Coherence Co-constructed: Using Coherence for Analysis and Transformation of Social Conflicts

Ali Ersen Erol

doi:10.13021/g81019

Coherence Co-constructed: Using Coherence for Analysis and Transformation of Social Conflicts

Narrative and Conflict Explorations in Theory and Practice ◽

10.13021/g81019 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 65 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ali Ersen Erol

Keyword(s):

Prime Minister ◽

Social Conflicts ◽

Narrative Coherence ◽

Alternative Approach ◽

Critical Approaches ◽

Dominant Discourses

Narrative coherence is a much-debated subject, primarily because different approaches to coherence leave us with an either/or predicament. We can either pay attention to rather modernist approaches that attempt to map meaning structures in a given text to locate points of coherence; or, we can pay attention to critical approaches that suggest even seeking coherence results in confirming with dominant discourses and narratives in a given context. This article is an attempt in reconciliation between these two approaches to provide an alternative approach to the question: what makes texts cohere? Using a political rally ad Turkish Prime Minister used to counter the protests that took place in Turkey during the summer of 2013, the article demonstrates how coherence is constructed as a relationship between a text and an audience based on semiotic markers that refer to historical and ideological narratives.

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Faith, Identity and Magical Realism in Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons

Advances in Language and Literary Studies ◽

10.7575/aiac.alls.v.12n.4.p.115 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 115

Author(s):

Leen Arkhagha ◽

Yousef Awad

Keyword(s):

Magical Realism ◽

Analytical Approach ◽

British Identity ◽

Faith Based ◽

Critical Approaches ◽

Textual Approach ◽

Dominant Discourses ◽

Racial Discourses

This article adopts a literary analytical approach to illuminate the use of magical realism in the contemporary Anglophone Arab narrative of Leila Aboulela’s Bird Summons (2019). The study follows a methodology which combines two critical approaches to magical realism: first, a textual approach, and then a contextual one. Accordingly, the study uses key magical realist elements in Bird Summons to delineate the poetics of magical realism within the narrative, before determining the context in which magical realism functions in the narrative. Simultaneously, the study benefits from Christopher Warnes’s two strands of magical realism, ‘faith-based magical realism’ and ‘irreverent magical realism’ in providing a coherent basis for the use of magical realism in the text. This study aims at examining the significance of the magical realist narrative in articulating Arab British identity in Bird Summons. The analysis will interpret the role of magical realism in conveying and undermining the dominant ethnic and racial discourses which shape Arab British identities in Britain. The study’s findings demonstrate how the use of magical realism in the examined Anglophone Arab novel reinforces the fictional purposes of Aboulela as a hyphenated Arab, as it allows her to undermine dominant discourses on hyphenated Arab identities. At the same time, the use of magical realism allows Aboulela to (re)construct Arab British identities within her novel, apart from essentialist views of identity.

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Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song

10.5871/bacad/9780197262887.001.0001 ◽

2003 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Mary-Ann Constantine ◽

Gerald Porter

Keyword(s):

Charles Dickens ◽

Oral Tradition ◽

Folk Song ◽

Oral Traditions ◽

Narrative Coherence ◽

Cultural Contexts ◽

Oral Transmission ◽

Critical Approaches ◽

Traditional Song ◽

Traditional Songs

This book is about traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, publications) overwhelmingly suggest that apparently ‘broken’ and drastically shortened versions of songs are not perceived as incomplete by those who sing them. This study turns the focus on these ‘dog-ends’ of oral tradition, and looks closely at how very short texts convey meaning in performance by working the audience's knowledge of a highly allusive idiom. What emerges is the tenacity of meaning in the connotative and metaphorical language of traditional song, and the extraordinary adaptability of songs in different cultural contexts. Such pieces have a strong metonymic force: they should not be seen as residual ‘last leaves’ of a once complete tradition, but as dynamic elements in the process of oral transmission. Not all song fragments remain in their natural environment, and this book also explores relocations and dislocations as songs are adapted to new contexts: a ballad of love and death is used to count pins in lace-making, song-snippets trail subversive meanings in the novels of Charles Dickens. Because they are variable and elusive to dating, songs have had little attention from the literary establishment: the authors of this book show both how certain critical approaches can be fruitfully applied to song texts, and how concepts from studies in oral traditions prefigure aspects of contemporary critical theory. Coverage includes English, Welsh, Breton, American, and Finnish songs.

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Critical approaches to study abroad: Challenging dominant discourses

Theory Into Practice ◽

10.1080/00405841.2020.1743547 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 59 (3) ◽

pp. 245-248

Author(s):

Kathy Obenchain ◽

Stephanie Oudghiri ◽

JoAnn Phillion

Keyword(s):

Study Abroad ◽

Critical Approaches ◽

Approaches To Study ◽

Dominant Discourses

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Statebuilding, Security-Sector Reform, and the Rule of Law

The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190904418.013.34 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 472-487

Author(s):

Paul Jackson

Keyword(s):

Rule Of Law ◽

Community Response ◽

Security Sector Reform ◽

Security Sector ◽

Sector Reform ◽

International Intervention ◽

Institutional Politics ◽

Alternative Approach ◽

Critical Approaches ◽

Critical Literature

Security-sector reform (SSR) and rule of law (ROL) approaches to international intervention have become a major element of the international community response to conflict since the 1990s. This international architecture that surrounds SSR and ROL privileges a particular form of knowledge that reflects a technocratic approach to security. This is reflected in the technocratic process of policy and also in the wider literature. Research into the literature itself shows that there are three core themes that dominate: state-centric approaches, technocratic approaches, and approaches to local ownership. These comprise a current, linear approach to SSR and ROL that ignores much of the critical literature on peacebuilding. Incorporating critical approaches could provide an alternative approach to SSR and ROL in terms of incorporating nonlinear underlying features, including a better understanding of institutional politics, an emphasis on process rather than structures, and analysis of the hidden politics of security and legal reform.

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