Dariusz Galasiński

An open letter to The BMJ editors on qualitative research

Seventy six senior academics from 11 countries invite The BMJ ’s editors to reconsider their policy of rejecting qualitative research on the grounds of low priority. They challenge the journal to develop a proactive, scholarly, and pluralist approach to research that aligns with its stated mission

Metalanguage : social and ideological perspectives

Metalanguage brings together new, original contributions on peoples knowledge about language and representations of language, e.g., representations of dialects, styles, utterances, stances and goals in relation to sociolinguistic theory, sociolinguistic accounts of language variation, and accounts of linguistic usage. The book follows from and complements a great tradition of the study of metalanguage, reflexivity, and metapragmatics, and offers a new, integrating perspective from various fields of sociolingustics: perceptual dialectology, variationism, pragmatics, critical discourse analysis, and social semiotics. The broad range of theoretical issues and accessible style of writing will appeal to advanced students and researchers in sociolinguistics and in other disciplines across the social sciences and humanities including linguists, communication researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, social psychologists, critical and social theorists. The book includes chapters by Deborah Cameron, Nikolas Coupland, Dariusz Galasi?ski, Peter Garrett, Adam Jaworski, Tore Kristiansen, Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, Dennis Preston, Theo van Leeuwen, Kay Richardson, Itesh Sachdev, Angie Williams, and John Wilson.

Questionnaires and Lived Experience: Strategies of Coping With the Quantitative Frame:

The article focuses on informants’ interaction with questionnaires as a method of collecting data and analyzes how the informants struggle with the reality imposed on them by the instruments’ items. Focusing on a social psychological questionnaire used to explore experience, the authors challenge the link between the data that are collected and what is concluded from them, and particularly the notion that such conclusions offer insight into informants’ experiences. The data the article is based on come from a session in which informants were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to examine feelings and behaviors after a job loss and to “think aloud” while doing it. The authors describe three strategies of dealing with the questionnaire frame: rejecting it, constructing experience in a way that matches the instrument, and, finally, reformulating the questionnaire’s questions. The article concludes by arguing that the process of filling in a questionnaire results in the experiences that the instrument is designed to examine being made irrelevant and their complexity far too great for a-contextual quantification.

Reconfiguring East-West identities: Cross-Generational discourses in German and Polish border communities

This article takes its data from one of two sets of communities studied as part of a British ESRC project into discursive constructions of identity. In this paper we argue three interrelated points. Firstly, we show the ways in which different elicitation formats of interviewee responses foreground variable aspects in peoples identification. Secondly, we show how similar elicitation methods produced different criss-crossings of identification which render summary generalisations about identities in these communities problematic. Thirdly, we highlight the fluid and often paradoxical nature of multiple identifications across the different layers with which people choose to engage.

A three-talk model for shared decision making: multistage consultation process

Objectives To revise an existing three-talk model for learning how to achieve shared decision making, and to consult with relevant stakeholders to update and obtain wider engagement. Design Multistage consultation process. Setting Key informant group, communities of interest, and survey of clinical specialties. Participants 19 key informants, 153 member responses from multiple communities of interest, and 316 responses to an online survey from medically qualified clinicians from six specialties. Results After extended consultation over three iterations, we revised the three-talk model by making changes to one talk category, adding the need to elicit patient goals, providing a clear set of tasks for each talk category, and adding suggested scripts to illustrate each step. A new three-talk model of shared decision making is proposed, based on “team talk,” “option talk,” and “decision talk,” to depict a process of collaboration and deliberation. Team talk places emphasis on the need to provide support to patients when they are made aware of choices, and to elicit their goals as a means of guiding decision making processes. Option talk refers to the task of comparing alternatives, using risk communication principles. Decision talk refers to the task of arriving at decisions that reflect the informed preferences of patients, guided by the experience and expertise of health professionals. Conclusions The revised three-talk model of shared decision making depicts conversational steps, initiated by providing support when introducing options, followed by strategies to compare and discuss trade-offs, before deliberation based on informed preferences.

Strategies of Talking to Each Other Rule Breaking in Polish Presidential Debates

Two television debates between candidates for the Polish presidency, Aleksander Kwasniewski and Lech Wa4psa were held in the week preceding the second round of elec-tions in 1995. At the beginning of both debates, the moderator explained the rules-agreed to by the two candidates-strictlyapportioning communicative rights. The candidates were not to address each other or refer to each others statements, restricting their utterances to answering questions posed by the moderator and journalists. In both debates, however, the candidates either addressed the other candidate directly to ask a question or challenge a point, or they directly responded to the opponents statement, even though the response was irrelevant to the question they had been asked. These actions were usually accompanied by mitigatingdevices. An analysis of these devices is presented and explanation offered as to why in some cases none were used. The devices are discussed as instances of the pretence of cooperation.

Agency in foreign news: A linguistic complement of a content analytical study

Abstract The paper reports the results of a quantitative content analysis focussing on representations of the foreign in the British and Polish presses, taking these results as a frame of reference for a qualitative critical linguistic analysis. The two analytical modes apparently yield two different sets of results, yet when juxtaposed they can be used to inform each other and provide a unified interpretation in which the insights of each method are complementary. Our analysis suggests that quantitative content analysis may be most useful as a means of revealing at least some of the media coverage of the moment. Critical linguistic analysis, however, complements this in its ability to reveal long-standing patterns of discursive representations with their systemic biases and preferences.

Psychiatrists’ Accounts of Insight

Our main aim was to examine how insight into schizophrenia is discursively represented in psychiatrists’ accounts, how these accounts relate to the current psychiatric literature on insight, and their potential clinical consequences. The article is anchored in the constructionist view of discourse and is based on nine semistructured interviews with specialist psychiatrists. We discuss three dimensions of insight into schizophrenia in the data we collected: a sense of illness, criticism, and readiness to receive treatment. We argue that they are embodiments of the dominant medical perspective in the relations between patients and physicians. Whereas in the former two it is possessing and accepting psychiatric knowledge which constitutes having insight, in the latter it is unquestioning acceptance and trust in whatever treatment the doctor deems fit to administer. We conclude with a discussion of medicalization of experience of mental illness, which appears to be the preferred mode of patient narrative for psychiatrists.

The last Romantic hero: Lech Wałęsa’s image-building in TV presidential debates

In this paper we analyze the strategies of Lech Walesas image-building as a powerful leader of the nation. We argue that Walesa realizes three different versions of his leadership which are founded on the following defining criteria: his anti-Communism, heroism and working-class background. The paper is based upon the transcripts of two 1995 television presidential debates between Walesa and his counter candidate, Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Following broadly Goffmans work on self-presentation and the social constructionist approach to discourse, we argue that Walesa linguistically constructs his image in these debates situating himself within long-standing tradition of the Polish Romantic hero. We draw parallels between his projected self-image and the well-established characters from the Polish nineteenth century literature and pre-World War II Polish history. Given that these literary and historical traditions have a strong presence in the heritage and the collective consciousness of the Polish nation, Walesa positions himself as a credible candidate who is both their inheritor and continuator.

Shopping for a New Identity Constructions of the Polish–German border in a Polish Border community

This article aims to show the varying constructions of the Polish–German border in the Polish border town of Zgorzelec. We are interested in how informants from three generations discursively position the frontier itself and the two towns on its either side: Polish Zgorzelec and German Görlitz. The data comes from a Europe-wide ethnographic project studying communities living on the borders between the European Union (EU) and its ascendant nations, funded by the European Commissions Fifth Framework Programme. We suggest that the inhabitants of Zgorzelec construct the border on two planes: public and private. In the public sphere, the border is constructed as a means of identifying ‘us Poles’ against all those living on the other side. In those nationalized terms, the border is also constructed as protecting Poland and Zgorzelecs (Polish) community. On the other hand, in the private sphere, the border is represented as virtually invisible allowing the individual to cross it for shopping or entertainment. The border becomes a gateway in which the individual becomes a customer, a shopper with his or her national identity pushed to the background. We also show that the two spheres intersect, creating spaces in which the two orders of discourse are made to co-exist and the discursive mechanisms of separation run next to the mechanisms of inclusion. We explore our informants’ discourses as mediated by the historical context of common experience (eviction, displacement, communism) pertaining mostly to the older generation and by the cultural-economic context (shopping, entertainment) largely in the case of our younger informants.