Kevin McKenzie
List of John Benjamins publications for which Kevin McKenzie plays a role.
2017 Vicissitudes of laughter: Managing interlocutor affiliation in talk about humanitarian aid Pragmatics 27:2, pp. 257–300 | Article
This paper is concerned with the way that laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation in talk among humanitarian aid workers as they describe their professional activities in settings of armed conflict. I first set out to situate my analysis within the tradition of work in… read more
2012 Formulating professional identity: The case of humanitarian aid Pragmatics and Society 3:1, pp. 31–60 | Article
Recent scholarly and practitioner research on the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been concerned with questions about the moral legitimacy of humanitarian aid in settings of armed conflict. At issue is the extent to which NGO activities are said to affect the conduct and outcome… read more
2009 The humanitarian imperative under fire Journal of Language and Politics 8:3, pp. 333–358 | Article
This paper explores how speakers manage the dilemmatic tension between competing demands for accountability in mundane explanations of humanitarian assistance in settings of armed conflict. Taking as analytic data talk recorded in interviews with the personnel of aid agencies and various… read more
2005 The institutional provision for silence: On the evasive nature of politicians’ answers to reporters’ questions Journal of Language and Politics 4:3, pp. 443–463 | Article
This paper explores how what is both appropriate to and excluded from consideration in a given episode of talk involving question-and-answers between a speaker and audience is the outcome of complex negotiation. We consider the details of such collaborative work in talk at a press conference with… read more
2005 Conspiracy theory and the critical enterprise Pragmatics 15:2/3, pp. 229–250 | Article
This paper explores the argumentative work undertaken in talk and text about conspiracy theory (CT), relating this to recent scholarly debate regarding the significance of critical inquiry in the context of developments in poststructuralist and postmodern social theory. We examine discussion of CT… read more
1999 The Psychology of Time-Travel: Ambivalent Identity in Stories of Cross-Cultural Contact Narrative Inquiry 9:2, pp. 391–426 | Article
This paper explores how the temporal disjunction established in the production of narrative affords a way of managing the tension between competing demands for accountability in settings where the issue of cultural difference features as a participant concern. Specifically, in speculating upon the… read more
