title: Waltzing on the Vienna Consensus on Drug Control? Tensions in the International System for the Control of Drugs

authors: Boister, Neil

abstract: This article examines the tensions within the international drug control system which are putting the until now consensual position in regard to the prohibition on drugs supply and use for anything other than medical and scientific use – the Vienna Consensus – under strain. The article examines a number of areas where policy stress is leading to controversy about potential violation of international drug control treaty obligations by states parties. Drawing a comparison with earlier periods of stress when drug control fell under the League of Nations, it suggests that what appears to be occurring is a shift in the Vienna consensus, and that the drug conventions are sufficiently flexible to permit resulting shifts in practice, although reform would be preferable.

text: Waltzing on the Vienna Consensus on Drug Control? Tensions in the International System for the Control of Drugs This article examines the tensions within the international drug control system which are putting the until now consensual position in regard to the prohibition on drugs supply and use for anything other than medical and scientific use – the Vienna Consensus – under strain. The article examines a number of areas where policy stress is leading to controversy about potential violation of international drug control treaty obligations by states parties. Drawing a comparison with earlier periods of stress when drug control fell under the League of Nations, it suggests that what appears to be occurring is a shift in the Vienna consensus, and that the drug conventions are sufficiently flexible to permit resulting shifts in practice, although reform would be preferable.

year: 2016

title: Bundle-driven metadiscourse analysis: Sentence initial bundles in Chinese and New Zealand postgraduates' thesis writing

authors: Li, Liang

subjects: computer science

abstract: Metadiscourse and lexical bundles are two closely related concepts and both operate as overlapping functional units in texts. Metadiscourse analysis always takes a top-down approach, in which discourse analysts begin from pre-determined metadiscourse items down to the analysed texts. Lexical bundle analysis usually uses a bottom-up approach, in which the analysis begins with bundles, extracted automatically from texts, up to generate metadiscourse items to reach an understanding of the discourse. The bundle-driven bottom-up approach is likely to lead to the discovery of longer metadiscourse units and create new categories, while at the same time allowing for the verification of existing researchergenerated metadiscourse lists. While many researchers have focused on examining metadiscourse in academic writing, few studies have used a bottom up approach beginning with lexical bundles in this way to explore the use of metadiscourse. Moreover, research on sentence initial bundles is rare. The present study explores the metadiscourse functions of generated four-word sentence initial bundles from the corpora of Chinese L2 and New Zealand L1 masters and PhD theses, and compares bundle distributions between L1 and L2 thesis writing. Except for a few propositional bundles, all the other bundles were identified as metadiscourse bundles and two new categories (introduction bundles and condition bundles) were created in to supplement those in Hyland's (2005a, 2005c) metadiscourse model. In contrast to New Zealand thesis writing, both the Chinese masters and PhD corpora were characterised by the heavy use of code gloss bundles (e.g. In other words, the), condition bundles (e.g. In the case of) and booster bundles (e.g. It is obvious that), and a relatively low use of endophoric bundles (e.g. The use of the), introduction bundles (e.g. There are a number), attitude bundles (e.g. It is interesting to), hedge bundles (e.g. It is possible that) and self-mention bundles (e.g. In this chapter, I). These findings indicate how productive bundle-driven metadiscourse analysis is in expanding the scope of current metadiscourse studies. It also suggests that L2 students could benefit from having attention drawn to lexical bundles as metadiscourse devices to support their academic writing.

text: Bundle-driven metadiscourse analysis: Sentence initial bundles in Chinese and New Zealand postgraduates' thesis writing Metadiscourse and lexical bundles are two closely related concepts and both operate as overlapping functional units in texts. Metadiscourse analysis always takes a top-down approach, in which discourse analysts begin from pre-determined metadiscourse items down to the analysed texts. Lexical bundle analysis usually uses a bottom-up approach, in which the analysis begins with bundles, extracted automatically from texts, up to generate metadiscourse items to reach an understanding of the discourse. The bundle-driven bottom-up approach is likely to lead to the discovery of longer metadiscourse units and create new categories, while at the same time allowing for the verification of existing researchergenerated metadiscourse lists. While many researchers have focused on examining metadiscourse in academic writing, few studies have used a bottom up approach beginning with lexical bundles in this way to explore the use of metadiscourse. Moreover, research on sentence initial bundles is rare. The present study explores the metadiscourse functions of generated four-word sentence initial bundles from the corpora of Chinese L2 and New Zealand L1 masters and PhD theses, and compares bundle distributions between L1 and L2 thesis writing. Except for a few propositional bundles, all the other bundles were identified as metadiscourse bundles and two new categories (introduction bundles and condition bundles) were created in to supplement those in Hyland's (2005a, 2005c) metadiscourse model. In contrast to New Zealand thesis writing, both the Chinese masters and PhD corpora were characterised by the heavy use of code gloss bundles (e.g. In other words, the), condition bundles (e.g. In the case of) and booster bundles (e.g. It is obvious that), and a relatively low use of endophoric bundles (e.g. The use of the), introduction bundles (e.g. There are a number), attitude bundles (e.g. It is interesting to), hedge bundles (e.g. It is possible that) and self-mention bundles (e.g. In this chapter, I). These findings indicate how productive bundle-driven metadiscourse analysis is in expanding the scope of current metadiscourse studies. It also suggests that L2 students could benefit from having attention drawn to lexical bundles as metadiscourse devices to support their academic writing.

year: 2017

title: Using Twitter in an Indigenous language: An analysis of te reo Māori tweets

authors: Keegan, Te Taka Adrian Gregory

abstract: Language revitalization theory suggests that one way to improve the health of a language is to increase the number of domains where the language is used. Social network platforms provide a variety of domains where indigenous- language communities are able to communicate in their own languages. Although the capability exists, is social networking being used by indigenous- language communities? This paper reports on one particular social networking platform, Twitter, by using two separate methodologies. First, Twitter statistics collated from the Indigenous Tweets website are analysed. The data show that languages such as Basque, Haitian Creole, Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Frisian and Kapampangan do have a presence in the “Twittersphere”. Further analysis for te reo Māori (the Māori language) shows that tweets in te reo Māori are rising and peak when certain events occur. The second methodology involved gathering empirical data by tweeting in te reo Māori. This served two purposes: it allowed an ancillary check on the validity of the Indigenous Tweets data and it allowed the opportunity to determine if the number of indigenous- language tweets could be influenced by the actions of one tweeter.

text: Using Twitter in an Indigenous language: An analysis of te reo Māori tweets Language revitalization theory suggests that one way to improve the health of a language is to increase the number of domains where the language is used. Social network platforms provide a variety of domains where indigenous- language communities are able to communicate in their own languages. Although the capability exists, is social networking being used by indigenous- language communities? This paper reports on one particular social networking platform, Twitter, by using two separate methodologies. First, Twitter statistics collated from the Indigenous Tweets website are analysed. The data show that languages such as Basque, Haitian Creole, Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Frisian and Kapampangan do have a presence in the “Twittersphere”. Further analysis for te reo Māori (the Māori language) shows that tweets in te reo Māori are rising and peak when certain events occur. The second methodology involved gathering empirical data by tweeting in te reo Māori. This served two purposes: it allowed an ancillary check on the validity of the Indigenous Tweets data and it allowed the opportunity to determine if the number of indigenous- language tweets could be influenced by the actions of one tweeter.

year: 2015