In communities where female circumcision is carried out, increasingly large segments of the population have been exposed to strong arguments against the practice. This study aimed to explore diverse discourses on female circumcision and the relationship between discourses and practice among informants who have been exposed both to local and global discourses on female circumcision. A qualitativ...

The literature on lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) affirmative psychotherapy suggests that heterosexist and homophobic discourses persist in the accounts of counsellors and therapists (Milton, Coyle & Legg, 2005) and that these may particularly cohere around the issue of same-sex parenting (Moon, 1994; Phillips, et al 2000). The current research demonstrates that this was the case in focus group...

In the context of international concern about increasing rates of cesarean sections, we used discourse analysis to examine explanations arising from feminism and the disciplines of medicine and midwifery, and found that each was positioned differently in relation to the rising rates. Medical discourses asserted that doctors are authorities on birth and that, although cesareans are sometimes med...

This article highlights the discourses of children and leisure-time pedagogues regarding ways the activity at two different Swedish school-age educare centres are mutually constructed. Two different topics are stressed: children’s perspectives and school-age educare centres as a social and educational practice. Data was constructed through walkand-talk conversations supported by photos from a d...

Australian Government aged care policy documents emphasise healthy ageing. Even though death in the aged care setting is a common occurrence, minimal policy exists to underpin activities that surround dying in this setting. Issues and practices about caring well for the dying remain a hidden discourse in aged care policy, the literature and therefore in practice. A discourse analysis of aged ca...

This paper is about causality, defined as a specific relation between eventualities on an event-state chain, called a ‘causal chain’. Though causality is a dynamic temporal relation, the expression of causality in discourse contrasts with temporal discourses, in which temporal order between eventualities is parallel to the sequential order of linguistic segments in discourse. Causal discourses ...

Intent. The intent of Learned Discourses is to provide a forum for open discussion. These articles reflect the professional opinions of the authors regarding scientific issues. They do not represent SETAC positions or policies. And, although they are subject to editorial review for clarity, consistency, and brevity, these articles are not peer reviewed. The Learned Discourses date from 1996 in ...

Computing the temporal structure of narratives is an important milestone in understanding stories and discourses. We propose structured representations for events based on their algebraic properties. We use these representations along with the situation type and aspect of the predicates involved to give detailed semantic postulates for various temporal connectives. These postulates|more detaile...

Alaska Native youth suffer disproportionately from suicide. Some researchers explain this by pointing to social disintegration brought on by rapid social change, but few make the connection to an ongoing colonialism explicit. This paper articulates some of the ways that colonial discourses affect Inupiat young people's self-conceptions, perceived choices, and, consequently, their behavioral hea...

We should consider that in the last number of years, Continental and Analytic Philosophy has undergone a major revision on a number of unfashionable issues. If we were once spellbound by discourses, social practices, texts, language and the finitude of human epistemology, then today’s scholars choose to orient their thoughts towards the independence of reality itself. Robert Jackson ART page 12...