Continued commentary article: The essentiality of essentialism and the symbolic violence of critical discourse analysis

摘要

In this review essay, I will consider three possible areas of weakness in Dervin and Layne's article published in the previous issue of this journal. First, I will take issue with their idea that the document in question is indeed about what it claims to be about - the cultural competence of international students. Taking this as one valid ostensible function of the document, it is proposed that Dervin and Layne have, nonetheless, skewed their own interpretation towards the 'cultural' under the influence of the document itself by ignoring that it might also serve other purposes of the university or Finnish universities in general. Second, moving back to the cultural perspective, I will take issue with their own stance towards Oh Behave!, taking up Coleman's point about applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to such a document and considering the implications of their own ideology (understood here in the broad sense as 'a set of ideas'). Third, I will reconsider the overall value of documents such as the Finnish University Guide for international students.