Explore the vast range of titles available.

Departing from the view that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action, this article explores the interconnectedness of genres and Discourses that transit generic boundaries. Situating the study in a local energy transition project in Denmark and exploring what happens in a series of citizen meetings without a narrowly defined agenda, I argue that the meetings may be seen as a nexus of genres constituted by a tissue of interwoven Discourses with a lifespan that extends beyond the specific communicative moment. I understand a nexus of genres as a point where genres in a wider sense meet and interact. Relating the Discourses initiated by the participating citizens to the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions in systemic functional linguistics, I analyse topics made salient by actors participating in the citizen meetings. By following these topics intertextually across generic boundaries, I identify Discourses that are mutually entangled and genres that are taken up in the process. These include anticipatory Discourse, Discourse of legitimation, Discourse of motivation, Discourse about technology and Discourse about energy saving initiatives or in other words Discourses that exceed the boundaries of the specific genre in which they are realized.

From emails relating to adoption over the Internet to discussions in the airline cockpit, the spoken or written texts we produce can have significant social consequences. The area of Mediated Discourse Analysis considers texts in their social and cultural contexts to explore the actions individuals take with texts - and the consequences of those actions. Discourse in Action: brings together leading scholars from around the world in the area of Mediated Discourse Analysis reveals ways in which its theory and methodology can be used in research into contemporary social situations explores real situations and draws on real data in each chapter shows how analysis of texts in their social contexts broadens our understanding of the real world. Taken together, the chapters provide a comprehensive overview to the field and present a range of current studies that address some of the most important questions facing students and researchers in linguistics, education, communication studies and other fields.

How do invocations of history inform speculative discourses in Western astrology? This article examines how events from the recorded past factor into predictive forecasts among professional astrologers for whom celestial patterns are indicative of shifting and evolving world-historical trends. Drawing on examples from prominent voices in the North American astrology community, across a range of commercial and social media platforms, I outline the parameters of what I call “astrological historicity,” a temporal orientation guided by archetypal principles closely associated with New Age metaphysics and psychodynamic theories of the self. I argue that while such sensibilities reinforce an ethos of therapeutic spirituality, they are not so narrowly individualistic as to preclude social and political considerations. Astrological historicity is at times a vehicle for culturally resonant expressions of historical consciousness, including critical awareness of historical legacies of racial and social injustice that directly link the past to the present and foreseeable future. Furthermore, while astrological accounts of history emulate aspects of modern historicism, including its orientation toward linear temporality and developmental themes, they rely on a nonlinear framework predicated on recurring cycles, correspondences, and synchronicities, bringing a complex heterotemporality to bear on world-historical circumstances. In seeking to understand the moral and political entailments of this area of occult knowledge production, this article aims to shed light on astrology’s cultural appeal not just as popular entertainment, spirituality, or therapy, but as an intellectual and cultural resource for many people searching for ways to express their frustration and disillusionment with reigning political-economic systems and authorities.

Anticipatory “it” pattern, which encodes interpersonal stance, plays a crucial role in academic writing. While previous studies have been explored the overuse and the underuse of this pattern among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and published writers, there has been limited exploration of how EFL learners use the anticipatory “it” pattern to express interpersonal stance in their academic writing. This study examines the relationship between Chinese MA students’ perceptions of interpersonal stance and their use of anticipatory “it” patterns in academic writing. Utilizing a self-compiled corpus of Chinese MA theses corpus, supplemented by a questionnaire and discourse-based interviews, this research aims to identify factors influencing students’ motivations to employ this pattern. Applying Hewings and Hewings’ functional typology of interpersonal functions of the “it” clause, the results reveal varying correlations across four categories of interpersonal functions in Chinese MA theses. These findings offer valuable insights into the nuanced relationship between students’ perceptions of interpersonal stance and their use of anticipatory “it” pattern, with implications for teaching and learning academic English writing. Plain language summary MA students’ interpersonal stance of “it” patterns This study focuses on a specific aspect of academic writing called the anticipatory “it” pattern, which helps writers express their interpersonal stance. While previous research has looked at how often English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and published writers use or misuse this pattern, there hasn’t been much exploration into how EFL learners express their interpersonal stance through this pattern in academic writing. This study uses data from a collection of Chinese MA theses as a starting point, followed by a questionnaire and interviews, to investigate how Chinese MA students perceive interpersonal stances and use the anticipatory “it” pattern in their academic writing. The goal is to understand factors influencing students’ decisions to use this pattern. By applying a typology of interpersonal functions of the “it” clause, the study finds correlations between students’ perceptions and using the anticipatory “it” pattern in different categories of interpersonal functions. These findings provide valuable insights into how students’ perceptions affect their use of this pattern in academic writing. Additionally, the study suggests implications for teaching and learning academic English writing.

Objective Over the last decade, there has been an increased focus on firearm use in violent acts and suicides. There is no known published firearm safety curriculum specific to psychiatric training and limited guidance on curriculum development from national organizations. The authors’ goals were to develop a firearm lecture series that would encompass essential knowledge related to firearm safety and risk assessments and assess its effect on psychiatric residents’ interest and confidence in firearm safety guidance. Methods The authors developed a six-lecture series on firearm safety that was conducted over all post-graduate year (PGY) training levels and a grand rounds on basic firearm safety. All levels of psychiatry residents at one urban academic center participated in a pre- and post-lecture series questionnaire designed to evaluate attitudes related to firearm safety guidance. They developed and administered the questionnaire through New Innovations collecting qualitative and quantitative data for analysis. The quantitative analysis was completed using paired t -test. Results Forty-seven residents participated. Twenty-seven respondents met inclusion criteria: attended at least one lecture or the grand rounds, completed pre- and post-lecture surveys, and submitted their pre-lecture survey before their first lecture. After the educational intervention, there was a statistically significant increase ( p <0.05) in interest in firearm safety, and confidence in all areas surveyed—risk assessment, safety guidance, and pertinent legislation. Conclusions The curriculum increased residents’ interest and confidence in providing firearm safety guidance. Areas of development include assessing the curriculum’s impact on clinical practice.

Empirical research into the ethics of emerging technologies, often involving foresight studies, technology assessment or application of the precautionary principle, raises significant epistemological challenges by failing to explain the relative epistemic status of contentious normative claims about future states. This weakness means that it is unclear why the conclusions reached by these approaches should be considered valid, for example in anticipatory ethical assessment or governance of emerging technologies. This paper explains and responds to this problem by proposing an account of how the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be established in ethical and political discourses based on Jürgen Habermas' discourse ethics. To better understand the nature of the problem, the relationship between norms, facts and the future is explored in light of potential meta-ethical fallacies faced in the field of empirical ethics. Weaknesses of current approaches to anticipatory ethical assessment and governance are then explored, including the Precautionary Principle and Technology Assessment. We argue that the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be understood within Habermas' approach to political discourse, which requires 'translation' of uncertain claims to be comprehensible to other stakeholders in discourse. Translation thus provides a way to allow for uncertain normative claims to be considered alongside other types of validity claims in discourse. The paper contributes a conceptual account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims in discourse and begins to develop a 'methodology of translation' which can be further developed for approaches to research and ethical assessment supporting anticipatory evidence-based policy, governance and system design.

The aim of this research is to diagnose and help students overcome their problems through practice activitiesin English Language Education Departments in Turkey. This paper measures the perception of co-articulatoryinformation in terms of consonant-to-consonant relations in the structure of vocabulary items and affixes ofEnglish. Thirty eight freshmen who are presently studying in the department of English language educationat Hacettepe University are the participants, who were given a pretest on vocabulary items that include 25questions, with five alternatives for the diagnosis of the secondary articulations in the words. Thereafter, athree-hour intense teaching and practicing process took place. After two weeks, the participants were givena posttest that included new vocabulary items not asked in the pretest. Results of data analysis revealed thatco-articulation and secondary articulation connection in the creation of assimilations constituted a seriouspronunciation problem due to consonantal and vowel assimilations for Turkish students of English LanguageEducation. Results also indicated that the perception of assimilation is weak at the end of the pretest, butthere is a remarkable development after the instruction on secondary articulation and coarticulation inrelation to the perception of assimilation in connected speech in English utterances