A high level of citizen involvement in civic life is presumed crucial to the well-being of democracy, but the actual discourse of citizen involvement has rarely been analyzed. This article analyzes citizen participation in the school board meetings of one US community that was in the midst of conflict. After providing background on education governance practices and the community that was studied, citizen participation is examined. Citizen commentaries at school board meetings are shown to be a distinct speech genre and the genre is described. Then, we characterize the discourse practices used to express negative sentiment. Feeling-limned description, avowal of feelings, rhetorical questions, reported speech, use of god and devil terms, and using meeting rules as weapons were the main negative sentiment strategies. In the conclusion we suggest when low levels of citizen involvement should be acceptable, and why `reasonable hostility' is a desirable form of citizen expression.

This essay analyzes competing discourses of resilience across United States and United Kingdom online news and blog coverage following the 2005 London 7/7 subway bombings. More specifically, it tracks how dominant articulations of resilience reflect an emerging Anglo-American sensibility that created constraints and possibilities for British national identity and security policy. We argue that the prevailing construction of Londoners as resilient represents a budding form of cosmopolitan nationalism that may have paved the way for the adoption of resilience as an official plank of U.S. and U.K. security policy. We conclude by examining the potential socio-political consequences of the discursive cultivation of resilience and explore its dialectical relation to vulnerability.

This essay analyzes competing discourses of resilience across United States and United Kingdom online news and blog coverage following the 2005 London 7/7 subway bombings. More specifically, it tracks how dominant articulations of resilience reflect an emerging Anglo-American sensibility that created constraints and possibilities for British national identity and security policy We argue that the prevailing construction of Londoners as resilient represents a budding form of cosmopolitan nationalism that may have paved the way for the adoption of resilience as an official plank of U.S. and U.K. security policy. We conclude by examining the potential socio-political consequences of the discursive cultivation of resilience and explore its dialectical relation to vulnerability.