Putting it integrationally

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Pablé

The present paper responds to two discussion articles previously published in Language and Dialogue 3:2 and 4:2: one by Wolfgang Teubert (“Was there a cat in the garden? Knowledge between discourse and the monadic self”), which is partly a critique of Roy Harris’ integrational epistemology (Harris 2009), and the other, itself a critical reply to Teubert, by Alison Sealey (“Cats and categories — reply to Teubert”). In this paper I adopt an integrational linguistic approach (e.g. Harris 1996, 1998) to Teubert and Sealey’s opposing philosophical views (social constructionism vs. realism), showing how their linguistic theories heavily rely on strategies of decontextualization (‘segregationism’) needed in order to cast themselves in the role of linguistic experts. Unlike the integrational linguist, who regards signs as radically indeterminate, the segregational linguist has to retain determinacy as a fundamental property of the sign — and hence the latter’s insistence that signs are ‘shared’. Both the relativist and the realist working within a segregational linguistic paradigm adhere to a semantic thesis of how words get their meanings that Harris (1980) has termed ‘surrogationalism’, i.e. the belief that words, in their function as names, ‘stand for’ things in the real world, the difference being that Teubert treats ‘reality’ as a discursive community-based construction (i.e. there is no objective reality for homo loquens), while Sealey thinks that material reality is independent of discourse and that words functioning as names of things reflect this to varying degrees.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Stella Kyvelou

Once the principle of the inseparability of the material world and cyber territory has been admitted, the question put to the urban planner is being transformed. The transition from the representation of two separate worlds - the physical on the one hand and the digital on the other - to a representation of a “double world” in the sense of the indivisible inter-connection of the physical and the digital, leads to a change of paradigm in abstraction and representation. By accepting the principle of considering the material world and the cyber territory (and not cyberspace) as an indivisible whole, we come up to realize that the urban question changes. If, in the past, our thoughts and studies were aimed at seeking a common world that we should discover and maintain, the modern world is not presumed to belong exclusively in the material reality. The planner’s work, therefore, should certainly take into account this interconnection, the discontinuous, fragmentary involvement, of matter and information. However, this phenomenon is not new since the symbolic dimension of cities, architecture and space in general has always closely interwoven representation and the real world. The difference is that there was then a connection with a particular territory or a national identity. Today, this ancient territorial reference is weakening, although there are signs of reversion to it. Based on these observations, the paper will discuss the evolution of the urban question under the assumption of the indivisible “double world” and the augmented territories.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-428
Author(s):  
Miriam R. Lowi

Studies of identity and belonging in Gulf monarchies tend to privilege tribal or religious affiliation, if not the protective role of the ruler as paterfamilias. I focus instead on the ubiquitous foreigner and explore ways in which s/he contributes to the definition of national community in contemporary gcc states. Building upon and moving beyond the scholarly literature on imported labor in the Gulf, I suggest that the different ‘categories’ of foreigners impact identity and the consolidation of a community of privilege, in keeping with the national project of ruling families. Furthermore, I argue that the ‘European,’ the non-gcc Arab, and the predominantly Asian (and increasingly African) laborer play similar, but also distinct roles in the delineation of national community: while they are differentially incorporated in ways that protect the ‘nation’ and appease the citizen-subject, varying degrees of marginality reflect Gulf society’s perceptions or aspirations of the difference between itself and ‘the other(s).’


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0254513
Author(s):  
Anna Lorenzoni ◽  
Mikel Santesteban ◽  
Francesca Peressotti ◽  
Cristina Baus ◽  
Eduardo Navarrete

The present pre-registration aims to investigate the role of language as a dimension of social categorization. Our critical aim is to investigate whether language can be used as a dimension of social categorization even when the languages coexist within the same sociolinguistic group, as is the case in bilingual communities where two languages are used in daily social interactions. We will use the memory confusion paradigm (also known as the Who said what? task). In the first part of the task, i.e. encoding, participants will be presented with a face (i.e. speaker) and will listen to an auditory sentence. Two languages will be used, with half of the faces always associated with one language and the other half with the other language. In the second phase, i.e. recognition, all the faces will be presented on the screen and participants will decide which face uttered which sentence in the encoding phase. Based on previous literature, we expect that participants will be more likely to confuse faces from within the same language category than from the other language category. Participants will be bilingual individuals of two bilingual communities, the Basque Country (Spain) and Veneto (Italy). The two languages of these communities will be used, Spanish and Basque (Study 1), and Italian and Venetian dialect (Study 2). Furthermore, we will explore whether the amount of daily exposure to the two languages modulates the effect of language as a social categorization cue. This research will allow us to test whether bilingual people use language to categorize individuals belonging to the same sociolinguistic community based on the language these individuals are speaking. Our findings may have relevant political and social implications for linguistic policies in bilingual communities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-238
Author(s):  
Nikos Vergis

AbstractDoes having a communicative role other than the speaker’s make a difference to the way pragmatic meaning is construed? Standard paradigms in interpersonal pragmatics have implicitly assumed a speaker-centric perspective over the years, however modern approaches have re-considered the role of listener evaluations. In the present study, I examine whether assuming different communicative roles (speaker, listener, observer) results in varying interpretations. A web-based experiment revealed that participants who took the perspective of different characters in short stories differed in the way they interpreted what the speaker meant. In most cases, participants in the role of the listener interpreted speaker meaning in more negative ways than participants in the other roles. The present study suggests that the directionality of the difference (negative inferences under the listener’s perspective) could be explained by taking into account affective factors.


1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. M. Bas ◽  
A. D. Muller ◽  
H. G. Hemker

Five different ways of estimating prothrombin are applied to the plasma of persons receiving vitamin K antagonists, to know: the one-stage assay, the two-stage assay, the Echis Carinatus Venom assay, the coagulase-reacting factor assay and the immunological assay. The Protein Induced by Vitamin K Absence analogous to prothrombin (PIVKA-II) can be shown to be co-estimated in all but the one-stage assay. There are minor differences, however, between the other four tests. The most practical way to assess both prothrombin and PIVKA-II seems to be the coagulase-reacting factor assay. The difference between the one-stage assay and the others can be explained on basis of the new data on the role of vitamin K in prothrombin biosynthesis. The differences between the other tests are smaller and remain to be explained.


2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 763-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itiel E. Dror

Dichotomizing perceptions, by those that have an objective reality and those that do not, is rejected. Perceptions are suggested to fall along a multidimensional continuum in which neither end is totally “pure.” At the extreme ends, perceptions neither have an objective reality without some subjectivity, nor, at the other end, even as hallucinations, are they totally dissociated from reality.


2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1581) ◽  
pp. 3106-3114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid M. L. Kappers

In this paper, I focus on the role of active touch in three aspects of shape perception and discrimination studies. First an overview is given of curvature discrimination experiments. The most prominent result is that first-order stimulus information (that is, the difference in attitude or slope over the stimulus) is the dominant factor determining the curvature threshold. Secondly, I compare touch under bimanual and two-finger performance with unimanual and one-finger performance. Consistently, bimanual or two-finger performance turned out to be worse. The most likely explanation for the former finding is that a loss of accuracy during intermanual comparisons is owing to interhemispheric relay. Thirdly, I address the presence of strong after-effects after just briefly touching a shape. These after-effects have been measured and studied in various conditions (such as, static, dynamic, transfer to other hand or finger). Combination of the results of these studies leads to the insight that there are possibly different classes of after-effect: a strong after-effect, caused by immediate contact with the stimulus, that does only partially transfer to the other hand, and one much less strong after-effect, caused by moving over the stimulus for a certain period, which shows a full transfer to other fingers.


1952 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Dinsmoor

Twelve white rats learned to press a bar or lever when this act was intermittently followed by pellets of food. Once a stable rate of pressing had been established, the animals were subjected to electric shock as a punishment for each response during alternate five minute periods within the experimental session. A difference in rates during the safe and punished phases was manifested both by the experimental group (8 rats), who were provided with a light as a signal when it was safe to respond, and also, contrary to expectation, by the control group (4 rats), who continued in darkness throughout the session. The differential responding by the control group was greatly reduced, however, when the duration of each phase was reduced from five minutes to one. The investigation was then continued to determine the role of some of the other factors in the situation. Increasing the severity of the shock increased the difference between the light and the dark rates. Withholding the pellets of food reduced the overall rates but did not affect the light-dark discrimination. Withholding the shock, on the other hand, permitted an increase in rate and caused the animals to lose their discrimination; when food had previously been withheld, however, so that the rate of response was relatively low, this deterioration in the discrimination was not as rapid as before. Restoration of the discrimination training under a lower hunger drive confirmed the finding that the formation of the discrimination was quite rapid and showed that the level of drive did not affect the proportionality between the rates in the light and in the darkness. These findings were interpreted by comparing the current procedure with those previously used in studies of avoidance reactions and conflict.


1939 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Beck

1. The examination of 1100 sera by both the Wassermann reaction and the complement-fixation test with spirochaetes revealed a superior sensitivity of the latter reaction and practically equal specificity of the two tests.2. Syphilitic serum contains two different antibodies: one reacting with the lipoid antigen of the Wassermann reaction, the other with a specific antigen in the spirochaete.3. The spirochaetal antibody of syphilitic serum has a complex serological structure, corresponding to spirochaete strains of different antigenic make-up.4. The existence of this antibody and its specific absorption by the homologous antigen can also be demonstrated by agglutination.5. The difference between agglutinin titres found in normal and syphilitic sera is not pronounced enough to render this method satisfactory for the practical diagnosis of syphilis.6. The spirochaete contains, apart from its specific antigen, the ubiquitous lipoid substance representing the Wassermann antigen.7. A fraction was obtained from spirochaetes by Raistrick and Topley's method which in complement-fixation and precipitation tests reacted actively with spirochaete antisera from rabbits, but which so far failed to react with syphilitic sera.This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. I wish to thank Prof. Golla, Director of the Central Pathological Laboratory, L.C.C. Mental Hospitals, who rendered this work possible, and Dr Arthur Davies, Director of the Devonport Laboratory, for the hospitality afforded me at his laboratory and for the patients’ sera used in this work. I am indebted to Prof. R. T. Hewlett for his revision of the manuscript, to Prof. Raistrick for advice in chemical matters, and to Dr Amies, of the Lister Institute, for his help with the Sharples centrifuge.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 654
Author(s):  
Morwenna Hoeks

Disjunctive questions are ambiguous: they can either be interpreted as polar questions (PolQs), as open disjunctive questions (OpenQs), or as closed alternative questions (ClosedQ). The goal of this paper is to show that the difference in interpretation between these questions can be derived via effects of focus marking directly. In doing so, the proposal brings out the striking parallel between the prosody of questions with foci/contrastive topics on the one hand and that of alternative questions on the other. Unlike previous approaches, this proposal does not rely on structural differences between AltQs and PolQs derived via ellipsis or syntactic movement. To show how this works out, an account of focus and contrastive topic marking in questions is put forward in which f-marking in questions determines what constitutes a possible answer by signaling what the speaker's QUD is like. By imposing a congruence condition between f-marked questions and their answers that requires answers to resolve the question itself as well as its signaled QUD, we predict the right answerhood conditions for disjunctive questions.


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