‘Othering’ can be conceptually defined as the manner in which social group dichotomies are represented in language via binary oppositions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The article aims to contribute to a methodological approach for differentiating the concept of othering in educational settings. We will introduce new ways of conceptualising othering based on findings from an empirical critical discourse analytical study of how teacher educators talk about the term ‘cultural diversity’. The study is based on transcriptions of interviews with Norwegian teacher educators. The findings illustrate that teacher educators talk about cultural diversity using seven different ways of othering. These ways of othering are important because teacher educators’ discourses influence preservice teachers, in turn, influencing their future teaching in schools. We argue that a critical linguistic awareness of the ways in which pupils are ‘othered’ is an important tool in counteracting social exclusion and promoting social justice and equity.

The article presents a pilot study based on video-recordings of four experiments taking the form of encounters, each involving a Norwegian-speaking child, a woman speaking only in English and an interpreter. Taking the interpretermediated encounter as the basic research element, and applying an interactionist theoretical perspective, small children's participation in these encounters is explored. The aim of the pilot study is to use the explorations of a few children's interactions with one particular interpreter to generate hypotheses and identify new research areas that may be further investigated through a larger collection of data. Preliminary results indicate that a child as young as three has sufficient communicative competence to participate successfully in an interpreter-mediated encounter. In addition, the interpreter's simultaneous speech in the other language did not seem to disrupt a child's narrative. These findings need to be further explored through more extensive and naturally occurring data. An identified topic that needs further exploration is young children's understanding of the nature of an interpreter's specific mandate and responsibility during such interaction.

Osama bin Ladens uttalelser vekker ofte gjenkjennelse, og de gjør seg derfor gjeldende. Tekstene hans er tilpasset et bredt publikum, og det er noe av årsaken til at han ikke bare anses som en terrorist, men også som en leder, heltefigur og frihetskjemper. I denne artikkelen skal det handle om bin Ladens retoriske slagkraft og makt.

In physical therapy, communication that actively involves the patient is seen as the foundation of patient-centered treatment. Research on communication in physical therapy highlights how patients' opportunity to actively participate is often limited by the therapists' focus on biomedical facts and clinical tasks. Few studies have explored aspects of communication in clinical practice that may promote patients' active participation. The aim of this study is to shed light on verbal and nonverbal communication used by physical therapists to get in touch with patients and how this physical and linguistic touching may contribute to encouraging patients' participation. The selected case is from a qualitative observational case study of the first encounter between a female physical therapist and a male patient with chronic neck pain. Drawing on theories about communication and the metafunctions of language, the findings highlight how the therapist's use of unfinished sentences, repetitions of the patient's own words, touch, gaze and accepting interruptions from the patient promotes the patient's participation. Demonstrations of the use of linguistic communication theory in this study may contribute to enhancing physical therapists' self-awareness around communication and how to get in touch with patients, which is a fundamental element in patient-centered treatment.

Cultural diversity is assumed to be a central component of Western education and even though it has been extensively investigated in international research on teacher education, little knowledge exists about its usage and meaning making in teacher educator discourses. This article provides insights into the usage and meaning making of the term cultural diversity based on semi-structured individual interviews with a total of twelve teacher educators from two Norwegian teacher education institutions. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of discourse theory and critical Whiteness studies, we find that the term cultural diversity is used in a double meaning making pattern: Cultural diversity is presented as desirable and positive by teacher educators, yet it is also aligned with the notion of otherness. We discuss some possible methodological tools with which teacher educators can detect meaning making patterns and thus counter the production and reproduction of socially unjust discursive patterns.