On a Country in Captive: A Review on Aruni Kashyap’s There Is No Good Time for Bad News

Aruni Kashyap’s poetry is an organic blend of powerful realities and raw emotions. While many of his contemporary poets devote their attention towards the technical nuances of poetry, Kashyap’s focus beams on what he wants to say rather than the how behind it. The form never overpowers the ideas that he ardently tries to convey through the perfectly cut lines of his debut poetry collection, There Is No Good Time for Bad News, which depicts the plight of a state that was brought to nemesis by the insurgency. His poems offer a spatial tour through the unexplored regions of the Northeast to the streets of Manhattan, where numerous lives are entwined into a single destiny. It resonates with the traumatic experiences and suppressed voices of the survivors of the Assam insurgency alerting the world to the brutality inflicted by the authoritarian state which deprives the people of a happy and peaceful life. The poet draws deep from the turbulent personal experiences of the people around him which he then fine-tunes into the shared experiences of the narrator, narrated and the reader. These verses are stained with the everyday violence encountered by the people of his homeland and unquestionably create a lasting impact, with the conversational style of language that is astutely employed by the poet.

Negative constructions in theory and practice: Ukrainian-Belarusian parallels

In the article the material of monumental texts of the Ukrainian language of the 16th – the first half of the 17th century (business documents, artistic, polemical, chronicle, scientific and confessional literature) and the studied monuments of the Old Belarusian language are studied the diachronic aspect of the use of case forms (generic or accusative) in negative verb constructions; their functioning in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages is analyzed. It has been revealed that in the monuments of the Ukrainian language of the specified period the accusative case in denial is inferior to the generic one. The use of certain syntactic models (parallel use of genitive and accusative forms in the pre- and postposition) was determined by the general style and place of writing the monuments. In studies of monuments of the Old Belarusian language in this position the genitive was fixed, and sometimes in negative constructions the accusative and the genitive were allowed at the same time. In the linguistics of the 20th – early 21st century philologists have repeatedly drawn attention to the peculiarities of the use of genitive and accusative cases in negative constructions both on the All-Slavic background and on the material of individual languages. Synchronously, it has been revealed that in the modern Ukrainian language the literary norm in negative constructions is the use of the genitive case instead of the accusative. However, there is no noticeable tendency to replace the accusative and the genitive in verbs with a negative participle not, as there are many cases of using the possessive case in literature and in everyday speech. On the other hand, there is no unanimity in the grammars of the modern Belarusian language on this issue: some scholars believe that both generic and possessive cases are possible in negative constructions, while others believe that only generic is possible. However, from a sample of analyzed works of Belarusian writers of the twentieth century, artistic and journalistic posts, as well as conversational style records, it can be argued that there are only a few cases of use of the accusative case, in particular in proverbs and sayings, and only the genitive is dominant in the negative constructions.

Weight management: insights from the science of human behaviour change

Helping animal owners to recognise and manage obesity in their animals is a particularly complex area of communications in veterinary medicine. Several studies have outlined the difficulty veterinary professionals face in such discussions, including frustration with the client, embarrassment (particularly if the owner is also overweight), and a sense of inevitable failure. However, obesity continues to be a serious and prevalent welfare problem in dogs, cats, and probably other companion animals as well — hence those discussions will only continue. This review considers veterinary surgeon–client interactions around obesity from the perspective of behaviour change psychology and motivational interviewing, in order to determine how veterinary surgeons and nurses can best assist owners. We consider how an approach based on a supportive and empathetic conversational style could be best suited to these discussions, leading to tailored weight management solutions. Nurses are ideally placed to work with owners in this way.

Lebanese conversational style and cultural values

This paper investigates the Lebanese conversational style in relation to Lebanese cultural values. The study adopts a discourse analysis approach based on interactional sociolinguistic methodology for the analysis of audio-recordings and semi-structured interviews involving Lebanese nationals (multi-active culture) and members of linear-active cultures, in addition to participant observation. Four distinctive linguistic features characterizing the Lebanese conversational style are identified: topic (focus on personal topics and abrupt topic shift), pacing (overlap and fast pace), expressive phonology and intonation, and formulaic language. The findings of this study reveal that the Lebanese have a high-involvement conversational style as a result of their cultural values which reflect those of high-context, multi-active and collectivist cultures. Furthermore, a connection is made between cultural and communicative differences which can account for instances of stereotyping and misunderstandings between members of the two cultural groups.

The Poetry of Darwish in the 1960s: Homeland and Exile

The early poetry of Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) is characterised by its overt resistance and confrontational tone against the Israeli forces. This research paper explores the themes of homeland and exile in Darwish’s poetry during the 1960s, tracing how the 1967 defeat has changed his poetic tone from the highly confrontational to the articulate conversational. It, therefore, contributes to the fields of literary criticism and Arab literary studies focusing on modern poetry of resistance. Although Darwish was still living on Palestinian lands during this period, he never felt at home, expressing his feelings of strangeness and suffering in a usurped land by force. The theoretical framework of Edward Said (1935-2003) is employed in this paper to question whether the themes of exile and homeland shape and reshape the Darwish’s understanding of resistance. Based on the analyses of this paper, Darwish’s poetry of resistance has dramatically changed due to his severe disappointment by the 1967 defeat, marking the collapse of Arab nationalism and its propaganda of the Arab homeland. Still, this shift does not affect Darwish’s rejection of the Israeli existence in Palestine. Instead, his poetry by the end of this decade still questions the violent and aggressive nature of the Israeli soldier despite Darwish’s intimate and human conversational style of his poems, thereby adding to the controversial analyses of Darwish’s poetics.

The Poetry of Darwish in the 1960s: Homeland and Exile

The early poetry of Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) is characterised by its overt resistance and confrontational tone against the Israeli forces. This research paper explores the themes of homeland and exile in Darwish’s poetry during the 1960s, tracing how the 1967 defeat has changed his poetic tone from the highly confrontational to the articulate conversational. It, therefore, contributes to the fields of literary criticism and Arab literary studies focusing on modern poetry of resistance. Although Darwish was still living on Palestinian lands during this period, he never felt at home, expressing his feelings of strangeness and suffering in a usurped land by force. The theoretical framework of Edward Said (1935-2003) is employed in this paper to question whether the themes of exile and homeland shape and reshape the Darwish’s understanding of resistance. Based on the analyses of this paper, Darwish’s poetry of resistance has dramatically changed due to his severe disappointment by the 1967 defeat, marking the collapse of Arab nationalism and its propaganda of the Arab homeland. Still, this shift does not affect Darwish’s rejection of the Israeli existence in Palestine. Instead, his poetry by the end of this decade still questions the violent and aggressive nature of the Israeli soldier despite Darwish’s intimate and human conversational style of his poems, thereby adding to the controversial analyses of Darwish’s poetics.

An Invitation to Combinatorics

Active student engagement is key to this classroom-tested combinatorics text, boasting 1200+ carefully designed problems, ten mini-projects, section warm-up problems, and chapter opening problems. The author – an award-winning teacher – writes in a conversational style, keeping the reader in mind on every page. Students will stay motivated through glimpses into current research trends and open problems as well as the history and global origins of the subject. All essential topics are covered, including Ramsey theory, enumerative combinatorics including Stirling numbers, partitions of integers, the inclusion-exclusion principle, generating functions, introductory graph theory, and partially ordered sets. Some significant results are presented as sets of guided problems, leading readers to discover them on their own. More than 140 problems have complete solutions and over 250 have hints in the back, making this book ideal for self-study. Ideal for a one semester upper undergraduate course, prerequisites include the calculus sequence and familiarity with proofs.

Conversational Style of Male and Female Characters in Game of Thrones Season 8

This study aims to find out what are conversational features used by male and female characters in Game of Thrones season 8, how it is represented in their conversation, and how power and social status affect characters' linguistic behavior. This study used a descriptive qualitative research design. The data of this study are twenty-two conversations taken from episode 1 up to episode 6 of season 8. There are four conversational style features discussed in this study: (1) talkativeness, (2) interruption, (3) compliments, and (4) minimal responses. The results show that all four features are found in the conversations, but they are manipulated differently by male and female characters. Also, the use of gender conversational style features in this case seems universal. Female characters are more talkative which confirms the theory of women’s language. Male characters also use female conversational style more frequently in terms of minimal responses and compliments. However, power plays an important role in this case since it enables characters to be more dominant which reflects that gender is not the only factor to control the conversation. Keywords: compliments, conversational style, interruptions, minimal response, talkativeness Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gaya percakapan yang digunakan oleh pemeran pria dan wanita dalam serial berjudul Game of Thrones Season 8, bagaimana gaya tersebut direpresentasikan dalam percakapannya, dan bagaimana kekuasaan dan status sosial mempengaruhi perilaku linguistik karakter. Penelitian ini menggunakan desain penelitian deskriptif kualitatif. Data dalam penelitian ini adalah dua puluh dua percakapan yang diambil dari episode 1 hingga episode 6 di season 8. Ada empat fitur gaya percakapan yang dibahas dalam penelitian ini: (1) tingkat keaktifan berbicara, (2) interupsi, (3) pujian, dan (4) tanggapan minimal. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa keempat fitur ditemukan dalam series ini, namun dipraktekkan secara berbeda oleh karakter pria dan wanita. Selain itu, penggunaan fitur gaya percakapan gender dalam hal ini terkesan universal. Karakter perempuan lebih banyak bicara yang mana mendukung teori gaya bahasa wanita. Karakter pria juga lebih sering menggunakan gaya percakapan wanita dalam hal memberikan tanggapan minimal dan pujian. Namun, kekuasaan memainkan peran penting dalam hal ini karena memungkinkan karakter lebih dominan dan menjelaskan bahwa gender bukan satu-satunya faktor yang mengendalikan percakapan. Kata kunci: gaya percakapan, interupsi, respon minimal, pujian

Gender differences in mother-child conversations about shame and pride in a Hungarian sample

Although meta-analytic reviews repeatedly found significant gender differences in the experiences of shame and pride throughout the life span, to date, gender differences in conversations about these emotions have not been studied. Our research was aimed at investigating the effect of child gender on maternal conversational style in and emotional content of mother-child conversations about shame- and pride-related past events in preschool years. Fifty four mother—preschool child dyads (52% girls, children’s age M = 70.36 months [SD = 8.13], mothers’ age M = 37.51 years [SD = 3.70]) from middle class Hungarian families were asked to talk about two past events, one in which children felt ashamed, and one in which they felt proud. The conversations were transcribed and coded for maternal conversational style and for emotional content. Maternal conversational style was indicated by maternal elaboration and evaluation of the child’s contributions. Emotional content was indicated by specific emotion terms, emotional behavior and emotional evaluations. In mother-son shame conversations, we found higher amount of negative emotional behavior. Boys also had longer conversations with their mothers, and mothers used more open-ended memory questions and more repetitions with boys in both shame and pride conversations. Girls had shorter contributions to pride stories than to shame stories, which was not the case for boys. Exploration of verbal socialization of shame and pride helps us to understand the development of individual differences in proneness to self-conscious emotions, and their implications for mental health.

COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION OF THE WORD IN THE SPEAKING

Speaking, by being a part of the paradigm of linguistic communication, with the help of the emotionally expressive coloring of the word conveys the imagery of human thought. The Kazakh people attached particular importance to oral transmission and intelligible presentation of thought. Therefore, the oral conversational style, nature and oratory of Kazakhs have always been distinguished by originality and artistry. These questions in oral speech are reflected through the word. The article examines the features of the speaking process in theoretical and pragmatic aspects of the word. The main goal is to analyze conceptual and semantic problems aimed at understanding the word as a communicative unit. The actual problems of the speaking process today are the issues of the two-sidedness of the speech act, the ways of communicating thoughts and the use of language norms.