This research paper focuses on the comprehensive description and analysis of the structure of judgments from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Despite the growing interest in examining the rhetorical and linguistic aspects of legal texts, the genre structure of judgments has remained a little-explored area. While headings and paragraph enumeration provide a systematic reference system for citation and cross-referencing they do not reveal the dynamic relations between individual text chunks in judgments. The current analysis combines Swales (...) and Bhatia's genre theory with Hoey's approach to patterning in discourse and corpus linguistics analyses. The findings show that the complexity of CJEU judgments extends beyond surface-level information with linguistic expressions playing a crucial role in highlighting dynamic relations and discourse patterning. The results reveal how the structure of CJEU judgments has changed over time and point to the intratextual relations between different sections. Additionally, the study provides a detailed description of the textual organisation of CJEU judgments in terms of move structures and conventionalised discourse patterns. (shrink)

The article examines the role of discourse in organisational sensemaking. By building links between the theorising undertaken within organisational studies and the empirical analysis of multimodal social interaction, it argues for a relational view of sensemaking and investigates how sense is made in and through social interaction in real organisational situations where language use intertwines with embodied actions and the manipulation of artefacts. In particular, the article studies the use of discourse technologies of textual artefacts in sensemaking processes. The (...) data come from training workshops of a Finnish workplace organisation, conducted in order for the employees to delineate the history and future of their organisation with the help of writable papers. The results show how the papers exert agency in the situation by facilitating three specific discursive practices and by enabling and restricting the actions employed in constructing a shared understanding of the organisational reality. (shrink)

A range of stakeholders are interested in organisational values, with demands from consumers, trade unions and pressure groups. Organisations face the challenge of integrating employees from several cultures and overcoming value differences. Coupled with this emphasis on organisational values there is increasing interest in the role of discourse in constituting meaning. This research shows how texts constitute organisational values. Hermeneutics is used to analyse the texts of the Open University and UK FTSE4good companies. The research shows that organisational values are (...) constituted through three hermeneutic circles — fragmentation/integration, conceptuality/contextuality and temporality — that provide an integrated medium for interpreting values. The three hermeneutic circles are mediated by a fourth: the tropological circle, where metaphor and homonymy fuse horizons, and synecdoche and metonymy relate parts and whole. Both texts and tropes mediate the transvaluation of organisational values across time. In recontextualising its values the organisation becomes a metaphor of itself. (shrink)

Procedure manuals and textually mediated deathThe procedure manual as a document represents the practice of nursing care. Analysis of such manuals allows us to explore discourses of nursing and the ways in which they frame nursing practice. A critical analysis of a hospital procedure manual using discourse analysis was undertaken. A specific excerpt concerning ‘Last offices’ is used as an example of the institutionalisation of organisational values and beliefs as these influence nursing care. ‘Last offices’ directs nursing practices related to (...) the death of a patient, and the laying out as preparation for the funeral director or coroner. The analysis shows that procedure manuals reproduce hegemonic ideologies of nursing. The analysis also shows how nursing practices are constituted by intersecting forces of differing locations such as the hospital as an organisation, the healthcare system and the wider society within which these function. (shrink)

This paper addresses the cultural impact of genomics and the Human Genome Project on human self-understanding. Notably, it addresses the claim made by Francis Collins that the genome is the language of God and the claim made by Max Delbrück that Aristotle must be credited with having predicted DNA as the soul that organises bio-matter. From a continental philosophical perspective I will argue that human existence results from a dialectical interaction between two types of texts: the language of molecular biology (...) and the language of civilisation; the language of the genome and the language of our socio-cultural, symbolic ambiance. Whereas the former ultimately builds on the alphabets of genes and nucleotides, the latter is informed by primordial texts such as the Bible and the Quran. In applied bioethics deliberations on genomics, science is easily framed as liberating and progressive, religious world-views as conservative an... (shrink)

In the fields of linguistics and psychology the didactic implementation of new knowledge relative to argumentative discourse and its acquisition has led us to develop a didactic sequence focused on the teaching of argumentation in 11–12 year old pupils. This sequence was experimented in six schools in order to assess the effect of these new educational methods on the capacities of pupils to treat the dialogic dimensions of argumentation in the writing of monologues. An analysis of the productions of the (...) puils who had been submitted to the didactic sequence, compared with those of a control group, showed a significant improvement in the capacities of the first group. These improvements concerned aspects such as backing up arguments, acknowledging the addressee, negotiating with an eventual contradictor and using of a certain number of units and linguistic expressions t specific to argumentative texts (expressions of responsability taking, textual organisers of cause and conclusion, modalisations of probability and of certitude, concessions and polite expressions). (shrink)

Analysing film. Distinguishing the filmic contribution to meaning -- Examples of filmic "textual organisation" -- Redrawing boundaries -- Organisation of the book -- Semiotics and documents. Semiotics and its relations to film -- The nature of discourse semantics -- The film as cinematographic document -- A combined view: filmic documents for filmic discourse -- Constructing the semiotic mode of film. Semiotic multimodality -- The internal organisation of semiotic strata -- Composing and combining semiotic modes -- Materiality and "epistemological commitment" (...) -- Christian Metz and the grande syntagmatique of the image track. The original model -- Two examples of analysis with the grande syntagmatique -- Revisions and rebuttals -- Foundations for analysis: filmic units. The basic units of film: preliminaries -- Audiovisual iconic representations -- Perception, perceptual realism and reliable measurement -- Multiplicity: from perception to discourse -- Filmic units revisited: discourse-motivated definitions -- The paradigmatic organisation of film. Beyond Metz: towards a grande paradigmatique -- Capturing discourse dependency structures in film -- The paradigmatic dimensions of projection, taxis and plane -- Two examples of paradigmatic analysis -- Summary and conclusions. (shrink)

This article analyses how the new type of worker is constructed in respect to gender in current management literature. It contributes to the increasing body of work in organisational theory and business ethics which interrogates management texts by analysing textual representations of gender. A discourse analysis of six texts reveals three inter-connected yet distinct ways in which gender is talked about. First, the awareness discourse attempts to be inclusive of gender yet reiterates stereotypes in its portrayal of women. Second, (...) within the individualisation discourse, formerly discriminatory elements of gender lose their importance but a gender dimension reappears within the idea of ‹Brand You’. Third, in the new ideal discourse, women are constructed as ideal workers of the future. The article argues that there is little space within this web of discourses for an awareness of the continued inequalities experienced by women in relation to men to be voiced and that this rhetorical aporia contributes to a ‹post-feminist’ climate. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the relation between the socalled Gutenberg galaxis of print culture and the Turing galaxis of digital media is not one of opposition and substitution, but rather one of co-evolution and integration. Or more precisely: that the Gutenberg galaxis on the one hand can be inscribed into the Turing galaxis, which on the other hand is textual in character since it is based on linear and serially processed representations manifested in a binary alphabet. (...) In continuation of this text and hypertext is described as notions of related but different sorts of complex systems and it is argued that both texts and hypertexts are best thought of as sequentially organised. The first part of the paper contains a description of the basic properties of computers and digital representation answering the question: what are the properties common to all kinds of use of computers – whether used for one purpose or another? The second part is concerned with the relationship between printed and electronic text. The third part addresses the idea of hypertext as systems which exploits modal shifts between node-mode and link-mode as a significant part of the semantics of the system. (shrink)

With the current changes driven by the expansion of the World Wide Web, this book uses a different approach from other books on the market: it applies ontologies to electronically available information to improve the quality of knowledge management in large and distributed organizations. Ontologies are formal theories supporting knowledge sharing and reuse. They can be used to explicitly represent semantics of semi-structured information. These enable sophisticated automatic support for acquiring, maintaining and accessing information. Methodology and tools are developed for (...) intelligent access to large volumes of semi-structured and textual information sources in intra- and extra-, and internet-based environments to employ the full power of ontologies in supporting knowledge management from the information client perspective and the information provider. The aim of the book is to support efficient and effective knowledge management and focuses on weakly-structured online information sources. It is aimed primarily at researchers in the area of knowledge management and information retrieval and will also be a useful reference for students in computer science at the postgraduate level and for business managers who are aiming to increase the corporations' information infrastructure. The Semantic Web is a very important initiative affecting the future of the WWW that is currently generating huge interest. The book covers several highly significant contributions to the semantic web research effort, including a new language for defining ontologies, several novel software tools and a coherent methodology for the application of the tools for business advantage. It also provides 3 case studies which give examples of the real benefits to be derived from the adoption of semantic-web based ontologies in "real world" situations. As such, the book is an excellent mixture of theory, tools and applications in an important area of WWW research. * Provides guidelines for introducing knowledge management concepts and tools into enterprises, to help knowledge providers present their knowledge efficiently and effectively. * Introduces an intelligent search tool that supports users in accessing information and a tool environment for maintenance, conversion and acquisition of information sources. * Discusses three large case studies which will help to develop the technology according to the actual needs of large and or virtual organisations and will provide a testbed for evaluating tools and methods. The book is aimed at people with at least a good understanding of existing WWW technology and some level of technical understanding of the underpinning technologies (XML/RDF). It will be of interest to graduate students, academic and industrial researchers in the field, and the many industrial personnel who are tracking WWW technology developments in order to understand the business implications. It could also be used to support undergraduate courses in the area but is not itself an introductory text. (shrink)

This study takes a systemic functional multimodal social semiotic approach to the analysis and discussion of image and text relations in two sets of data. First, patterns of contextualisation of images and text in the online magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah produced by the Islamic extremist organisation which refers to itself as Islamic State are examined. The second data set consists of a sample of texts from Western online news and blog sites which include recontextualisations of images found in the first (...) data set. A sample of examples of the use and re-use of images is discussed in order to identify patterns of similarity and difference when images and text are recontextualised. It is argued that the ISIS material tends to foreground the interpersonal metafunction in combination with the textual metafunction, while the other data set tends to foreground the ideational metafunction. These inferences indicate that further exploration of a larger data set is worth pursuing. Such studies would provide deeper insights helping to distinguish between online material which supports terrorism and that which opposes it, as well as facilitating the further development of multimodal social semiotic approaches to image and text relations. (shrink)

Narrative is increasingly being recognised as an important tool both to manage and understand organisations. In particular, narrative is recognised to have an important influence on the perception of environmental issues in business, a particularly contested area of modern management. Management literature is, however, only beginning to develop a framework for evaluating the quality and legitimacy of narratives. Due to the highly fluid nature of narratives, the traditional notion of truth as reflecting ' objective reality' is not useful here. In (...) this article, an alternative approach that evaluates a narrative in two stages is developed. First, a horizontal reading investigates the surface of the narrative, its textual features, instrumental devices and its integrity as a text, to assess the quality of a narrative. Second, a more philosophical or vertical reading makes explicit the underlying value assumptions that author and reader bring to the writing and reading of the narrative to assess the narrative's claim to legitimacy. The framework is then tested against a narrative on the relationship between business and environment as espoused by a supply chain manager of a UK-based manufacturing company. (shrink)

This article discusses the [development and] use of a video life-world schema to explore alternative orientations to the shared health consultation. It is anticipated that this schema can be used by practitioners and consumers alike to understand the dynamics of videoed health consultations, the role of the participants within it and the potential to consciously alter the outcome by altering behaviour during the process of interaction. The study examines health consultation participation and develops an interpretative method of analysis that includes (...) image elicitation (via videos), phenomenology (to identify the components of the analytic framework), narrative (to depict the stories of interactions) and a reflexive mode (to develop shared meaning through a conceptual framework for analysis). The analytic framework is derived from a life-world conception of human mutual shared interaction which is presented here as a novel approach to understanding patient-centred care. The video materials used in this study were derived from consultations in a Walk-in Centre (WiC) in East London. The conceptual framework produced through the process of video analysis is comprised of different combinations of movement, knowledge and emotional conversations that are used to classify objective or engaged WiC health care interactions. The videoed interactions organise along an active or passive, facilitative or directive typical situation continuum illustrating different kinds of textual approaches to practice that are in tension or harmony. The schema demonstrates how practitioners and consumers interact to produce these outcomes and indicates the potential for both consumers and practitioners to be educated to develop practice dynamics that support patient-centred care and impact on health outcomes. (shrink)

The article discusses the composition of Lysias’ speech, devoted to the history of music, in Pseudo-Plutarch’s treatise On Music. Close attention has been paid to the unifying mechanisms employed by Lysias to create the coherence and unity of the textual construction. The analysis of the speech presented in the article leads to the conclusion that the employment of clearly marked and coordinated two-part units became the most important technique of the organisation of this speech. The first part of each (...) of eleven pairs Lysias’ speech consists of includes quotations from earlier written sources, the second displays comments and interpreting remarks on these citations. This scheme of organisation of the speech provides the internal order and continuity of thought in the historical part of Pseudo-Plutarch’s work. (shrink)

Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame, Moral Education and the Good Life is the first major work that takes two philosophers from the ancient Greek and early Chinese traditions to stimulate discussion of an interdisciplinary nature on the rich and complex topic of the emotions, in particular shame. It features sophisticated comparative analysis of the Greek and Chinese texts while bringing the ancient materials to bear on modern controversies such as the role of shame in moral education and social cohesion. Despite (...) fundamental differences in their social-historical and intellectual backgrounds, Aristotle and Xunzi bear striking similarities in several respects: their concept of humans as essentially members of communities, as having a unique set of characteristics that set them apart from other living things, and as beings in need of moral training to fulfil their potential and become integrated into a well-ordered society. The two philosophers' discourses on shame reveal important insights into their ideals of human nature, moral education and the good life. This book tackles directly the methodological problems that are relevant to anyone interested in cross-cultural comparisons and organises discussion of the ancient sources in such a way as to facilitate a thorough integration of perspectives from the cultural traditions concerned. This approach provides sufficient focus to allow for detailed textual analysis while giving scope for making constant connections to the broader comparative questions at issue. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘Summer Davos’ meeting in China organised by the World Economic Forum is an annual event that brings together leading voices from the East and West in business, society, and politics. The economic-political challenges and geopolitical upheavals that intercepted temporarily and transnationally in the close-up to the 2016 Summer Davos meeting rendered this discursive event a site of particular political/ideological contestation. This study intends to make sense of the unobtrusive, pro- home-nation nationalist ideology manifested in the interpreted texts by Chinese (...) conference interpreters who bridge language gaps in situ in the meeting. These textual manifestations of nationalism are examined by interrogating how specific discursive strategies are deployed in connection with thematic contents about China, the interpreters’ home-nation, in relation to other countries. Fundamentally, Chinese interpreters’ nationalism finds its way into their linguistic means that realise their specific strategies of self-censoring, neutralising self-negativity, aggrandising self-positivity and accentuating the negative-other representation in relation to topics on national sovereignty, territorial integrity, diplomatic relations and economic/political positions, all of which are crucial to the interests of a nation. (shrink)

A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is, or is plausibly cast as, a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends on that agent's motivational repertoire. Section I sketches some of the metaethical terrain most relevant to Nietzsche's organising ethical project, his “revaluation (...) of all values”, and lays out three “design-requirements” that an adequate account of Nietzsche's metaethical views must satisfy. Section II introduces the basic internalist position. Sections III–IV provide textual support for the internalist reading of Nietzsche, with Section V showing how it meets each of the design-requirements. Section VI concludes by showing how the internalist apparatus also illuminates Nietzsche's views about the process of revaluing values. (shrink)

This book presents the very latest research on the medieval use of sophisms in logical and grammatical investigation by twenty-three of the leading experts in Europe and beyond. Important insights into the genre of sophismatic treatises have been gained only very recently, and the organisation of the European Symposium on this topic in 1990 led to a concentration of research and evaluation of insights. The papers are divided into three groups: one covers textual study and analysis of the role (...) of sophisms in the medieval curriculum; another deals with grammatical sophisms; and the third covers particular logical sophisms, from 'Man is the worthiest of creatures' and problems in the theory of reference to the Liar paradox and the work of William of Ockham. (shrink)

The two aims of the paper were to systematically review and critique social science and linguistic text analyses of nursing records in order to inform future research in this emerging area of research. Systematic searches in reference databases and in citation indexes identified 12 articles that included analyses of the social and linguistic features of records and recording. Two reviewers extracted data using established criteria for the evaluation of qualitative research papers. A common characteristic of nursing records was the economical (...) use of language with local meanings that conveyed little information to the uninitiated reader. Records were dominated by technocratic‐medical discourse focused on patients’ bodies, and they depicted only very limited aspects of nursing practice. Nurses made moral evaluations in their categorisation of patients, which reflected detailed surveillance of patients’ disturbing behaviour. The text analysis methods were rarely transparent in the articles, which could suggest research quality problems. For most articles, the significance of the findings was substantiated more by theoretical readings of the institutional settings than by the analysis of textual data. More probing empirical research of nurses’ records and a wider range of theoretical perspectives has the potential to expose the situated meanings of nursing work in healthcare organisations. (shrink)

This paper scrutinizes the topic of meaning manifestation and signification made known by the act of interpretation, which amounts to finding the organising principles of a text and rules of combination. The language of narrativity is a set of generational and transformational instances disguising textual content and initiating interpretation as such. The paper discusses the levels of description which assist in tackling the concept of change, or difference in degrees, as the result of both the artificial operation of rewriting (...) the text on various methodological grounds and real dynamics justified by the obvious layers of the plot. The elementary units of meaning articulation covered by this article run the gamut from Roland Barthes’ distributional and integrational narrative units to Algirdas Julien Greimas’ deep and surface structures with special stress on the narrative programs and narrative analysis, which is of primary interest here. The Greimassian narrative grammar successfully describes what exists and how to capture the process of signification. In the end, analytical instruments elaborated by Greimas are effectively adapted to interpret the case of Edgar Allan Poe’s story William Wilson. The story itself is retold and interpreted through narrative formalisation, which consists in speaking of the plot transformations in terms of utterances of states and utterances of doing. Within the framework of narrative structures that emerge on the way to the formalisation of William Wilson, small changes in narrative trajectories seem to be out of sight, not even readable. Contrariwise, Barthes’ touch on what the text is all about enables the reader to be engaged in looser textual interpretations, to gain more variable, highly detailed experience in noticing the slightest movement and tasting each nuance of the overall setting. This paper first and foremost takes on board the structural narrative analysis as it is set out in Greimas’ narrative grammar leading to a special kind of severe narrative absolutism; on top of that, the paper gives a clue of a couple of alternative views on the problem, views represented by Barthes. (shrink)

Studies on mind-wandering frequently use reading as an experimental task. In these studies, reading is conceived as a cognitive process that potentially offers a contrast to mind-wandering, because it seems to be task-related, goal-directed and stimulus-dependent. More recent work attempts to avoid the dichotomy of successful cognitive processes and processes of mind-wandering found in earlier studies. We approach the issue from the perspective that texts provoke modes of cognitive involvement different from information processing and recall account that underlies many early (...) mind-wandering studies. After all, reading itself is an umbrella term for activities that are characterised by a variety of phenomenological and functional signatures. We conceptualise reading and mind-wandering in relation to each other through the framework of enculturated predictive processing, which is informed by research in literary studies. Earlier accounts think of reading predominantly in terms of the construction of situation models to organise textual information. By contrast, enculturated predictive processing foregrounds shifting stances readers can take in relation to the text. Characters featuring in literary texts might be mind-wandering themselves, or passages in literary style might make the construction of a clearly defined situational model impossible. Furthermore, we take into account that texts often elicit mind-wandering through the construction of task-relevant and attention-driven virtual scenarios in readers’ minds. This more complex account of reading can enrich recent attempts to understand mind-wandering as a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon. The study of mind-wandering can benefit, we argue, from a closer attention to the process of reading and to the texts it deploys as stimuli. The emerging perspective from enculturated predictive processing and literary studies makes distinctions in reading that in turn enable research on mind-wandering to ask more precise questions about (1) different kinds of mind-wandering, (2) different modes of reading, and (3) how and where they interconnect across time. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the representation in academic journal articles and textbooks of an organisation theory. In the case of Burns’ and Stalker’s book The Management of Innovation (1961,1966), summaries of the text by other scholars have arguably differed from the original authors and among themselves in their emphases. Similar points have been made about representations of other theorists such as Kurt Lewin and, perhaps most famously, Adam Smith. They all raise issues about the meanings of texts and where (...) such meanings lie: with the author, the reader, the text itself or perhaps some combination of these. They also raise questions about whether texts can be shown to have definitive meanings; and if not, whether there are any criteria for adjudicating on the validity of varied interpretations. Representations by textbook writers are analysed and questions about the meaning of texts raised by ‘structuralist’ and ‘deconstructionist’ writers examined. Their writings beg certain questions about textual representations. Perhaps the most extreme of these views is Barthes’ concept of the ‘death of the author’. Like Barthes, Derrida argues, for the reasons mentioned above, that there is no underlying, final decipherable meaning in a text, but gives more credence to the role of the author, accepting the validity of the author’s consciousness and intentions as one of the sources of meaning in texts. There are also other sources: the situatedness and historical context of the text and the text itself. Derrida’s concept of ‘différance’ requires the reader to engage in an analysis of the text which offers limitless possibilities for interpretation and a renunciation of the certainty of truth, because the meaning of a text may extend beyond the limits of our knowledge at any one time. His notion of the ‘logic of supplementarity’ is a further means to analyse texts, as it also disprivileges obvious or overt meanings in texts by overturning hierarchy in oppositions and questioning univocal definitions of meaning. Questions inspired by these and other writers give rise to an exploration of who is speaking in the text; which subject matter is represented as central and which as marginal; binary oppositions within the text and intertextual connections. The paper then begins the more ambitious task of answering the broader question as to whether it can be shown that there are more and less ‘representative’ or ‘stronger’ interpretations of a text. (shrink)

Résumé : Les représentations sociales font l’objet d’études en sciences humaines et sociales depuis plus de cinquante ans. En fonction de la théorie du noyau central, la représentation sociale peut être définie en tant qu’organisation structurée et hiérarchisée selon deux systèmes : un central et un périphérique. Au fil du temps et à partir du discours des répondants, des travaux réalisés par des chercheurs de l’Université de Sherbrooke ont permis, par l’entremise du recours à l’analyse lexicométrique et à la statistique (...) textuelle, d’identifier des éléments du noyau central ainsi que des éléments périphériques dans les différentes recherches. Cette contribution vise à mettre en perspective nos orientations méthodologiques, à revenir sur la nécessité de recourir à des approches pluriméthodologiques et à proposer des modèles alternatifs pour les échantillons plus faibles. -/- Abstract : Social representations have been the subject of study and analysis in social sciences and humanities for over fifty years. According to the central nucleus theory, social representation can be defined as a structured and a hierarchical organization according to two systems: one central, and one peripheral. By analyzing participants answers, several different studies have been previously published by researchers from the University of Sherbrooke. These studies have identified central core elements as well as peripheral elements by using lexicometrical analysis and textual statistics. This contribution aims to put into perspective our methodological orientations as well as to reconsider the need to use pluri-methodological approaches and to propose alternative models for small samples. (shrink)

What is to be gained by studying visual observation in Mass Observation's COVID-19 collections? What can we see of the pandemic through diarists’ images and words? Visual methods were part of the plural research strategies of social research organisation Mass Observation (MO) in its first phase, when it was established in 1937, but remained marginal in relation to textual research methods. This continues with the post-1981 revival of the Mass Observation Project (MOP), with its emphasis on life writing. With (...) wider shifts in technology and accessibility, however, even when they are not solicited, photographs now accompany MOP correspondents’ submissions. In MO’s substantial COVID-19 collections, images appear in or as diary entries across a range of forms, including hand-drawn illustrations, correspondent-generated photographs, creative photomontages, and screengrabs of memes. In addition, diarists offer textual reflections on COVID-19's image cultures, such as the role of photographs in pandemic news media, as well as considering how the pandemic is intersecting with the visual in more abstract ways, from themes of surveillance and ‘Staying Alert’ in public health messaging to internal pictorial imaginaries produced as a result of isolation and contemplation. Positioning these materials in relation to wider patterns in pandemic visual culture, including public photographic collecting projects that make explicit reference to MO as their inspiration, this article considers the contribution of the visual submissions and image-rich writing in MO's COVID-19 collections to the depiction of a virus commonly characterised as invisible. (shrink)

This paper takes as its focus the adoption by the Co‐operative Wholesale Society of what appears to be a socially responsible stance on food labelling practice and policy through the publication of a public report and a proposed code of practice.The central issue in the debate surrounding labelling is the question of ‘asymmetric information’ (when one party knows more about a product than the other). In order to function, markets need perfect information. The existence of asymmetric information gives rise to (...) ‘market failure’ which prevents the ‘free market’ from functioning according to the laissez faire model. It can be argued that regulation will overcome this problem. However, this paper counters this argument on several grounds. In the first part of the paper labelling is examined as a textual construction, and ethical dimensions are revealed through an awareness of discourse and signification, which gives rise to a view of packaging as a version of reality partially built through connotation and association.The second part of the paper examines political and regulatory concerns. Marketing and economic theories are discussed in terms of their impact upon ethical issues in food labelling. Sense is made of various arguments about the policy and practice of food regulation – particularly in the wake of the James Report calling for the establishment of a Food Standards Agency. Tactics for resisting regulation are also examined. The paper analyses the role and motivation of the CWS in taking these steps.Consideration is given to the issue of where responsibility for information giving and public health education might lie, and what phenomena act as barriers to increased public awareness and action on dietary matters. Finally the debate over food labelling is used as an example of why it is problematic (and possibly unethical) to promote the free market model as the only sensible alternative to other modes of economic organisation. (shrink)

This is a case study on a series of at least thirty-four sixteenth-century notebooks from the Sloane collection, which reconsiders early modern note taking techniques and the organisation of knowledge. These notebooks were written by an anonymous compiler, a physician who read widely in the alchemical and medical literature available in his lifetime, the late sixteenth century. In the alchemica, he devotes individual volumes to specific alchemical substances, which are connected with each other by means of a complex system of (...) cross-referencing; they are constantly revised and change appearance according to the physician's latest ideas about alchemical medicines. As a result, the notebooks not only preserve received information — they also represent an equivalent to the alchemical workshop, where the combination of different textual elements generates knowledge. (shrink)

Based on ethnographic and linguistic analyses, this article describes the discourse-related practices and interactional role behaviours of an experienced lawyer who assumed a pivotal role in the negotiation of a Mergers-and-Acquisitions type transaction vis-a-vis a number of other legal and financial professionals. Set in an international business context, all communication took place in English and for the most part via email. Complex discursive processes facilitated close interdisciplinary engagement and, more particularly, required that a single individual assume a key interactional role (...) to oversee and advance the negotiation activities. This pivotal role entailed the strategic use of language and discourse to negotiate, account for, and justify the various stages of the negotiation. In addition to textual analyses of the negotiated contract and attendant emails, interviews were conducted with the principal lawyer and her senior partner in order to examine the textual findings grounded in the organisational context of a law firm and produce an ontology of this negotiation process. These research findings could be used to assist novice lawyers and business professionals to understand some of the discourse strategies and interactional roles that are often so critical for commercial contract negotiation activities. (shrink)

Oma algses mitmetähenduslikkuses on see F. Baconi aforism kõige tihendatum tõdemus, mis tõmbab olemusliku eraldusjoone ühelt poolt antiikse ja keskaegse ning teisalt uusaegse arusaama vahele teadusest ja teadusteadmisest. Artiklis püüab autor anda võimaluste piires tervikpildi uusaja teaduse industriaalselt (tehnoloogiliselt) orienteeritud teadmistüübi tekkimisest. Uusaja teaduse kujunemiseks vajaliku pöörde maailmavaateliste eeldustena tuleb käsitleda: (1) põhimõtteliselt uut subjekti ja objekti käsitust; (2) täiesti uut väärtusruumi, uut teaduse ideoloogiat (ilmalikkus, kriitiline vaim, tõesus ja praktiline kasulikkus); (3) tunnetuslaadi muutust — kontemplatsioonilt interventsioonile, kvaliteedi kirjeldamiselt kvantiteedi (...) uurimisele; (4) looduse käsitlemist Kosmose asemel seaduspäraselt korrastatud objektide “väljana”. Uue tunnetusstiili — empiirilise ja teoreetilise tunnetuse kokkuviimine, hüpoteetilis-deduktiivse metodoloogia kujundamine Galilei poolt, abstraktse ja sünteetilis-tekstilise loomuga spekulatsiooni asendumine uurimisobjekti ehituse, korrapära ja põhjuslikkuse objektiivse analüüsiga, universaalsete loodusseaduste doktriini kujunemine jms—kujunemine konstitueeris uut tüüpi teadmise. Teadmise kui nähtava maailma piltkoopia asemele luuakse teadmine kui loodusobjektide seaduspära analüütiline rekonstruktsioon. See on vormiltmatemaatiline, päritolult eksperimentaalne ning loodusobjektide kontrollimisele ja ümbertegemisele suunatud nn valdamisteadmine. This F. Bacon's aphorism in its original ambiguity is the most condensed belief that draws a distinctive essential line between ancient and medieval understanding of science and scientific knowledge on one hand and modern understanding on the other. The author aims at providing, as far as possible, an integral overview of emerging of the industrially (technologically) orientated type of knowledge of modern times. Ideological/philosophical preconditions of the change necessary for emerging of modern science are: (1) a fundamentally new approach to the subject and object; (2) a completely new system of values, a new ideology of science (secularity, critical spirit, trueness and utilitarianism); (3) a change in manner of cognizance - from contemplation to intervention, from describing quality to studying quantity; (4) treating nature as a naturally organised "field" of objects instead of the Cosmos. Emerging of a new style of cognizance - bringing together of empirical and theoretical cognition, the devise of the hypothetical-deductive method by Galilei, replacement of speculations abstract and synthetic-textual in nature with objective study of the structure, regularity and causality of the object of study, establishment of the doctrine of universal natural laws etc - constituted a new type of knowledge. Knowledge as a copy of the visible world is replaced by knowledge as an analytical reconstruction of the regularity of natural objects. It is so-called dispositive knowledge, morphologically mathematical, originally experimental and aimed at control and alteration of natural objects. (shrink)

This study uses a literature study of examining the Tarjih Council of Muhammadiyah, the second largest Islamic organisation in Indonesia. Criticism is directed towards manhaj’s principle which states that any classical Islamic school of law should not be embraced and, thus, breaks up from the chain of Islamic intellectuality. The critics, however, fail to cover the very idea of Muhammadiyah as an embodiment of the Islamic renewal vision. The article aims to reveal the evolution of the manhaj. The evolution will (...) be elaborated into stages to show the development of concepts and principles in each stage. The article is based on a literature study using constructive conceptual analysis. The analysis is divided into three steps, namely analytical assessment, performative aspects, and conceptual genealogy, stressing the reflective relationship between knowledge and social reality. The study shows that the Tarjih Council’s preference not to embrace any classical Islamic schools of law has developed since the establishment of the Tarjih Council. The developments of manhaj’s formulation occur in three stages from 1924 until 2000. The manhaj comes up with the synthesis of textuality, rationality, and spirituality as the basic vision of Muhammadiyah’s renewal idea which reflects the achievement of a modernist Islamic movement. The study, in comparison to previous research, provides a more comprehensive picture of the manhaj of Muhammadiyah as a representation of the Islamic renewal movement and shows how the manhaj comes to a synthesis that marks Muhammadiyah as a unique modernist-renewal movement.Contribution: The study enriches the perspectives on the manhaj as the backbone of Muhammadiyah ideology and shows that Islamic modernism in Indonesia has stepped further to uncover a synthesis suitable to Indonesian society. (shrink)

"Research directions on interaction. This article proposes to consider interaction as a concept and an object of study based on pragmatics and textual linguistics, according to three approaches: discursive genres (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1990, 1992), place relationships (Vion, 1992), dialogism and polyphony (Bakhtine, 1970, 1984 and Ducrot, 1980, 1984). These approaches are illustrated by the analysis of several interaction situations: a political debate organised on Romanian television during the 2004 election campaign, two extracts from literary works Les Parents terribles by Jean (...) Cocteau and La chute by Albert Camus, and a forum in the newspaper Le Figaro (09/2009). Keywords: interaction, communicational trope, place relationships, dialogism, polyphony. ". (shrink)

Résumé Selon la perspective de l’œuvre ouverte développée par Eco, « un texte est un tissu d’espaces blancs, d’interstices à remplir … un mécanisme paresseux qui vit sur la plus-value de sens qui y est introduite par le destinataire » (Eco 1985, Lector in fabula ou la coopération interprétative dans les textes narratifs, Myriem Bouzaher (trad.). Paris: Grasset, 66–67). C’est à cette plus-value de sens, concomitante à l’activité interprétative, que la présente étude s’attardera, et ce, afin d’identifier d’abord des éléments (...) de l’album d’enfance nécessitant l’interprétation d’un lecteur modèle et d’en convoquer par la suite les significations qui peuvent être appliquées au texte. Plus précisément, il s’agira de décrire et d’analyser les mécanismes intertextuels qui enrichissent l’organisation syntaxique et sémantique de quatre albums d’enfance parus au Québec entre 1992 et 2002 et qui nécessitent l’intervention d’un lecteur modèle pour identifier les systèmes de signification et les savoirs qui y sont rattachés. Les albums soumis à l’investigation reprennent le schéma narratif de contes de fée connus et celui d’une nouvelle contemporaine. L’hypothèse est la suivante: si les composantes génériques de l’album dévoilent à un jeune lecteur des univers de références connus et familiers, le processus de l’intertextualité sollicite des contenus qui, soumis à l’interprétation d’un lecteur modèle, font parfois surgir des structures de signification inattendues. (shrink)

À travers deux études de cas, on montre comment le travail sur corpus permet de prendre en compte la variabilité de la langue tout en donnant accès par la mise en paradigme de nombreuses occurrences à la valeur abstraite de marqueurs ou d'opérations énonciatives. L'attention à la diversité lexicale et syntaxique des contextes devient un atout pour déterminer ce qui favorise le recours à tel marqueur plutôt que tel autre. Par ailleurs certains faits apparaissent comme relevant à la fois de (...) l'orientation argumentative et de l'organisation textuelle et au-delà de la multiplicité des faits de discours se dégagent des spécificités génériques et des valeurs énonciatives stables. (shrink)

À travers deux études de cas, on montre comment le travail sur corpus permet de prendre en compte la variabilité de la langue tout en donnant accès par la mise en paradigme de nombreuses occurrences à la valeur abstraite de marqueurs ou d'opérations énonciatives. L'attention à la diversité lexicale et syntaxique des contextes devient un atout pour déterminer ce qui favorise le recours à tel marqueur plutôt que tel autre. Par ailleurs certains faits apparaissent comme relevant à la fois de (...) l'orientation argumentative et de l'organisation textuelle et au-delà de la multiplicité des faits de discours se dégagent des spécificités génériques et des valeurs énonciatives stables. (shrink)

Integrity is often conceived as a moral virtue that pertains to the coherence between one’s moral convictions and actions, as well as consistency in convictions over time. By contrast, I argue that integrity is primarily an epistemic virtue. To act with integrity, an individual or organisation must engage in responsible inquiry; that is, the collection, processing, sharing, and storage of information in ways that promote truth. Organisational structures such as division of labour and hierarchy present challenges to responsible inquiry, thereby (...) making epistemic integrity in organisations inherently vulnerable and increasing the risk of unintentional unethical behaviour. This epistemic perspective on organisational integrity emphasises the importance of developing virtuous epistemic infrastructure and an ethical epistemic culture. By aligning their beliefs with facts, organisations can also improve moral behaviour and reduce the risk of culpable ignorance. (shrink)

Both natural and engineered systems are fundamentally dynamical in nature: their defining properties are causal, and their functional capacities are causally grounded. Among dynamical systems, an interesting and important sub-class are those that are autonomous, anticipative and adaptive (AAA). Living systems, intelligent systems, sophisticated robots and social systems belong to this class, and the use of these terms has recently spread rapidly through the scientific literature. Central to understanding these dynamical systems is their complicated organisation and their consequent capacities for (...) re- and self- organisation. But there is at present no general analysis of these capacities or of the requisite organisation involved. We define what distinguishes AAA systems from other kinds of systems by characterising their central properties in a dynamically interpreted information theory. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a philosophical and theoretical account of biological communication grounded in the notion of organisation. The organisational approach characterises living systems as organised in such a way that they are capable to self-produce and self-maintain while in constant interaction with the environment. To apply this theoretical framework to the study of biological communication, we focus on a specific approach, based on the notion of influence, according to which communication takes place when a signal emitted by a (...) sender triggers a change in the behaviour of the receiver that is functional for the sender itself. We critically analyse the current formulations of this account, that interpret what is functional for the sender in terms of evolutionary adaptations. Specifically, the adoption of this etiological functional framework may lead to the exclusion of several phenomena usually studied as instances of communication, and possibly even of entire fields of investigation such as synthetic biology. As an alternative, we reframe the influence approach in organisational terms, characterising functions in terms of contributions to the current organisation of a biological system. We develop a theoretical account of biological communication in which communicative functions are distinguished from other types of biological functions described by the organisational account (e.g. metabolic, ecological, etc.). The resulting organisational-influence approach allows to carry out causal analyses of current instances of phenomena of communication, without the need to provide etiological explanations. In such a way it makes it possible to understand in terms of communication those phenomena which realise interactive patterns typical of signalling interactions – and are usually studied as such in scientific practice – despite not being the result of evolutionary adaptations. Moreover, this approach provides operational tools to design and study communicative interactions in experimental fields such as synthetic biology. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

An ethical evaluation of employee participation to decision-making has to be based, obviously, on a theory about ethics, but also on an understanding of the role and the impact of participation in the organisation. This paper aims at sketching different organisational paradigms, and analysing their normative prescriptions w.r.t. participation. It will appear that the recognition of the social nature of man and the acknowledgement of the existence of differentiated goals could enhance the positive outcomes of participation. Next, we will examine (...) to what extent a systemic approach and a stakeholder concept of the firm can meet these requirements. The necessity of a global approach to participation will be emphasised. Consequently, we suggest in the last section of this paper that participation should be extended to the definition of a shared value horizon. (shrink)

According to the ancient commentaries, Iliad 21.195 was omitted by some sources, thereby making Acheloios, instead of Ocean, the origin of all waters, including the sea: the reasons for and the date of such a version of the text have been debated. In this paper 1 argue that the version without line 195 actually represents the earlier textual stage. This role of Acheloios is paralleled in the poem interpreted in the Derveni papyrus, and some features of Acheloios' cosmological function, (...) as well as his iconography, find interesting parallels in the Near East. As a 'cosmic' figure, Acheloios was in competition with Ocean, and is only rarely so represented in later preserved texts. His function as the origin of all fresh water and the source of all springs was more persistent, probably due also to his cultic role in Dodona: this, too, is probably reflected in another ancient variant for the text of Il. 16.234. (shrink)

Examination of the application of virtue ethics to business has only recently started to grapple with the measurement of virtue frameworks in a practical context. This paper furthers this agenda by measuring the impact of virtue at the level of the organisation and examining the extent to which organisational virtue impacts on moral attentiveness and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in creating organisational effectiveness. It is argued that people who operate in more virtuous organisational contexts will be (...) expected to be more attentive to ethical issues and in turn perceive a greater role for ethics and social responsibility in business. Analysis of results based on a sample of 137 HR professionals shows that where people report that their organisation provides meaningful work, they are more likely to display reflective MA and the belief that ethics and social responsibility are compatible with business objectives, suggesting that organisations who are interested in promoting an ethical culture should focus on their work structures and practices. More generally, OV is shown to have a more complex relationship with PRESOR than hypothesised pointing towards a more nuanced view of OV. The paper examines the implications of the results for organisations and research. (shrink)

Organisations are computing systems. The university’s sports centre is a computing system for managing sports teams and facilities. The tenure committee is a computing system for assigning tenure status. Despite an increasing number of publications in group ontology, the computational nature of organisations has not been recognised. The present paper is the first in this debate to propose a theory of organisations as groups structured for computing. I begin by describing the current situation in group ontology and by spelling out (...) the thesis in more detail. I then present the example of a sports centre to illustrate why one might intuitively think of organisations as computing systems. To substantiate the thesis, I introduce Piccinini’s restrictive analysis of physical computation. As I show, organisations meet all criteria for being computing systems. Organisations are structured groups with the function of manipulating medium-independent vehicles according to rules. Furthermore, I argue for the modal claim that this is a necessary feature of organisations. Having sketched the computational account of organisations, I compare it to other proposals in the literature. (shrink)