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This paper aims to analyse how immigration was discursively constructed as a newsworthy topic in the UK's quality papers' campaign coverage of the Brexit referendum. To do so, a corpus of four major British broadsheets (The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and Daily Telegraph) was collected and analysed with a combination of qualitative (Discursive News Values Analysis) and quantitative (Corpus Linguistics) methods. The results show that similar patterns of news values usage appeared in the corpus across the ideological lines (left-right) and Brexit stance (Leave-Remain). Although some dissociation strategies can be observed in the left-wing or Remain backing press, the statistically significant presence of similar linguistic pointers indicates that an anti-immigrant discourse was a salient part of the coverage, even permeating into the left-wing press and the Remain camp's discourse. The adoption and repetition of such narratives could also, by themselves, lead to further acceptance and normalisation of the common anti-immigrant topoi in the broader discourse of Brexit in society, although more research is needed in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper systematically analyzes the discourse of quality in public policies and reforms of the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) between 1983 and 2013. It identifies a subtle and cumulative but highly significant movement in which "quality" is transformed from a vague and largely undefined promise related to the pursuit and extension of New Public Management (NPM) doctrines into a set of catch‐all and seemingly apolitical norms for contemplating and undertaking reform. This finding contributes to debates about whether and to what extent NPM is "dead," "comatose," "very much alive," and so forth, showing that quality simultaneously displaces NPM as the source of catch‐all administrative norms, and also reinvigorates and embeds them within and as part of medical professionalism though with new points of emphasis and twists. Pointing to generalizable mechanisms underlying this transformation, this paper highlights a growing international quality improvement movement as offering a new and consequential set of reform doctrines, to borrow Hood's terms, "for all seasons." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The belief in meritocracy – that advancement is based solely on individual capabilities and hard work – remains ingrained in organizations despite evidence that it is a flawed concept perpetuatings gender and other social inequalities. Critical streams of research have highlighted the ideological character of meritocracy discourse, its entrenched nature and acceptance as 'common-sense'. Less is known about how this 'meritocracy myth' is maintained, that is, how this hegemonic discourse retains its potency in day-to-day talk in organizations. We argue that leaders, given their active discursive roles and opportunities to establish and control discourses, play an important but underexamined role in the reproduction and legitimization of this seemingly progressive yet ultimately destructive discourse. We conduct a critical discourse analysis (CDA) drawing on qualitative interviews with leaders in higher education institutions in the United Kingdom focusing on their talk about women's recruitment and progression in academic roles. We identify three discursive interventions through which leaders routinely maintain and reinforce and on occasion challenge the existing system of meritocracy: invisibilizing gender inequality through gender-neutrality; denying constraints through individualization ; and problematizing meritocracy to uphold or challenge the status quo. We argue that by uncovering the means through which meritocracy discourse retains its resilience, our paper offers the opportunity to scrutinize and challenge these discursive underpinnings that uphold the 'meritocracy myth'. We suggest that it is possible to re-imagine what might be considered 'merit worthy' in universities, recognizing and centring structural gender and other social inequalities to create more equal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study seeks to identify the main tendencies in the use of politically correct language from the linguocultural and pragma-linguistic perspectives. The paper offers an overview of the ways in which political correctness is expressed in the British and American political discourse. The study is corpus-based; the contexts illustrating theoretical hypotheses are borrowed from three large-scale corpora of the corresponding variants of English (British National Corpus, Corpus of Contemporary American English, and Hong Kong Baptist University Corpus of Political Speeches). The study relies on the linguo-cultural and pragma-linguistic paradigm supplemented by discourse analysis. Research results indicate that British and American political discourse has both general and culture-specific features. Speakers from both the USA and the UK tend to refer to milestone events their audience is well-acquainted with. They use a wide array of general notions, as well as specific terms and set expressions depending on the impression they wish to make on their listeners. American politicians appear to be inclined towards using less formal lexis such as 'opposing the nation's enemies' and 'political rivals', whereas their British counterparts tend to choose more formal terms and expressions. Modern political discourse is characterised by continuity: it is inextricably connected with the previous stages in its development, while at the same time acquiring new peculiarities and taking new forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union has always been tumultuous and problematic, and European integration has always been a controversial topic in the UK's contemporary politics. However, current research on the Brexit referendum's news discourse hardly addresses this topic directly. Therefore, this paper analyses the discursive construction of the UK versus the EU during the campaign coverage of the Brexit referendum in major British broadsheets. To do so, a corpus of four major British broadsheets along ideological lines (left-right) and Brexit stance (Leave-Remain) was analysed by applying a mixed method approach of Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (Discursive News Values Analysis along with some Corpus Linguistic tools and techniques). The way news values were adopted in the campaign coverage of the British broadsheets shows a certain continuation of historical discourses around the relationship of the entities. The results show that news values during the campaign coverage were adopted by the pro-leave outlets to construct a highly negative and elite-associated image of the EU in contrast to the UK, while the pro-remain broadsheets mostly focused on a limited, practical and economic argument in favour of the EU, maintaining and highlighting the importance of UK independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overwhelming personality of the 20th century, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom was the spiritual head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain (1948-2003) who really raised the British people's awareness of what Orthodoxy meant. He provided the realm of religious discourse with a particular outlook on Christianity (mainly sprung from his own revelation of the risen Christ), which he expressed in a perfectly natural and unsophisticated manner. Interestingly enough, Anthony Bloom and C. S. Lewis can be viewed as "kindred spirits", as not only did they embrace Christianity after being nonbelievers, but their writing styles are also similar in that "both have an uncanny ability to explain difficult concepts with simple and engaging language" ("Beginning to Pray (A. Bloom)" [book review]). In Metropolitan Anthony's view, Christian life represents the personal encounter with God. His discourse is in fact a place of encounters; it is where Eastern Orthodoxy meets Western spirituality, where the sacred realm meets the secular realm and, perhaps most importantly, where the metropolitan's inner world meaningfully interacts with his addressees' spiritual searches. We hereby examine the ways in which adjectives contribute to creating an image of a particular world in the following books: Living Prayer (1999a), School for Prayer (1999b), Meditations on a Theme: A spiritual journey (2003). Our approach relies on the Jakobsonian model (1960/1987) of language functions, Kinneavy's (1980) Theory of Discourse, van Eemeren's (2002) pragmadialectical theory of argumentation and various studies on religious discourse. The current paper reveals such discourse constants as the triadic pattern of adjectival constructions, the abundant use of the adjectives "real" and "true", as well as the presence of adjectives in parallelism and repetition. All these expressive uses of adjectives contribute to the creation of a complex network in which the world of the Gospel, the discursive ethos (conveying the author's attitude in its diversity) and the reader's image intermingle in a most harmonious manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse related to any political event is a portrayal of the views of the participants involved. These views in turn are based on the underlying ideologies, beliefs and, concepts. Intertextual connections, among other aspects of discourse, make a discourse more meaningful and understandable in a given context. This article is an attempt to bring to light the various shades of discourse of Brexit, in terms of its participants and characteristics that emerged on the canvass of British political scene in the wake of 2016 EU Referendum campaign. Moreover, it goes on to explore instances of intertextual connections in post referendum Brexit discourse. For this purpose, a number of placard images from the "People's Vote march", an anti-Brexit march organized on October 20, 2018, were selected. This paper brings to light the dichotomy of Britons into Leavers and Remainers during Brexit referendum and further bisects them into senders and receivers to elaborate the participants of Brexit discourse. A review of the literature reveals Leavers' discourse to be chiefly based on populism, Euroscepticism, British sovereignty, global Britain, anti-immigration, racism, misrepresentation of facts and discreet handling of language by the leaders of leave camp. On the contrary, it is found that Remainers' discourse mainly relied on regarding immigrants as strength of UK and EU membership as a source of imparting stability and productivity to the UK on the one hand and on highlighting the loss of healthcare benefits to the UK and NHS and prevalence of unemployment on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines Equality and Human Rights Commission's (EHRC) 2019 report into racism in United Kingdom Higher Education. After outlining the context of the report, the paper is situated within discourses of internationalization in higher education (HE)and those of investment, excellence and social mobility. Using transversality, an analytical tool developed by Gilles Deleuze, as a means of critiquing these connections, two groups of findings are presented. First, the report misrepresents the role of racism in HE as an isolated phenomenon rather than as an integral part of the discourse, logic and practices of internationalized HE. Specifically, it masks the discourses of investment, mobility and excellence that underpin it. Second, the report evidences, but fails to identify, the negative consequences of internationalization in higher education discourse. Specifically, discourses of investment, excellence and mobility are linked to the threat of decomplexification, securitization and, ultimately, ethical vacuity in HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although imperialism is firmly on the geographical agenda at present, rarely does the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar feature, even though it is the only remaining formal colony in Europe. Seized in 1704, Gibraltar has come to stand as a symbol of British imperial resilience, a status encapsulated by the phrase ‘as solid as the Rock’. The paper explores how such a place-based imperial discourse has served to marginalize the civilian population and yet, paradoxically, has been appropriated locally to articulate a distinctive sense of belonging. More generally, the paper considers how a surviving colony such as Gibraltar, with its apparently loyal population, complicates postcolonial categories, periodizations and assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward a discursive devices approach to analysing the linguistic practices involved in the translation of management ideas. The paper draws on empirical data from a study of a quality improvement initiative in a UK public—private partnership. To illustrate our argument, we examine the discursive devices skilfully employed by two change champions during a training session to introduce staff to the new quality regime. Drawing insights from the field of discursive psychology, we analyse how a variety of discursive devices, such as footing, are employed to translate the idea during dialogue between sellers and recipients. We suggest that skilful variation can play a relevant role in the translation of management ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shifting national policy in the UK emphasizes choice, independence and social inclusion for older people using social care services through the promotion of healthy, active lifestyles and increasing user involvement (Department of Health, 2006). Older people are a diverse population. Their definition of a ‘life worth living’ and support necessary to achieve this are cited as paramount within public policy formation. Simultaneously, older people coming into contact with social work are primarily conceptualized as ‘a challenge’ within the current social, economic and political environment, in which ageing is perceived as a time of difficulty and loss ultimately leading to increased structured dependency (Townsend, 2006). This paper makes links between discourses on life-long learning within public policy with those in social care. Both are concerned with increasing participation, citizenship and social justice for older people. It highlights contradictions between aspirations towards life-long learning derived from Freirean approaches seeking to promote ‘active ageing’ with negative political rhetoric about the burden of ageing and practice of managed care. Social workers play an important part in facilitating learning opportunities within their relationships with older people. Where and how these might be used to promote more inclusive strategies and approaches within practice for the engagement and further emancipation of service users is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses how the preferred self-conceptions of men in an elite military unit-the British Parachute Regiment - were disciplined by the organizationally based discursive resources on which they drew. The research contribution this paper makes is twofold. First, we argue that preferred self-conceptions (i.e. desired identities) are mechanisms for disciplining employees' identity work, and analyse how paratroopers were subject to, and constituted by, the discursive practices of the Regiment. Paratroopers' preferred conceptions of their selves were disciplined by understandings both of what it meant to be a paratrooper and of the institutional processes by which they were made. In talking about how the Regiment 'manufactured' them, paratroopers provided insight on how the Regiment produced and reproduced the idealized identities to which they aspired. Second, to complement other understandings of identities, we suggest that people are often best characterized as 'aspirants'. An aspirational identity is a story-type or template in which an individual construes him- or herself as one who is earnestly desirous of being a particular kind of person and selfconsciously and consistently in pursuit of this objective. The recognition of subjectively construed identities as narrativized permits an appreciation of individuals as sophisticatedly agentic, while recognizing that their 'choices' are made within frameworks of disciplinary power which both enable and restrict their scope for discursive manoeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like most English press reports on the first partition of Poland, the author of an opinion piece from 1773, published in the Public Advertiser under the pseudonym "Tullius", believed that of the three powers dividing Poland, the Prussian interest could be the most dangerous both for the national interest of Britain and for the future of the European balance of power. It is significant that in almost all cases where the interests of Britain and the question of intervention were invoked in English opinion pieces, the defence of the continent's political balance appeared as a strong argument. Through a critical discourse analysis of relevant opinion pieces published in London newspapers between 1771 and 1774, I point out how the authors used similar or different balance-of-power rhetoric, while occasionally deeper, polemical balance-of-power discourse to reflect their views. I illustrate that the authors of these articles have applied the concept essentially in relation to the following three themes: (1) the "diabolical alliance" of the partitioning powers, (2) the issue of British intervention, and (3) the criticism of the idle British government. One of the main conclusions of my analysis is that the balance-of-power discourse is most prominent in relation to the third issue, sometimes even leading to a general questioning of the legitimacy of the contemporary balance-of-power policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increased interest in trade policy following the UK's EU membership referendum. However, relatively little scholarly analysis has been produced on how Brexit will affect EU trade policy. Instead, the received wisdom has been that Brexit will shift the EU's trade policy position in a less liberal direction. This is based on a 'static' analysis where the UK variable is simply removed from the figurative 'function' determining EU trade policy. We argue that this neglects the potential role of more 'dynamic' effects. First, the negotiations to determine the nature of the EU-UK future economic partnership are likely to involve a lengthy process with a still uncertain, and possibly evolving, destination. The outcome and process of arriving there will influence how economic operators and policymakers adapt their preferences and behaviour, including through possible relocation and the formation of new alliances. This will shape EU trade policy in potentially counterintuitive ways. Second, the absence of clear material structures from which actors can 'read' their interests highlights the importance of considering the role of ideas and political framing. How the vote for and consequences of Brexit are interpreted will likely shape what is considered an appropriate policy response. Examining EU trade policy since the Brexit vote, the article finds that rather than push the EU in a more illiberal direction, the referendum result has been used to reinforce the European Commission's external liberalisation agenda. The Commission's discursive response to Brexit and Donald Trump has been to portray the EU as a champion of free trade in an era of global populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper aims to contribute to media studies on climate change through a study of the ways in which the adequacy of transnational measures of tackling climate change are represented in media outlets in the UK, Ireland, Sweden and Finland. Media texts on the European Union Energy and Climate Package, introduced in January 2008 and approved in modified form in December 2008, are analyzed in-depth. Through an exploratory cross-societal comparison of media representations, the paper traces some of the dynamics of contemporary environmental debates. We argue that the adequacy of proposed transnational measures for tackling climate change becomes a relative concept in the media: measures are not adequate or inadequate per se, but contingent upon social context and relative with regard to time and to the comparisons made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and aims to explain an apparent dissonance between the dominance in Britain of `anti-oppressive' social work discourse and the socio-political con- text surrounding its use; a context often claimed to feature excessive regulation and control. Pursuing this, some politically radical aims associated with `anti-oppressiveness' are spelt out, and the difficulty of achieving these in an unconducive climate is discussed. Then, a distinction made by Robert Merton between `latent' and `manifest' functions is used to suggest that the manifest radicalism of `anti-oppressive' discourse can helpfully be distinguished from some latent largely unrecognised consequences of its use not consequences with politically radical impact, but with a social meaning congruent with a climate of control. It is concluded that the `success' of anti-oppressive discourse might well be viewed as requiring more of the kind of critical analysis that the discourse itself was supposed to espouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent reforms intended to restore confidence in them, appraisal practices used to develop and assess the desirability of interventions in the UK transport sector remain contested, constituting arenas where competing problem definitions are likely to come into conflict. Through a detailed case study of the first of a new generation of "multi-modal transport studies", this paper explores the politics of the "new approach to appraisal" and subsequent decision-making, examining a number of factors that contributed to the failure in this case, and more widely, to reach consensual decisions. Ambiguities in guidance documents and government policy, and mismatches in the timescales of important policy and plan development processes, combined with inherent uncertainties, are shown to have contributed to a climate in which conflicting local discourses could not be reconciled. Finally, the ultimate outcome of the Hastings study — rejection by central government of a series of bypass proposals — is discussed in terms of its implications for current debates over sustainability appraisal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current period of welfare reform in British politics is taking place within a discourse of modernization described in terms of a ‘third way’. The ideas which constitute this discourse resonate with recent developments within human geography, namely a movement to theorizing ‘in-between’ spaces, a turn to culture and to issues of globalization. This paper suggests that welfare reform is a restructuring project which allows the nature of thinking and acting ‘in thirds’ to be questioned. It problematizes the ‘third way’ approach to cultural modernization and economic globalization as a de-politicized discourse, and argues for the cultural politics and political economics which underpin welfare reform to be foregrounded. As a form of political discourse analysis, it points to the developing need for a welfare geography that is attuned to the languages and practices through which dominant systems of social and economic distribution are constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been a significant number of published studies in recent years on the British media representation of Muslims. These studies have tended to focus only on the British mainstream media, and to my knowledge, there is no significant research on the discursive construction of British Muslims in alternative media outlets. This paper attempts to fill this gap, focusing on the representations of British Muslims in the British Christian print media. Drawing on empirical data relating to four British Christian print media, Church Times, The Tablet, Evangelicals Now and Evangelical Times, this paper investigates how the questions of being Muslim and being British are dealt with in the British Christian print media, and the extent to which the politics of being Muslim and being British inform us about identity formation and affirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores discursive constructions of women trafficked for sexual exploitation in newspaper articles in the United Kingdom and the United States. I draw on the results of a multimodal discourse analysis of 25 articles published in 2018 across seven newspapers. The framework of politics of pity is used to analyze the politics of representation of trafficked women. The analysis yields six categories that fall into two themes: Agency is depicted through trafficked women as deceased, controlled, and injured subjects, and visibility through the categories of strangers, victims, and survivors. These ways of appearance suggest that, in newspaper content, trafficked women are placed on a hierarchy of victimhood. Appeals to compassionate care are reserved for "ideal victims," while those lower on the hierarchy are construed as ambivalent subjects lacking a political voice. The study shows that dominant constructions of public suffering reflect a neo-abolitionist politics of representation, while marginalized identities and subjectivities are framed through ambivalence. To expand the remit of care, ambivalence could be productively used to contextualize social oppression in media accounts of human trafficking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on industry-level research to explore the enterprise discourse in the UK passive fire protection industry. It highlights the theoretical weaknesses of the enterprise discourse by questioning the assumption that employers and managers necessarily support enterprise. It examines how employers, not just employees, may seek to resist or evade enterprise and how, far from offering a united front, employers may oppose each other. The article points towards the need for industry-level studies due to the limitations and potentially misleading insights that can flow from organization-level studies. Overall, it is argued that there may be more common ground between employees and employers in terms of opposition to enterprise than has previously been suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The language of teenagers is of particular interest to linguists, in that adolescents and young people introduce important innovations and changes into language use, as compared to the stability typical of adult language. This paper is concerned with the analysis of the spoken language of British teenagers, taken from the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT), and looks specifically at a group of English expressions, referred in the literature under different names, ‘general extenders’ being one of the most common of these in recent years. Data collected from the corpus is contrasted with a comparable sample of the language of adults taken from the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE). Particular attention is paid to three expressions, and stuff, and everything and and things, since of all general extenders these show the most distinctive features in terms of use and frequency when teenage talk and adult speech are compared. Findings indicate, firstly, that general extenders are, as expected, more typical of speech than of writing; secondly, that they are, contrary to the initial hypothesis, generally more common in adults than in teenage language, although some do occur more frequently in the language of teenagers; thirdly, that their use seems to have increased in recent times; fourthly, that the three general extenders present some features typical of grammaticalization; and finally, that no typical pragmatic function of these is associated with the language of teenagers, although and stuff and and everything often lose their original set-marking condition in teenage production, that is, their habitual function of classifying an item as a member of a particular class or category, and are used instead as markers of group and social identity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Nurse educationalists in Britain face the charge that the system is no longer producing nurses who are competent when they qualify. Research into these issues led to an historical approach, using life story and documentary analysis, to understanding how nurses from the 1940s and 1950s talked about nursing. This article by Janet Hargreaves considers the value of such an approach and argues that an understanding of how nursing was crafted in the past illuminates the present [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the dimension of functional variation across different situation types within Halliday's Systemic Functional framework. Data obtained from a study on the linguistic features used in comment articles from two British national newspapers, The Guardian and The Sun, are correlated with their field, tenor and mode of discourse, with the aim of exploring to what extent variations of language use are related to variations of social context. From there, I consider the context of situation as a constitutive element of a broader context of culture. This will allow me to define register as well as see why register analysis is a valuable tool in understanding a culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the paper of Adrian Randall about labour, capital and discourse in relation to the 1806 parliamentary enquiry into the woollen industry in Great Britain. He states that Randall in correct to raise the question of new languages or old. He believes that discourse is a relatively new concept for historians, and its needs refining. He stresses that historians need to evaluate new forms of analysis to see if they can explain historical processes more convincingly. He thinks that the theory of discourse does this when applied to the 1806 parliamentary enquiry into the woollen industry.

Transparency has become a key word in UK defence management, but its meaning is unclear; there are those that argue that it is too abstract to be implemented in its true essence, whilst others argue that it is inherently incompatible with the New Public Management Model which dominates public sector management today. Through observing the way individuals operationalise the concept in the defence community, we attempt to illustrate what transparency seems to mean in practice by focussing on how it is understood and recognising the impact it has and is expected to have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Concepts of recovery increasingly inform the development and delivery of mental health services internationally. In the UK recent policy advocates the application of recovery concepts to the treatment of personality disorders. However diagnosis and understanding of personality disorders remains contested, challenging any assumption that mainstream recovery thinking can be directly translated into personality disorders services. Methods: In a qualitative interview-based study understandings of recovery were explored in extended, in-depth interviews with six people purposively sampled from a specialist personality disorders' service in the UK. An interpretive, collaborative approach to research was adopted in which university-, clinical- and service user (consumer) researchers were jointly involved in carrying out interviews and analysing interview data. Results: Findings suggested that recovery cannot be conceptualised separately from an understanding of the lived experience of personality disorders. This experience was characterised by a complexity of ambiguous, interrelating and conflicting feelings, thoughts and actions as individuals tried to cope with tensions between internally and externally experienced worlds. Our analysis was suggestive of a process of recovering or, for some, discovering a sense of self that can safely coexist in both worlds. Conclusions: We conclude that key facilitators of recovery - positive personal relationships and wider social interaction - are also where the core vulnerabilities of individuals with lived experience of personaility disorders can lie. There is a role for personality disorders services in providing a safe space in which to develop positive relationships. Through discursive practice within the research team understandings of recovery were co-produced that responded to the lived experience of personality disorders and were of applied relevance to practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roma, Gypsies and Travellers in Britain are marginalised in society and often the subject of negative discourse in media and political debate. This article examines why this matters through an example of a specific discourse incident in late 2013/ early 2014, with the media reporting and political comment on the size and behaviour of the Roma population in the Page Hall area of Sheffield. Using a framework of antagonistic discourse as control startingfrom Foucault's work and bringing in Laclau and Mouffe, the article adapts concepts such as Galtung and Ruge's 'news values' in this particular episode and places it in the context of the wider Gypsy debate. It offers suggestions to think about taking forward a more positive debate on Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities in Britain, which could try to counterbalance the hysteria that often takes place in the press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginnings of the global debate over corporate governance in the early 1990s, academics, practitioners and policymakers have focused on changing boards of directors to improve corporate governance. The financial crisis of 2007–09 arose despite two decades of codification of corporation governance, a process that continues in the light of concern about corporate performance and accountability: codes have not eliminated the problems they set out to address. Analysing the three main versions of the UK code of corporate governance, we see a shifting discourse of ‘structures’ in Cadbury to ‘independence’ under the reforms in 2003, and then in the 2010 iteration towards ‘behaviour’, as the code seeks to improve boards as mechanisms of corporate governance. The evolution in the language and recommendations of the code reveals growing understanding both of the practical challenge of board effectiveness and of the limitations to codification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bristol Inquiry is arguably one of the most important cases of judicial medical investigation held in the United Kingdom (UK), which continues to raise important insights into the social construction of medical and scientific risks. As a way of marking the inquiry’s tenth anniversary year, this article returns to an important conversation held between noted pediatric cardiothoracic and cardiovascular specialists, on days 49 and 50 of the inquiry’s proceedings. Their conversance principally describes a pathway of scientific advancement across four decades (c. the mid-1960s to 1999). Risks, and the avoidance of medical error (iatrogenesis), represent important subtopics of the ensuing historical narrative, within which the experts describe opportunities for error as diminishing in-line with paradigmatic advancement. The telling of this story of risk mitigation involves the expurgation of considerable sensitivities to scientific uncertainty. In analyzing this example of expert scientific witness testimony, the article primarily considers how representations of uncertainty are formulated in language. The article concludes that, in this instance, the social construction of risk and uncertainty were heteroglossically premised upon language catalysts, cognitive metaphors, and logic-based mathematical rubrics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conceptualization of professions and professionalization is once again a significant theme in the social sciences. The position of professions seems increasingly complex as relations with other occupational groups develop in ways that seem uncertain, ambiguous and complex. We present a discourse-based framework for the analysis of professional change, drawing on Chouliaraki and Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA), and their adaptations of the work of Laclau and Mouffe, and Bhabha. The model focuses on the articulation process within conjunctures of social practice, and in particular how social actors endeavour to make advantageous articulations which achieve a degree of permanence in an inherently changeable world. It also considers how discourses are articulated together to create hybrid forms of professional discourse. We apply the framework to recent changes in the role and autonomy of general medical practitioners in the United Kingdom following the implementation of the clinical governance system, to assess the value of the framework in addressing the negotiated nature of professionalism and, more specifically, to explore the relationship between managerialism and professional autonomy and status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue sets out to investigate a number of areas of concern, regarding gender and sexuality, which are identifiable in the current British higher education environment. We argue that current dominant 'neoliberal' discourses, which emphasise the commodification of higher education in the U.K., function to set limits upon 'equality'. While these discourses often suggest a widening of opportunities within higher education, with an emphasis upon unlimited individual freedom and choice, the lived experience can be rather different for women and sexual minorities. This issue explores the impact such discourses are having upon gender and sexuality identities and practices in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines how the meaning of risk, safety, and accidents are constructed in a military context. We compare meanings of these constructs among members working for three organizations (Health and Safety Executive, Ministry of Defence, and Royal Marine Commandos) jointly responsible for planning and executing “safe” military training and maneuvres in a particular unit of the United Kingdom’s Royal Marine Commandos. The discourse among these members embodies the inter-organizational collaboration over military safety, and through an analysis of this discourse we situate and frame shared and contested meanings of risk, safety, and accidents within this particular community of practice. We discuss implications of these findings for theory and practice, rallying for a more contextualized understanding of what risk, safety, and accidents mean in organizational life and thus the relative nature of the standards to which organizations are expected to adhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of formal research ethics and governance structures in social work research have lagged behind those applicable in health, although in the UK, social care has been deemed to be covered by those that were used in the NHS. Whilst this link is useful, it does not facilitate researcher involvement in the small-scale qualitative studies that feature in social work more than in health. Our exploration of the subject reveals that the dominance of the natural sciences paradigm in the social science is evident nationally, regionally and internationally. So, in this sense, the UK follows the usual paths that favour quantitative studies. In this article we explore the trajectory of governance structures in social work research in the UK to argue that social work needs its own ethics and governance structures, but that some agreement should be sought with other professions, particularly in those projects that cross professional and discipline boundaries so that social work research does not have to undergo dual processes for ethical approval. This implies a broader recognition of social work research ethics and governance structures than currently exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the uses of history in contemporary Eurosceptic discourse in Britain. It does so in the knowledge that studying an essentially contested concept such as Euroscepticism poses severe methodological problems, and in the first section I situate my article in the emerging scholarly literature on the subject. Having explained why I limit my research to popular Euroscepticism in the tabloid press, in the second section I critically analyse the rhetorical strategies employed by the Sun and the Daily Mail to garner support for their line on Europe, suggesting that the appeal of their discourse resides in its recourse to national history of the school textbook variety. In the third part I use this finding to argue that the discipline of history has been an unwitting accomplice in making Euroscepticism so popular amongst the British public, press and politicians. This has considerable ramifications both for the theoretical study of Euroscepticism and the political efforts to counter its popularity, and I consider all of these in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite debate and criticism, the notion of "competence" has risen to prominence very rapidly and now has an important place in the vocabulary of human resource management (HRM). Seeks to explain such a rapid rise by drawing on discourse theory. The discourse of competence may be seen to arise through the convergence of discourses in four separate domains, and thereby gain legitimacy from the stocks of already formulated meanings in these separate domains. Taking a discourse theory approach also exposes the control aspects of competence through the constitution of the individual as a social subject in terms of the inscription of assessment judgements. However, the convergence of discourses has not resulted in complete closure. Concludes with some speculation about the degree to which the competence approach will successfully achieve employer commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary on the Editorial 'The politics and analytics of health policy' by Professor Calum Paton focuses on two issues. First, it points to the unclear links between ideas, ideology, values, and discourse and policy, and warns that discourse is often a poor guide to enacted policy. Second, it suggests that realism, particularly 'programme theory' are useful tools for health policy analysis. 'Market reform' cannot be reduced to a simple 'four legs good, two legs bad' verdict, and programme theory might suggest that certain mechanisms may be good for one outcome in a particular context, but bad for another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]