SoRU	SoRU
Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty RN22 ESA TG04 ISA Risk Societies TASA	Conference
Research Network (RN22) of the European Sociological Association (ESA) Thematic Group (TG04) of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Conferences Workshops Call for Papers Jobs Reading lists News Obituaries	Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD) Second International Conference CADAAD'08 University of Hertfordshire 10-11 July 2008 Session stream 'Risk as Discourse' Chair: Jens Zinn, j.zinn@kent.ac.uk, University of Kent, UK In public and academic discourse risk gained ground in the last decades. Many sociologists believe that risk has become the core category to understand social reproduction and change (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991). However, there are still major debates about the characteristics of risk as a social semantic and how risk occupies a position as a social "master-discourse". This session invites papers from linguistics researchers, sociologists and other social scientists who examine the semantic of risk, how risk discourse takes place in different social domains and how it developed historically. Contributions which reflect on the ideological character of risk are particularly welcome. (1) Public Discussion of Risk and Regulation Peter Lunt (Peter.Lunt@brunel.ac.uk), Brunel University of West London There has been a shift in the regime of regulation of both financial services and communications in the UK in recent years. In both markets new style regulators have been created by act of parliament charged with protecting the interest of citizens and consumers in response to the changing technical, social and economic environments in both these sectors. Both regulators, as well as their technical work in the analysis of emerging risks in their respective markets are also concerned to promote public understanding of risks in these sectors and increase public awareness. As part of a broader study of the relations between publics and regulators we have conducted focus groups with members of the public to discuss with them their understanding of the relationship between law and regulation and to explore with them the role of regulation in their lives. In this paper we map the key themes and varieties of these discussions and relate them to the theory of regulation. The discussions were wide ranging and demonstrated that there is widespread public concern over regulation, that this is represented in diverse and sometimes contradictory discourses raising a variety of critical concerns about the regulators agendas related to the role of public understanding in the regulatory process. (2) Making Risk Meaningful: How Internal Auditors Construct Risk and Risk Management(.pdf) Powerpoint Presentation Michael Page (Mike.Page@port.ac.uk), University of Portsmouth and Laura Spira (laura@spira.fsbusiness.co.uk), Oxford Brookes University Commentators in the field of accounting and corporate governance have recently observed the ways in which discourse reflexively creates perceptions of reality even in the apparently technical activities of audit and risk management. Cultural perceptions of risk have evolved markedly over the centuries and there are incommensurable risk management regimes within and among organisations yet the discourse within corporate governance is of risk as a unifiable, homogeous phenomenon that can be subject to management by bureaucratic systems. Regulatory innovations have the capacity to provide shocks to the system in particular where the regulation is a requirement for increased disclosure. In this research we analyse the ways in which key audit professionals tasked with implementing the Turnbull guidance on internal control and risk management talked about risk and risk management. Analysis of metaphors is used as an investigatory tool to uncover internal auditors' perceptions of risk. Previous frameworks have proposed alternative metaphorical approaches such as 'risk as disease' or 'risk as conflict' whereas we find that internal auditors overwhelmingly regard risk as an object, with the associated concepts that risk can be manipulated and managed. (3) The subject of risk in the Portuguese parliament: the cases of the medically assisted reproduction and of the nuclear energy Tiago Santos Pereira (tsp@ces.uc.pt), António Farinhas Rodrigues (afarinhas@ces.uc.pt), António Carvalho (amcarvalho@ces.uc.pt), João Arriscado Nunes (jan@ces.uc.pt) University of Coimbra, Portugal The contemporary societies are decisively marked by issues of Science and Technology. The paradigm of the double delegation (Callon et al, 2001) is based on the transfer of the authority to work with subjects of administrative and political order to the elected officials and public servants through electoral and administrative mechanisms and the authority to deal with scientific or technical issues to duly certified experts. However, with the emergence of new risks (Beck, 1986) like environmental and health and food safety crisis, it has became pertinent to involve the citizens in a reflexive process of deliberation that transforms them in actors and participants of the decisions in matters of S&T. Some of these exercises include consensus conferences, citizen conferences, citizen juries, citizen panels, foresight exercises and scenario workshops. The national parliaments, spaces par excellence of the legislative work, should also reflect these concerns for the contemporary democracies. In the Portuguese case, due to the inexistence of interface organizations (as cabinets of S&T), the decisions in matters related with C&T, when they involve controversial subjects, are taken without public debates or through broad debates between specialists with different positions. The risk discourse, a constitutive aspect of the debate concerning technological matters, is built and managed in different way by the several members of parliament. Through the analysis of two case studies, the debates in the Portuguese Parliament concerning the nuclear energy and the medically assisted reproduction, we characterized the ways how the Portuguese MP’s use different discourses on the risks concerning the discussed technologies, presenting different characteristics of the point of view of the referred aspects (economic, environmental, ethical and social), of the collective or individual dimensions, of the ideological associations and of the legislative results, having in account, through the chronology of the two case studies, the historical evolution concerning the role that the risk occupies in each one of them. (4) Automatic detection of discourse indicating emerging risk Ágnes Sándor (Agnes.Sandor@xrce.xerox.com) Xerox Research Centre Europe Risk assessment aided by automatic text analysis is generally based on the extraction of event descriptions. The underlying idea is that certain events may lead to danger, and, if such events are taken into consideration in due time, the danger can be identified and avoided. There are two strategies for assessing risk based on event extraction. The first consists of extracting all reported events, after which a subsequent process of some kind (like statistical processing) is needed in order to estimate which events potentially lead to dangerous situations. The second strategy is to establish a list of event types that have led to dangerous situations in the past, and search only for these events (e.g. the event type “a country hires nuclear scientists” might be indicative of nuclear danger). Both strategies can be executed using various approaches, and both have advantages and drawbacks. They can be considered as complementary. We propose a discourse-based approach for the first strategy, i.e. screening risky events out of all the events extracted, as well as a method for carrying out the screening automatically. Our approach for screening relies on the observation that in addition to risk-inducing event types, certain circumstances also typically indicate emerging risk. Based on corpus studies, we have identified a number of such circumstances: the sudden change of a stable situation; singularity, i.e. deviation from habits, practices, norms; or the recognition of dangerous trends. In possible future applications, however, we intend to rely on experts for establishing lists of relevant risk-inducing circumstances in specific fields (like finance, politics, health), since the scope of our expertise is limited to the development of the linguistic processing system. Our method for the automatic detection of circumstances consists in linguistic analysis based on the concept-matching framework. We have developed within this framework various text-mining applications including a proof-of-concept system for risk detection. Concept-matching is used to detect domaindependent predefined concepts. For each concept a system of rules is constructed that match classes of bags of words, called constituent concepts, which are in syntactic dependency relationships with each other in sentences. Our systems have been developed with the XIP (Xerox Incremental Parser) dependency parser. Concept-matching systems yield precise results, and their coverage depends on the coverage of the constituent concepts and that of the bags of words. The detection of the discourse indicating emerging risks could be applied in combination with statistical screening of events and methods based on pre-defined event types. (5) Local Media and Petrochemical Clusters: News from Tarragona Enric Castelló (enric.castello@urv.cat), Rovira i Virgili University, Spain Frame analysis is a fruitful approach for studying the media’s coverage of social conflict. Adapting existing framing research models on media discourses (see Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Hertog and McLeod, 2003 and Van Gorp, 2007), this work analyses the local media coverage of the petrochemical industry in the Tarragona region (Spain). The social debate in the area is about the benefits and the risks of having the main Spanish petrochemical cluster so close to a highly populated area (four hundred thousand inhabitants and near two million in summer). The coverage of the issue exemplifies two main frame packages: one is “petrochemical industries bring progress to society” and the second is “petrochemical industries bring danger and risk to society”. These frames works through a broad typology of topics (in the economic, environment, sociocultural, scientific and health fields) which, through the use of propositions, lexical choice, metaphor, comparison, euphemism and visual images, shape how these frames convey meaning transmission and effectiveness. The author selected and analysed the news pieces referring to the petrochemical industry in Tarragona appearing in five newspapers: the two main locals (Diari de Tarragona and El Punt) and one regional (La Vanguardia) during 2006 and 2007, and the two free newspapers (Més Tarragona and Aquí) during 2007. The research offers an analysis taking into account the cultural resonances of certain discursive formations (related to the regional identity around the industry and the social dependence on petrochemical industry); the sponsors’ activities (essentially the companies; the institutions; and some associations) and the media practices in the zone. In its first stage, the research is based on a quantitative content analysis for measuring the presence of these frames in the local media coverage. Secondly, a more qualitative analysis is planned in order to examine how these frames function through a set of discursive proposals around the petrochemical industries. The results suggest that most of the information is related to the progress frame, which relies on economic impact, improvement of infrastructures and scientific or technological advances. Meanwhile, the risk and danger frame are less present and discourses in this frame use a ‘cushioning’ range of concepts (prevention, security, accuracy, cleaning, decontamination) and stress the non-risk implications in some reports on petrochemical accidents. Frame packaging from alternative sponsors (ecologists and neighbour associations) have a scarce presence. This research is part of a broader research project entitled ‘The Perception of Petrochemical Risk in Tarragona and the European Union. Social Effects of Institutional Communication and Media” supported by the Education and Science Ministry of the Spanish Government (project code: SEJ2007-63095/SOCI). References in this abstract Gamson, William A. and André Modigliani (1989) ‘Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach”. American Journal of Sociology, 95(1): 1-37. Hertog, James K. and Douglas M. McLeod (2003) ‘A Multiperspectival Approach to Framing Analysis: A Field Guide’ in Reese, Stephen D., Oscar H. Gandy, Jr. and August E. Grant (eds.) Framing Public Life. Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. New Jersey and London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Van Gorp, Baldwin (2007) ‘The Constructionist Approach to Framing: Bringing Culture Back In’. Journal of Communication, 57(1): 60-78. (6) Communicating Hurricane Risk: Problematics in Local Public Discourse Catherine F. Smith (SMITHCATH@ecu.edu), Donna J. Kain (KAIND@ecu.edu), John Howard, Tom Crawford, Heather Ward, Roberta Thuman This proposal speaks to how risk discourse takes place in different social domains. In this case, risk pertains to hurricanes or tropical storms. The domains are United States local governments, mass media, and local populations in hurricane-affected regions. In the US, government at all levels has distributed responsibility for communication as a function of public safety and emergency management. In addition, populations in locales that are regularly affected by natural disasters have histories of supplementing official communications with unofficial methods of informing people as they prepare for, respond to, and recover from storms. Situated between government and communities are various mass media sources—television, radio, amateur radio, newspapers, and now the Internet—that generally serve in both official and quasi-official capacities to provide weather warnings and additional emergency information. We will report findings in an ongoing case study of hurricane risk and hazard communication in North Carolina’s coastal zone. Our approach to data collected in interviews with emergency managers, municipal public information officers, residents, business owners, and holiday visitors is to analyze risk and hazard communication as multi-strand public discourse. For analytic purposes, we distinguish institutional (governmental and mass media) and communal (conversational and everyday) strands of discourse. We focus on differences in orientation to context. In preliminary analysis, we find evidence that local governments and mass media differ from local populations in how they make sense of extreme weather events. We argue that these co-participants in the storm context orient to different elements of the context and that they base inferences on different types of knowledge. We generally attribute the differences to differences between organizational and professional culture that emphasizes instrumental roles and goals with reference to systematic knowledge contrasted with community culture that emphasizes personal and social objectives with reference to experiential and historical knowledge. This case study’s relevance for general study of the semantics of risk is primarily to highlight the discursive character of public perception and management of risk. Secondarily, the study identifies thematic differences between institutional and community characterization of storm risk in one locale that might be of interest for comparative studies in other locales. (7) Heart disease and cancer, diet and exercise, vitamins and minerals. The Construction of Lifestyle Risks in Popular Health Discourse(.pdf) Powerpoint Presentation Georg Marko (georg.marko@uni-graz.at), Department of English Studies, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Austria Although recent social theories focus primarily on large-scale ecological risks brought about by technological progress, the concept of risk itself may be even more strongly associated with personal health and its connection to lifestyles. My proposed paper will look at how risk informs our conception of this relation, particular in popular expert-to-lay communication promoting lifestyle changes (keywords: diet, exercise, stress reduction) to avoid cardiovascular diseases, cancer and premature death. I start from the assumption that the salience of risk in a discourse is enhanced by a general negative and pessimistic perspective, focusing on the negative, the critical and the pathological, by a personal tone and a certain degree of informality, supposed to highlight the central role of the individual addressed, her or his health and her or his lifestyle, and a scientific aura, increasing the difference in status between speaker and addressee and increasing the authority of the former’s voice. My analysis will therefore concentrate on the following three large-scale discursive strategies: Negativization means intensifying and foregrounding the negative aspects and downplaying and backgrounding the potential benefits and pleasure dimension of risky acts or habits. Personalization (addressee-orientation) means emphasizing the immediate relevance to, and responsibility of, the addressee. Scientification means conceptualizing the world in scientific terms, with quantification (the conceptualization in terms of quantities, measurements and statistical relations) and fragmentation (conceptualization in terms of components rather than in holistic terms, e.g. nutrients, body parts, etc.) playing important roles. I will examine the linguistic realizations of these strategies in order to critically evaluate their (partly heterogeneous) socio-political implications (particularly with respect to aspects such as personal and individual responsibility and guilt, the status of expertise, the merging of concerns of health and moral obligations, the creation of a paranoid atmosphere in which constant self-observation and self-monitoring and a non-hedonistic and ascetic approach to one’s own body are promoted). The study draws upon the methods of corpus-based discourse analysis, tracing linguistic patterns in large electronic corpora with the help of concordancing programmes. For this purpose, I have compiled a corpus representing the aforementioned popular expert-to-lay discourse on health. It consists of self-help books concerned with cardiovascular diseases (with titles such as 50 Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol, Ultraprevention. The 6-Week Plan That Will Make You Healthy for Life, How to Prevent Your Stroke) and comprises approximately 1.5 million words. (8) The Discourse of Climate Change: A Corpus based approach Ramesh Krishnamurthy (r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk), Reiner Grundmann (r.grundmann@aston.ac.uk), both School of Languages and Social Sciences Aston Univerity Birmingham, UK Powerpoint Presentation Ever since Ulrich Beck published his seminal Risk Society (1986) thesis this has become a focus for much theoretical and empirical research in the area of environmental and health studies. Our aim is to investigate public debates and representations of climate change as an instance of risk discourse. In the past decade or so there have been several studies that looked into CC which could be described as discourse analyses. Some of these sought to establish if an issue attention cycle could be established (e.g. Trumbo 1996), others looked at the differences between nations (Grundmann 2007) or sources of information (Carvalho & Burgess 2004). We want to develop a novel approach that uses corpus based analysis in order to analyse discursive structures and their change over time and across national audiences. We seek to download large quantities of text from the Lexis database through the years 1980-2007 and use textual analysis in order to establish differences and commonalities across time and across countries. This will provide the opportunity to test the hypothesis that national climate change policies resonate with the public discourse. While there has been some attention paid to highly visible countries in the international climate change debate such as the US, the UK and Germany, less is known about other countries. We will first of all examine various claims makers and their claims as made in the media. We will base our analysis on a large dataset and include countries that have been neglected. We will include France in the first instance but aim to include other countries that are crucial in the international process in the future. (9) Risk of Terrorism – a scientific valid fact or a wild guess? (Powerpoint Presentation) Sissel H. Jore (sissel.h.jore@uis.no), Ove Njå (ove.njaa@uis.no) Risk Management University of Stavanger, Norway Risk management is introduced by the American authorities as a key tool to plan and execute terrorism mitigation: ”Risk management, a strategy for helping policymakers make decisions about assessing risks, allocating resources, and taking actions under conditions of uncertainty, has been endorsed by Congress and the President as a way to strengthen the nation against possible terrorist attacks.” (GAO 2005, United States Government Accountability Office). Others claim that terrorism is a stark reminder of the limit of risk management; it brings home the potential ungovernability of modern societies, and how those with little power can work cheaply and effectively to destroy. This article discusses different discourses of risk and risk management in the light of terrorism and the threat of terrorist attacks. Would different discourses on terrorism lead to different types of risk management strategies, and would different discourses on risk management lead to different strategies for protecting the society? In addition to the risk management-approach, authorities in the USA and the UK have also chosen a precautionary principle-approach to the risk of terrorism. The precautionary principle implies that scientific uncertainty or ambiguity is no excuse for inaction against serious or irreversible risks. The precautionary principle is particularly aimed at overcoming the burden of proving that a risk is real or imminent, and the principle authorizes protective government action even when the risk is regarded quite uncertain or remote, but could turn out to be very harmful. This principle implies a different discourse than the risk management discourse because how to understand the terrorism risk and when to act upon the terrorism threat is fundamentally different. Whether the decision makers choose a risk-based or a precaution-based approach to the terrorism risk, will have implications for the level of security measures implemented in the society. The article identifies three main discourses on the foundation of risk; the classical natural scientific approach, the Bayesian approach and the social scientific approach to risk. The different discourses have different implications on what the foundations of risk are, and what knowledge claims that can be done in its name. The article outlines how different discourses on risk management could totally disturb the risk communication and the results from analyses of terrorism threats. The paper concludes on connections between the risk discourses and the subsequent decision strategies. (10) Risk Politicisation Strategies in EU Immigration Policy (.pdf) (Powerpoint Presentation) Maria João Militão Ferreira (mferreira@iscsp.utl.pt / mjfamadora@clix.pt) Technical University of Lisbon / Institute of Social and Political Sciences My paper concerns the growing security continuum between immigration and security in the European Union. I try to answer the question: is immigration being considered as a security risk at EU level? Through critical discourse analysis, I intend to study how European Union’s institutions are constructing the linkage between immigration and security, in particular in terms of risk politicisation, and how that translates into policy-making at European Union level. My purpose is to combine several approaches on risk politicisation in an attempt to understand the interplay between cultural contexts, biopower, identity construction and exclusion in European policies devise to manage immigration flows towards ‘fortress Europe’. I draw resources from culturalist (risk and culture / grid-group cultural theory), structuralist (risk and governamentality), critical (risk and ethics) and post-modern theories (risk and estrangement). As it is acknowledged in literature, politicisation highly depends on discursive practices. Although I intend to refer to these diverse types of theoretical perspectives on risk, I specifically explore in what ways grid-group cultural theory can be used, as a heuristic device, to frame policy outcomes in European immigration policy. The grid-group cultural theory was developed mainly through the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas. The theory claims that two dimensions frame social contexts: grid (individuation/regulation) and group (social incorporation/membership). From this dimensions four dynamically related cultural types emerged: hierarchy, fatalism, egalitarianism and individualism, derived from corresponding cultural biases. These cultural biases entail different risk politicisation strategies. Policy tracing in European immigration policies besides demonstrating the prominence of the triad European Parliament, European Commission and Justice and Home Affairs Council, has also shown that their attitudes towards policy-making reveal different cultural biases according to the grid-group typology. In this paper I argue that, concerning European immigration policy, the intergovernmental weight and the reactive nature of the political process is promoting a fettered environment for policy-making, which combined with asymmetrical transactions, is favouring a hierarchic rationality. Through a critical discourse analysis, of existing European legislation regarding immigration and asylum, I assess on what grounds the predominance of such bias may lead to the securitization of the European Union’s immigration policy. (11) Risk as Discourse. Perspectives for further Research Jens O. Zinn (j.zinn@kent.ac.uk) Additional papers not presented: Choice and Safety as techniques of governance Ewen Speed (esspeed@essex.ac.uk) University of Essex, UK This paper will consider policies and processes designed to enhance quality and reduce risk in the provision of health care services. Firstly, taking the ‘choice agenda’ in UK National Health Service health care provision as a case study, the paper will explore the utility of regarding discourses of ‘choice’ as an invocation of moralism. Quality control with an end goal of improved service provision for the end user, rather than quality control as a means of reducing expenditure, is a much harder discourse for health professionals to resist. Whereas previously health professionals were required to meet financial targets, they are now excepted to meet quality targets in addition to financial targets, and these quality targets are often given more primacy. This moralism fundamentally alters the discursive construction of the performance metrics, whilst simultaneously increasing the capacity of these discourses to constrain and delimit professional practice. No health professional can say that improving patient experience is a bad thing. In turn, this makes it hard for professionals to resist this quality agenda. Through a consideration of the development of discourses of consumerism and consumption, this paper will explore the rise of ‘choice as quality assurance’ in the UK. Secondly, a similar invocation of moralism will be considered in relation to processes of regulation. By considering the polices and procedures of organisations like the National Patient Safety Agency, (NPSA) and other similar organisations such as the Care Quality Commission, (CQC) the paper will identify similar moral processes being invoked in relation to processes of regulation. However, this paper will argue that it is in relation to processes of regulation that more resistance can be identified. The regulation discourse is often countered through invocation of a craft discourse, such that regulation is decried for obviating the role of learned craft in professional practice. In conclusion, this paper will make explicit the often implicit moralisms invoked in processes of quality assurance and risk regulation. It will highlight how these moral discourses have replaced fiscal ones, and how these new metrics might be regarded as much more effective means of constraining and delimiting professional practice. ‘Choice and safety’ can just as easily be read as discourses of quality and risk, which gives them a somewhat different intentionality. Critical Discourse Analysis Approach to the Evolution of Narratives about Colombia’s Armed Conflict Erika M Rodriguez- Pinzón (erikamaria.rodriguez@uam.es), Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain Although the armed conflict in Colombia between leftist guerrillas and government was born in the Cold War in the last years this conflict has been framed on the international “war on terror”. Communist guerrillas have become in “guerrillas narco-terrorists” and other actors like extreme right wing paramilitary groups has occupied a big part of the confrontation. In spite of its growing intensity, the war has remains being internal, and Colombia remains being a country far to the international conflict areas as Middle-East, not just geographically but also in terms of resources and military power importance. If Colombia doesn’t appear to be a threat, at least not directly or imminent, to USA, why has it becomes the third global receptor of military aid from America? The question could be answered using the classical geopolitical arguments. But this answer doesn’t fulfil the question about how USA understands the dynamics of the war, and why Colombia’s armed conflict becomes recently a hot debate between Democrats and Republicans at US Congress. This explanation either allows us to understand the dynamics of the groups involved in the conflict and their own perceptions and actions modified by the US behaviour. In order to have a widest vision of the conflict and their international explanations, in this proposal I apply the “critical analysis of discourses” as a tool to understand how the United State’s narrative about Colombia’s armed conflict was build and which their implications have been. The paper is divided in three sections. The first one is a reference to the uses of “critical discourses analysis on international security” especially after 9-11 attacks. It attempts to focus on the practical application of discourse analysis methods. In the second part I suggest a model of analysis for Colombian case, in order to explain the variation of the narratives about the Colombia’s war in the international context. Finally it is presented a brief analysis about the impact of the narrative changes in the dynamics of the conflict and especially in the own discourse of the main actors of the conflict. This ongoing research is an effort to show the relevance of critical analysis as a tool to understand complex phenomena of the international system. Although the discourse analysis relevance is regarded as being a very important tool, it is not the only one that explains the existence and development of the conflict. Political, economic, geographical and social analyses are necessary to understand Colombia’s war, and only, through the use of multiple approaches, Social and Political Sciences will give a contribution to achieve peace. On the Grammars of Risk and Threat in Security Studies Holger Stritzel (H.Stritzel@lse.ac.uk), Department of International Relations, LSE, UK The discipline of security studies has for a long time been dominated by a concern with ‘threats’ in world politics. The so-called linguistic turn in international relations and security studies has turned this concern into a growing body of innovative conceptual studies on the linguistic dynamics of threat constructions as ‘securitisations’ (Waever), ‘discourses of danger’ (Weldes) or ‘the politics of insecurity’ (Huysmans). At the same time, ‘alliance theories’ (Waltz, Walt) or studies on ‘security communities’ (Adler, Barnett) and ‘security complexes’ (Buzan) have focused on the broad patterns of what constitutes a transnational security space, based on common conceptions of threat. Recently, this concern has been supplemented by studies on ‘risks’ in international relations and security studies, mainly by drawing on risk sociology (Rasmussen) or Foucault (Aradau, van Munster). This has also led to a growing body of empirical application on security institutions as ‘risk management institutions’ (Coker) or the politics of risk as insurance (Lobo-Guerrero) and biopolitics (Dillon). The paper seeks to explore the grammars of risk and threat in security studies by analysing these recent academic discourses. What is at the heart of the notion of threat and risk in security studies and how have they been applied to international politics? Is there room for dialogue between the two concepts? Finally, how can the academic discourse on risk and threat in security studies be analysed with the tools made available by Critical Discourse Analysis? The paper proposes to drawn on speech act theory and the concept of ‘performativity’ to understand the discursive dynamics of risk and threat as specific grammars of security in international relations.

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Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD)

Second International Conference CADAAD'08
University of Hertfordshire
10-11 July 2008

Session stream
'Risk as Discourse'
Chair: Jens Zinn, j.zinn@kent.ac.uk, University of Kent, UK

In public and academic discourse risk gained ground in the last decades. Many sociologists believe that risk has become the core category to understand social reproduction and change (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991). However, there are still major debates about the characteristics of risk as a social semantic and how risk occupies a position as a social "master-discourse". This session invites papers from linguistics researchers, sociologists and other social scientists who examine the semantic of risk, how risk discourse takes place in different social domains and how it developed historically. Contributions which reflect on the ideological character of risk are particularly welcome.

(1) Public Discussion of Risk and Regulation
Peter Lunt (Peter.Lunt@brunel.ac.uk), Brunel University of West London

There has been a shift in the regime of regulation of both financial services and communications in the UK in recent years. In both markets new style regulators have been created by act of parliament charged with protecting the interest of citizens and consumers in response to the changing technical, social and economic environments in both these sectors. Both regulators, as well as their technical work in the analysis of emerging risks in their respective markets are also concerned to promote public understanding of risks in these sectors and increase public awareness. As part of a broader study of the relations between publics and regulators we have conducted focus groups with members of the public to discuss with them their understanding of the relationship between law and regulation and to explore with them the role of regulation in their lives. In this paper we map the key themes and varieties of these discussions and relate them to the theory of regulation. The discussions were wide ranging and demonstrated that there is widespread public concern over regulation, that this is represented in diverse and sometimes contradictory discourses raising a variety of critical concerns about the regulators agendas related to the role of public understanding in the regulatory process.

(2) Making Risk Meaningful: How Internal Auditors Construct Risk and Risk Management(.pdf)
Powerpoint Presentation
Michael Page (Mike.Page@port.ac.uk), University of Portsmouth and Laura Spira (laura@spira.fsbusiness.co.uk), Oxford Brookes University

Commentators in the field of accounting and corporate governance have recently observed the ways in which discourse reflexively creates perceptions of reality even in the apparently technical activities of audit and risk management. Cultural perceptions of risk have evolved markedly over the centuries and there are incommensurable risk management regimes within and among organisations yet the discourse within corporate governance is of risk as a unifiable, homogeous phenomenon that can be subject to management by bureaucratic systems.
Regulatory innovations have the capacity to provide shocks to the system in particular where the regulation is a requirement for increased disclosure. In this research we analyse the ways in which key audit professionals tasked with implementing the Turnbull guidance on internal control and risk management talked about risk and risk management.
Analysis of metaphors is used as an investigatory tool to uncover internal auditors' perceptions of risk. Previous frameworks have proposed alternative metaphorical approaches such as 'risk as disease' or 'risk as conflict' whereas we find that internal auditors overwhelmingly regard risk as an object, with the associated concepts that risk can be manipulated and managed.

(3) The subject of risk in the Portuguese parliament: the cases of the medically assisted reproduction and of the nuclear energy
Tiago Santos Pereira (tsp@ces.uc.pt), António Farinhas Rodrigues (afarinhas@ces.uc.pt), António Carvalho (amcarvalho@ces.uc.pt), João Arriscado Nunes (jan@ces.uc.pt) University of Coimbra, Portugal

The contemporary societies are decisively marked by issues of Science and Technology. The paradigm of the double delegation (Callon et al, 2001) is based on the transfer of the authority to work with subjects of administrative and political order to the elected officials and public servants through electoral and administrative mechanisms and the authority to deal with scientific or technical issues to duly certified experts. However, with the emergence of new risks (Beck, 1986) like environmental and health and food safety crisis, it has became pertinent to involve the citizens in a reflexive process of deliberation that transforms them in actors and participants of the decisions in matters of S&T. Some of these exercises include consensus conferences, citizen conferences, citizen juries, citizen panels, foresight exercises and scenario workshops.
The national parliaments, spaces par excellence of the legislative work, should also reflect these concerns for the contemporary democracies. In the Portuguese case, due to the inexistence of interface organizations (as cabinets of S&T), the decisions in matters related with C&T, when they involve controversial subjects, are taken without public debates or through broad debates between specialists with different positions.
The risk discourse, a constitutive aspect of the debate concerning technological matters, is built and managed in different way by the several members of parliament.
Through the analysis of two case studies, the debates in the Portuguese Parliament concerning the nuclear energy and the medically assisted reproduction, we characterized the ways how the Portuguese MP’s use different discourses on the risks concerning the discussed technologies, presenting different characteristics of the point of view of the referred aspects (economic, environmental, ethical and social), of the collective or individual dimensions, of the ideological associations and of the legislative results, having in account, through the chronology of the two case studies, the historical evolution concerning the role that the risk occupies in each one of them.

(4) Automatic detection of discourse indicating emerging risk
Ágnes Sándor (Agnes.Sandor@xrce.xerox.com) Xerox Research Centre Europe

Risk assessment aided by automatic text analysis is generally based on the extraction of event descriptions.
The underlying idea is that certain events may lead to danger, and, if such events are taken into
consideration in due time, the danger can be identified and avoided.
There are two strategies for assessing risk based on event extraction. The first consists of extracting all reported events, after which a subsequent process of some kind (like statistical processing) is needed in order to estimate which events potentially lead to dangerous situations. The second strategy is to establish a list of event types that have led to dangerous situations in the past, and search only for these events (e.g. the event type “a country hires nuclear scientists” might be indicative of nuclear danger). Both strategies can be executed using various approaches, and both have advantages and drawbacks. They can be considered as complementary.
We propose a discourse-based approach for the first strategy, i.e. screening risky events out of all the events extracted, as well as a method for carrying out the screening automatically.
Our approach for screening relies on the observation that in addition to risk-inducing event types, certain circumstances also typically indicate emerging risk. Based on corpus studies, we have identified a number of such circumstances: the sudden change of a stable situation; singularity, i.e. deviation from habits, practices, norms; or the recognition of dangerous trends. In possible future applications, however, we intend to rely on experts for establishing lists of relevant risk-inducing circumstances in specific fields (like finance, politics, health), since the scope of our expertise is limited to the development of the linguistic processing system. Our method for the automatic detection of circumstances consists in linguistic analysis based on the concept-matching framework. We have developed within this framework various text-mining applications including a proof-of-concept system for risk detection. Concept-matching is used to detect domaindependent
predefined concepts. For each concept a system of rules is constructed that match classes of bags
of words, called constituent concepts, which are in syntactic dependency relationships with each other in sentences. Our systems have been developed with the XIP (Xerox Incremental Parser) dependency parser.
Concept-matching systems yield precise results, and their coverage depends on the coverage of the
constituent concepts and that of the bags of words.
The detection of the discourse indicating emerging risks could be applied in combination with statistical screening of events and methods based on pre-defined event types.

(5) Local Media and Petrochemical Clusters: News from Tarragona
Enric Castelló (enric.castello@urv.cat), Rovira i Virgili University, Spain

Frame analysis is a fruitful approach for studying the media’s coverage of social conflict. Adapting existing framing research models on media discourses (see Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Hertog and McLeod, 2003 and Van Gorp, 2007), this work analyses the local media coverage of the petrochemical industry in the Tarragona region (Spain). The social debate in the area is about the benefits and the risks of having the main Spanish petrochemical cluster so close to a highly populated area (four hundred thousand inhabitants and near two million in summer). The coverage of the issue exemplifies two main frame packages: one is “petrochemical industries bring progress to society” and the second is “petrochemical industries bring danger and risk to society”. These frames works through a broad typology of topics (in the economic, environment, sociocultural, scientific and health fields) which, through the use of propositions, lexical choice, metaphor, comparison, euphemism and visual images, shape how these frames convey meaning transmission and effectiveness.
The author selected and analysed the news pieces referring to the petrochemical industry in Tarragona appearing in five newspapers: the two main locals (Diari de Tarragona and El Punt) and one regional (La Vanguardia) during 2006 and 2007, and the two free newspapers (Més Tarragona and Aquí) during 2007. The research offers an analysis taking into account the cultural resonances of certain discursive formations (related to the regional identity around the industry and the social dependence on petrochemical industry); the sponsors’ activities (essentially the companies; the institutions; and some associations) and the media practices in the zone.
In its first stage, the research is based on a quantitative content analysis for measuring the presence of these frames in the local media coverage. Secondly, a more qualitative analysis is planned in order to examine how these frames function through a set of discursive proposals around the petrochemical industries. The results suggest that most of the information is related to the progress frame, which relies on economic impact, improvement of infrastructures and scientific or technological advances. Meanwhile, the risk and danger frame are less present and discourses in this frame use a ‘cushioning’ range of concepts (prevention, security, accuracy, cleaning, decontamination) and stress the non-risk implications in some reports on petrochemical accidents. Frame packaging from alternative sponsors (ecologists and neighbour associations) have a scarce presence.
This research is part of a broader research project entitled ‘The Perception of Petrochemical Risk in Tarragona and the European Union. Social Effects of Institutional Communication and Media” supported by the Education and Science Ministry of the Spanish Government (project code: SEJ2007-63095/SOCI).
References in this abstract
Gamson, William A. and André Modigliani (1989) ‘Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach”. American Journal of Sociology, 95(1): 1-37.
Hertog, James K. and Douglas M. McLeod (2003) ‘A Multiperspectival Approach to Framing Analysis: A Field Guide’ in Reese, Stephen D., Oscar H. Gandy, Jr. and August E. Grant (eds.) Framing Public Life. Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. New Jersey and London: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Van Gorp, Baldwin (2007) ‘The Constructionist Approach to Framing: Bringing Culture Back In’. Journal of Communication, 57(1): 60-78.

(6) Communicating Hurricane Risk: Problematics in Local Public Discourse
Catherine F. Smith (SMITHCATH@ecu.edu), Donna J. Kain (KAIND@ecu.edu), John Howard, Tom Crawford, Heather Ward, Roberta Thuman

This proposal speaks to how risk discourse takes place in different social domains. In this case, risk pertains to hurricanes or tropical storms. The domains are United States local governments, mass media, and local populations in hurricane-affected regions. In the US, government at all levels has distributed responsibility for communication as a function of public safety and emergency management. In addition, populations in locales that are regularly affected by natural disasters have histories of supplementing official communications with unofficial methods of informing people as they prepare for, respond to, and recover from storms. Situated between government and communities are various mass media sources—television, radio, amateur radio, newspapers, and now the Internet—that generally serve in both official and quasi-official capacities to provide weather warnings and additional emergency information.
We will report findings in an ongoing case study of hurricane risk and hazard communication in North Carolina’s coastal zone. Our approach to data collected in interviews with emergency managers, municipal public information officers, residents, business owners, and holiday visitors is to analyze risk and hazard communication as multi-strand public discourse.
For analytic purposes, we distinguish institutional (governmental and mass media) and communal (conversational and everyday) strands of discourse. We focus on differences in orientation to context. In preliminary analysis, we find evidence that local governments and mass media differ from local populations in how they make sense of extreme weather events. We argue that these co-participants in the storm context orient to different elements of the context and that they base inferences on different types of knowledge. We generally attribute the differences to differences between organizational and professional culture that emphasizes instrumental roles and goals with reference to systematic knowledge contrasted with community culture that emphasizes personal and social objectives with reference to experiential and historical knowledge.
This case study’s relevance for general study of the semantics of risk is primarily to highlight the discursive character of public perception and management of risk. Secondarily, the study identifies thematic differences between institutional and community characterization of storm risk in one locale that might be of interest for comparative studies in other locales.

(7) Heart disease and cancer, diet and exercise, vitamins and minerals. The Construction of Lifestyle Risks in Popular Health Discourse(.pdf)
Powerpoint Presentation
Georg Marko (georg.marko@uni-graz.at), Department of English Studies, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Austria

Although recent social theories focus primarily on large-scale ecological risks brought about by technological progress, the concept of risk itself may be even more strongly associated with personal health and its connection to lifestyles. My proposed paper will look at how risk informs our conception of this relation, particular in popular expert-to-lay communication promoting lifestyle changes (keywords: diet, exercise, stress reduction) to avoid cardiovascular diseases, cancer and premature death.
I start from the assumption that the salience of risk in a discourse is enhanced by a general negative and pessimistic perspective, focusing on the negative, the critical and the pathological, by a personal tone and a certain degree of informality, supposed to highlight the central role of the individual addressed, her or his health and her or his lifestyle, and a scientific aura, increasing the difference in status between speaker and addressee and increasing the authority of the former’s voice. My analysis will therefore concentrate on the following three large-scale discursive strategies:
Negativization means intensifying and foregrounding the negative aspects and downplaying and backgrounding the potential benefits and pleasure dimension of risky acts or habits.
Personalization (addressee-orientation) means emphasizing the immediate relevance to, and responsibility of, the addressee.
Scientification means conceptualizing the world in scientific terms, with quantification (the conceptualization in terms of quantities, measurements and statistical relations) and fragmentation (conceptualization in terms of components rather than in holistic terms, e.g. nutrients, body parts, etc.) playing important roles.
I will examine the linguistic realizations of these strategies in order to critically evaluate their (partly heterogeneous) socio-political implications (particularly with respect to aspects such as personal and individual responsibility and guilt, the status of expertise, the merging of concerns of health and moral obligations, the creation of a paranoid atmosphere in which constant self-observation and self-monitoring and a non-hedonistic and ascetic approach to one’s own body are promoted).
The study draws upon the methods of corpus-based discourse analysis, tracing linguistic patterns in large electronic corpora with the help of concordancing programmes. For this purpose, I have compiled a corpus representing the aforementioned popular expert-to-lay discourse on health. It consists of self-help books concerned with cardiovascular diseases (with titles such as 50 Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol, Ultraprevention. The 6-Week Plan That Will Make You Healthy for Life, How to Prevent Your Stroke) and comprises approximately 1.5 million words.

(8) The Discourse of Climate Change: A Corpus based approach
Ramesh Krishnamurthy (r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk), Reiner Grundmann (r.grundmann@aston.ac.uk), both School of Languages and Social Sciences Aston Univerity Birmingham, UK
Powerpoint Presentation

Ever since Ulrich Beck published his seminal Risk Society (1986) thesis this has become a focus for much theoretical and empirical research in the area of environmental and health studies. Our aim is to investigate public debates and representations of climate change as an instance of risk discourse. In the past decade or so there have been several studies that looked into CC which could be described as discourse analyses. Some of these sought to establish if an issue attention cycle could be established (e.g. Trumbo 1996), others looked at the differences between nations (Grundmann 2007) or sources of information (Carvalho & Burgess 2004). We want to develop a novel approach that uses corpus based analysis in order to analyse discursive structures and their change over time and across national audiences. We seek to download large quantities of text from the Lexis database through the years 1980-2007 and use textual analysis in order to establish differences and commonalities across time and across countries. This will provide the opportunity to test the hypothesis that national climate change policies resonate with the public discourse. While there has been some attention paid to highly visible countries in the international climate change debate such as the US, the UK and Germany, less is known about other countries. We will first of all examine various claims makers and their claims as made in the media. We will base our analysis on a large dataset and include countries that have been neglected. We will include France in the first instance but aim to include other countries that are crucial in the international process in the future.

(9) Risk of Terrorism – a scientific valid fact or a wild guess? (Powerpoint Presentation)
Sissel H. Jore (sissel.h.jore@uis.no), Ove Njå (ove.njaa@uis.no) Risk Management
University of Stavanger, Norway

Risk management is introduced by the American authorities as a key tool to plan and execute terrorism mitigation: ”Risk management, a strategy for helping policymakers make decisions about assessing risks, allocating resources, and taking actions under conditions of uncertainty, has been endorsed by Congress and the President as a way to strengthen the nation against possible terrorist attacks.” (GAO 2005, United States Government Accountability Office). Others claim that terrorism is a stark reminder of the limit of risk management; it brings home the potential ungovernability of modern societies, and how those with little power can work cheaply and effectively to destroy. This article discusses different discourses of risk and risk management in the light of terrorism and the threat of terrorist attacks. Would different discourses on terrorism lead to different types of risk management strategies, and would different discourses on risk management lead to different strategies for protecting the society? In addition to the risk management-approach, authorities in the USA and the UK have also chosen a precautionary principle-approach to the risk of terrorism. The precautionary principle implies that scientific uncertainty or ambiguity is no excuse for inaction against serious or irreversible risks. The precautionary principle is particularly aimed at overcoming the burden of proving that a risk is real or imminent, and the principle authorizes protective government action even when the risk is regarded quite uncertain or remote, but could turn out to be very harmful. This principle implies a different discourse than the risk management discourse because how to understand the terrorism risk and when to act upon the terrorism threat is fundamentally different. Whether the decision makers choose a risk-based or a precaution-based approach to the terrorism risk, will have implications for the level of security measures implemented in the society. The article identifies three main discourses on the foundation of risk; the classical natural scientific approach, the Bayesian approach and the social scientific approach to risk. The different discourses have different implications on what the foundations of risk are, and what knowledge claims that can be done in its name. The article outlines how different discourses on risk management could totally disturb the risk communication and the results from analyses of terrorism threats. The paper concludes on connections between the risk discourses and the subsequent decision strategies.

(10) Risk Politicisation Strategies in EU Immigration Policy (.pdf)
(Powerpoint Presentation)
Maria João Militão Ferreira (mferreira@iscsp.utl.pt / mjfamadora@clix.pt)
Technical University of Lisbon / Institute of Social and Political Sciences

My paper concerns the growing security continuum between immigration and security in the European Union. I try to answer the question: is immigration being considered as a security risk at EU level?
Through critical discourse analysis, I intend to study how European Union’s institutions are constructing the linkage between immigration and security, in particular in terms of risk politicisation, and how that translates into policy-making at European Union level.
My purpose is to combine several approaches on risk politicisation in an attempt to understand the interplay between cultural contexts, biopower, identity construction and exclusion in European policies devise to manage immigration flows towards ‘fortress Europe’. I draw resources from culturalist (risk and culture / grid-group cultural theory), structuralist (risk and governamentality), critical (risk and ethics) and post-modern theories (risk and estrangement). As it is acknowledged in literature, politicisation highly depends on discursive practices.
Although I intend to refer to these diverse types of theoretical perspectives on risk, I specifically explore in what ways grid-group cultural theory can be used, as a heuristic device, to frame policy outcomes in European immigration policy.
The grid-group cultural theory was developed mainly through the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas. The theory claims that two dimensions frame social contexts: grid (individuation/regulation) and group (social incorporation/membership). From this dimensions four dynamically related cultural types emerged: hierarchy, fatalism, egalitarianism and individualism, derived from corresponding cultural biases. These cultural biases entail different risk politicisation strategies.
Policy tracing in European immigration policies besides demonstrating the prominence of the triad European Parliament, European Commission and Justice and Home Affairs Council, has also shown that their attitudes towards policy-making reveal different cultural biases according to the grid-group typology.
In this paper I argue that, concerning European immigration policy, the intergovernmental weight and the reactive nature of the political process is promoting a fettered environment for policy-making, which combined with asymmetrical transactions, is favouring a hierarchic rationality. Through a critical discourse analysis, of existing European legislation regarding immigration and asylum, I assess on what grounds the predominance of such bias may lead to the securitization of the European Union’s immigration policy.

(11) Risk as Discourse. Perspectives for further Research
Jens O. Zinn (j.zinn@kent.ac.uk)

Additional papers not presented:

Choice and Safety as techniques of governance
Ewen Speed (esspeed@essex.ac.uk) University of Essex, UK

This paper will consider policies and processes designed to enhance quality and reduce risk in the provision of health care services. Firstly, taking the ‘choice agenda’ in UK National Health Service health care provision as a case study, the paper will explore the utility of regarding discourses of ‘choice’ as an invocation of moralism. Quality control with an end goal of improved service provision for the end user, rather than quality control as a means of reducing expenditure, is a much harder discourse for health professionals to resist. Whereas previously health professionals were required to meet financial targets, they are now excepted to meet quality targets in addition to financial targets, and these quality targets are often given more primacy. This moralism fundamentally alters the discursive construction of the performance metrics, whilst simultaneously increasing the capacity of these discourses to constrain and delimit professional practice. No health professional can say that improving patient experience is a bad thing. In turn, this makes it hard for professionals to resist this quality agenda. Through a consideration of the development of discourses of consumerism and consumption, this paper will explore the rise of ‘choice as quality assurance’ in the UK.

Secondly, a similar invocation of moralism will be considered in relation to processes of regulation. By considering the polices and procedures of organisations like the National Patient Safety Agency, (NPSA) and other similar organisations such as the Care Quality Commission, (CQC) the paper will identify similar moral processes being invoked in relation to processes of regulation. However, this paper will argue that it is in relation to processes of regulation that more resistance can be identified. The regulation discourse is often countered through invocation of a craft discourse, such that regulation is decried for obviating the role of learned craft in professional practice.

In conclusion, this paper will make explicit the often implicit moralisms invoked in processes of quality assurance and risk regulation. It will highlight how these moral discourses have replaced fiscal ones, and how these new metrics might be regarded as much more effective means of constraining and delimiting professional practice. ‘Choice and safety’ can just as easily be read as discourses of quality and risk, which gives them a somewhat different intentionality.

Critical Discourse Analysis Approach to the Evolution of Narratives about Colombia’s Armed Conflict
Erika M Rodriguez- Pinzón (erikamaria.rodriguez@uam.es), Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain

Although the armed conflict in Colombia between leftist guerrillas and government was born in the Cold War in the last years this conflict has been framed on the international “war on terror”. Communist guerrillas have become in “guerrillas narco-terrorists” and other actors like extreme right wing paramilitary groups has occupied a big part of the confrontation. In spite of its growing intensity, the war has remains being internal, and Colombia remains being a country far to the international conflict areas as Middle-East, not just geographically but also in terms of resources and military power importance.
If Colombia doesn’t appear to be a threat, at least not directly or imminent, to USA, why has it becomes the third global receptor of military aid from America? The question could be answered using the classical geopolitical arguments. But this answer doesn’t fulfil the question about how USA understands the dynamics of the war, and why Colombia’s armed conflict becomes recently a hot debate between Democrats and Republicans at US Congress. This explanation either allows us to understand the dynamics of the groups involved in the conflict and their own perceptions and actions modified by the US behaviour.
In order to have a widest vision of the conflict and their international explanations, in this proposal I apply the “critical analysis of discourses” as a tool to understand how the United State’s narrative about Colombia’s armed conflict was build and which their implications have been. The paper is divided in three sections. The first one is a reference to the uses of “critical discourses analysis on international security” especially after 9-11 attacks. It attempts to focus on the practical application of discourse analysis methods.
In the second part I suggest a model of analysis for Colombian case, in order to explain the variation of the narratives about the Colombia’s war in the international context.
Finally it is presented a brief analysis about the impact of the narrative changes in the dynamics of the conflict and especially in the own discourse of the main actors of the conflict.
This ongoing research is an effort to show the relevance of critical analysis as a tool to understand complex phenomena of the international system. Although the discourse analysis relevance is regarded as being a very important tool, it is not the only one that explains the existence and development of the conflict. Political, economic, geographical and social analyses are necessary to understand Colombia’s war, and only, through the use of multiple approaches, Social and Political Sciences will give a contribution to achieve peace.

On the Grammars of Risk and Threat in Security Studies
Holger Stritzel (H.Stritzel@lse.ac.uk), Department of International Relations, LSE, UK

The discipline of security studies has for a long time been dominated by a concern with ‘threats’ in world politics. The so-called linguistic turn in international relations and security studies has turned this concern into a growing body of innovative conceptual studies on the linguistic dynamics of threat constructions as ‘securitisations’ (Waever), ‘discourses of danger’ (Weldes) or ‘the politics of insecurity’ (Huysmans). At the same time, ‘alliance theories’ (Waltz, Walt) or studies on ‘security communities’ (Adler, Barnett) and ‘security complexes’ (Buzan) have focused on the broad patterns of what constitutes a transnational security space, based on common conceptions of threat. Recently, this concern has been supplemented by studies on ‘risks’ in international relations and security studies, mainly by drawing on risk sociology (Rasmussen) or Foucault (Aradau, van Munster). This has also led to a growing body of empirical application on security institutions as ‘risk management institutions’ (Coker) or the politics of risk as insurance (Lobo-Guerrero) and biopolitics (Dillon).

The paper seeks to explore the grammars of risk and threat in security studies by analysing these recent academic discourses. What is at the heart of the notion of threat and risk in security studies and how have they been applied to international politics? Is there room for dialogue between the two concepts? Finally, how can the academic discourse on risk and threat in security studies be analysed with the tools made available by Critical Discourse Analysis? The paper proposes to drawn on speech act theory and the concept of ‘performativity’ to understand the discursive dynamics of risk and threat as specific grammars of security in international relations.

Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines (CADAAD)

Second International Conference CADAAD'08 University of Hertfordshire 10-11 July 2008

Second International Conference CADAAD'08
University of Hertfordshire
10-11 July 2008