The Influence of Medialization to Legal Discourse Concerning Context, Media and Social Power

Medialization has become like digitalization, rationalization, dynamization, globalization, pluralization, hybridization, and differentialization and is one of the buzzwords of modern Western industrialized societies, which are all together essentially responsible for structural change in communication. Medialization means the adaption of producers to media logics, media formats, and media routines ＆ workflows. There are consequently and logically influences because of the dynamic process of medialization to legal discourse and genres, law, media, and social power. It has to be discussed if the logics, data formats, and routines ＆ workflows of new media and information and communication technologies （ICTs） like social media are creating also a new generation of genres and novel form of legal discourses. Also, if social media will replace or complete old classic media （law of Riepl）, the question of the relevance of law concerning new ＆ social media has to be answered in close future. Lastly, if to the fore of social power, these new novel resources are actually framing for problem-based inquiries in law. There are big chances but also serious risks in cyberworld, their realities, and dangers. There actually exists an urgent call of action to theory building, development of methodologies, and empirical research.

Request-Refusal Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Teledramas From the Perspective of Social Power

This study was designed to explore the issue of request-refusal strategies in Chinese setting by establishing a corpus of vedio clips of contemporary Chinese teledramas on the basis of an overview of previous studies on Chinese refusal strategies. In the present study, we chose 3,970 short sequences of video clips from 35 Chinese teledramas which vividly described the Chinese people＇s life in the contemporary times. Taking the two variables of power and distance as reference points, nine situations were designed in this study. Elaborate refusal strategies were consecutively elicited in the nine situations of the 35 contemporary Chinese teledrama serials from the perspective of social power in the study.

Marx’s Ontology of Social Power System for Ecological Justice

Historical materialism provides the ontology basis to understand the contemporary ecological justice problem,which is the perspective for analyzing ecological interests from the nature,structure,and transition of the social power system.The transcendence of Marx’s thoughts on western mainstream environmental justice theory lies that it does not based on the“speculative ontology”of metaphysics,but on the basis of“realistic ontology”of social power system.

Methodology of Marx for Ecological Justice

Historical materialism provides a methodology for solving the problem of ecological justice,that is,consciously constructing the socialist power system is the prerequisite and foundation for realizing ecological justice.In essence,the fundamental nature of the socialist power system,namely,“affinity to the people”,determines the realistic possibility of ecological justice.

An intersectional gender analysis of familial and socio-cultural drivers of inequitable scientific career progression of researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Background:Sub-Saharan Africa(SSA)suffers from a dearth of concrete information on the causes of women’s under-representation in scientific research workforce particularly at higher levels compared with the wealth of information that exists in the global north.The goal of this study was to illuminate familial and socio-cultural drivers that contribute to intersectional gender inequities in scientific career progression in SSA to inform strategies that could promote career equity for African scientific researchers.Methods:This study was nested within the context of‘Developing Excellence in Leadership,Training and Science in Africa’(DELTAS Africa)—a health-based scientific research capacity strengthening initiative.It adopted an exploratory qualitative cross-sectional study design.In-depth interviews were conducted among 58(32 Female and 26 Male)trainees/research fellows at various career stages,affiliated to three purposively selected African Research Consortia.The interviews were conducted between May and December 2018 in English.The data were analysed inductively based on emergent themes.Results:The study participants were nationals of thirteen SSA countries.More female than male participants had young children.Four themes were identified.They illustrate women’s and men’s characterisation of the normative career pathway and progression requirements which calls for significant‘time’commitments(theme 1),and how social power relations of gender within the family and wider society shapes their participation in scientific research activities(theme 2).This culminates in researchers’’differential experiences of navigating between the‘two different lives’—family and career,and the resultant implications for their career progression and personal well-being(theme 3).Women researchers made different and conscious trade-offs for navigating the‘two different lives’by utilising various metaphors such as the‘biological clock and career clock’,the‘glass ball and rubber ball’,and the concept of‘sacrifice’(theme 4).Conclusions:This study is the first of its kind to demonstrate how intersectional gender analysis through use of qualitative research methods may provide novel insights into the hidden familial and socio-cultural drivers of gender inequitable scientific research career progression.It offers important policy and practice measures and approaches for fostering career equity for women and men scientists within research capacity strengthening initiatives in SSA.

A Contrastive Pragmatic Study of Politeness Strategies in Disagreement between Native Speakers of English and Chinese EFL Learners

This paper attempts to make a contrastive cross-cultural study of a special speech act-- ＂disagreement.＂ Participants are 35 American undergraduates and 42 Chinese undergraduates respectively with the data eliciting technique--DCT （discourse completion test）. Findings show that Chinese undergraduates tend to use different politeness strategies according to different social distance and social power while American undergraduates prefer to use positive politeness strategy most followed by negative politeness strategy, regardless of social distance and social power. The results of the study reveal cultural differences between the U.S. and China that lead to the distribution of diverse politeness strategies and also offer insights into what Chinese EFL learners are struggling with during their development of interlanguage pragmatic competence.