Rumor Has it: “Dementia” A Discourse-Analytical Analysis of Obituaries of People With Dementia

Despite the increasing incidence of the condition, people with dementia face a double stigma: ageism and the stigma of mental illness. The stigmatization of the condition has negative consequences, and can even lead to self-stigmatization. To develop adequate education programs to overcome the harmful stigma, the degree and the characteristics of that stigmatization have to be identified. In this study, the content and the language of obituaries of well-known people with dementia are analyzed using a qualitative bottom-up approach. If mentioned, the dementia receives little attention and the information given does not exceed common knowledge. Euphemistic language such as metaphors is introduced not to circumvent the condition, but to palliate its degressive nature.

THE DELETION OF THE HUMAN AGENT IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE DISCOURSE: AN ECOLINGUISTIC STUDY

This study explores the use of the strategy of erasure in environmental science discourses to explore the deletion of the agent. Three environmental science textbooks have been chosen for analysis. Stibbe’s (2015) framework of erasure has been used as a model for analyzing the data. He asserts that the natural world is marginalized in texts through the use of certain linguistic strategies; these strategies run throughout the whole discourse to construct the erasure of the ecosystem. The researchers aim to identify erasure at the level of void, which is the complete erasure or deletion of the agent from these discourses. Stibbe mentions nine linguistic strategies for the construction of erasure in environmental discourses. These strategies are passive voice, nominalization, co-hyponymy, hyponymy, metaphor, metonymy, construction of noun phrases, transitivity patterns and massification. For the construction of void, the researchers have analyzed the strategies of passivization and nominalization. It has been found that these strategies are pervasive in the discourses, thereby deleting the agent and constructing void. The study suggests a new way to look at the language of ecological discourses and proposes further studies on how euphemistic language in these discourses can negatively influence readers. Keywords: erasure, mask, void, environmental discourse

Invasion, retaliation, concealment and silences at Dead Man’s Flat, South Australia: A consideration of the historical, archaeological and geophysical evidence of frontier conflict

This article presents the results of historical research, as well as archaeological and geophysical surveys, in order to explore a number of frontier conflict events at Dead Man’s Flat in South Australia (SA). The historical records reveal the cruelty and complexity of the period and expose the concealments, contradictions, euphemistic language, denials and silences that are typical of the Australian frontier. Further disparities are revealed in more recent commemorative efforts. Archaeological investigations in the study area provided an ‘absence of evidence’. Whilst the geophysical survey revealed that there are potential graves located on the flat, no interment was located in the area commemorated by local non- Indigenous community members. The combined results of this multi-method approach uncovered new dissonances, raised new questions and provided new exegeses about the frontier in this region. For traditional owners, the sum of the evidence reveals a history of invasion, killings and massacre, theft, deceit and cover-up – Dead Man’s Flat is, therefore, a place to be approached with deep respect in order to honour the experiences of their ancestors.

Implementation of the manipulative potential of political euphemisms in modern media discourse

The article analyzes the research process on the history of political euphemisms in Russian and other foreign linguistics, listing the main scientific research results related to the definition of typical features of political euphemisms on the Internet news portals. One of the main tasks of the research is to identify the essence of the functioning of political euphemisms as a means of manipulating the consciousness of the electorate through the substitution of values. The initial prerequisites for the work are the provisions of linguoculture, psycholinguistics and intercultural communication. The political euphemisms of the media sphere have been studied in a comparative aspect. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the manipulation potential of euphemistic language units depends directly on the political value of citizens.

Political Ecology on Instagram Digital Media as A Politeness Branding Image

The convergence of technology has a major impact on human life. The dependence on media forms media ecology. Media ecology becomes a bridge in creating a group self-image. The main study of this research was to analyze the forms of politeness verbal messages on digital media @PandemicTalks. The Instagram account @PandemicTalks presents a new style of sharing information on digital media through graphic and visual content. The research orientation focused on visual verbal messages with the substance of COVID-19 related to the government policies. This qualitative research used both netnographic and descriptive phenomenological method. The results show that the COVID-19 Pandemic formed the characters of technology literate society. The communication lines were more dynamically interactive. Language was as a social and political control in creating the politeness branding image. The politeness strategy used the verbal wisdom markers. The sharing function politeness of visual verbal messages on the @PandemicTalks account was more dominant. The branding image used a persuasive euphemistic language style.

Moral Development in Adolescents as A Key Indicator for The Prevention of Violent Behavior in Their Couples’ Relationships

Dating violence is a multidimensional and cross-cultural problem that in the last decade has extended worryingly to teenage age. The consequences are so serious and lasting over time that they cause serious psychological, educational, family and social implications. Knowledge of predictive indicators and the consequences that these aggression and victimization processes cause, can offer an important guide for the design of prevention and intervention protocols that contribute to decrease the prevalence of cases, to facilitate their identification, to give an answer faster and more efficient. This study emphasizes the moral development of adolescents as a key indicator and, specifically, in the level of moral disengagement they present. The aims are: a) Analyze the level of moral disengagement of adolescents, as well as the mechanisms they use to accept and normalize violent behaviors; b) Know what mechanisms of moral disengagement predict certain forms of aggression in dating relationships. The sample consists of 2029 adolescents (55.4% girls) with ages between 14 and 18 years (M = 16.2; SD = 1.2). The results indicate that adolescents have a moderate level of moral disengagement (M = 2,562; SD = 0.4362) and the most commonly used disengagement mechanisms coincide with the diffusion and displacement of responsibility for the damage caused. As the level of disengagement increases, the mechanisms that adolescents use to validate and approve aggressive behaviors committed and suffered are diversified. Finally, it is found that the use of mechanisms such as dehumanization and euphemistic language are strong predictors of certain forms of victimization.

Euphemisms of Corruption among Students of Higher Institutions in South West Nigeria

Corruption is a pervasive practice in Nigeria that is commonly associated with government officials who divert public funds for private use, while minimal attention is paid to acts of corruption in the educational sector. This study, which is part of research on how language is used to drive and conceal corruption in Nigeria, aims at revealing some corrupt practices in Nigerian higher institutions that are concealed because of the euphemistic language used by students to describe and help perpetuate corrupt practices in their relationships with academic and non-academic staff of different institutions. Four institutions of higher education in south-west Nigeria were purposively selected and focus group discussions were conducted with 54 conveniently selected students of these institutions to collect qualitative data on the explanation of linguistic codes derived from the first phase of this study. The findings revealed extensive usage of ‘runs’ as a superordinate code for diverse acts of corruption including: sex for marks, cash for marks, sex/cash for grade alterations, examination malpractice, and the use of fake documents. Parents and guardians need to listen closely to the language of students in higher education for early detection of assimilation and acceptance of corrupt practices as a way of life.

Controlling the Narrative: Euphemistic Language Affects Judgments of Actions while Avoiding Perceptions of Dishonesty

The present work (N = 1,906 U.S. residents) investigates the extent to which peoples’evaluations of actions can be biased by the strategic use of euphemistic (agreeable) anddysphemistic (disagreeable) terms. We find that participants’ evaluations of actions are mademore favorable by replacing a disagreeable term (e.g., torture) with a semantically relatedagreeable term (e.g., enhanced interrogation) in an act’s description. Notably, the influence ofour agreeable and disagreeable terms was reduced (but not eliminated) when making actions less ambiguous by providing participants with a detailed description of each action. Despite their influence, participants judged both agreeable and disagreeable action descriptions as largely truthful and distinct from lies, and judged agents using such descriptions as more trustworthy and moral than liars. Overall, the results of the current study suggest that a strategic speaker can, through the careful use of language, sway the opinions of others in a preferred direction while avoiding many of the reputational costs associated with less subtle forms of linguistic manipulation (e.g., lying). Like the much-studied phenomenon of “fake news,” manipulative language can serve as a tool for misleading the public, doing so not with falsehoods but rather the strategic use of language.

Een ondeugende Diogenes

Summary In the corpus of apocryphal Cynic letters those attributed to Diogenes stand out: they form the bulk of the letters and they are the most humorous. This corresponds with representations of him as a provocateur elsewhere in imperial Greek literature. This article focuses on the topic of sex in Diogenes’ letters, and answers two main questions: first, whether the sexual humor of the letters is more risqué than what we find in the other sources; second, how this sexual humor contributes to the overall purpose of the apocryphal Diogenes letters. I suggest that even though in the letters euphemistic language persists, they treat the Diogenes anecdotes about sex in greater detail than anywhere else. The provocative, risqué humor contained in these anecdotes would serve to entice and entertain audiences in order to get them engaged in Cynic philosophy.