The Role of Second Language Motivation in Constructing the Self: An Empirical Study to Investigate the Role of Motivational Trajectories in Negotiating and Reconstructing Academic Sojourners’ Desired Selves in the UK

<p style="text-align: justify;">This study is an endeavour to explicate the dissonance of the linguistic quality outcome of study abroad (SA) experiences by exploring the second language (L2) motivation of six academic sojourners in Manchester. A person-in-context approach revealed that developing intimate relationships with ‘native-speakers’, providing L2-mediated interaction opportunities with international students, and social approval were key determinants of the extent to which SA students were invested in social practices. Such social engagements were found to stem from second language motivation that is part of identity construction process. In addition, the thematic analysis of the narrative inquiries suggests that the global status of the English language defies the traditional conceptualisations of L2 motivation as most participants’ motivations were formed despite their negative or neutral attitudes towards the English community. The findings also endorse the role of the other as a robust motivational source by which learners can replenish their motivation stream, leading to social identity investment to construct their ideological selves. The paper concludes with a recommendation to re-interpret the conceptualisation of the Ideal L2 Self system because ‘native-speakers’ are rarely the closest parallels to L2 learners, and it should incorporate explicit intrinsic orientations. Furthermore, language institutions in SA contexts should direct their focus on establishing conversation clubs and hosting social events for SA students to provide a safe space for their identities to be developed, enacted and reconstructed.</p>

Research and Development of a COVID-19 Tracking System in Order to Implement Analytical Tools to Reduce the Infection Risk

The whole world is currently focused on COVID-19, which causes considerable economic and social damage. The disease is spreading rapidly through the population, and the effort to stop the spread is entirely still failing. In our article, we want to contribute to the improvement of the situation. We propose a tracking system that would identify affected people with greater accuracy than medical staff can. The main goal was to design hardware and construct a device that would track anonymous risky contacts in areas with a highly concentrated population, such as schools, hospitals, large social events, and companies. We have chosen a 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol for contact monitoring and mutual communication of individual devices. The 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol has many advantages such as a low price and higher resistance to interference and thus offers benefits. We conducted a pilot experiment to catch bugs in the system. The device is in the form of a bracelet and captures signals from other bracelets worn at a particular location. In case of contact with an infected person, the alarm is activated. This article describes the concept of the tracking system, the design of the devices, initial tests, and plans for future use.

Reactive and Asymmetric Communication Flows: Social Media Discourse and Partisan News Framing in the Wake of Mass Shootings

Marked by both deep interconnectedness and polarization, the contemporary media system in the United States features news outlets and social media that are bound together, yet deeply divided along partisan lines. This article formally analyzes communication flows surrounding mass shootings in the hybrid and polarized U.S. media system. We begin by integrating media system literature with agenda setting and news framing theories and then conduct automated text analysis and time series modeling. After accounting for exogenous event characteristics, results show that (a) sympathy and gun control discourses on Twitter preceded news framing of gun policy more than the other way around, and (b) conservatives on Twitter and conservative media reacted to progressive discourse on Twitter, without their progressive counterparts exhibiting a similar reactiveness. Such results shed light on the influence of social media on political communication flows and confirm an asymmetry in the ways partisan media ecosystems respond to social events.

Focus on One or More? Cultural Similarities and Differences in How Parents Talk About Social Events to Preschool Children

How parents talk about social events shapes their children’s understanding of the social world and themselves. In this study, we show that parents in a society that more strongly values individualism (the United States) and one that more strongly values collectivism (Japan) differ in how they talk about negative social events, but not positive ones. An animal puppet show presented positive social events (e.g., giving a gift) and negative social events (e.g., knocking over another puppet’s block tower). All shows contained two puppets, an actor and a recipient of the event. We asked parents to talk to their 3- and 4-years old children about these events. A total of 26 parent–child dyads from the United States (M = 41.92 months) and Japan (M = 42.77 months) participated. The principal dependent measure was how much parent talk referred to the actor of each type of social event. There were no cultural differences observed in positive events – both the United States and Japanese parents discussed actors more than recipients. However, there were cultural differences observed in negative events – the United States parents talked mostly about the actor but Japanese parents talked equally about the actor and the recipient of the event. The potential influences of these differences on early cognitive and social development are discussed.

Collective Mourning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Neurosociology

The COVID-19 pandemic has had diverse effects on society worldwide, forcing social scientists to rethink, understand, and address the complexity of the current situation. One thing is certain: the coronavirus is here to stay, and the pandemic has radically transformed social dynamics and social events, regardless of the type of society or the level of development of the countries. COVID-19 has forced all societies to reflect on their priorities and how to achieve human well-being. This implies designing different strategies to overcome the challenges of social development. One of the critical social challenges of COVID-19 is that society as a whole is going through a process called ‘collective mourning,’ as all citizens have lost someone or something-from lives of loved ones to daily routines and ways of life; society is in deep mourning. We are confident that we will overcome this pandemic, thanks to vaccines, but the social effects of COVID-19 will not be resolved with vaccines. The objective of this article is to raise awareness on the importance of using an emerging sociological perspective (neurosociology) to cope with collective mourning so that the state can prepare to provide integrated responses.

Health Behaviors During the COVID-19 Epidemic: Perspectives From Studying International Coping and Compliance

Control of the COVID-19 pandemic requires significant changes in people’s health behaviors. We offer this multidisciplinary perspective on the extent of compliance with social distancing recommendations and on coping with these measures around the globe in the first months of the pandemic. We present descriptive data from our survey of 17,650 respondents across 18 countries and territories in June 2020. The majority of respondents worried about contracting the virus. Nearly all engaged in at least some preventive behaviors, particularly handwashing, mask wearing, and avoiding social events. Most reported that it would be difficult to continue these behaviors for more than a few months, and about half reported feeling more anxious since the start of the pandemic. Commonly reported coping behaviors included news consumption, watching television, and sleeping. Our cross-national study highlights areas for developing and implementing health behavior interventions in the global fight to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Subjective Well-Being among Parents of Children with Special Educational Needs in Hong Kong: Impacts of Stigmatized Identity and Discrimination under Social Unrest and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest have posed a unique set of challenges to Hong Kong. During these two social events, parents of children with special educational needs (SEN) who were already experiencing caregiving pressure, likely coped with additional stressors; they were at a higher risk of mental health problems. A pre-registered, cross-sectional survey study was carried out among 234 Hong Kong parents of children with SEN, investigating the associations of stigmatized identity, perceived discrimination, and subjective well-being under the impact of these social events. Utilizing the Bayesian modelling, we found that highly self-stigmatized parents not only perceived more daily-life discriminating behaviors against them, but also reported having higher distress, more negative emotions, and lower life satisfaction. A higher perceived impact of social events and more discrimination were also associated with lower well-being. Additionally, stigmatized identity, perceived discrimination, and perceived impact of social events demonstrated unique associations with well-being variables, indicating they were substantial stressors. The study called out for public attention to the mental health conditions among parents of children with SEN and other disadvantaged groups in society.

Bayesian Framework for Multi-Wave COVID-19 Epidemic Analysis Using Empirical Vaccination Data

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the necessity of advanced modeling inference using the limited data of daily cases. Tracking a long-term epidemic trajectory requires explanatory modeling with more complexities than the one with short-time forecasts, especially for the highly vaccinated scenario in the latest phase. With this work, we propose a novel modeling framework that combines an epidemiological model with Bayesian inference to perform an explanatory analysis on the spreading of COVID-19 in Israel. The Bayesian inference is implemented on a modified SEIR compartmental model supplemented by real-time vaccination data and piecewise transmission and infectious rates determined by change points. We illustrate the fitted multi-wave trajectory in Israel with the checkpoints of major changes in publicly announced interventions or critical social events. The result of our modeling framework partly reflects the impact of different stages of mitigation strategies as well as the vaccination effectiveness, and provides forecasts of near future scenarios.

SOCIAL WORK WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF FAMILY REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT CHILDRENS’ DISABILITY

The article is dedicated to the research of family representations about childrens’ disabilities. Nowadays, special attention is paid to the targeted social services development and implementation that will correspond to the needs and demands of a certain client group. The relevance of the research is identifying different types of family representations will help to classify families with children with disabilities according to their attitudes towards social change and, accordingly, improve the quality of provided social services. The purpose of the article is to study the characteristics of family representations about childrens’ disabilities and determine their impact on the process of providing social services to families. The method or semantic differential was used to study the content of different types of family representations, which included the study of the attitudes towards childhood illness, disability status, and family. The observation was used to study the characteristics of family behavior in the process of providing social services. The result of the research there were found four types of family representations: «sacrificial», «compensatory», «perspective» and «adaptive». The first type considers himself as a victim of circumstances and tries to attract specialists to his problems, however does not want to take responsibility for it. The second type tries to compensate for all the restrictions, which were caused by disability, and joined all the activities. The third type of representations percepts disability as a normal characteristic of personality, trying to cope with life challenges. The fourth type of representation is highly adapted, though all the restrictions are perceived as a normal thing, which does not cause any problems. Families with each type of representation have different types of interaction with the social worker and act differently during social events.

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.