Stop Panicking: stop panic buying, and stop stockpiling food!

Stop Panicking: stop panic buying, and stop stockpiling food!

To anyone who, before now, didn’t fully understand the concept of “the tragedy of the commons”, look around you to what is happening in Ireland during the spread of Covid-19, which the World Health Organisation has recently classified as a pandemic.


It sounds scary when something is classified with a word as powerful as “pandemic”. Add a tense movie-thriller-sounding qualifying word to pandemic, such as Covid-19, and there is plenty of reason to let your thoughts disappear down a movie script dystopian style rabbit hole of horror scenarios.

The irony of the situation is that the only horror that is likely to occur form panic-driven stockpiling of food and (bizarrely) toiletries will be to the old, sick and vulnerable in society, who are the ones that we must surely try our hardest to protect. They are after all the ones most likely to suffer most during the pandemic.

A letter to the Irish Times criticising a criticiser of political correctness: An example of free speech taking a crack at freedom of speech by criticising freedom to define sexuality.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/pc-or-not-pc-1.3182691

(Follow the link above or skip down to the letter if you've come here from my facebook link)

A short letter I wrote last year to the Irish Times taking a crack at an article by #LarissaNolan in which she criticised 'political correctness' and loud hailed the impending disintegration of free speech! I forgot to post it last year... anyway here it is! Perceptions of the purpose and relevance of political correctness are apparently dividing people more and more, and therefore becoming more pertinent.

Political correctness in modes of expression is essentially tied to language and discourse. The understanding of the extent to which language and discourse enact power has been evidenced in writings as old as 450 years: 'the pen is mightier than the sword' and all that kinda craic, but just older again. It's certainly not a new notion. But still the idea persists that 'freedom of speech' is absolute, and that it means that it ought to be inconsequential to say anything, to anyone, or any group, anytime. 

Social Power and Privilege in Society.

Development Perspectives Workshop: Hosted by Stephanie Kirwan and Bobby McCormack.

On Thursday October 26^th last, Stephanie Kirwan and Bobby McCormack, of Development Perspectives, hosted a fascinating workshop in the Carmelite Centre in Dublin City. The workshop focused on ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in society, specifically the invisibility of power and privilege, and how it creates and maintains particular sets of norms and conventions which sustain unequal access to social capital, and resources.  Under guidance from Bobby and Stephanie, the conversation developed quite organically taking us down an enlightening rabbit hole of issues surrounding topics such as education, social status, language, discourse, rights, duties, obligations, privileges, and responsibilities etc.

There was a broad range of people from different backgrounds in attendance bringing multiple perspectives to the table.

The event inspired me to write about power and privilege in society. So here it is…

(As a quick disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Development Perspectives and the views in this article are entirely my own)

Storms, Surfers, and Peculiar Irish Nannyism: A national discourse of alarmist paternalism

By Nick Doran

"Discourse" (a word with many meanings) - for the purposes of this article I am taking it to be a general societal viewpoint or understanding, activated and maintained by, and through, language within a particular socio-historical context. It is viewed as social action and is instrumental in maintaining and creating power in social relations. Concepts, both experienced in reality and experienced through language and discourse, have been shown to activate the same areas of the brain pointing to the power of language and discourse in creating social and political realities and structures.

In South Korea most of the population cannot swim. This is a fact. So when on the beaches of South Korea, if you wander in past your waist, the lifeguards will charge you down, quite aggressively, to bring you back in from the brink of disaster. It doesn't matter what credentials or skill you display. From a societal perspective you need to be protected. Following from this, 55 million South Koreans must adhere to the lowest common denominator of water sports capabilities under the weight of society's collective cognitive predisposition towards paternalism. Regardless of whether one can swim or not, policy dictates that you must not. There has been little critical thought put into the attendant policies. Undoubtedly, South Korea's recent history, and psychological legacy resulting from massive human loss and suffering during the Korea War plays a role in this societal drive towards paternalism or guardianism. The culture of guardianism is driven by a developmental ideology rather than critical understanding. This ideological stance is so pertinent in South Korea that a friend, who sea kayaked around South Korea some years back, was followed by a Coastguard escort the entire way around the peninsula for 3 weeks.

Irish Times Letter to the Editor: Banning Cluster Bombs (2008)

Letter to the Editor: Irish Times 2008

Madam, - Dermot Ahern (March 6th) writes a prolix defence in reaction to Nuala Ahern's article of March 4th and Margaretta D'Arcy's letter of March 5th, both of which question the Government's actions regarding banning cluster bomb munitions.

Mr Ahern cites his contacts with Minister for Finance Brian Cowen, and with the National Pensions Reserve Fund Commission, "with a view to ensuring that no public funds are invested in any company involved in or associated with the production of cluster munitions".

After this woolly statement, the Minister goes on to say he is "proud that Ireland is leading efforts to combat cluster munitions and passionately hope that a convention will be agreed here in May".

The question remains, however: does Ireland have investment in companies which produce cluster bomb munitions? - Yours, etc,


NICK DORAN, Sandyford Road, Dundrum, Dublin 14.

An excerpt from my Doctoral Thesis introduction: A comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of British and Irish media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

The issue at question: Media representations of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.

Media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict (hereafter IPC) has become increasingly diversified in recent years. This diversification of news in general, and the IPC in particular, have occurred somewhat in parallel with the rapid growth of the fields of critical thinking in language and discourse analysis. Critical Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Systemic Functional Linguistic, Cognitive Discourse Analysis and Discourse Semantics are just some of the areas which have contributed to the impressive body of knowledge about human communication and the dialectic that language, ideology and power maintain in societies.

The Road to hell… and all that: how intentionality and social and discursive loci of the words you speak can act as a window onto your values.

Understandings of the concepts of "language" and "discourse" are slaves to what might be called “common sense” – the notion that through adherence to a logic of social norms we might better navigate surrounding social orders. 

“Words are just words”, “sticks and stones…”, “actions speak louder than words”, are generally considered strong guiding principles in relation to people's attitude towards, and understanding of the purpose of language.

The socio-linguistic function and representation of science and scientific discovery in society

I have recently been thinking about the broader function of science and the application of scientific rules, processes and language in relation to society, cognition and discourse.

Science is simply observation, probability analysis, pattern recognition and discovery. By that definition all people are scientists on some level.  We discover that if we drop a glass from height on a hard surface it will, in all probability, shatter. If the action is repeated we discover that, all things being equal, it will probably shatter again. A simple scientific discovery has been made, albeit without the formalities of academic rigour, control, scope, method and conclusion. It is nonetheless scientific in a broad sense.

A thought about my Reasons for Writing this Blog

Like most people, every day, from when I wake to when I sleep my mind is consumed with thoughts of one kind or another.  Basically I daydream lots. I reckon that this is the natural state of the human mind: figuring out items, events, states, actions, reactions and problems.  Is that not what daydreaming and 'zoning out' entail: the ability to process life.  Anyway, daydreaming is an important part of what I do to navigate the world around me.  When I'm not daydreaming I'm usually over thinking things - whatever that might mean.  In fact I was once told that I think too much. On receiving the information I began to think about why someone might think that I think too much. Then I thought about that for a while until I drifted into a daydream... lovely stuff.  

(Critical) Discourse Analysis Briefly Explained

"Discourse Analysis" means the examination and study of communicative events. The term “communicative event” refers to any act of communication whether it is written, spoken, pictorial, or sign. A communicative event can consist of anything from a single morpheme (a single meaningful unit of language such as a word or a meaningful part of a word) to a book, speech, film, TV series, political speech, news report, or other semiotic event.