Michelle Lazar

• National University of Singapore

Branchial arches represent embryological precursors of the face, neck, and pharynx, and developmental abnormalities of these branchial arch derivatives can lead to airway anomalies. We report definitive repair of the fistula in an infant with a rare congenital laryngopharyngo-cutaneous fistula. This is the first report that describes a 2-stage fibe...

This article examines how the gendered dichotomization of spaces continues to operate as a patriarchal technology for the maintenance of hierarchical social orders in the contemporary period. Adopting a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) perspective, this article considers the extent to which the gendered nei-wai (‘inside’/’outside’) spati...

Pink Dot SG is an LGBTQ social movement in Singapore, which since its inception in 2009 organizes an annual free‐to‐all public gathering in the Speaker's Corner at Hong Lim Park. Over the years, the gathering has grown in size, and has gained national and international visibility. Prior to the event each year, a set of official YouTube promotional...

The introduction ‘Politics of the “South”’ refers simultaneously to the thematic focus of the special issue on political discourse studies in the southern hemisphere as well as a theoretical focus on the geopolitics of academic knowledge production and exchange. In the first part, concerns regarding the geopolitics of knowledge in the social scienc...

In commenting on the articles in this special issue, I focus on a sociolinguistics of gender and sexual stereotyping through a transnational perspective. Defining stereotypes as distillations of types of persons and practices expressive of ideological meanings and integral to power relations, a sociolinguistics study of stereotyping is proposed as...

This article frames the Special Issue on ‘Discourse, Gender and Sexuality from the Global South’. It does so by providing an overview of the notion of the South in the social sciences and the humanities. We engage, in particular, with current theoretical discussions around a set of concepts and approaches that have been labelled ‘southern theories’...

Pink Dot SG is a non-profit social movement launched by LGBTQ Singaporeans to rally support for Singapore's LGBTQ community. Every year, since its inception in 2009, it organises a free-to-all public event, which attracts increasingly larger crowds. In this article, I undertake a critical multimodal analysis of one of its official promotional video...

Femininity is work. Theoretical notions of ‘doing’ and ‘performing’ femininity have pointed to the actual labour involved in constituting identity. An integral aspect of heterosexual feminine identity labour in many cultures is beautification or the doing of beauty work. Women, as part of doing heterosexual femininity, are expected to undertake ser...

Traditional gender stereotypes of women have been a common feature of consumer advertisements. In response to feminist criticisms against these stereotypical representations, as well as in recognition of a rising population of female wage earners in industrial societies, advertisers have 'updated' their representations of women as strong, confident...

Metaphors are commonly viewed as a figurative literary device that adds eloquence to a speech or text. The assumptions underlying this popular understanding of metaphors are that they are a property of words; they are used to achieve some artistic or rhetorical effect; they are based on a relationship of similarity between two entities; they are a...

The relationship between beauty practices, femininity and feminism is well documented in the scholarly literature. In many societies, ‘doing’ beauty is a vital component of ‘doing’ femininity: being beautiful, as defined by the norms of a society — for example, in terms of skin type and complexion, and body shape, size and appearance — and working...

In Singapore, top down public education campaigns have long been a mode of governance by which the conduct of citizens is constantly regulated. This article examines how in two fairly recent campaigns, a new approach to campaign communication is used that involves media interdiscursivity, viz., the mixing of discourses and genres in which the media...

The article provides a critical analysis of a postfeminist identity that is emergent in a set of beauty advertisements, called ‘entitled femininity’. Three major discursive themes are identified, which are constitutive of this postfeminist feminine identity: 1) ‘It’s about me!’ focuses on pampering and pleasuring the self; 2) ‘Celebrating femininit...

This chapter is concerned with America's articulation of the pursuit of justice in securing the 'New World Order'. The New World Order has been a discourse-(in)-formation in the post-Cold War years, from G.H.W. Bush's inaugural statement in 1990 to President George W. Bush's administration (Lazar & Lazar 2004). In a world no longer divided along st...

From a conceptual metaphorical point of view, it would appear that in today’s world, more wars are fought in target domains than in the source domain. There is a proliferation in the conceptualisation of a variety of civilian social practices and experiences as militarised spaces. Metaphor scholars have systematically documented this of argument (L...

This article is based on the view that in the post-Cold War period, a US-defined New World Order discourse has been in formation. Adopting a critical discourse analytical perspective, the paper examines the deployment of American liberal democratic political ideology, which forms the basis of the New World Order discourse. American liberal democrac...

This article is based on the view that in the post-Cold War period, a US-defined 'New World Order' discourse has been in formation. Adopting a critical discourse analytical perspective, the paper examines the deployment of American liberal democratic political ideology, which forms the basis of the New World Order discourse. American liberal democr...

This article outlines a ‘feminist critical discourse analysis’ at the nexus of critical discourse analysis and feminist studies, with the aim of advancing rich and nuanced analyses of the complex workings of power and ideology in discourse in sustaining hierarchically gendered social orders. This is especially pertinent in the present time; it is r...

A critical perspective on unequal social arrangements sustained through language use, with the goals of social transformation and emancipation, constitutes the cornerstone of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and many feminist language studies. Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis brings together, for the first time, an international collection of...

This chapter1 is concerned with the politics at work in representations of the modern father. Particularly in contemporary industrialized societies, where women have made considerable strides in the public work arena, there has been a growing visibility and accentuation of men’s domestic identity as fathers, giving rise to a ‘culture of daddyhood’....

This article suggests that a productive way to make sense of the discourse and actions surrounding the 11 September 2001 attacks, and thereafter, is to view them within the larger context of the discourse of the ‘New World Order’. This involves an intertextual analysis of President Bush’s speeches since 11 September, along with speeches made by the...

This paper deals with national public campaigns as a government technology of social change and control. Focusing on Singapore's National Courtesy Campaign, particularly undertaken in the public road and transport field in recent years, the study examines how the operation of this technology reflects current shifts in political practice. Two emergi...

In this article, I introduce the concept of ‘strategic egalitarianism’ in relation to women's co-optation into nationalist projects in Singapore. By strategic egalitarianism, I mean the granting of equality to women that is contingent upon meeting particular pragmatic nationalist objectives. For example, the granting of equal educational and employ...

This article analyses the co-presence of two potentially contending discourses of gender relations - the Discourse of Egalitarian Gender Relations, and the Discourse of Conservative Gender Relations - in the domain of parenthood in a Singaporean national advertising campaign. The difference between the two discourses is a question of symmetry and a...

In recent years, an issue that has received plenty of national publicity in Singapore is the growing trend for well-educated women to remain single. The oft-cited reason for the trend is male dispreference for marrying women of an equal or higher educational standing than themselves. Arising from this situation, a series of `educational' ads was la...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Lancaster, 1998.