Narrativised simile and emotional responses to Brexit

This study looks at two figurative ways in which popular media and social media represent the publics response to the process of implementing Brexit. Specifically, it contrasts analogies, which construe the nature of Brexit in terms of the nature of the problems arising (e.g. the impossibility of taking the eggs out of the cake ), with tweets relying on simile to express emotional responses. The focus of this study is on the nature of simile, as the trope of choice in profiling emotional responses, and especially on narrativised similative constructions, such as Brexit is like X , where X as an extended narrative. These similes match the real story of Brexit, which lasted several years, with other narrative scenarios. Crucially, the scenarios created are focused on how the person feels about the story of Brexit (e.g. the long period of hesitation and indecisiveness) and not on political affiliations and arguments. In effect, Brexit is like X framing could be loosely paraphrased as Experiencing Brexit makes me feel similarly to experiencing a narrative such as X , where X is a made-up story, depicting unimportant social events or movie genres. The emotions targeted in the Brexit is like X examples (such as disappointment, boredom, feeling exasperated or bemused) are complex emotional reactions to a narrative failing to reach a satisfying resolution. From the perspective of figuration, Brexit is like X similes suggest the need to re-evaluate the nature of simile as a conceptual mapping and to consider the role fictive stories play in expression of emotions. Also, the complex syntactic forms used to represent the narrative structure of X provide the material for reconsidering simile as a construction.

Diseño gráfico para los materiales multimedia en los EVEA

El objetivo de esta investigación es elaborar una descripción argumentada sobre la aplicación de los fundamentos del diseño gráfico y audiovisual en los materiales multimedia para los entornos virtuales de enseñanza-aprendizaje, mediante el método de Cartografía Conceptual; investigación de tipo cualitativa por la cual es posible construir una explicación formal como resultado del análisis de artículos científicos, libros y ensayos que abordan el tema. El hallazgo principal sugiere que los fundamentos citados deberían tener mayor presencia en los materiales multimedia para ambientes educativos, de manera que el estudiante sea el centro de atención en el diseño, producción y evaluación de dichos materiales. Abstract The objective of this research is the development of an argumentive description of the application of graphic design and audiovisual rationale within multimedia materials in virtual learning/teaching environments, through conceptual mapping methods. This research is qualitative, thus allowing a formal construction of results from the analysis of scientific articles, books and essays which study this issue. The main finding suggests that the rationale above mentioned should have a greater presence in multimedia materials withing educative environments, so that the design, production and evaluation of said materials evolve around students.

Metaphor, Religion, and Gender: A Case Study of Metaphor Analysis in Islamic Motivational Speech Corpus

Metaphor plays a vital role in human communication and its presence is evident in various discourses across genres. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity in the study of metaphors used among different genders especially in religious discourse. Thus, the current study aims to examine metaphor use in religious motivational speeches between two (male and female) speakers. A corpus-based approach, that involved analysis of keywords, collocation, and concordance, was selected in identifying linguistic metaphors while conceptual mapping (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) was chosen to identify conceptual metaphors in both corpora. The main data consist of four speeches of Yasmin Mogahed (YM Corpus) and four speeches of Nouman Ali Khan’s speeches (NAK Corpus) retrieved from their YouTube Channels. #LancsBox 5.0 was chosen as the tool in analysing the language patterns. From the findings, it can be concluded Yasmin used a higher frequency of metaphors compared to Nouman. This is evident from the results in the collocation analysis in YM corpus that showed seven collocates (‘SWT’, ‘heart’, ‘foundation’, ‘healthy’, ‘fear’, ‘solid’, and ‘fill’) were predetermined to have signals of metaphorical expressions as compared to NAK corpus that only has four collocates (‘evil’, ‘syirik’, ‘religion’, and ‘faith’) with signals of metaphorical expressions. It is also apparent that the variety of metaphors used by Yasmin is more diverse (BUILDING, HUMAN/LIVING ORGANISM, TREE, and CONTAINER metaphors) as compared to Nouman that only uses COMPUTER FILE and CONTAINER metaphors. Yasmin’s choice of metaphors seems to be heavily influenced with the common metaphors used in the Qur’an, while Nouman’s lack choice of metaphors indicate his preference in explaining religious concepts through literal explanation instead of metaphorical one. Future studies are recommended to have a bigger sample to better differentiate the metaphor usage between genders. It is also imperative for future research to further examine the implications of different choice of metaphors on the construction of meaning in the Islamic motivational religious corpus between different genders.

Towards transformative WASH: an integrated case study exploring environmental, sociocultural, economic and institutional risk factors contributing to infant enteric infections in rural tribal India

Background Despite clear linkages between poor Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WASH) and enteric disease, the design of effective WASH interventions that reduce child enteric infections and stunting rates has proved challenging. WASH factors as currently defined do not capture the overall exposure factors to faecal pathogens through the numerous infection transmission pathways. Understanding the multiple and multifaceted factors contributing to enteric infections and their interconnectedness is key to inform future interventions. This study aimed to perform an in-depth holistic exploration of the environmental, socio-cultural, economic and institutional context surrounding infants to develop an integrated understanding of enteric infection drivers in rural tribal Banswara, in Rajasthan State, India. Methods This study relied on the triangulation of mixed-methods to capture critical influences contributing to infant enteric infection transmission. We conducted structured observations and exploratory qualitative research across 9 rural tribal villages, including transect walks, household observations, interviews with frontline health workers and group discussions with mothers. The emergent social themes and identified factors were mapped based on the scale of agency (individual, family or community-level factor) and on their nature (environmental, socio-cultural, economic and institutional factors). Results Infants aged 5 to 24 months were seen to have constant exposures to dirt via mouthing of soil, soiled hands, soiled objects and food. Rudimentary household environments with dirt floors and domestic animals lacked a hygiene-enabling environment that hindered hygienic behaviour adoption. Several unsafe behaviours failing to interrupt infants’ exposures to pathogens were captured, but caregivers reported a lack of self-efficacy skills to separate children from faecal exposures due to the rural farming environments where they lived. Conceptual mapping helped understand how wider-level societal factors such as socio-economic limitations, caste inequalities, and political corruption may have trickle-down effects on the caregivers’ motivation and perceived self-efficacy for improving hygiene levels around children, highlighting the influence of interconnected broader factors. Conclusions Conceptual mapping proved useful to develop an integrated understanding of the interlinked factors across socio-ecological levels and domains, highlighting the role of wider sociocultural, economic and institutional factors contributing to infant’s enteric infection risks. Future WASH interventions are likely to require similar integrated approaches that account for the complex factors at all levels.

Contextual congruency and novel metaphor integration

The goal of this paper is to further our understanding of how novel metaphor sentences are processed at a discourse level. Previous studies have focused on contextual issues during the processing of sentences containing conventional metaphors, with the effect of context on sentences with novel metaphors less studied. Accordingly, we determined the effects of contextual congruency on novel metaphor sentences in short texts by conducting two on-line reading experiments. We adopted Conceptual Mapping Model in order to create sentences with two types of novel metaphor (1) sentences with novel metaphors that follow mapping principles (considered to be comparatively less novel) and (2) sentences with novel metaphors that do not follow mapping principles (considered to be comparatively more novel). In Experiment 1, conventional metaphor scenarios were preceded by congruent novel metaphor sentences following mapping principles and those not following mapping principles. In Experiment 2, conventional metaphor scenarios were preceded by incongruent novel metaphor sentences following mapping principles and those not following mapping principles. Results showed that congruent novel metaphor sentences following mapping principles were read faster than those not following mapping principles in conventional metaphor scenarios (Experiment 1), while there was a marginal difference in reading times between incongruent novel metaphor sentences following and those not following mapping principles, but not in the expected direction (Experiment 2). Our research supports previous work that shows that congruency plays a large role in assimilating new information, and also provides further evidence for the role of mapping principles in the creation and processing of novel metaphors.

Transformation and evaluation of the MIMIC Database in the OMOP Common Data Model (Preprint)

BACKGROUND In the era of big data, the intensive care unit (ICU) is very likely to benefit from real-time computer analysis and modeling based on close patient monitoring and Electronic Health Record data. MIMIC is the first open access database in the ICU domain. Many studies have shown that common data models (CDMs) improve database searching by allowing code, tools and experience to be shared. OMOP-CDM is spreading all over the world. OBJECTIVE The objective was to to transform MIMIC into an OMOP database, and to evaluate the benefits of this transformation for analysts. METHODS We transformed MIMIC (version 1.4.21) in the OMOP format (5.3.3.1), through a semantic and structural mapping. The structural mapping aimed at moving the MIMIC data into the right place in OMOP with some data transformations. It parted into three phases: conception, implementation and evaluation. The conceptual mapping aimed at aligning the MIMIC local terminologies to the OMOP's standard ones. It consisted of three phases: integration, alignment and evaluation. A documented, tested, versioned, exemplified and open repository has been set up to support the transformation and improvement of the MIMIC community's source code. The resulting data set was evaluated over a 48-hour datathon. RESULTS With an investment of 2 people for 500 hours, 64% of the data items of the 26 MIMIC tables have been standardized into the OMOP CDM and 78% of the source concepts mapped to reference terminologies. The model proved its ability to support community contributions and was well received during the datathon with 160 participants and 15,000 requests executed with a maximum duration of one minute. CONCLUSIONS The resulting MIMIC-OMOP dataset is the first MIMIC-OMOP dataset available free of charge with real disidentified data ready for replicable intensive care research. This approach can be generalized to any medical field.