scholarly journals Probing linguistic change in Arabic vernaculars: A sociohistorical perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Enam Al-Wer ◽  
Uri Horesh ◽  
Deema Alammar ◽  
Hind Alaodini ◽  
Aziza Al-Essa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Diverse Data

Abstract It is received wisdom in variationist sociolinguistics that linguistic and social factors go hand in hand in structuring variability in language and any consequent instances of language change. We address the complexity of such factors by exploring data from several Arabic dialects in the eastern Arab world. We demonstrate that language change does not always follow expected phonological trajectories, even in cases where older changes are reconstructed to have operated along so-called universal patterns. In our explanation of recent changes in these dialects, we emphasise the role of social motivations for language change and the interactions between these social constraints and purely linguistic ones. Our analysis of change is supported by historical accounts of variation and change in Arabic. We illustrate how general principles of sociolinguistic theory apply to the Arabic data and provide additional layers of sociolinguistic information that highlight the importance of diverse data for evaluating cross-linguistic generalisations. (Arabic, language change, historical sociolinguistics)

scholarly journals The Role of Subtitling and Dubbing in Arabic Vocabulary Acquisition: A Contrastive Study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asil Qasim ◽  
Rashid Yahiaoui
Keyword(s):  
Vocabulary Acquisition ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Memory Retention ◽  
Intermediate Students ◽  
Language Class ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Audiovisual Translation

The critical comparison of subtitling and dubbing has long been a subject of discussion by many researchers in the field of Audiovisual Translation. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study to investigate the role of subtitling and dubbing in vocabulary acquisition has been carried out in the Arab world. The aim of the present study is to measure the effect of Audiovisual Translation modalities, mainly subtitling and dubbing, in the acquisition of Arabic vocabulary in an Arabic as a foreign language class (AFL) carried out at Sultan Qaboos College for Teaching Arabic For Non-Native Speakers. In order to do this a couple of questions needed answers 1) Which modality (subtitling and/or dubbing) is more conducive to vocabulary acquisition in the Arabic language? And 2) Which modality is more efficient in the long-term memory retention of Arabic vocabulary? Thirty upper intermediate students participated in this case study, which involved them watching a four-minute clip of the American TV series Designated Survivor in three versions: (a) subtitled into Arabic, (b) dubbed into Arabic, and (c) dubbed and subtitled in Arabic. The results showed that all groups were able to acquire and retain second language (L2) vocabulary; however, the dubbing group achieved higher results in both the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test.

The role of sociocognitive salience in the acquisition of structured variation and linguistic diffusion: Evidence from quotative be like

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Davydova
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
High Degree

Abstract Quotative be like is a much discussed variable linguistic feature recruited in this investigation in order to revisit the hypothesis of linguistic diffusion (Labov 2007) predicting re-ordering of original patterns by L2 populations. As a sociocognitively salient variant spreading above the level of conscious awareness, be like has been appropriated by adult speakers from two distinctive L2 English ecologies with a high degree of precision, a finding previously not reported in studies exploring the acquisition of structured variation. In this article, I explain how, supported by frequency and constraint complexity, sociocognitive salience may have contributed to the generally accurate replication of the variable grammar for be like and, by this token, how it can inform existing models of language change. (Sociocognitive salience, linguistic diffusion, L2 acquisition of structured variation, variationist sociolinguistics, World Englishes, be like)

EXPRESS: The Role of Patient Satisfaction in Hospitals’ Medicare Reimbursements

2020 ◽  
pp. 074391562098472
Author(s):  
Lu Liu ◽  
Dinesh K. Gauri ◽  
Rupinder P. Jindal
Keyword(s):  
Patient Satisfaction ◽  
Pain Management ◽  
Hospital Care ◽  
Pay For Performance ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Satisfaction Survey ◽  
The Us ◽  
Performance System ◽  
Diverse Data

Medicare uses a pay-for-performance program to reimburse hospitals. One of the key input measures in the performance formula is patient satisfaction with their hospital care. Physicians and hospitals, however, have raised concerns especially about questions related to patient satisfaction with pain management during hospitalization. They report feeling pressured to prescribe opioids to alleviate pain and boost satisfaction survey scores for higher reimbursements. This over-prescription of opioids has been cited as a cause of current opioid crisis in the US. Due to these concerns, Medicare stopped using pain management questions as inputs in its payment formula. We collected multi-year data from six diverse data sources, employed propensity score matching to obtain comparable groups, and estimated difference-in-difference models to show that, in fact, pain management was the only measure to improve in response to pay-for-performance system. No other input measure showed significant improvement. Thus, removing pain management from the formula may weaken the effectiveness of HVBP program at improving patient satisfaction, which is one of the key goals of the program. We suggest two divergent paths for Medicare to make the program more effective.

scholarly journals HOW SHOULD WE RECONCILE SELF-REGARDING AND PRO-SOCIAL MOTIVATIONS? A RENAISSANCE OF “DAS ADAM SMITH PROBLEM”

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-102
Author(s):  
Natalie Gold
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
Motivation Crowding ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Selfish Agents

Abstract“Das Adam Smith Problem” is the name given by eighteenth-century German scholars to the question of how to reconcile the role of self-interest in the Wealth of Nations with Smith’s advocacy of sympathy in Theory of Moral Sentiments. As the discipline of economics developed, it focused on the interaction of selfish agents, pursuing their private interests. However, behavioral economists have rediscovered the existence and importance of multiple motivations, and a new Das Adam Smith Problem has arisen, of how to accommodate self-regarding and pro-social motivations in a single system. This question is particularly important because of evidence of motivation crowding, where paying people can backfire, with payments achieving the opposite effects of those intended. Psychologists have proposed a mechanism for the crowding out of “intrinsic motivations” for doing a task, when payment is used to incentivize effort. However, they argue that pro-social motivations are different from these intrinsic motivations, implying that crowding out of pro-social motivations requires a different mechanism. In this essay I present an answer to the new Das Adam Smith problem, proposing a mechanism that can underpin the crowding out of both pro-social and intrinsic motivations, whereby motivations are prompted by frames and motivation crowding is underpinned by the crowding out of frames. I explore some of the implications of this mechanism for research and policy.

scholarly journals Comparative sociolinguistic perspectives on the rate of linguistic change

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Tanja Säily ◽  
Turo Vartiainen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Specific Topic ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

AbstractThis issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics aims to contribute to our understanding of language change in real time by presenting a group of articles particularly focused on social and sociocultural factors underlying language diversification and change. By analysing data from a varied set of languages, including Greek, English, and the Finnic and Mongolic language families, and mainly focussing their investigation on the Middle Ages, the authors connect various social and cultural factors with the specific topic of the issue, the rate of linguistic change. The sociolinguistic themes addressed include community and population size, conflict and conquest, migration and mobility, bi- and multilingualism, diglossia and standardization. In this introduction, the field of comparative historical sociolinguistics is considered a cross-disciplinary enterprise with a sociolinguistic agenda at the crossroads of contact linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

scholarly journals Using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE WALLIS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Teaching Resource ◽  
The University ◽  
Late Modern

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

scholarly journals Variation in Faroese and the development of a spoken standard: In search of corpus evidence

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Knooihuizen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Morphological Variation ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
Rapid Social Change ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
Constrained Variation

Although Faroese exhibits extensive linguistic variation and rapid social change, the language is near-uncharted territory in variationist sociolinguistics. This article discusses some recent social changes in Faroese society in connection with language change, focusing in particular on the development of a de facto spoken standard, Central Faroese. Demographic mobility, media and education may be contributing to this development in different ways. Two linguistic variables are analysed as a first step towards uncovering the respective roles of standardisation, dialect levelling and dialect spread as contributing processes in the formation of Central Faroese: morphological variation in -st endings and phonological variation in -ir and -ur endings. The analysis confirms previously described patterns of geographically constrained variation, but no generational or stylistic differences indicative of language change are found, nor are there clear signs that informants use Central Faroese. The results may in part be due to the structure of the corpus used.

scholarly journals The projectilic image: Islamic State’s digital visual warfare and global networked affect

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 1194-1209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwan M Kraidy
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Video Production ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Study Approach

Islamic State’s (IS) image-warfare presents an auspicious opportunity to grasp the growing role of digital images in emerging configurations of global conflict. To understand IS’ image-warfare, this article explores the central role of digital images in the group’s war spectacle and identifies a key modality of this new kind of warfare: global networked affect. To this end, the analysis focuses on three primary sources: two Arabic-language IS books, Management of Savagery (2004) and O’ Media Worker, You Are a Mujahid!, 2nd Edition (2016), and a video, Healing the Believers’ Chests (2015), featuring the spectacular burning of a Jordanian air force pilot captured by IS. It uses the method of ‘iconology’ within a case-study approach. I analyze IS’ doctrine of image-warfare explained in the two books and, in turn, examine how this doctrine is executed in IS video production, conceptualizing digital video as a specific permutation of moving digital images uniquely able to enact, and via repetition, to maintain, visual and narrative tension between movement and stillness, speed and slowness, that diffuses global network affect. Using a theoretical framework combining spectacle, new media phenomenology, and affect theory, the article concludes that global networked affect is projectilic, mimicking fast, lethal, penetrative objects. IS visual warfare, I argue, is best understood through the notion of the ‘projectilic image’.

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