Educational Support of a Student with ADHD. An Analysis of Parents’ Biographical Experiences

The aim of this paper is to present the results of a study on the subjective interpretation and the construction of biographies by parents of children with ADHD. The research was driven by insufficient knowledge regarding the definition of the support offered at school to a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among parents and to determine what is important and unique from a parental perspective. The presented studies were constructivist, interpretative studies using the biographical method. Narrative interviews were conducted with parents of children with ADHD living in Poland. Reconstruction of their parental experiences allowed an understanding of their individual feelings and experiences, which showed “the truth” about the educational support provided to a child. The aim of the studies was a reconstruction of the narrative and an analysis of the subjective meanings which parents give to the educational support that is offered to their children at school. The central thesis took the form of a question: How did parents interpret their own experiences related to educational support given at school to a child with ADHD? The analysis of the narration shows different parental experiences regarding the educational support received. The reality reconstructed by examined parents is complex and consists of hope and expectations, but also doubts, powerlessness and helplessness. Some parts of the narration are poignant, sorrowful and rife with feelings of loneliness, which is a consequence of misunderstanding a specific child’s needs. The other parts of the narrative are dominated by happiness and joy caused by the support that a student received and its effects. By speaking about the help which was received at school, the parents expose their personal feelings towards that event, and they show their individual interpretation of the reality that they experienced. They give subjective meaning to a narrative that they feel is significant.

Trust is knowing that... The subjective meanings and senses of experience-based foundations of trust of students with intellectual disabilities

Trust refers to daily life facilitating factors, to social integration, to a sense of security or quality of life. So far, there have been no studies analysing the trust of students with intellectual disabilities. The analysis of trust of young persons with intellectual disabilities was not attempted. Therefore, a question was formulated: what meanings and senses do students with these disabilities assign to their experiences of the foundations of trust? The study features qualitative research interviews (in-depth and non-structured). The theoretical and empirical assumptions apply the interpretive/constructivist paradigm and phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective based on Alfred Schütz’s social theory. The empirical material was obtained based on 11 interviews conducted with students with mild intellectual disabilities of 6th – 8th grades of special needs comprehensive school. The basis for trust is everyday knowledge manifested in: the knowledge about the essence of trust, knowledge of the study’s participants – their skills and capabilities, the cause that leads to a specific result. Knowledge as the foundation of trust is common and non-reflective, but also authentic and dynamic, revealing ways of coping with everyday life. The meanings and senses assigned to objects, humans and relationships are not a direct representation of the social world, but they constitute in fact the way of life of the subjects.

In search of the narrator

The chapter proposes a semantic analysis of narrators in fiction, addressing three main issues: (a) in fiction, we cannot rely on reality to determine the identity of the narrator, (b) there are linguistic items beyond pronouns to introduce a narrator, and (c) narrators can be unreliable. It shows how narrators in fiction can be modeled by discourse referents (drefs) in dynamic semantics. At the core of the analysis is the assumption that hearers derive subjective meanings by taking into account all contexts c that could be the context they are in. Combined with dynamic semantics, this captures the intuition that a narrator can be both unique and indefinite. Different types of narrator introduction are surveyed: apart from first-person pronouns, speaker-oriented items like exclamatives, questions, and evidentials trigger the accommodation of a narrator dref. Other items, like predicates of personal taste, can but need not refer to the narrator dref. The analysis is extended to unreliable narrators and narrations about humanless worlds.

Identity, Belonging and Strategic Citizenship. Considerations About Naturalisation Among Italians and Spaniards Living in the EU

The subject of naturalisation among intra-EU migrants has only recently drawn the attention of social science scholars. Empirical evidence from quantitative studies shows an increase in citizenship applications among this new wave of mobile people, indicating a strategic use of naturalisation. However, there is not a great deal of micro-level research, especially as to the subjective meanings attached to citizenship take-up in a new EU member state. Drawing on 68 in-depth interviews conducted with Italians and Spaniards living in London and Berlin, we argue that an individual’s understanding of naturalisation within the EU context is based on two aspects: on one hand, a strictly pragmatic evaluation of the pros and cons of the new status; on the other, a new sense of belonging as well as new cultural and territorial identifications that intra-EU migrants are not often willing to experience. Therefore, this article suggests that EU migrants that strongly identify with their country of origin and the EU see national and EU identities as conflicting with naturalisation, thus setting aside instrumental considerations. This constitutes a critique to theoretical approaches claiming the diminishing importance of a nation’s cultural self-understanding. Our paper also sheds light on the possible effect of the UK’s departure from the EU on young Southern European migrants choosing to apply for British citizenship, highlighting that it is mostly the implementation of the formal exit process and the actual abrogation of EU citizenship rights that reconfigure patterns in naturalisation, rather than the uncertainty and fears about the future.

Exploring the Culture of Surveillance: A Qualitative Study in Portugal

By following the theoretical framework of the surveillance culture this article aims to detail the surveillance imaginaries and practices that individuals have, capturing differences and social inequalities among respondents. We present an in-depth look into surveillance awareness, exploring subjective meanings and the varying awareness regarding commercial, governmental, and lateral surveillance. Furthermore, a detailed analysis is made on how individuals sometimes welcome surveillance, expanding on the cost-benefit trade-off, and detailing it on three distinct trade-offs: the privacy vs. commercial gains/rewards, the privacy vs. convenience and, the privacy vs. security. Lastly, we present a section that explores and analyzes resistance to surveillance.

Research of social expectations’ properties of future specialists of socionomic profile

The article researches of social expectations’ properties of future specialists of socionomic profile. Psycholinguistic determinants of personality construction of social reality are established. It is emphasized that the variability of the requirements of the social space necessitates constant prognostic activity of the life’s subject. This practice is demonstrated in relation to natural object connections, in the sphere of processes of social interaction, social communication and speech construction in the form of peculiar social expectations. Relevant psychodiagnostic research tools were used: clear quantification of texts, created a coding matrix, carried out quantitative and qualitative content analysis, empirical distribution of all levels’ scales of the studied parameters, Spearman correlation was determined. The predominant properties of the respondents were established: internality (n=18; 51.43%); activity (n=20; 57.13%), moderate openness results (n=16; 45.71%). It is proved that the respondents, interpreting the social field, pay considerable attention to the reflexive aspects, take the position of “participant in the process”. It is shown how sign-semantic formations, acquiring subjective meanings, become an objective fact that affects the construction of social reality by the individual. An example of content-analytical measurement of human behavior is demonstrated.

Sociology of Chronic Pain

Chronic pain is a common, costly, and consequential health problem. However, despite some important analytic contributions, sociological research on pain has not yet coalesced into a unified subfield. We present three interrelated bodies of evidence, and illustrative new empirical findings using 2010-2018 NHIS data, to argue that pain should have a central role in sociological investigations of health. Specifically, we contend that (1) pain is a sensitive barometer of population health and wellbeing; (2) pain is emblematic of many contested and/or chronic conditions; and (3) pain and pain treatment reflect, and have wide-ranging implications for, public policy. Overall, whether we analyze pain quantitatively or qualitatively—focusing on its distribution in the population, its social causes and consequences, or its subjective meanings for individuals—pain reflects the social conditions, sociopolitical context, and health-related beliefs of a society. Pain is thus an important frontier for future sociological research.

The force dynamics of adjectival deontic modality in the mediatised register of the fatwa: a corpus cognitive–semantic analysis

This study offers new insights into how the cognitive–semantic analysis of adjectival deontic modality in the mediatised ‘fatwa’ register can be methodologically enhanced at both quantitative and qualitative levels. Drawing on the force-dynamics model originated by Talmy (1981 , 1988 ) and developed by Sweetser (1990) , the adjectivally modal expressions of obligation and permission have been investigated in an electronic corpus of fatwas (353,293 words in 1,440 texts). The research data is manipulated by the Wmatrix ( Rayson, 2003 ) corpus tool with a view to calculating the relevant modal keywords and generating their concordances; further, the interactive register analysis of the tenor in the fatwa discourse is provided in a way that ( i) facilitates the concordance reading of the adjectival keywords of deontic modality, and ( ii) examines the force dynamics underlying these adjectival keywords in terms of their modally interactive meanings. The study has reached three main findings. First, in the specialised corpus of electronic fatwas there are five keywords of adjectival deontic modality: obligatory, obliged, permissible, impermissible and forbidden. Second, the force dynamics of obligatory, obliged and permissible reveals enacting positive-compulsion with attitudinal variations of objective and subjective meanings towards real-world content (themes) and participants (questioner and questionee) in the mediatised register of the fatwa. Third, complementary to the second, the force dynamics of impermissible and forbidden reveals a set of debarring negative-restriction barriers of various forms, namely personal, collective, generic and topical, in the same fatwa register.

Extending Blatt’s two-polarity model of personality development to dissociative identity disorder: a theory-building case study

In this theory-building case study, we investigate Blatt’s two-polarity model of personality development according to which psychopathology is a consequence of an unbalance between the two developmental lines of interpersonal relatedness and self-definition. Anaclitic psychopathology, such as schizophrenia, histrionic, dependent, and borderline personality disorders, is associated with an excessive and rigid emphasis on interpersonal relatedness. In this theory-building case study, we examine whether this model can be extended to dissociative identity disorder (DID). The patient is a 23-year old Caucasian man who suffers from periodic episodes of dissociation. Consensual qualitative research for case studies is used to quantitatively and qualitatively describe the interplay between symptomatic and interpersonal evolutions throughout 41 sessions of supportive-expressive psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In line with the two-polarity model of personality development, close associations between symptoms of dissociation and dependent interpersonal dynamics were observed. Psychoanalytic interventions focusing on elaboration of the subjective meanings of (past and anticipated) dissociations, and on working through core interpersonal conflicts, are followed by transformations in the patient’s interpersonal stances and subjective well-being. No new dissociative episodes were reported during the follow-up assessment three and a half years after the completion of treatment. This case study demonstrates that DID is a form of anaclitic psychopathology as it is associated with a predominant tendency to interpersonal relatedness.

Between lexical verbs and auxiliaries

This chapter classifies Japanese V-V complexes into four major types on the basis of morphosyntactic criteria and shows that the formal taxonomy has semantic underpinnings. Type 1: lexical thematic compound verbs (lexical verb + lexical verb), Type 2: lexical aspectual compound verbs (lexical verb + delexicalized aktionsart verb), Type 3: syntactic compound verbs (verb phrase + delexicalized phasal verb), Type 4: V-te V complex predicates (verb phrase + delexicalized aspectual/attitudinal/benefactive verb). The delexicalized V2s in Types 2, 3, and 4 modify the event structures of the first verbs with an array of aktionsart, phasal, pragmatic, and subjective meanings that are largely comparable to those of Indian vector verbs. These delexicalized verbs, coupled with the auxiliary verbs of a fifth type designating politeness or contempt, are conceived of as “semilexical” categories representing intermediate stages of development on a verb-to-auxiliary grammaticalization cline.