Sound change and social structure in a rural community

1983 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy C. Frazer
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
American English ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Past Half

ABSTRACTMost studies of sound change in the United States have focused on the social strata of urban societies. In the American cornbelt, however, the most important social distinctions are horizontal rather than vertical. A fundamental ethnic division dating back to original settlement of the area opposes town and countryside dwellers. A study of fifty-one speakers in a rural area of Illinois shows fronting and raising of (aw) to be considerably more advanced among countryside dwellers than among town residents. Furthermore, the countryside population underwent a profound social and economic change during the past half century as large numbers of subsistence farmers abandoned the land and rural life altogether, leaving behind a smaller number of farmers whose larger operations meant that the economic and social status of the average farmer considerably improved. An examination of town and countryside age groups from the data base shows that an increase in the fronting and raising of (aw) took place primarily in a single generation most affected by the change in the farm population. At least temporarily, fronted and raised (aw), despite an overt nonstandard status documented in more than a century of speech and language textbooks, suddenly acquired a new prestige – spreading even to town populations – along with a reassertion of rural values and rural life. (Sound change, social structure, rural society, American English, sociolinguistics, dialectology)

EDITORIAL: Migration and competitiveness: Japan and the United States

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Philip L. Martin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Variable Cost ◽  
Fixed Cost ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Key Sectors ◽  
Past Half

Japan and the United States, the world’s largest economies for most of the past half century, have very different immigration policies. Japan is the G7 economy most closed to immigrants, while the United States is the large economy most open to immigrants. Both Japan and the United States are debating how immigrants are and can con-tribute to the competitiveness of their economies in the 21st centuries. The papers in this special issue review the employment of and impacts of immigrants in some of the key sectors of the Japanese and US economies, including agriculture, health care, science and engineering, and construction and manufacturing. For example, in Japanese agriculture migrant trainees are a fixed cost to farmers during the three years they are in Japan, while US farmers who hire mostly unauthorized migrants hire and lay off workers as needed, making labour a variable cost.

Pakistan’s Development: Successes, Failures, and Future Tasks (Presidential Remarks)

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Golden Jubilee ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Do So

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.

Dynamics of Pakhtun Social Structure: Implications for Economic Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protestant Work Ethic ◽  
Social Character ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
The Social

Every region and people has peculiar economic characteristics and these features largely have roots in that region‟s social structure, social psychology and its dynamics. The capitalist economy of the United States has roots in individualismand Protestant Work Ethic, influenced both by Protestant religion and the social character of the Americans; the Client Economy of Saudi Arabia has deep linkages to its tribal social structure and the so-called Bazaar Economy of Afghanistan is profoundly embedded in the Pakhtun social structure of the country. The Pakhtuns of Pakistan have a peculiar social structure and social psychology thereof having profound and extensive influence on the region‟s economy particularly its largely underdevelopedcondition. The paper explores the characteristics of Pakhtun social structure and the interactive linkages between the social edifice and economic development or lack of it.

The Transition of the Presidency, 2020-2021

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Pfiffner James P.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Change Leadership ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Half Century ◽  
United State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Presidential Transitions ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half

The peaceful transition of power from one set of rulers to another is the essence of democracy. The United States has enjoyed the consensus that elections are the means to change leadership of the country for more than two centuries. The 2020-2021 transition of the presidency marks an exception to that consensus. President Trump refused to accept the reality of his 2020 defeat at the polls, despite the fact that Joe Biden won more than 7 million more votes than Trump and won the electoral college by a vote of 306 to 232. Trump declared that he had won the election and that his opponent, Joseph Biden, had conspired to steal the election through fraudulent ballots. This paper will briefly characterize the development of presidential transitions over the past half century. It will then examine the extensive efforts of President Trump to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the volent attack on the United State Capitol on January 6, 2021. Finally, it will show how Trump tried to thwart the incoming Biden administration. It will conclude that Trump’s actions in 2020 and 2021 presented a serious threat to the American polity.

The Social Structure of Organ Transplantation in the United States

2013 ◽  
pp. 199-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srividhya Venugopal ◽  
Evan Stoner ◽  
Martin Cadeiras ◽  
Ronaldo Menezes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Organ Transplantation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Social

How Ecology Has Changed

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene P. Odum
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
University Of Georgia ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University ◽  
Past Half

During the past half century, ecology has emerged from its roots in biology to become a stand-alone discipline that interfaces organisms, the physical environment and human affairs. This is in line with the root meaning of the word ecology which is ‘the study of the household’ or the total environment in which we live. When I first came to the University of Georgia in 1940 as an instructor in the Department of Zoology, ecology was considered a rather unimportant sub-division of biology. At the end of World War II, we had a staff meeting to discuss ‘core curriculum’, or what courses every biology major should be required to take. My suggestion that ecology should be part of this core was rejected by all other members of the staff; they said ecology was just descriptive natural history with no basic principles. It was this ‘put down’, as it were, that started me thinking about a textbook that would emphasize basic principles, which eventually became the first edition of my Fundamentals of Ecology, published in 1953. In those early days ‘ecology’ was often defined as the ‘study of organisms in relation to environment’. The environment was considered a sort of inert stage in which the actors, that is the organisms, played the game of natural selection. Now we recognize that the ‘stage’ and the ‘actors’ interact with each other constantly so that not only do organisms relate to the physical environment, but they also change the environment. Thus, when the first green microbes, the cynobacteria, began putting oxygen into the atmosphere, the environment was greatly changed, making way for a whole new set of aerobic organisms. Also, when one goes from the study of structure to the study of function, then the physical sciences (including energetics, biogeochemical cycling and earth sciences in general) have to be included. And, of course, now more than ever, we have to consider humans and the social sciences as part of the environment. So we now have essentially a new discipline of ‘ecology’ that is a three-way interface.

scholarly journals The Savanna Theory of Happiness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satoshi Kanazawa ◽  
Norman P. Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Affective Disorder ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Seasonal Affective Disorder ◽  
The United States ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half

This chapter describes the savanna theory of happiness, which posits that it may not be only the consequences of a given situation in the current environment that affect individuals’ happiness but also what its consequences would have been in the ancestral environment. The theory further suggests that the effect of such ancestral consequences on happiness is stronger among less intelligent individuals than among more intelligent individuals. Consistent with the theory, being an ethnic minority, living in urban areas, and socializing with friends less frequently all reduce happiness, but the effects of these conditions are significantly stronger among less intelligent individuals than among more intelligent individuals. The theory can further explain why some individuals suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and why women’s level of happiness has steadily declined in the United States in the past half-century.

Does Progressive Finance Alter School Organizations and Raise Achievement? The Case of Los Angeles

2020 ◽  
pp. 089590482090147
Author(s):  
Joon-Ho Lee ◽  
Bruce Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
English Learners ◽  
High Poverty ◽  
High Poverty Schools ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poor Students ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Finance ◽  
Past Half

State finance reforms have raised per-pupil spending and elevated the achievement of disadvantaged students over the past half-century. But we know little about how fresh funding may alter teacher staffing or the social and curricular organization of schools, mediating gains in learning. We find that US$1.1 billion in new yearly funding—arriving to Los Angeles high schools after California enacted a progressive weighted-pupil formula in 2013—led schools to rely more on novice and probationary teachers. Schools that enjoyed greater funding modestly reduced average class size and the count of teaching periods assigned to staff in five subsequent years. Yet, high-poverty schools receiving higher budget augmentations more often assigned novice teachers to English learners (ELs) and hosted declining shares of courses that qualified graduates for college admission. Mean achievement climbed overall, but EL and poor students fell further behind in schools receiving greater funding.

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