Processing Pronouns without Antecedents: Evidence from Event-related Brain Potentials

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1315-1326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Filik ◽  
Anthony J. Sanford ◽  
Hartmut Leuthold
Keyword(s):  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Language Processor ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Interview Panel ◽  
Integration Effort ◽  
The Way

Pronouns that do not have explicit antecedents typically cause processing problems. We investigate a specific example in which this may not be the case, as in “At the interview, they asked really difficult questions,” where the plural pronoun they has no explicit antecedent, yet is intuitively easy to process. Some unspecified but constrained set of individuals (the interview panel or the company) can be inferred as the referent, but it is not crucial to determine specifically which entities are being referred to. We propose that this contrasts with the processing of singular pronouns (he or she), for which it is necessary to determine a specific referent. We used event-related brain potentials to investigate how readers process the pronoun (they vs. he/she) in these cases. Sentences were placed in a context that either did or did not contain an explicit antecedent for the pronoun. There were two key findings. Firstly, when there was no explicit antecedent, a larger fronto-central positivity was observed 750 msec after pronoun onset for he/she than they, possibly reflecting the additional difficulty involved in establishing a referent for he/she than for they when no explicit referent is available. Secondly, there was a larger N400-like deflection evoked by he/she than they, regardless of whether there was an explicit antecedent for the pronoun. We suggest that this is due to the singular pronouns bringing about a greater integration effort than the plural pronoun. This observation adds to a growing body of research revealing fundamental differences in the way these pronouns are handled by the language processor.

An Examination of Women's Perspectives on Power

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Miller ◽  
A. Gaye Cummins
Keyword(s):  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Personal Authority ◽  
Women’S Perceptions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Men's Experience ◽  
The Way

Historically, theoretical and popular conceptions about power have not included or addressed women's experiences. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge about women by examining women's perceptions of and relationship to power. One hundred twenty-five women, ranging in age from 21 to 63, were asked to define and explore power through a variety of structured and open-ended questions. The results showed that women's definition of power differed significantly from their perception of society's definition of power, as well as from the way power has traditionally been conceptualized. More theoretical and empirical attention should be given to understanding the role of personal authority in both women's and men's experience of power.

WIR im interaktionalen Gebrauch: Zur Verwendung des Pronomens der 1. Person Plural in der institutionellen Kommunikation – am Beispiel onkologischer Aufklärungsgespräche

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-334
Author(s):  
Susanne Günthner
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Way

Abstract This empirically oriented article focuses on uses of the pronoun “wir” (‘we’) in medical interaction – more precisely, in oncological consultations. After a brief presentation of major research on the 1st person plural pronoun in German, I will – based on methods of Interactional Linguistics – analyze interactional uses of this deictic pronoun in institutional doctor-patient conversations. This article aims at contributing to research of how grammar is used in response to local interactional needs within social interaction (Auer/Pfänder 2011). As the data show, participants in these institutional settings make use of various types of “wir” – beyond the prototypical forms of usage (a) “self and person addressed”; (b) “self and person or persons spoken of” and (c) “self, person or persons addressed, and person or persons spoken of” (Boas 1911: 39). These “alternative”, non-prototypical uses of “wir”, which partly override the “residual semanticity” (Silverstein 1976: 47), are found to be related to the way in which they are embedded within the particular “social field” (Hanks 2005: 18). Thus, the indexical anchoring of “wir” proves to be rather flexible and responsive to interactional contingencies.

Embodied orientations towards co-participants in multinational meetings

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassiliki Markaki ◽  
Lorenza Mondada
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Multinational Company ◽  
Business Meetings ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
The Way

The interactional organization of meetings is an important locus of observation for understanding the way in which institutions are talked into being. This article contributes to this growing body of research by focusing on turn-taking and participation in business meetings, approached within conversation analysis in a sequential and multimodal way. On the basis of a corpus of video-recorded corporate meetings of a multinational company, in which managers coming from several European branches convene, the article takes into consideration the embodied orientations of the participants as they address each other, as they turn to particular addressees or groups in a recipient designed way while describing, informing, announcing events and results, and as they make relevant specific participants’ identities – especially national categories – and, in this way, display specific local expectations regarding rights and obligations to talk and to know.

Construction and collaboration in life-writing projects: Malala Yousafzai’s activist ‘I’

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 201-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Belén Martínez García
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Global South ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Way

This article explores the storytelling practices employed in Malala Yousafzai’s life-writing texts as examples of collaboration in the co-construction of an activist agenda. It tracks the narrative ‘I’ and its movements in and out of the plural pronoun ‘we’ as it moves across communities and embraces the legacy of testimonial accounts by both former and contemporary human rights activists. In line with that tradition, it is necessary to include the stories of other victimized people in the life-writing text, so that the result advocates for change on a sociopolitical, not just individual, level. The fact that the texts are mediated by editors, translators, co-authors and collaborators every step of the way paves the collaborative path Global South young women activists traverse, a path fraught with potential pitfalls and ethical difficulties for them and for scholars alike.

scholarly journals Gender (im)balance in citation practices in cognitive neuroscience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline M. Fulvio ◽  
Ileri Akinnola ◽  
Bradley R. Postle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
The Past ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Reference Sections ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Systemic Factors ◽  
Citation Practices ◽  
Underrepresentation Of Women ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn the field of neuroscience, despite the fact that the proportion of peer-reviewed publications authored by women has increased in recent decades, the proportion of citations of women-led publications has not seen a commensurate increase: In five broad-scope journals, citations of papers first- and/or last-authored by women have been shown to be fewer than would be expected if gender was not a factor in citation decisions (Dworkin et al., 2020). Given the important implications that such underrepresentation may have on the careers of women researchers, it is important to determine whether this same trend is true in subdisciplines of the field, where interventions might be more effective. Here, we report the results of an extension of the analyses carried out by Dworkin et al. (2020) to citation patterns in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JoCN). The results indicate that the underrepresentation of women-led publications in reference sections is also characteristic of papers published in JoCN over the past decade. Furthermore, this pattern of citation imbalances is present for all gender classes of authors, implicating systemic factors. These results contribute to the growing body of evidence that intentional action is needed to address inequities in the way that we carry out and communicate our science.

“Franchise” Branch Campuses in Uzbekistan: The Internationalisation of Higher Education as a Solution?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-174
Author(s):  
Dilnoza Ubaydullaeva
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Branch Campuses ◽  
Internationalisation Of Higher Education ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Way

Internationalization transformed the way Higher Education (HE) is provided. Used correctly, internationalization can bring a useful exchange of services and resources into a country’s HE sector. Although there is a growing body of research on HE internationalization broadly, current scholarship overlooks the correlation of excessive reliance on opening of foreign university branches as a way to internationalize the HE sector and the development of the local HE system. This research thus provides the first insights into how the internationalization of HE may not necessarily solve a developing country’s problems in the local HE sector. Using the case of Uzbekistan, it argues that, in the absence of systematic reforms in the local HE system, HE reform that over-relies on the imported internationalization in the form of foreign university branches is not sustainable. Such “franchise” or “imported” internationalization does not contribute to the development of local HE system.

Understanding the privatisation of probation through the lens of Bourdieu’s field theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Jake Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Probation Service ◽  
Rehabilitation Needs ◽  
The Way

This chapter contributes to the growing body of criminological work to use Bourdieu’s field theory to understand changes in policy and practice in criminal justice. The chapter uses the privatisation of probation services in England and Wales as a case study to argue that although probation practitioners vociferously opposed the reforms, their attempts to prevent them were always unlikely to succeed. This is because Transforming Rehabilitation needs to be understood as the culmination of a longstanding process of symbolic violence which resulted in the depreciation of relevant forms of capital amongst practitioners and their allies. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the reforms before turning to a discussion of Bourdieu’s field theory. I argue that because ‘capital’ links field and habitus – in that capital is the product of the way in which habitus and field are, or are not, attuned to one another – this is an important mechanism of field theory which has, hitherto, been neglected. I argue that as probation practitioners’ habitus has remained relatively stable over the last fifty years, the changing field led to a delegitimation of the forms of capital owned by practitioners which left them unable to mount a successful defence of a public probation service.

scholarly journals Borrowed identities: Class(ification), inequality and the role of credit-debt in class making and struggle

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 1417-1434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Sparkes
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
Relative Class ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Way

Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu’s class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class positions, nor the role of unsecured credit in facilitating consumption. This article contributes to this area by examining how unsecured credit and problem debt influences consumption and class position amongst individuals with modest incomes. Drawing on 21 interviews with individuals managing problem debt, this article details how class inequality emerges through affective states that include anxiety and feelings of deficit. It also shows how these experiences motivate participants to rely on unsecured credit to consume cultural goods and engage in activities in a struggle against their class position, with the intention of enhancing how they are perceived and classified by others. The findings indicate that cultural class analyses may have overlooked the symbolic importance of mundane consumption and goods in social differentiation. This article further details how these processes entangle individuals into complex liens of debt – which lead to over-indebtedness, default, dispossession and financial expropriation – illustrating how investigations of credit-debt can better inform understandings of class inequality, exploitation and struggle.

scholarly journals One size doesn’t fit all: rethinking approaches to continuing professional development in technology enhanced learning

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Compton ◽  
Timos Almpanis
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Continuing Professional Development ◽  
Continuous Professional Development ◽  
Technology Enhanced Learning ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Compliance Mechanism ◽  
Enhanced Learning ◽  
The Way

Despite extensive investment, levels of enthusiasm for technology enhanced learning (TEL) are notoriously varied amongst the key stakeholders. A growing body of research shows that TEL is often expected by students and, when used effectively, has a positive impact on engagement and outcomes. Despite this, transmissive models of continuous professional development (CPD) that focus on the technology and systems over the pedagogic underpinnings can feel like a compliance mechanism ripe for resistance. We argue that a more effective approach utilises simpler, cloud based tools to highlight pedagogic approaches and that adaptations in the way CPD happens provide an environment within which exploration, utilisation and even transformation in practice can occur. 

scholarly journals Socioeconomic Enablers for Contagion: Factors Impelling the Antimicrobial Resistance Epidemic

Antibiotics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Collignon ◽  
John J. Beggs
Keyword(s):  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Global Problem ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Micro Organisms ◽  
Poor Infrastructure ◽  
The Way

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing global problem that causes increased deaths as well as increased suffering for people. Overall, there are two main factors that drive antimicrobial resistance: the volumes of antimicrobials used and the spread of resistant micro-organisms along with the genes encoding for resistance. Importantly, a growing body of evidence points to contagion (i.e., spread) being the major, but frequently under-appreciated and neglected, factor driving the increased prevalence of antimicrobial resistance. When we aggregate countries into regional groupings, it shows a pattern where there is an inverse aggregate relationship between AMR and usage. Poor infrastructure and corruption levels, however, are highly and positively correlated with antimicrobial resistance levels. Contagion, antibiotic volumes, governance, and the way antibiotics are used are profoundly affected by a host of social and economic factors. Only after we identify and adequately address these factors can antimicrobial resistance be better controlled.

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