Constructing Religious Harmony through Rhetoric: An Analysis of Vivekananda's Selected Speeches

This research article reports how rhetorical elements used in the speeches of Swami Vivekananda at World Parliament of Religions supports to construct the religious harmony in the world. This study is based on qualitative interpretative research design and employs the theoretical ideas based on Richard Andrews to interpret the various rhetorical devices in his selected speeches. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the use of arguments in his speeches by using the idea developed by Stephen Toulmin and his visual rhetoric is analyzed using the idea based on Tracey Owens Patton. Findings show that use of rhetorical elements in his speeches contributes to make his arguments stronger to construct the religious harmony among the world religions despite the apparent contradiction among them. He incorporated rhetorical devices in his speeches such as metaphors, similes, parallelism, appropriate dictions and repetitions to persuade the audience to establish his claim more effectively by making simple and understandable. His rhetoric of spiritualization of religions with the support of interpretation of Vedic philosophy contributes to integrate the world religions by stating that every human being has been created equally having the body and immortal spirit with them. His visual rhetoric including attractive bodily appearance, confidence and commanding voice helped him to attract the attention of the large mass of audience towards him. Findings of this article contribute to a better understanding that appropriate use of rhetorical elements supports to make effective communication and helps to persuade the audience to achieve the goal.

Self-body recognition and attitudes towards body image in younger and older women

Despite the fact that ageing causes dramatic changes in bodily appearance, little is known about how self-body recognition changes across life span. Here, we investigated whether older, compared to younger women, differed in the ability of recognising their own than other women’s body parts and whether this effect was associated to negative body image dispositions. Twenty-eight young (Mage: 25.93 years, SDage = 4.74) and 25 middle-aged (Mage: 54.36 years, SDage = 4.54) women completed an implicit task consisting of visual matching of self and others’ body parts and an explicit self–other body discrimination task. Stimuli comprised of images of body parts of the participant and of other age- and BMI-matched models, which were presented in the original size or modified to look rounder or thinner. Measures of adiposity (i.e. BMI), body image concerns and appearance-related worries for specific body parts and for the whole body were also collected. Whilst both groups showed a self-body advantage in the implicit, but not in the explicit task, the advantage was notably bigger for the younger group. However, the implicit self-advantage was higher in those middle-aged women that displayed more body image concerns and worries for specific body parts. Furthermore, the two groups were comparably less able in recognising their body parts when presented thinner as compared to rounder or in their actual size. Overall, these findings open the possibility that, as women age, their implicit self-recognition abilities may decline in association with more negative body image dispositions.

When Near Becomes Far

When Near Becomes Far explores the representations and depictions of old age in the rabbinic Jewish literature of late antiquity. Through close literary readings and cultural analysis, the book reveals the gaps and tensions between idealized images of old age on the one hand, and the psychologically, physiologically, and socially complicated realities of aging on the other hand. The authors argue that while rabbinic literature presents various statements on the qualities and activities that make for good old age, on the respect and reverence that the elderly should be awarded, and on harmonious intergenerational relationships, it also includes multiple anecdotes and narratives that portray aging in much more nuanced and poignant ways. These anecdotes and narratives relate, alongside fantasies about blissful or unnoticeable aging, a host of fears associated with old age: from the loss of beauty and physical capability to the loss of memory and mental acuity, and from marginalization in the community to being experienced as a burden by one’s own children. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different aspect of aging in the rabbinic world: bodily appearance and sexuality, family relations, intellectual and cognitive prowess, honor and shame, and social roles and identity. As the book shows, in their powerful and sensitive treatments of aging, rabbinic texts offer some of the richest and most audacious observations on aging in ancient world literature, many of which still resonate today.

The authors have requested that this preprint be removed from Research Square.

Purpose: Despite the fact that ageing causes dramatic changes in bodily appearance, little is known about how self-body recognition changes across life span. Here, we investigated whether older, compared to younger women, differed in the ability of recognising their own than other women’s body parts and whether this effect was associated to negative body image dispositions. Methods: Twenty-eight young (Mage: 25.93 yrs, SDage = 4.74) and 25 middle-aged (Mage: 54.36 yrs, SDage = 4.54) women completed an implicit task consisting in visual matching of self and others’ body parts and an explicit self-other body discrimination task. Stimuli comprised of images of body parts of the participant and of other age- and BMI- matched models, which were presented in the original size or modified to look rounder or thinner. Self-report measures of abnormal body image concerns and appearance-related worries for specific body parts were also collected. Results: Whilst both groups showed a self-body advantage in the implicit, but not in the explicit task, the advantage was notably bigger for the younger group. However, the implicit self-advantage was higher in those middle-age women that displayed more abnormal body image concerns and worries for specific body parts. Furthermore, the two groups were comparably less able in recognizing their body parts when presented thinner as compared to rounder or in their actual size. Conclusions: Overall, these findings open the possibility that, as women age, their implicit self-recognition abilities may decline in association with more negative body image dispositions.

Music Theory’s Therapeutic Imperative and the Tyranny of the Normal

Traditional music theory rationalizes abnormal musical elements (like dissonant or chromatic tones or formal anomalies) with respect to normal ones. It is thus allied with a medical model of disability, understood as a deficit or defect located within an individual body, and requiring remediation or cure. A newer sociocultural model of disability understands it as a culturally stigmatized deviance from normative standards for bodily appearance and functioning, analogous to (and intersectional with) race, gender, and sexuality as a source of affirmative political and cultural identity. The sociocultural model of disability suggests the possibility of a disablist music theory, one that subverts the traditional therapeutic imperative and resists the tyranny of the normal. Disablist music theory is music theory without norms, and without a commitment to wholeness, unity, coherence, and completeness—those fantasies of a normal, healthy body. Instead, disablist theory brings the seemingly anomalous event to the center of the discussion and revels in the commotion and discombobulation that result: it makes the normal strange. In the process, it opens up our sense of what music theory is and might be.

Academic and non-academic life stressors and their impact on psychological wellbeing of medical students

<abstract><sec> <title>Objectives</title> <p>Among medical students, depression, anxiety, and stress (DAS) are key public wellbeing challenges that require epidemiological research. We aimed to evaluate potential sources of these psychological disturbances and assess the contribution of academic and non-academic life stressors in psychological morbidity among medical students.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Methods</title> <p>This exploratory questionnaire-based survey was conducted in a Saudi Arabian public sector medical college. A total of 231 medical students were enrolled and completed the depression, anxiety, and stress scale-21 (DASS-21) questionnaire.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Results</title> <p>More than half of the medical students, 129 (55.8%), had depression, 106 (45.9%) students had anxiety, and 87 (37.7%) students had stress. Academic achievement was the largest explanatory factor for depression and stress, whereas bodily appearance constituted the largest explanatory factor of anxiety among the study sample. Academic and non-academic stressors score was significantly associated with depression (adjusted Odds Ratio, aOR = 1.13, 95% CI 1.07–1.19), anxiety (aOR = 1.07, 95% CI 1.03–1.12), and stress (aOR = 1.12, 95% CI 1.08–1.17).</p> </sec><sec> <title>Conclusions</title> <p>Medical students have a high incidence of negative emotional states. These negative psychological states were explained by academic achievement and bodily appearance. The studied stressors influenced medical students' psychological wellbeing.</p> </sec></abstract>

The Optics of Bodily Deviance: Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s Path to Public Office

Through an account of New Spanish playwright Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza’s path to secure an administrative position for himself in seventeenth-century Spain’s Hapsburg administrative apparatus, this essay discusses the cultural and social conditions that led to the administration’s persistent preoccupation with its public image and, in particular, with the safeguarding of its authority. I argue that the instances of public contempt expressed by his peers – on account of the severe bodily deformity Ruiz de Alarcón suffered from – played a decisive role in the decision of the Council of the Indies to ban the playwright from any public office. The council’s behaviour reflects the restraining influence that the Hapsburg administration exercised over the physical appearance of state officials. This essay also discusses how Ruiz de Alarcón challenges the logic behind this disciplining of bodily appearance in his play Las paredes oyen.

Surveillance in Practice: Operators’ Collective Interpretation of CCTV Images

CCTV surveillance is a cultural practice and collective effort. CCTV not only involves a technical assemblage that is used to discipline the surveilled, it is also a social assemblage in which the informal practices of operators play a major role in the multiple interpretations of images. This paper provides insights into the daily work practices and discourses of CCTV operators and their supervisors through observations of and interviews in the control room of public CCTV surveillance in Rotterdam. By providing a better understanding of the role of people in socio-technical assemblages, this paper contributes to the discussion on human mediation in computerized networks. The paper contributes to the expanding literature on surveillance as a cultural practice by combining insights on social sorting with insights on collective evaluation of unfolding situations—i.e., how group dynamics within the control room influence how people are “judged.” Building on Goffman’s frame analysis, the paper reveals the crucial role of talk and humor in re-performing what happens on the streets as well as evaluating situations and the people watched. Moreover, it discusses how these collective re-performances of what is being watched both reproduce and reshape “othering” practices within the control room. The paper shows how humorous utterances play an important part in overcoming hierarchy and collectively managing emotions, and explores how this humor influences profiling on the basis of bodily appearance.

Bodies as behavior

The Dinocrates-Alexander episode of book 2 supplies the reader with a complex heuristic for differentiating good architects from bad. Vitruvius claims to rely on his knowledge and writing in anticipation of his own success, whereas he attributes Dinocrates’ renown to an attractive bodily appearance. A close intertextual reading of the passage threaded through Livy 1 suggests that Alexander and Dinocrates violate the ideal architect–autocrat relationship. The manner in which one interprets the episode indicates whether one can distinguish altruism from ambitio and the like. Alexander’s appetitious reaction to Dinocrates and his body is further problematized by the latter’s nudity and evocation of Hercules and athletic victors. Discussions in the rhetorical handbooks indicate that arguments concerning a plaintiff’s or defendant’s bodily state can support arguments about his character. The handbooks seem to presume a widespread valorization of what the Greeks would call καλοκἀγαθία‎, but there is an implicit acknowledgment that beauty dissimulates vice. The athletic and/or gladiatorial body is therefore a particular locus of contestation and controversy, as Cicero’s (and Sallust’s) depictions of Catiline show. On the Greek side, writers as early as Tyrtaeus and Xenophanes had suggested that wisdom is better than strength. Isocrates frames the issue politically, and Vitruvius takes it one step further. Following the Roman handbooks that viewed the cultivation of bodily attributes (vs. the fortuitous possession of those attributes) as the primary signifier of character, Vitruvius suggests that athletes are ethically and politically bankrupt, while writers deserve triumphs and apotheosis. Archimedes, Socrates, and even Vitruvius himself provide counterexamples.

Isolated Bilateral Pinna Swelling: A Rare Initial Presentation of Leprosy

BACKGROUND: Leprosy or Hansen disease is a chronic infectious disease that causes social stigma due to its deforming bodily appearance and physical disability. It has a wide spectrum of presentation affecting diagnosis.CASE REPORT: A 21-year-old man who presented with chronic isolated bilateral pinna swelling as a result of leprosy is reported. The bilateral pinna swelling started as multiple shiny papules with an erythematous background and progressively became hyperpigmented and lobular over two years. This rare presentation of leprosy poses initial diagnostic difficulties, leading to misdiagnoses by various health care professionals. Diagnoses ascribed include eczema, insect bite and perichondritis. A suspicion of leprosy was raised when hyperaesthetic hypopigmentation of skin started to appear on the body after two years, with worsening of the pinna swellings. This was confirmed by identification of Mycobacterium leprae in slit skin smear test and skin biopsy.CONCLUSION: Isolated involvement of pinna in a patient without lesions in other body parts is an unusual initial presentation of leprosy. However, leprosy should be kept as a rare differential diagnosis of isolated lesions on the ear in patients not responding to conventional treatment.