scholarly journals Linguistic Impoliteness and Interpersonal Positioning in Nigerian Online Political Forum

2021 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Rotimi Taiwo ◽  
Alaba Akinwotu ◽  
Stella Kpolugbo

Interactional positioning has to do with how people express their attitudes and dispositions to others (stance) and signal how they wish to relate with other participants in the discourse (engagement). These are closely connected with the extent to which impoliteness is expressed in discourse and the resources and strategies employed. This study investigates interactional positioning and impoliteness in two Nigerian political discussion sites, Nairaland Forum and Gistmania. The findings show that bald-on-record and negative impoliteness were predominant in the discussions. The common linguistic expressions of impoliteness were name-calling, vulgarism, cursing, dismissal and sarcasm. Participants also used questions, directives and reader pronouns you and your for face attacks and heightening of the effect of impolite expressions. Self-mentions and attitude markers, especially cognitive verbs, were used to convey feelings and attitudes towards other participants within and outside the discussion. The study concludes that impoliteness thrives in political debates online because of the uninhibited context, which gives freedom to participants to deliberately inject invective language in order to set the emotional temperature in the discussion and cause disaffection among the participants and the group they represent.

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 585-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecil Meeusen ◽  
Kristof Dhont

Using a representative sample of Belgian adolescents (N = 1530) and both their parents, we investigated the parent–child similarity in prejudice towards different out–groups and ideological attitudes (right–wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation). Contrary to previous studies, first, we distinguished between common and specific components of prejudice to test whether the parent–child similarity in one specific type of prejudice was symptomatic of parent–child similarity in prejudice towards out–groups in general. Second, we evaluated whether the parent–child similarity in common and specific components of prejudice was related to the parent–child similarity in ideological attitudes. Third, we investigated the moderating role of political discussion in the intergenerational framework of ideology and prejudice. Results indicated that parent–child similarity was particularly pronounced for the common rather than the specific component of prejudice and that the similarity in ideological attitudes was partly related to the similarity in the common component of prejudice. Finally, adolescents who discuss social and political issues more (versus less) frequently with their parents more strongly resembled their parents in the common component of prejudice and levels of authoritarianism. These results suggest that generalized prejudice runs in families and highlight politicization of the family as an important socialization mechanism. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jones

Abstract Little research has yet explored the impact of (re)translation on narrative characterization, that is, on the process through which the various actors depicted in a narrative are attributed particular traits and qualities. Moreover, the few studies that have been published on this topic are either rather more anecdotal than systematic, or their focus is primarily on the losses in character information that inevitably occur when a narrative is retold for a new audience in a new linguistic context. They do not explore how the translator’s own background knowledge and ideological beliefs might affect the characterization process for readers of their target-language text. Consequently, this paper seeks to make two contributions to the field: first, it presents a corpus-based methodology developed as part of the Genealogies of Knowledge project for the comparative analysis of characterization patterns in multiple retranslations of a single source text. Such an approach is valuable, it is argued, because it can enhance our ability to engage in a more systematic manner with the accumulation of characterization cues spread throughout a narrative. Second, the paper seeks to move discussions of the effects of translation on narrative characterization away from a paradigm of loss, deficiency and failure, promoting instead a perspective which embraces the productive role translators often play in reconfiguring the countless narratives through which we come to know, imagine and make sense of the past, our present and imagined futures. The potential of this methodology and theoretical standpoint is illustrated through a case study exploring changes in the characterization of ‘the common people’ in two English-language versions of classical Greek historian Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the first produced by Samuel Bloomfield in 1829 and the second by Steven Lattimore in 1998. Particular attention is paid to the referring expressions used by each translator—such as the multitude vs. the common people—as well as the specific attributes assigned to this narrative actor. In this way, the study attempts to gain deeper insight into the ways in which these translations reflect important shifts in attitudes within key political debates concerning the benefits and dangers of democracy.


Author(s):  
Kaylee Baucom

Feminist discourse is evolving and a new wave of feminist consciousness is appearing in the media, in political debates, and in the classroom. I teach literature at a community college in Las Vegas, where the students are similar to the “common readers” of Woolf’s Morley College in their desire to educate themselves, in their educational preparedness, and in their socioeconomic circumstances. Many of my students work as entertainers on The Strip and throughout my four years of teaching in Sin City, I have observed that my female students who work in the sex entertainment industry take a special interest in Woolf’s work. These students connect their concerns about female independence, sexual assault, pay inequality, and body-shaming, with Woolf’s feminist writings. Many of these women strongly identify with Woolf’s declarations of independence in A Room of One’s Own, as well as some of her most radical philosophies, such as her proclamation in Three Guineas that, “to sell a brain is worse than to sell a body.” Woolf speaks to and for these women in unique ways, and their responses to her work reflect a new, fourth wave feminist awareness. This study considers emerging, fourth wave feminist readings of Woolf both in theory and in practice. I wish to share the unique experience of teaching Woolf’s work to college students who identify as sex-entertainment workers, and highlight ways that these contemporary women are using Woolf’s work to create a new feminist heritage.


Author(s):  
Filippo Ranieri

Summary The numerous translations through which the Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone – a milestone in the history of the common law – became known in France, and thus contributed for the first time to acquaint French jurists with English law, have been largely neglected by legal historians. The first section of the present contribution introduces the French anglophile visitors to England who, during the second half of the eighteenth century, disseminated the work of William Blackstone and its first translations in France. The biography and work of these first translators require a detailed examination. A second section assesses the influence of these translations, particularly in the legal and political debates on the English trial by jury in the context of revolutionary legislation. A third section considers the later translations of Blackstone’s work during the Napoleonic period and the following years. Finally, a call for further research outlines the impact of that translation literature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-724
Author(s):  
Silvia Federici

The Common/s as a principle of social organization is at the center of radical political debates as an alternative to the logic of capital and the market. In her essay Silvia Federici presents a feminist perspective on the politics of the commons, with special attention to the reproductive commons women are constructing in response to the displacements caused by the new expansion of capitalist relations.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Räikkä ◽  
Daniel Weyermann

The legitimacy and stability of the political order are important aspects of a just social structure. Political liberals sometimes claim that a polity is legitimate and stable when it is based on shared views or premises, or reasons that all citizens can accept. In political debates about the shape of the common polity, this could mean that citizens have a moral duty to present premises that they take to be shared in the relevant sense.


1978 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 389-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chr. de Vegt

AbstractReduction techniques as applied to astrometric data material tend to split up traditionally into at least two different classes according to the observational technique used, namely transit circle observations and photographic observations. Although it is not realized fully in practice at present, the application of a blockadjustment technique for all kind of catalogue reductions is suggested. The term blockadjustment shall denote in this context the common adjustment of the principal unknowns which are the positions, proper motions and certain reduction parameters modelling the systematic properties of the observational process. Especially for old epoch catalogue data we frequently meet the situation that no independent detailed information on the telescope properties and other instrumental parameters, describing for example the measuring process, is available from special calibration observations or measurements; therefore the adjustment process should be highly self-calibrating, that means: all necessary information has to be extracted from the catalogue data themselves. Successful applications of this concept have been made already in the field of aerial photogrammetry.


Author(s):  
Ben O. Spurlock ◽  
Milton J. Cormier

The phenomenon of bioluminescence has fascinated layman and scientist alike for many centuries. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a number of observations were reported on the physiology of bioluminescence in Renilla, the common sea pansy. More recently biochemists have directed their attention to the molecular basis of luminosity in this colonial form. These studies have centered primarily on defining the chemical basis for bioluminescence and its control. It is now established that bioluminescence in Renilla arises due to the luciferase-catalyzed oxidation of luciferin. This results in the creation of a product (oxyluciferin) in an electronic excited state. The transition of oxyluciferin from its excited state to the ground state leads to light emission.


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