Might Covid-19 Require Revision of Language Management?

Language management refers to state administrative regulations, policies, and activities on the language(s) use within educational, legal, and other public domains and to the scientific discipline which studies this phenomenon. We argue that during COVID-19 health emergency, the concept of language management might need revision as new topics and contexts have come to light within the discussion on language use amid the current pandemic. We explore key dimensions of this discussion representation in public communication, identify language-use related topics which have been mentioned in this discussion, study its levels and major actors. The texts from official sites of international organizations, national governments, public and non-profit social agencies, mass media were selected. The corpus of 238 sources with a total of 193478 words was subject to manual and computer-based thematic content coding and clustering. The results reveal language-use related topics within the information and discussion topics during the COVID-19, specify the levels at which the above topics discussed, outline those actors who initiate/take part/form the target audience within the discussion on language use during the COVID-19. The research also leads to the conclusion on the critical importance of such issues as the style of international and national leaderships addresses, production and timeliness of multilingual data on the pandemic, countermeasures against misinformation and anti-nation bias, development of protocols for the use of fact-based rational language. The mentioned items are considered as the key components of a language management framework for policy and actions which need a coordinated interagency response within local and global contexts during the COVID-19.

Peer review declaration

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Double-blind review First of all, the editor Iris will take a simple check to know whether the paper topics are included in the call-for-paper areas of this conference, if not, the submission will be rejected or seggested to other conferences. The included submissions will then be numbered and sent to the conference committee members(reviewers) for peer-review, the author names, emails and affiliations were removed constantly in this porocess. Each reviewer should fill in the reviewing form and 9 criterias in total are to be scored (5-point scale, with 1=lowest and 5=highest), including “Originality: Is the work relevant and novel”, “Motivation: Does the problem considered have a sound motivation”, “Repetition: Have significant parts of the manuscript already been published”, “Length: Is the content of the work of sufficient scientific interest to justify its length”, “Conclusion: Does the paper contain a carefully conclusion, summarizing what has been learned and why it is useful”, “Reference: Is the reference adequate and necessary”, “Structure: Is the manuscript structure(including the title, abstract and the content) rational”, “Language: Is the language accurate and readable”, “Diagrams, figures, tables and captions: Are they essential and clear”. Then the reviewer will give an overall evaluation or Detailed reviewing result(if any). In the end of the form, the final decision of Accept/Revision/Reject should be selected. No matter which selection the paper was marked, we send the whole reviewing form to the authors. When it is marked by Revision, we will have a double check of the revised papers before acceptation. • Conference submission management system: Yaseen Academy • Number of submissions received: 8 • Number of submissions sent for review: 7 • Number of submissions accepted: 4 • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100): 50% • Average number of reviews per paper: 3 • Total number of reviewers involved: 12 • Any additional info on review process: A preliminary review was conducted by the main editor and only the approved papers were sent for peer-reviewed. • Contact person for queries: Iris Zhang (Yaseen Academy, Hongshan District, Wuhan, Hubei, China, [email protected])

Mishearing as a Side Effect of Rational Language Comprehension in Noise

Language comprehension in noise can sometimes lead to mishearing, due to the noise disrupting the speech signal. Some of the difficulties in dealing with the noisy signal can be alleviated by drawing on the context – indeed, top-down predictability has shown to facilitate speech comprehension in noise. Previous studies have furthermore shown that strong reliance on the top-down predictions can lead to increased rates of mishearing, especially in older adults, which are attributed to general deficits in cognitive control in older adults. We here propose that the observed mishearing may be a simple consequence of rational language processing in noise. It should not be related to failure on the side of the older comprehenders, but instead would be predicted by rational processing accounts. To test this hypothesis, we extend earlier studies by running an online listening experiment with younger and older adults, carefully controlling the target and direct competitor in our stimuli. We show that mishearing is directly related to the perceptibility of the signal. We furthermore add an analysis of wrong responses, which shows that results are at odds with the idea that participants overly strongly rely on context in this task, as most false answers are indeed close to the speech signal, and not to the semantics of the context.

Can You Make Better Decisions If You Are Bilingual?

Studies have shown that “framing bias,” a phenomenon in which two different presentations of the same decision-making problem provoke different answers, is reduced in a foreign language (the Foreign Language effect, FLe). Three explanations have emerged to account for the difference. First, the cognitive enhancement hypothesis states that lower proficiency in the FL leads to slower, more deliberate processing, reducing the framing bias. Second, contradicting the previous, the cognitive overload hypothesis, states that the cognitive load actually induces speakers to make less rational decisions in the FL. Finally, the reduced emotionality hypothesis suggests that speakers have less of an emotional connection to a foreign language (FL), causing an increase in rational language processing. Previous FLe research has involved both FL and non-FL speakers such as highly proficient acculturated bilinguals. Our study extends this research program to a population of heritage speakers of Spanish (HS speakers), whose second language (English) is dominant and who have comparable emotional resonances in both of their languages. We compare emotion-neutral and emotion-laden tasks: if reduced emotionality causes the FLe, it should only be present in emotion-laden tasks, but if it is caused by cognitive load, it should be present across tasks. Ninety-eight HS speakers, with varying degrees of proficiency in Spanish, exhibited cognitive biases across a battery of tasks: framing bias appeared in both cognitive-emotional and purely cognitive tasks, consistent with previous studies. Language of presentation (and proficiency) did not have a significant effect on responses in cognitive-emotional tasks, but did have an effect on the purely-cognitive Disjunction fallacy task: HS speakers did better in their second, more proficient language, a result inconsistent with the reduced emotionality hypothesis. Moreover, higher proficiency in Spanish significantly improved the rate of correct responses, indicating that our results are consistent with the cognitive overload hypothesis.

Effects of Content Features and Lingual Form of Government Information Release on the Regulation of Public Negative Emotions During COVID-19 Epidemic in Wuhan

Background: Emergencies and their associated negative emotions have a great effect on public health. As a key part of the emergency management, government information release (GIR) not only meets the public's health information seeking, but also helps to eliminate the breeding and spreading of negative social emotions. Method: From the two aspects of content features and lingual forms, a regression model was built to explore the mechanism of GIR on the regulation of netizens' negative emotions by adopting the theoretical methods of content analysis, emotion calculation, and case analysis. Results: During the emergency outbreak, if the government can timely release information on the incident and respond to the public using rational language, netizens' negative emotions can be alleviated. During the emergency peak, the government should release the event progress, resolution and disposal information to improve the recognition of netizens and eliminate negative emotions. Conclusions: According to different stages of emergencies, the government should timely and reasonably utilize the attitude tendency, content type and lingual form of GIR to effectively regulate the negative emotions of netizens.

Zaum Box: New Music for Speaking Percussionist

Zaum Box is a collection of compositions for solo speaking percussionist setting transrational Russian futurist sound poetry called zaum. Zaum arose among a small interdisciplinary group of artists, writers, musicians and thinkers who invented a beyond-rational language as part of the radical disruption of traditional artistic and expressive forms, necessary to bring about the accelerated experience of a technologically-driven future. The subgenre of contemporary concert music for solo speaking instrumentalist dates from the 1970’s and has grown into a significant branch of the solo percussion repertoire. The composition of Zaum Box was founded on an extended period of research into zaum, futurism and Russian language. The complete set of compositions was produced as a limited-edition box set of uniquely formatted scores, which were realised by percussionist Katelyn Rose King in a set of ten videos. This article by the composer reviews all the phases of this project, including research and production, and examines the relationships between text, sound, music and theatricality in selected scores.

Cinema, If You Please

Cinema is a prime example of contemporary experience. However, film viewers seem infrequently to express their engagement with this experience in terms of rapt pleasure or plain delight. This book seeks to move beyond the purely rational language of meaning and “interest,” to regard some examples of cinematic work with the sort of pleasured rapture in which people partook in certain eighteenth century experiences of the aesthetic. In-depth analysis of sequences from Vertigo, A Matter of Life and Death, Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper, Blow-up, and many other films, urges readers to think and move beyond narrative storytelling; beyond contemporary cultural relevance; beyond moral and political stricture; and into a serious consideration of what it is to be “swept away” by a film. A guiding principle of this text is that new light can be thrown on beloved films by consideration of certain culturally established ways of achieving aesthetic delight that took form in or around the eighteenth century, including but not limited to: viewing Dutch oil paintings; listening to the music of Mozart; strolling through the English Pleasure Garden and public promenade, and reading of the voyages of Captain James Cook. Such socially organized pleasures are cast as historical foundations from which we might draw a better understanding of the pleasure and delight filmic moments can offer.