa. Tarkastelen myös sitä, missä määrin tasa-arvo ideologisena käsitteenä tuottaa ja uusintaa valta-asemia. Tulkitsen aineistosta neljä tasa-arvon diskurssia. Esitän, että suomalaisten tasa-arvodiskurssien verkosto jokseenkin paradoksaalisesti tuottaa ja ylläpitää symbolista ja materiaalista epätasa-arvoa. Huomioimalla suomalaisen tasa-arvon historiallisen kontekstin, esitän, että tasa-arvoideologiaa päivitetään ja ylläpidetään jatkuvasti ainakin osittain sen vuoksi, että tasa-arvon historiallinen kehitys on sidoksissa muihin tärkeisiin kansallisiin projekteihin ja arvoihin kuten kohtuullisuuteen, homogeenisyyteen, konfliktittomuuteen, kansalliseen yhtenäisyyteen, kansakuntaan ja samankaltaisuuteen. Erityiset tavat, joilla näihin projekteihin on jatkuvasti viitattu tasa-arvon saamien merkitysten ja toteutustapojen yhteydessä, ovat olleet avainasemassa tasa-arvon ideologisen statuksen säilyttämisessä. Ne ovat myös avainasemassa sen ymmärtämisessä, miten suomalaisen tasa-arvon ideologisia muotoiluja voitaisiin muuttaa.ei saavutettav
Analysing Social Values in Identification : A Framework for Research on the Representation and Implementation of Values
Get PDFThis article contributes to the concept of social values by presenting analytical tools that explore how social values are classified, re-presented and interpersonally performed in the construction of identities. I approach social values as classificatory systems of acceptability and desirability that are collectively generated. The meanings of social values are embedded in culture and in power imbalanced social relations; they constantly undergo reformulation in identification processes and are also used to define the social order. I suggest that social values can be analysed in relation to aspects of representation and interpersonal positioning that are also involved in the construction of identities: Value classifications involve compartmentalising moral orders into e.g. good, desirable, important, necessary; value projects are concerned with how value classifications and content occupy roles and become oriented to action; and value positioning is concerned with how narrators align with value classifications and projects as well as with individuals and groups seen to share or reject such classifications and projects.Peer reviewe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Analysing ideological complexes from the perspective of modalities
Get PDFModalities are fundamental in building, maintaining and contesting ideological systems. While modalities have been described as resources for constructing both representational and interpersonal aspects of reality and truth, the analytical focus has been on modalities as a relationship between authors, their texts and their audiences, i.e. on their interpersonal functions. Informed by a framework on modalities for discourse analyses of values, Hodge and Kress’s theory on ideological complexes and Fairclough’s three-dimensional conception of discourse, in this paper I develop a method for examining modalities as resources for building dominant and counter discourses. I use example excerpts that come from my research on Finnish equality discourses to build and demonstrate the method. The example texts were written by people who are differently positioned in relation to salient norms and institutions on gender/sex and sociability: people contacted through a national random sample, people diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, and people with transgender experiences. The method allows not only for systematic examinations of how modalities function in ordering power-imbalanced interpersonal relations but also attends to an underexplored dimension dealing with how modalities work in ideological representation.Peer reviewe
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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