Metaphor, Embodied Realism, and Sacramental Truth

This chapter and the next provide an introduction to the field of cognitive linguistics. This chapter focuses on core concepts including conceptual metaphor, metonymy, polysemy, and prototype theory (conceptual blending is explored in Chapter 3). Based on this overview, the author argues that language “means” not through referential correspondence to objective, observer-independent reality but by prompting for embodied simulation on the part of hearers and readers. Language, then, is true insofar as these simulations are apt to reality as experienced by embodied human beings. The chapter proposes that this epistemological perspective of “embodied realism” is congruent with the critical realism endorsed by many recent theologians and with a sacramental worldview in which the material world can be the arena for God’s self-communication.

Perceptions versus performance: How routines, norms and values influence journalists’ protest coverage decisions

Protest paradigm researchers theorize that protests are delegitimized in news coverage because of journalistic culture and practices. This study explores the degree to which norms, routines, values and perceptions explain coverage patterns of protest. This mixed-methods study utilizes self-reflections from a survey of US journalists in four regions, alongside a content analysis of their coverage. Our study highlights how objective-observer role conceptions, routines driven by newsworthiness, and a perception-performance gap help explain protest coverage patterns. Importantly, journalists believed they did a better job covering protests than the content analysis showed, raising questions about what protest coverage should look like.

Propagandist or objective observer? Independent documentaries in/on Hong Kong's recent social movements

PurposeThis article explores recent changes in Hong Kong’s independent documentary filmmaking during a decade of escalating protests in the territory, focusing in particular on cinema's role in Hong Kong's “movement field.”Design/methodology/approachThe article focuses on Ying E Chi, an important distributor and promoter of Hong Kong independent films; the annual Hong Kong Independent Film Festival it organizes; three recent documentaries it distributes that are relevant to the 2019–2020 protests. The findings in this article are based on interviews, the textual analysis of relevant films and participant observation at film screenings.FindingsThis study argues that independent documentaries function in Hong Kong's “movement field” in three main ways: by contributing to and providing a space for civic discourse, by facilitating international advocacy and by engaging in memory work. Its contributions to civic culture, it asserts, are reflected in the films' observational aesthetic, which invites reflection and discussion. Public screenings and lengthy post-screening discussions are important ways in which these functions are realized.Originality/valueThis article builds on existing literature to propose a new way of thinking about cinema's role in Hong Kong social movements. It also analyses three important recent films that have not yet been covered much in existing academic literature.

Genre Maketh Dog?

In The New Biography, Virginia Woolf notes that there is a paradox inherent to the genre of biography, i. e. that of »truth« and »personality«. »[P]ersonality«, she argues further, can only be truly conveyed through aesthetic selection and manipulation of the facts of a life, through fiction. Animal biography challenges both of these categories: what is a true dog character and how close can an author come to a life-like depiction of it? Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography (1933) as well as the earliest English example of animal biography, Francis Coventry’s The History of Pompey the Little or The Life and Adventures of a Lap Dog (1751), are, in their own way, concerned with this issue. Influenced by their generic predecessors, the texts explore the narratological possibilities which an animal biography can offer, from satirical purposes to aesthetic objectives, from mere functionalisation to sentient animals. Woolf is essentially affected by contemporary discussions of biography and the challenges imposed by creating a dog »personality«. This is fundamental for the depiction of Flush as having an individual (anthropomorphised) character, rather than being depicted as a mere, and changeable type. Pompey the Little, in contrast, serves as a mostly silent and apparently objective observer of society, who, by watching and imitating his masters’ manners, offers eighteenth-century society a ruthlessly unembellished look into the mirror. Consequently, his animal character is, for satirical purposes, reduced to a mere type rather than a complex, not to mention »truth[ful]«, depiction of a nonhuman character. In this paper, we argue that genre expectations interact with two further aspects, i.e. literary history and historical as well as philosophical developments, and all three decisively influence how the two texts understand and relate human as well as non-human experience.

Fundamentals of metatheoretical understanding of nature based on comprehensive reflection of discourse

The study provides rationale for meta-theoretical interpretation of a special type of a literary text – the one based on ultimate reflexion. The analysis rests on “camp prose” works characterized by a significant degree of abstraction on the part of the subject of narration and the possibility of contaminating the objective reality phenomena and the ones of personal reflexive reality within the framework of an “objective” observer description. The authors specify the meta-language of the first level abstraction and the peculiarities of constructing the analyzed type of text as a certain acting scheme for both the literary text producer and the recipient. The proposed scheme incorporates a peculiar cognitive experience (featuring creativity, abstraction, intuition and reflexivity) and a new phenomenological reflexion that imply a new way of realizing different types of experience within the scope of reflexive reality. The texts based on ultimate reflexion are defined as verbal-psycho-emotive entities that can trigger a certain state of consciousness in the process of reading and objectify different sense overtones implied by the author.

The Views of the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the Austrian Football Association on legal liability for the conduct of supporters

The clubs legal responsibility for the behavior of supporters is used by UEFA to in-fluence the content of sports competitions, ideally abstracted from demonstrating by spectators any non-football ideas. Nevertheless, the regulation of the national associa-tions-members of UEFA also assumes the responsibility of the clubs and, sometimes, the supporters themselves for the unacceptable behavior of the latter. The experience of regulation this issue by the Austrian Football Association demonstrates mentioned approach. Therefore, it is interesting to make a comparison: how much the regulated responsibility of supporters affects to the regulation by the association a strict liability of clubs for the behavior of fans. Using the practice of CAS, we may see a presumptive approach on the basis of an assessment of the situation by “a reasonable and objective observer” for the objective resolution of a dispute.

Gender Bias in Pediatric Pain Assessment

Objective: Observer rating of pain is central to diagnosis and treatment in healthcare, especially in pediatrics. However, there are few studies examining potential biases in observer ratings of pediatric pain. Cohen et al. (2014) reported that adult participants rated a video of a child undergoing a needle stick as experiencing more pain when the child was described as a boy as compared to a girl, suggesting a possible gender bias. To confirm, clarify, and extend this finding, we conducted a replication experiment and follow-up study examining the role of explicit gender stereotypes in shaping such asymmetric judgments. Method: In an independent, pre-registered, direct replication and extension study with open data and materials (osf.io/6tj58), we showed participants the same video from Cohen et al. (2014), with the child described as a boy or a girl depending on condition. We then asked adults to rate how much pain the child experienced and displayed, how typical the child was in these respects, and how much they agreed with explicit gender stereotypes concerning pain response in boys versus girls. Results: Similar to Cohen et al. (2014), but with a larger and more demographically diverse sample, we found that the ‘boy’ was rated as experiencing more pain than the ‘girl’ despite identical clinical circumstances and identical pain behavior cross conditions. Controlling for explicit gender stereotypes eliminated the effect. Conclusions: Explicit gender stereotypes—e.g., that boys are more ‘stoic’ or girls are more emotive—may bias adult assessment of children’s pain.