scholarly journals Corruption in Action in an Emerging Democracy: The Case of Socio-Pragmatic Metaphors in Cameroon English Usage

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Willie Mushing Tamfuh
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Variation Theory ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Usage ◽  
National Reputation ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Emerging Democracy

In recent times, the Cameroon society has witnessed a decline in social and moral values, which has greatly influenced people’s use of language. Over the years, English has equally witnessed a degradation of the language to such an extent that one can talk of corrupt language. Corruption is a key subject that has gained the keen attention of political and social scientists as it affects the political, economic, social and cultural life of a society. This paper sets to identify the systems or rules and conventions according to which the language of corruption operates and concerns the semantic description of the typical words and expressions Cameroonians use to denote this practice in contemporary Cameroon. The idea is that the language we use is a reflection of the society in which we live and a representation of the social reality. This investigation aims to identify, collect and analyse specimens of utterances characteristic of corruption vocabulary and to describe this form of language use from a socio-pragmatic perspective. The scope of study is limited to establish a relationship between people, the language and a complex multilingual society as Cameroon. Data was collected from both oral and written sources as a representation of the opinions gathered from a cross section of Cameroonians. The significance of our study lies in the linguistic description of some characteristic of corruption related discourse. Using the participant observation, both spoken and written data were collected from different sources from the vantage point of functional lexicology and cognitive linguistics. A combination of different known theories, notably; the variation theory, speech act theory, lexico-semantics and the Pragmatic theory relevant to describe an utterance as a speech forms capable of a communicative performative action. Findings reveal that corruption is ubiquitous, corrosive and a dishonest deviant behaviour that severely damages personal and national reputation. To counter this, those engaged in the practice use different speech features such as borrowings, coinages, synonyms, clichés, metaphors and euphemisms. Metaphors and euphemisms are indirect ways speakers communicate important information. The language of corruption is strikingly similar in its soothing, euphemistic tone. Inadvertently, as language users have developed myriads of indirect and camouflage ways to refer to corruption, the language of corruption is also developing its own lexicon and linguistic features.

Transnarodowa kwestia społeczna. Migracje i nierówności społeczne

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Thomas Faist
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Question ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ecological Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Political Economic

The social question is back. Yet today’s social question is not primarily between labour and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized because migrants and their significant others entertain ties across the borders of national states in transnational social spaces; because of the cross-border diffusion of norms; and because there are implications of migration for social inequalities within national states. The first section discusses the structure of social inequalities in migration and the politics around it. It starts, first, by elaborating upon the commonalities and differences of the social question in the 19th and 21st centuries and then, second, asks whether the increasing relevance of location compared to class for income and life chances has replaced voice as a main response by exit. This is followed, third, by an elaboration of the nexus between social inequalities and migration, i.e. migration being both an antecedent and a consequence of social inequalities. Fourth, the focus moves to the main changes in migration control, its externalization from border control to remote control. This is followed, fifth, by a consideration of the other side of the coin, internalization processes in countries of destination and origin, driven by processes such as marketization and securitization of migration. The second section then moves on to sketch one of the main challenges, the need to include ecological aspects into the discussion of the social question. The analysis concludes with reflections on the shifting form of the transnationalized social question. Finally, the outlook discusses the role of social scientists in discussing the transnationalized social question in the public sphere.

Toward a Theory of State Intervention

1980 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-205
Author(s):  
Ira J. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Economic

State intervention into the ownership, financing, and regulation of various industries and sectors of the capitalist economy is a phenomenon as old as capitalism itself. In the last 15 years this topic has become a focal point of vigorous interest among social scientists. Given the manifest problems to be found within current political-economic relationships, it is not surprising that a great deal of this attention has been focused on the contemporary scene. Nevertheless, a small number of works have undertaken the explanation of the historical development of state intervention. Unfortunately, the historian in search of explanatory guidance is confronted here with a series of less than comprehensive analyses which move at descriptive and explanatory cross-purposes. The first tasks of the social scientist or historian who wishes to address the development of state intervention therefore must be to classify and clarify the accounts which have been proposed.

scholarly journals Language Personality in the Russian Linguistic Tradition: Diachronic-Synchronic Aspects

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (26) ◽  
pp. 110-119
Author(s):  
Natalia Yudina
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Complex Analysis ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Linguistic Usage ◽  
Russian Linguistic ◽  
The Russian Language

The article is devoted to the analysis of one of the most important terms in modern linguistic usage – the definition of a language personality. It was introduced in Russian-language scientific use in the 1930s by academician V. Vinogradov, and has been related to the ever-increasing interest in the anthropocentric factor in language, as well as to changes in the scientific linguistic paradigm, since the 1980s. Resuming some terminological and conceptual descriptions of language personality, as represented in the Russian-language linguistic literature, this article comes to the conclusion that language personality theory is presently reviewed in linguodidactics, linguoculturology, cognitive linguistics, ethnolinguoculturology, psycholinguistics, lexicography, stylistics, pragmatics, and other intra- and extralinguistic disciplines.The complex analysis makes it possible to identify verbal-semantic (lexicon), linguocognitive (thesaurus), motivational (pragmaticon; cf.Y. N. Karaulov), stylistic, communicative-pragmatic, linguoculturological, emotional, articulatory, and other levels. In addition to language personality, the terms verbal and communicative personality must also be specified and systematized. Further conceptual and terminological research in the description of language personality seems highly necessary for modern linguistics. The process of developing and establishing a language personality appears to be an essential component of the objective and subjective transformations of the information society. Further inquiry into the study of language personality will contribute to a better understanding of the social-political, economic, socio-cultural and linguistic processes occurring in the 21st century.

scholarly journals An Architecture by means of Anthropology. Beyond learning the tools of social science

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gisbert Alemany
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Method ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
The Times

Architects and urban planners have traditionally considered social sciences to learn their tools, particularly the ones that allow them to analyse and describe the environments and the people for whom they work. This has led architects to develop better tools of observation and description of the social realm and not only the material one. Nevertheless, most of the times this interdisciplinary approach has identified social sciences, and specially anthropology, with ethnography. This paper departs from the critique of this identification made by anthropologist Tim Ingold and focuses in what he proposes is the core method of anthropology, participant observation. Then it reviews several recent proposals of social scientists who are searching for a non-representational more future oriented discipline. Which is an aim more related to that of architects. This paper tries to imagine how this transdisciplinary practice could look like.

Mobilities: The Role of the Social Sciences and Humanities under the United Nations Sustainable Goals for 2020–2030

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Amélia Polónia
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Political Economic

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2020–2030 include areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice. The topic of migrations comprises broad concepts of socio-cultural, religious, political, economic, environmental and technological movement and change. The consensus seems to be that the future lies in cooperation across disciplines. The question of this paper is: how far can social scientists go or want to go down this road?

"I'm Not Just Talking to the Victims of Oppression Tonight- I'm Talking to Everybody": Rhetorical Authority and Narrative Authenticity in an African-American Poetics of Political Engagement

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Briggs
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Home Town ◽  
Speech Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
Textual Authority ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract A number of scholars have recently followed Bakhtin's lead in recognizing the analytic importance of discourse that contains more than one genre. This article discusses the opening lines of an address by a civil rights activist, the Reverend Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., to an audience that consisted mainly of college stu-dents. After adumbrating the general themes he planned to address, Chavis told a personal narrative regarding his success in desegregating the library in his home town in the 1950s. Although Chavis initially drew on academic lecturing style in establishing textual authority, linguistic features of the narrative linked the form of the discourse to the social milieu he was representing, thus estab-lishing narrative authenticity. Both sections contain a stylistic overlap of fea-tures found in performed African-American sermons. Drawing on Gates's (1988) use of the term Signifyin(g) and a new model of genre (Briggs & Bau-man, 1992), I suggest that this dialogue of genres enables Chavis to Signify on the ongoing speech event and its political-economic location as well as to critique the textual economy of segregation. (Linguistic Anthropology)

The Demilitarization of the Egyptian Cabinet

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark N. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Executive Branch ◽  
The State ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Background Characteristics ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Occupational Training ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Occupational Career

One way that social scientists categorize and describe political regimes is to analyze the nature of the executive branch of government, particularly the makeup of cabinets. The assumption is that the structure of the cabinet and the class background, and the educational or occupational training of ministers reflect the nature of the regime. Those at the top of the state may represent certain groups in society or be particularly responsive to the demands of the social groups from which they come. Background characteristics may also be a good indicator of the style of rule. Education, training, age, occupational career, all indicate how decision-makers think, how they organize to approach problems, how they issue orders and use subordinates. The institutional background of ministers may reflect the importance of various institutions in society, for the connection of institutions through individuals at the top of the state may be a good indication of which specialized constituencies must be consulted, which command power and which control political, economic, and social resources.

The Transnationalized Social Question

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Faist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Question ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Public Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Political Economic

The social question is back. Yet today’s social question is not primarily between labour and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. While class has always been criss-crossed by manifold heterogeneities, not least of all cultural ones around ethnicity, religion, and language, it is these latter heterogeneities that have sharpened in situations of cross-border migration over the past decades. As in the nineteenth century, political conflicts arise, constituting the social question as a public concern. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices of the global South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people seeking a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized because migrants and their significant others entertain ties across the borders of national states in transnational social spaces; because of the cross-border diffusion of norms; and because there are implications of migration for social inequalities within national states. Casting a wide net in terms of conceptual and empirical scope, this book tackles both the social structure and the politics of social inequalities. It sets a comprehensive agenda for research which also includes the public role of social scientists in dealing with the transnationalized social question.

Can Carnal Sociology Bring Together Body and Soul?

2019 ◽  
pp. 114-136
Author(s):  
John Levi Martin
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Laboratory Study ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Rigorous Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The Mind

There are two ways of thinking in philosophical psychology, dualist and nondualist. Nondualists have been encouraged to treat the idea of habitus as the philosophers’ stone that will bring the mind and body together. But participant observation suggests that in focusing attention on the development of habitus—a capacity to respond to the imperatives of the social environment without the need for mediation by concepts—a distinction will probably need to be made between those aspects of habitus inaccessible to consciousness and those aspects accessible. Fortunately, the latter category is likely to include those aspects least amenable to laboratory study and most of interest to social scientists. Finally, this latter category also provides the crucial data for a rigorous approach to field theory.

scholarly journals Public care policies for child and adolescent victims of domestic violence

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (spe) ◽  
pp. 812-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Telma Sanchez Vendruscolo ◽  
Maria das Graças Carvalho Ferriani ◽  
Marta Angélica Iossi Silva
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Child And Adolescent ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Public Care ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Adolescent Victims

This is a qualitative study that aimed to know and analyze the social representations of social workers regarding the assistance to the child and adolescent, victims of domestic violence. The data collection was carried out through semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The data analysis was based on the hermeneutic-dialectic perspective. The empirical categories that emerged from the subjects' representations were: "lack of policy", "do not support because have not received support", and "social assistance" whereas the political economic aspect was highlighted as determinant of violence; the cultural aspects, perpetuating a cycle of violence in the families. An important step must be taken is the formulation of public policies directed to all children and adolescents and not policies of exception, directed only to those who are in situation of "social and personal risk".

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