Brendan O'Rourke

Enabling deeper and more transferable analysis of economic expert discourse: A Commentary on Maesse's Economic Experts

Maesse’s paper is a timely and significant contribution to the large and important debates on economists’, and more generally social scientists’, expertise and the roles such experts play in public discourse and policy formation. The debates are wide-ranging as they have been emerging frommany different sources. They are important because of the long-term trend of society’s increasing specialization and its resulting need for coordination. This coordination is conducted in a public discourse based on the rationalized knowledge of experts, including economic experts (Beck 1992; Kurz-Milcke and Gigerenzer 2004). Maesse’s contribution is timely as it promises to bring together many of the critiques that have emerged from the recent crisis in the economy and its resulting crisis for economic experts. Hiswork will enable discourse analysis to contribute in amore fruitful and transferable way to the debate. This is partly because Maesse enables discourse analytical work to be more accessible to other traditions addressing the topic, but also because his approach makes clear and stimulates further curiosity about the connections between expertise, elites and power. The debates on economic expertise and society are so fractured and wide-ranging that some courage is needed to contribute to them. Maesse shows this courage and yet avoids straining the patience of his readers by refraining from spending too much explicitly pointing out the breath of the debates being addressed. In commenting on Maesse’s article, it is incumbent on me to point to this breath, though clearly such an effort must, within the confines of a journal article, remain indicative rather than comprehensive. The discipline of economics itself has, at least in parts, become more reflective on its discourses and its expertise (McCloskey 1983; Samuels and Perry 2011; Carrick-Hagenbarth and Epstein 2012; Lanteri and Vromen 2014). External to the discipline but paying close attention to the profession’s peculiarities have been works such as Fourcade (2009), Mirowski and Plehwe (2009), Plehwe, (2011) and Pautz (2014). More specifically language-focused work particularly pertinent to economics has had a resurgence represented well, for example, by work in a recent special issue (Ali 2014). This, of course, brings us to the diverse traditions of discourse analysis that have addressed our understandings of the economy, and from which Maesse draws, including Diaz-Bone and Krell (2009), Springer (2012) and Wodak and Van Leeuwen (2002). Here and throughout Maesse gives the reader an insight into these debates which is especially useful for those who lack the language

Developing an Elite Formation Index for Comparative Elite Studies: The Case of the Schooling of Irish and UK Cabinet Ministers

Elites and their formation have become a matter of increasing public concern and research interest in recent years. The lessons from such research can be made more generalisable if a measure of elite formation could be developed that is comparable across different elite formation systems, whether they differ by elite, time or country. But, the nature of elite formation renders this a complex task. Nevertheless, in this article, by building upon measures employed in other fields such as industrial economics, indices are constructed that facilitate the comparison of elite formation systems. This is illustrated through a comparison of the schooling of Irish and British cabinet ministers.

Young Men Consuming Newspaper Prostitution: a Discourse Analysis of Responses to Irish Newspaper Coverage of Prostitution

Introduction In this article we look at how young men consume coverage of prostitution in Irish newspapers. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the media, and newspapers in particular, seem to be an important source of information for people (Meade, ). This is especially true in the case of prostitution, as the only contact the citizenry generally have with sex-workers is through the media (Hallgrimsdottir, Phillips and Benoit, ). In many Western countries consuming media is one of the main activities that people, particularly young people, engage in and therefore is the prism through which they view the world (Cushion, : ). Sex and sexuality is a topic particularly worth exploration because of societal concerns about the role of media in influencing sexuality (McManus and Dorfman, ). The study of how the media handles sensitive topics concerned with problematic sexuality has received some attention (Brown, ; Stenvoll, ) and the issue of sexuality in Ireland has also been addressed (Ferriter, ; Inglis, ). However, the area of prostitution in Ireland, and its representation in the media, has received less attention. Additionally our utilisation of discourse analysis is unusual, as is the focus on men. We set out to understand some of the key discursive strategies used by young men in framing their discourse in response to newspaper coverage of prostitution. The next section provides a brief overview of societal and media discourses of prostitution. This is followed by a description of the particular methodological choices made in this research. Two prominent ideological dilemmas are then illustrated by the analysis of extracts from the data. Finally, there is a discussion of the interpretations offered and some conclusions are suggested.

Politics, Economics and Communications

Follow this and additional works at: http://arrow.dit.ie/buschmaroth Part of the Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Comparative Politics Commons, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, Public Affairs Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, and the Social Influence and Political Communication Commons

The Critical Role of Ideas: Understanding Industrial Policy Changes in Ireland in the 1980s

In the current context of economic crisis we examine how earlier Irish governments, also confronted with challenging economic circumstances, sought to alter the country’s industrial policy. During the second half of the 1970s the Irish economy performed relatively well, after weaker performance following the first oil shock. However, recovery proved transitory, as procyclical fiscal policies fed inflation. By the 1980s, the economy shrank, and unemployment and emigration returned. This led to a questioning of industrial policy in place since the 1950s. What changes were made to this policy during the 1980s? And what lessons might this hold for contemporary policy makers? We use the Critical Junctures Theory (CJT) to investigate these questions. According to Hogan (2006) a critical juncture is a multistage event that sets a process of policy change in motion. A crisis can create a situation where extant policies and associated ideas are called into question by change agents. Any subsequent displacement of the extant paradigm by a new set of ideas on how policy should operate can lead to radical policy change. But, without ideational change, policy change will likely be relatively minor — the hierarchy of goals underpinning a policy will remain unaltered and extant policy will soldier on. Through using the CJT we can gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the changes that occurred in Irish industrial policy during the 1980s.

The vital role of ideas in industrial policy changes in Ireland during the 1980s

Employing a discursive institutionalist approach in the form of the critical juncture theory (CJT), this paper examines the nature of the changes to Irish industrial policy in the mid 1980s, a time when the country went through one of its worst economic crises. Did these policy changes, ushered in by the Telesis Report of 1982, constitute a transformation in industrial policy, or a continuation of a previously established policy pathway, and if so why? To answer this question the paper explores the roles played by various change agents, and their ideas, in altering the industrial policy that had been established during the 1950s, when the country first opened up to foreign trade and investment. The findings ultimately help explain why Irish industrial policy did not undergo a radical transformation during the 1980s.

Comparing the Schooling of Irish and UK Cabinet Ministers: A Demonstration of the Usefulness of an Elite Index

Elites and their formation have become of increasing public concern and research interest in recent years. The lessons from such research can be made more generalizable if a measure of elite formation could be developed that is comparable across countries. But, the nature of elite formation renders this a complex task. Nevertheless, in this paper, by building upon measures employed in other fields, such as industrial economics, we construct indices that facilitate the comparison of elite formation across countries. We illustrate this through a comparison of the schooling of Irish and British cabinet ministers.

Strategic Discourse across Organizational Meetings: Towards a Systems Perspective.

Abstract This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics(Langley and Tsoukas, 2010), meso-discourse analysis (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1969) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a ‘system of meetings’. The primary data draws from 130+ hours of recorded meeting proceedings, spanning 58 meeting events, from multiple sub-groups within a medium sized company. The paper first provides an exploration of how organizational participants may broadly construct inter-connectivity between their meetings. The data is initially viewed from both a process and systems perspective:  In process terms, the organizational discourse is conceptualized as a ‘river of discourse’, within which meeting discourses take place, over an evolving time span, and thus contribute to the inter-connectivity of meetings.  In systems terms, the meeting events are conceptualised as interconnected sub-groups of meetings, which in turn are nested within a wider system of meetings, which layer into the still wider organizational system (or system environment) Discourse analysis is used to show how, under either conceptualization, participants discursively construct means of connecting their meetings. Existing concepts such as immutable mobiles (Cooren et al., 2008) and temporal frames (Boden, 1997) are initially applied. Additional concepts such as meeting ‘trans-participants’ and ‘present absentees’ are developed from the data to illustrate the potential for constructing a theory to explain how organization meetings are systemically connected to each other, embedded within the organization and contribute to the ongoing organizing (Weick et al., 2005) process. The paper concludes with an invitation to explore:  the merits of further research on developing this conceptualization of a ‘system of meetings’ using the available data set.  how such a conceptualization may make a theoretical contribution to the organizational and process literature  how a substantive theory in this area could lead to a practical contribution for organizations to improve the use of organizational meetings.

Book review: PAUL DU GAY, Organizing Identity: Persons and Organizations `After Theory'. London: SAGE, 2007. x + 193 pp. £22.19 (pbk)

required by the market, which forces those who can afford them to take private supplementary communicative courses once they have finished high school. Vaish concludes that the integration of pedagogies which favour communicative competence in the Indian national school system, so that the 12 years of English medium instruction is adequate for many employment sectors in the workplace, is a challenge still to be overcome. The author points out that this reform agenda would greatly benefit the disadvantaged who do not have the resources to pay for English classes outside the school system. The reader who underestimates the modest appearance of Biliteracy and Globalization: English Language Education in India will find it surprising how much tension this thin paperback book with no spectacular cover design brings in its 126 pages. To give a flavour of some of the tensions which permeate the text, it is possible to mention the tension between the Net and the Self, the global and the local, linguistic capital for the marketplace and language for culture and spiritual practice, English as the language of globalization and English as the language to subvert social systems which privilege unequal distribution of resources, culturally rooted pedagogical practices and pedagogical practices which respond to marketplace demands. For those of us who were raised in countries where colonization processes almost extinguished linguistic diversity, this book is an enticing narrative. For those who were brought up in highly complex multilingual contexts, it will give them the opportunity to sympathize with or question the point of view of a narrator influenced by a melting pot experience who comes back to her developing country home as a researcher. In conclusion, Biliteracy and Globalization: English Language Education in India is recommended reading for language researchers and teachers, though it will also be interesting to those who want to have a glimpse of the educational system in this fascinating country.

Book reviews: GUIDO ERREYGERS and GEERT JACOBS (eds), Language, Communication and the Economy. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. 240 + vii pp. ISBN 9027227063, 120 (hbk):

This volume is part of a series on Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture edited by Ruth Wodak and Greg Myers. This particular volume is an eclectic mix of empirical studies. Such variety makes it a challenging read. However, it is nicely organized into three sections: Critique, Method and History. The Critique section of the book opens with Deborah Cameron looking at ‘the sociolinguistic consequences of economic globalization’ (p. 9). Various examples from call centres are used to illustrate how scripting (the control of what customer services operators say) and more specifically styling (how they say it) are instances of Fairclough’s (1989) ‘synthetic personalization’. Authenticity seems to be a much-demanded feature of this synthetic personalization. This creates a tension for some workers (e.g. those in a call centre), while others (e.g. telephone-sex workers) seem more au fait with faking authenticity. Gerlinde Mautner’s article complements Cameron’s nicely as it carries a similar view into a fresh area: Mautner evidences how commercial language has come to dominate nonprofit organizations, especially in the university sector. Somewhat in tension with the previous articles, the final article in this section argues that