Question-declaration coupling in a university meeting talk: Discourse of social inequality and collegiality

Conversation Analysis (CA) deals with the description of the microscopic and corpus-driven data in an ‘unmotivating looking’ analytical fashion. As long as there are new, interesting, or deviant features from the data, they are always worthy of a micro analysis. For this paper, we report the ‘question-declaration coupling’ in meeting talks as a new feature and explicate it through the discourse of social inequality and collegiality in the academe. The data came from a total of five recorded meetings from three departments, such as Education, Arts Science, and Social Work, in a private university in Manila, Philippines. The meetings lasted for five hours and 50 minutes. From adjacency pairs of question-answer, the sequential pattern shows that the questions deserve conspicuous answers from the subordinates, but the Chair automatically couples them with declarative sentences and other utterances that serve as continuers. The pattern is categorised as a strategic turn-suppressing mechanism to hold back the members from possibly challenging the existing policies of the institution. It is also seen as a strategic mechanism to deprive the members of extending the litanies of possible counter-arguments. From a positive perspective, we argue that it is through the air of social inequality and collegiality that people are able to know their boundaries in an ongoing interaction. Toward the end, we state the implications of the results for teaching and learning socio-pragmalinguistics. We also recommend future cross-linguistic comparisons for these microscopic features under study, considering the small corpus of this study.

The Inequality Mirror: Using a Student Survey to Teach Social Stratification

Social inequality is a central theme in sociology study plans (both in research and education), but it is often one of the most difficult topics to teach. This article presents an innovative student-centered strategy for teaching social inequality that uses a survey to collect data on students’ socioeconomic characteristics and perceptions of inequality. To stimulate reflection and discussion on the social mechanisms that reproduce inequality, this information is subsequently presented to them in conjunction with a comparative analysis to general population data. The exercise seeks to make social inequality less abstract for students by involving them in the research process and by using data relative to their own lives and families. Ultimately, the strategy boosts students’ sociological imagination and their capacity for critical thinking by encouraging them to see the connections between individual biographies and broader social forces.

Burmese Women Portrait Under the British Imperialism in Orwell’s Burmese Days

This study aims to expose the Burmese women portrait under British Imperialism. The writer believes that Burmese Days is created as a response to the social phenomenon that was happening during the process of its creation. This study used a qualitative method using a sociological approach by Laurenson and Swingewood. The data of this study were collected from the description and utterances of the characters and narrator in the novel. The result of this study shows that the women were portrayed as the slave of the English men. The women are not valuable, they merely become entertainment for the English men to entertain them. Even, some of the Europeans have concubines to accompany them in killing their time or killing their boredom. It looks like the women are created for the English men as dolls which can be played as often as they can, and of course, like a doll, they can be thrown easily after the English men being bored. As this research limited to the analysis of women portrait as a concubine for the English men, it is suggested for other researchers to analyze and find the relevant problems that still exist around the society, such as social inequality, resistance, obedience, strategy, gender, racism, corruption and other social aspects in the novel Burmese Days.

Focusing Interrelations of Education Plans and Social Inequality in Early Childhood

Contributing to research on social inequality in early childhood, this chapter addresses the relevance of education plans in institutional early childhood education and care (ECEC) towards fostering children's educational advancement. To do so, results are discussed from an ongoing research project focusing on 3-6-year-old children's social-emotional skills (SES, taken as an important marker of educational advancement). Next, taking a qualitative multilevel stance, interviews with ECEC providers' representatives in Lower Saxony, Germany were analyzed with regard to challenges in advancing SES, showing interrelations as well as discrepancies between ECEC politics and practice, questioning the impact of education plans on reducing social inequality in early childhood.

Armutsforschung

The perception of growing social insecurities and divisions, not least due to the Covid-19 pandemic, has brought questions of social inequality and poverty back into focus. The interdisciplinary handbook addresses these new and old challenges and at the same time critically classifies and interprets current developments and manifestations of poverty. In addition to the academic debate, the handbook shows perspectives for the socio-political treatment of poverty. It serves as a comprehensive and concise reference work for practitioners, students and academics at the interface of various social science sub-disciplines. With contributions by Jan Bertram, Peter Bescherer, Petra Böhnke, Jeanette Bohr, Rita Braches-Chyrek, Antonio Brettschneider, Karl August Chassé, Michael David, Sonja Fehr, Marion Fischer-Neumann, Yvonne Franke, Natalie Grimm, Viktoria Häußermann, Maren Hilke, Dennis Homann, Ernst-Ulrich Huster, Andrea Janßen, Nora Jehles, Petra Kaps, Michael Klassen, Tanja Kleibl, Bettina Kohlrausch, Daniel Kumitz, Lutz Leisering, Sigrid Leitner, Gaby Lenz, Stephan Lessenich, Ortrud Leßmann, Stephan Lorenz, Ronald Lutz, Kai Marquardsen, Michael May, Lars Meier, Maria Pernegger, Roswitha Pioch, Ayça Polat, Martin Schenk, Karin Scherschel, Daniela Schiek, Johannes Schütte, Frank Sowa, Anne Tittor, Athanasios Tsirikiotis, Carsten G. Ullrich, Carolina Alves Vestena, Florian Vietze, Marliese Weißmann, Holger Wittig-Koppe and Janina Zölch.

Comparison of social inequality in HPV vaccination among teenagers with parental reports and healthcare providers’ records in the 2019 National Immunization Survey-Teen.

Background: Relatively little is known and inconclusive about social inequality in human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among teenagers in the United States. This study aims to investigate whether there is a social disparity in HPV vaccination among teenagers and if so, whether it can differ by the source of teen vaccination information (parental reports and provider records). Methods: We used the data from the 2019 National Immunization Survey-Teen (NIS-Teen; 42,668 teenagers, aged 13-17) including parental reported vaccination status. Among them, 18,877 teenagers had adequate provider reported vaccination records. Two socioeconomic status (SES) measures were used: mother’s education and annual family income. Multivariate logistic analyses were conducted. Results: False negatives of parental reports against provider records were more than two times higher (p < 0.001) in low SES teens than in high SES teens. In both SES measures, the proportion of HPV unvaccinated teenagers were lowest in the highest SES level in analyses with parental reports. However, it was the opposite in analyses with provider records. Interestingly, regardless of vaccination information source, the HPV unvaccinated rate was highest in the middle SES teens (>12 years, non-college graduates; and above poverty level, but not > $75K). Conclusion: A significant social inequality in HPV vaccination among teenagers exists in the United States. The pattern of social inequality in HPV vaccination can be distorted when only parent reported vaccination information is used.