scholarly journals Sameness and difference in narrative modes and narrative sense making: The case of Ramsey Campbell’s “The Scar”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Mari Hatavara ◽  
Jarkko Toikkanen

AbstractThe article discusses basic questions of narrative studies and definitions of narrative from a historical and conceptual perspective in order to map the terrain between different narratologies. The focus is placed on the question of how fiction interacts with other realms of our lives or, more specifically, how reading fiction both involves and affects our everyday meaning making operations. British horror writer Ramsey Campbell’s (b. 1946) short story “The Scar” (1967) will be used as a test case to show how both narrative modes of representation and the reader’s narrative sense making operations may travel between art and the everyday, from fiction to life and back. We argue that the cognitively inspired narrative studies need to pair up with linguistically oriented narratology to gain the necessary semiotic sensitivity to the forms and modes of narrative sense making. Narratology, in turn, needs to explore in detail what it is in the narrative form that enables it to function as a tool for reaching out and making sense of the unfamiliar. In our view, reading fictional narratives such as “The Scar” can help in learning and adopting linguistic resources and story patterns from fiction to our everyday sense making efforts.

2006 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Holland ◽  
Joseph M. Currier ◽  
Robert A. Neimeyer

Contemporary grief theories have highlighted the role of meaning-making in adaptation to bereavement, focusing on two major construals of meaning: making sense of the loss and finding benefit in the experience. The current investigation attempted a conceptual replication of the findings of Davis, Nolen-Hoeksema, and Larson (1998) that suggested that sense-making predicts adaptation to loss in the early period of bereavement, whereas benefit-finding primarily plays an ameliorative role as time progresses. To this end, an ethnically diverse sample of 1,022 recently bereaved college students completed the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG) as well as questions that assessed sense-making, benefit-finding, and the circumstances surrounding their losses. Results only partially replicated the findings of Davis and his colleagues, demonstrating that: 1) time since loss bore no relation to grief complications; 2) sense-making emerged as the most robust predictor of adjustment to bereavement; and 3) benefit finding interacted with sense making, with the fewest complications predicted when participants reported high sense, but low personal benefit, in the loss.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fridah Katushemererwe ◽  
Andrew Caines ◽  
Paula Buttery

AbstractThis paper describes an endeavour to build natural language processing (NLP) tools for Runyakitara, a group of four closely related Bantu languages spoken in western Uganda. In contrast with major world languages such as English, for which corpora are comparatively abundant and NLP tools are well developed, computational linguistic resources for Runyakitara are in short supply. First therefore, we need to collect corpora for these languages, before we can proceed to the design of a spell-checker, grammar-checker and applications for computer-assisted language learning (CALL). We explain how we are collecting primary data for a new Runya Corpus of speech and writing, we outline the design of a morphological analyser, and discuss how we can use these new resources to build NLP tools. We are initially working with Runyankore–Rukiga, a closely-related pair of Runyakitara languages, and we frame our project in the context of NLP for low-resource languages, as well as CALL for the preservation of endangered languages. We put our project forward as a test case for the revitalization of endangered languages through education and technology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 908-908
Author(s):  
Vivian Lou ◽  
Daniel W L Lai ◽  
Daniel Fu-Keung Wong ◽  
Doris Yu ◽  
Shuangzhou Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract Children caregivers contributed significantly to care and support dementia parents globally. In the caregiving journey, making sense of providing care plays significant role in their caregiving journey. In an ageing society such as Hong Kong, different generations of children caregivers take up dementia caregiver roles. We hypothesized that from studying baby boomers (BB, born in 1946-1964) and generation X (GX, born in 1965-1980), generations have impacts on their meaning making and well-being outcomes. 601 Caregivers completed a paper or online battery of questionnaires on burden (ZBI-4), mental well-being (PHQ-9), caregiving factors (ADL, IADL, caregiving hours, Positive Aspect of Caregiving; PAC) and the meaning making factors (Finding Meaning Through Caregiving; FMTC). Results showed that significant difference between caregivers from two generations. GX have significantly lower meaning made, measured by PAC affirming self and enriching life, as well as FMTC provisional meaning. While they spent less caregiving hours for the more independent care recipients, they suffered from higher burden, higher FMTC loss/powerless and worse psychological well-being (PHQ). The findings demonstrated generation X caregiver suffered from lower level of the meaning made and worse psychological wellbeing outcomes than BB caregivers. Future caregiver studies should take generational effect into account and services shall be provided in a generation-responsive approach.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT SAMET

AbstractDespite recent attention to the relationship between the media and populist mobilisation in Latin America, there is a misfit between the everyday practices of journalists and the theoretical tools that we have for making sense of these practices. The objective of this article is to help reorient research on populism and the press in Latin America so that it better reflects the grounded practices and autochthonous norms of the region. To that end, I turn to the case of Venezuela, and a practice that has been largely escaped attention from scholars – the use of denuncias.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026839622110466
Author(s):  
Karen Osmundsen ◽  
Bendik Bygstad

Continuous development extends the agile approach and focuses on bringing valuable services to users with the aim of achieving a continuous flow of learning and development in short cycles. The objective of this work is to theorize the idea of continuous development in the context of digital infrastructure evolution and explore the organizational interactions underlying continuous development. By drawing on literature on digital infrastructure theory and continuous development as it has emerged as an idea from the DevOps thinking expanded from agile, we outline main characteristics of continuous development and propose a theoretical definition of continuous development in organizational contexts. Then, in answering our research question “which patterns of interactions can be identified in the continuous development of digital infrastructures?”, we conducted a longitudinal case study at a Norwegian grid company and explored how a specific digital infrastructure evolved through continuous development. We identified generic interaction patterns with two cycles of sense-giving and sense-making between organizational actors, enabling the continuous development of the digital infrastructure. Our findings and model of interaction patterns offer a nuanced perspective on both digital infrastructure evolution and established views of sense-making and sense-giving mechanisms, as well as new ways to think about digitalization in incumbent firms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Soini ◽  
Janne Pietarinen ◽  
Kirsi Pyhältö

Curriculum reform that has an effect on the everyday practices in schools always entails translation of new ideas into new educational practices. This takes place primarily through shared sense making. However, our understanding of the different ways in which shared sense making is carried out is still scarce. In Finland, the district level plays an important intermediary role in orchestrating curriculum development work at the municipalities and in translating and mediating reform into school-level development work. The study explores different shared sense-making strategies employed by 12 district-level curriculum reform steering groups around Finland, including participants from 54 municipalities. Three hands-on strategies of shared sense making including comparison, standardisation and transformation were identified. The results indicated that different hands-on strategies have different functions in the process of making sense of the reform objectives. To a certain extent, the strategies can be viewed as hierarchical. Overall, results suggest that district-level actors aim to foster shared sense making; however, a more intentional use of strategies is needed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Latesha Murphy-Edwards ◽  
Kate van Heugten

This article reports on the qualitative phase of mixed method research conducted in a medium-size city in New Zealand, which examined 14 parents’ experiences of child- and youth-perpetrated domestic property violence (DPV). The research used semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis, enabling parents’ perceptions of the causes and impacts of this form of family violence to be explored in depth. Three superordinate themes were identified in the analysis: damage done, the various impacts of DPV; staying safe and sane; and making sense of DPV, parents’ perspectives. An ecological meaning-making theory emerged from the data and provided an overarching interpretative framework for considering the themes both separately and together. The findings showed that DPV is a distinct form of parent abuse and one that can have serious impacts of a financial, emotional, and relational nature. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed along with ideas for further research into this problem.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tallulah Harvey

This short story, “The Archive”, grew out of the eco-critical research I underwent during my postgraduate degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. In recent years, literary studies have become increasingly invested in environmentalism. The damaging consequences of human endeavour are now widely regarded within environmentalist and scientific communities, and by environmental literary theory or “ecocriticism”, as a shift from the Holocene (the geological epoch that provided the appropriate conditions for mammals to thrive), to the “Anthropocene” (the epoch in which human activity has become the dominant driving force of climatic change). The ecological implications of the Anthropocene prompt questions regarding human enterprise and responsibility; fuelling dystopian or apocalyptic end of the world narratives and anxieties towards technology, capitalism and post-humanism. This short piece explores the current problems facing climate change activists, namely the inconsistencies between the scientific community’s attitude towards ecological degradation and popular culture’s. Slajov Zizek suggests that public denial and the disassociation from environmental disaster is not caused by a lack of scientific knowledge, but because we as individuals fail to corroborate what we already know about climate change with our sensory experience of the everyday: ‘We know it, but we cannot make ourselves believe in what we know’. The Archive questions this pervasive delusion, one that denies climate change even in the face of dwindling resources, increasing natural disaster and rising sea levels. We as a society consume natural resources excessively, without any regard for the consequences.  My work draws attention to the suicidal nature of this desire, and encourages its readers to take responsibility for their actions, for the sake of humanity’s survival.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves ◽  
Egil Asprem ◽  
Elliott Daniel Ihm

To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from “religions” to “worldviews” and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on “big questions” ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans’ evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and world-making and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews.


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