Realization Patterns of Request Strategies in Sudanese Arabic and English

Author(s):  
Khalid Abdel Gadir Tag Eldin

<p>This study tried to identify the Sudanese university students’ preferences of request strategies. It explored the claim of the universality of the speech act’s three levels of directness i.e. direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect. It contrasted and compared the subjects’ choice of strategies in Arabic and English languages. It also investigated the impact of some social factors on the subjects’ strategy choice. The data collected from the subjects showed that they used direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect requests when they responded to English and Arabic Discourse Completion Tests. This finding consolidated the universality claim of the three levels of directness. The data also showed that the subjects preferred to use direct requests more than the conventionally indirect ones and hints. The collectivist culture of the students’ society influenced their choice of direct strategies as it is based on solidarity, intimacy, etc. The results also showed that the different social variables i.e. the social distance between the interactants, the power one interlocutor has over the other, and the degree of request imposition had impact on the subjects’ choice of strategies. </p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><strong>:</strong> Pragmatics, Request Strategies, Speech acts, Sudanese university students, Sudanese Colloquial Arabic.</p>

Author(s):  
Sloane Speakman

In examining the strikingly high prevalence rates of HIV in many parts of Africa, reaching as high as 5% in some areas, how does the discourse promoted by the predominant religions across the continent, Islam and Christianity, affect the outlook of their followers on the epidemic? This question becomes even more intriguing after discovering the dramatic difference in rate of HIV prevalence between Muslims and Christians in Africa, confirmed by studies that have found a negative relationship to exist between HIV prevalence and being Muslim in Africa, even in Sub-Saharan African nations. Why does this gap in prevalence rates exist? Does Islam advocate participating in less risky behavior more so than Christianity? By comparing the social construction, epidemiological understanding and public responses among Muslim populations in Africa with Christian ones, it becomes apparent that many similarities exist between the two regarding discourse and that, rather than religious discourse itself, other social factors, such as circumcision practices, contribute more to the disparity in HIV prevalence than originally thought.


Author(s):  
Caitlin Vitosky Clarke ◽  
Brynn C Adamson

This paper offers new insights into the promotion of the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) framework for mental illness and chronic disease. Utilising the Syndemics Framework, which posits mental health conditions as corollaries of social conditions, we argue that medicalized exercise promotion paradigms both ignore the social conditions that can contribute to mental illness and can contribute to mental illness via discrimination and worsening self-concept based on disability. We first address the ways in which the current EIM framework may be too narrow in scope in considering the impact of social factors as determinants of health. We then consider how this narrow scope in combination with the emphasis on independence and individual prescriptions may serve to reinforce stigma and shame associated with both chronic disease and mental illness. We draw on examples from two distinct research projects, one on exercise interventions for depression and one on exercise interventions for multiple sclerosis (MS), in order to consider ways to improve the approach to exercise promotion for these and other, related populations.


Comunicar ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (41) ◽  
pp. 61-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristóbal Casanueva-Rocha ◽  
Francisco-Javier Caro-González

At a time when academic activity in the area of communication is principally assessed by the impact of scientific journals, the scientific media and the scientific productivity of researchers, the question arises as to whether social factors condition scientific activity as much as these objective elements. This investigation analyzes the influence of scientific productivity and social activity in the area of communication. We identify a social network of researchers from a compilation of doctoral theses in communication and calculate the scientific production of 180 of the most active researchers who sit on doctoral committees. Social network analysis is then used to study the relations that are formed on these doctoral thesis committees. The results suggest that social factors, rather than individual scientific productivity, positively influence such a key academic and scientific activity as the award of doctoral degrees. Our conclusions point to a disconnection between scientific productivity and the international scope of researchers and their role in the social network. Nevertheless, the consequences of this situation are tempered by the nonhierarchical structure of relations between communication scientists. En un momento en que la actividad académica en el ámbito de la comunicación se valora principalmente por el impacto de las revistas y los medios de comunicación científica y por la productividad de los investigadores, surge la cuestión de si los factores sociales pueden condicionar la actividad científica con la misma fuerza que estos elementos objetivos. Esta investigación analiza la influencia de la productividad científica y de la actividad social en el ámbito de la comunicación. Se ha identificado la red social de los investigadores de comunicación a partir de las tesis doctorales. Para los 180 investigadores más activos en los tribunales de tesis se ha calculado su producción científica. Se utiliza el análisis de redes sociales para estudiar las relaciones que se producen en los tribunales de tesis doctorales. Los resultados muestran que los factores sociales influyen positivamente en una actividad académica y científica tan relevante como la obtención del grado de doctor, mientras que la productividad científica individual no lo hace. Como conclusiones cabe señalar que existe una desconexión entre la productividad científica y la proyección internacional de los investigadores y su papel en la red social. Las implicaciones de este hecho están matizadas por una estructura no jerarquizada de las relaciones entre los científicos de comunicación.


2020 ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Vladyslav O. Studenets

The arguments and counterarguments in the boundaries of scientific discussion on monitoring the motivational mechanism of securing the labor activity efficiency are generalized. It is related to the fact that the most essential transformations are seen in the social and labor spheres in conditions of market development. The paper aims to define the social factors in the efficiency of labor activity of workers. Systematization of literature sources and approaches to solving the problem of studying the social factors of labor efficiency leads to the conclusion that Ukrainian and foreign scientists have studied the effectiveness of labor activity and the impact of social factors on its increase, but in modern conditions, there is a need for critical analysis at enterprises of various types of economic activity in Ukraine. The study of this issue was carried out in the following logical sequence: determination of results, formation of the main tasks, directions of research of labor remuneration and its structure, determination of tendencies of ensuring the labor activity efficiency. The methodological tools of the study include the system of economic laws, concepts, and categories, the fundamental provisions of modern economic theory and applied economics, statistics. The general methodological basis of the research consists of an abstract-logical complex approach and methods of statistical analysis. The indicators of labor remuneration, the minimum wages, and structures of the wage fund constitute the object of the research because they are the social factors to ensure the efficiency of labor activity. The article examines the indicators of wages, their structure, as well as the impact on ensuring the efficiency of employees. The regional peculiarities in the structure of remuneration are studied and the specific weight of the additional remuneration fund is ranked. The directions of increasing the efficiency of labor activity by strengthening the influence of social factors are offered.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Mita Sri Handayani ◽  
Muhammad Nur Wangid ◽  
Andre Julius

The background of the current study is the urgency of possessing good social cognition to adapt to the social changes that are happening quickly. Weak social cognition makes individuals less in empathy, aggressive or unhappy in their daily life. The link between self-management and social cognition lies in cognitive adjustment. Hence, the authors think it is important to do research that focuses on the implementation of counseling with self-management techniques in developing social cognition. The authors aimed to investigate the effectiveness of self-management in improving social cognition. The present study used one group pretest-posttest quasi-experiment. We invited 10 students from Universitas Ma'soem, Indonesia to participate in the experiment. They were selected based on a low social cognition score after filling the self-report of nineteen items social cognition scale. The results showed counseling with self-management techniques effective in improving university students' social cognition. Besides, limitations and recommendations are discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 1067
Author(s):  
Denny Asmas ◽  
Ahmad Tarmizi

The increasing number of residents, especially in Telanaipura Village Telanaipura sub-district will have far-reaching implications also on the decision to purchase instant noodle products.  the background outlined above, can be taken to formulate a problem: How social variables affect the decision to buy Instant Indomie noodle products. The purpose of this study is as follows: To analyze the influence of social variables on the decision to buy instant indomie noodle products. To find out the social influence and purchasing decisions used the regression formula. The accumulated results of respondents' answers showed that on average, all respondents' answers showed that the purchase decision variable was at a pretty good level with an average score of 320. The accumulated respondent's response to social variables was 325.8. This value is in a fairly good interval class. This means that social factors are considered by consumers to consume instant indomie noodle food. determination coefficient or (R Square) of independent variable regression (Social Variable) to the Decision to Purchase indomie instant noodle products 0.643. social variable t-calculated value of 2,003, because the t-count value (2,003) is greater than t-Table (1,684) then at the error rate 5% Ho rejected Ha accepted


Author(s):  
Albena Antonova

The influence of Internet on knowledge acquisition increases as it became the primary source of reference, especially for young generations. Therefore, it is important to understand how social factors and Internet influences not only explicit but also implicit knowledge construction. Several theories explain the impact of the social groups on the knowledge formation as Social Cognitive Theory of Bandura and Lay Epistemic Theory of Kruglanski. Thus, the authors propose an analysis of the implicit knowledge construction processes through the theoretical overview of Internet communication. More specifically, they discuss how the mechanisms of Internet increase the social and group impact on the implicit knowledge processes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Surkyn ◽  
Reinhild Vandekerckhove ◽  
Dominiek Sandra

Abstract We examine unintentional spelling errors on verb homophones in informal online chat conversations of Flemish adolescents. In experiments, these verb forms yielded an effect of homophone dominance, i.e., most errors occurred on the lower-frequency form (Sandra et al., 1999). Verb homophones are argued to require the conscious application of a spelling rule, which may cause a temporary overload of working memory resources and trigger automatic retrieval of the higher-frequency spelling from the mental lexicon. Unlike most previous research, we investigate homophone intrusions in a natural writing context. Thus, we test the ‘ecological validity’ of psycholinguistic experiments. Importantly, this study relates these psycholinguistic constructs to different social variables in social media writing to test a prediction that directly follows from Sandra et al.’s account. Whereas social factors likely affect the error rates, they should not affect the error pattern: the number of working memory failures occurs at another processing level than the homophone intrusions. Hence, the focus is on the interaction between homophone dominance and the social variables. The errors for two types of verb homophones reveal (a) an impact of all social variables, (b) an effect of homophone dominance, and (c) no interaction between this effect and the social factors.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Burgo

The Present Perfect (PP) in some Peninsular Spanish dialects is following the same path as other Romance languages; it is going through a grammaticalization process where the PP is usurping the semantic domains of the Preterite. This is the case of many Peninsular dialects such as Alicante (Schwenter, 1994) and Madrid (Serrano, 1994) among others as well as Bilbao (Kempas, 2005). He found that the frequencies of PPs in hodiernal contexts were higher than in other Spanish cities so these findings point out to a more advanced path of grammaticalization in this city. Previous studies have paid more attention to the linguistic constraints that favor the use of the PP instead of the Preterite rather than the social factors that influence this linguistic change. In this article, I focus on the study of three social variables (age, gender and class) to account for evidence of a change in progress in Bilbao Spanish.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Ana Ramsha ◽  
Samrah Hidayat

This study examines the role of social parameters in the choice of address forms used in kinship domain in Punjab, Pakistan. The study targeted 140 respondents in order to test the impact of social factors along with the regional differences in the choices of address forms in kinship domain. Statistical analyses are done by applying t-test for gender in relation to choices of address forms and ANOVA for age, income, education and social class. The study finds out that there is a strong connection of different social parameters not only with language use and practice but also in choices and use of address forms especially in kinship relationships.  Moreover, it is highlighted that gender does not influence in the choices of address forms, even the participants belonging to young and middle categories show no significant difference with regard to the choices of address form despite the fact that all the factors and parameters exert influence on the choices of address forms. Hence address forms as being one of the major traits of language and society is affected by all the social factors around and regional differences are also most important as they give identity and ethnicity to the society.


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