The Satiation of Natural Curiosity

At the core of this essay is the idea that cognition is best described as a highly developed homeostatic device aiming to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between internal representations and changes in environmental conditions. The author emphasizes the fundamental role played by aesthetics in facilitating an accurate description of the human mind and introduce basic elements of a theory accounting for the influence of art on the cognitive system. A general bibliography is provided for the reader unfamiliar with the notions and desirous to pursue the analysis further.

Semiotic Landscapes in Commercial Communication

The analysis of a sample of characteristic commercial shop signs in today's Limassol, Cyprus, asserts their anchorage function as syncretic/polysemiotic texts relying upon the synergy of semiotic systems, in their commercial and broader informational function. The study of intersemiosis, i.e. of the translation between pictorial and linguistic semiotic systems and their hierarchy, can provide the basis for an in-depth semiotic study of the socio-economic and historical-aesthetic landscape of the city. This study offers a preliminary methodological separation of sign systems on the shop signs in Limassol, showing up the ways intersemiosis remains the standard historical communication method of shop signs since the advent of mass commerce.

Visual Graphetics and Language Ideology

There are certain sounds in the Greek-Cypriot dialect (henceforth GCD) that cannot be represented by characters from the Greek alphabet in its written form. Contradicting ideologies have made it impossible for Cypriots to settle on an official and common orthographic system, which has led to a rich variety of typographic conventions and many significant typographic drawbacks. This study aims to introduce a new set of typographic characters for the representation of the palato-alveolar GCD consonants that would provide ideal reading conditions for users (Unger, 2007; Noordzij, 2005; Bringhurst, 2005), while taking into consideration their political and cultural stances and needs. The new typographic system has been tested in two rounds of action research, providing both quantitative and qualitative data. The results show that the proposed system satisfies both the design and linguistic criteria of a successful written system as proposed by Sebba (2007), namely phonological accuracy, simplicity and readability.

Inside the Presidential Speechwriting Process

This paper incorporates content analysis of 495 drafts of 70 presidential speeches gathered from the archives of all ten presidencies from Franklin Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush to measure the changes to drafts of presidential speeches as they move through the White House speech drafting and review process. Studying the fluctuations in rhetorical scores demonstrates the degree to which forces within the presidency present different approaches to the rhetorical strategies of the White House. While the fluctuations revealed by content analysis may not tell us precisely about the motives of those within the process, they reveal significant differences in the approach of various staff members and help scholar better understand the inner workings behind the rhetoric of the bully pulpit.

Talking about NSA Wiretapping and Guantanamo

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, American leaders confronted difficult dilemmas involving civil liberties in the context of terrorism. Previous scholarship has made clear that exposure to threatening information may result in significant decreases in the public's willingness to support expansive civil liberties guarantees, yet relatively few researchers have systematically examined the content of information transmitted to the public during these debates. This study employs a computerized content analysis to investigate differences in broadcast media coverage following the reporting of significant post-9/11 security/rights dilemmas. The analysis focuses on two key periods: the reporting of President Bush's authorization of warrantless NSA wiretapping in late 2005 and the coverage of President Obama's 2009 proposal to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Findings suggest that broadcast sources diverged significantly in the amount of threatening information conveyed to the public during the reporting of key security/rights dilemmas.

IMF Fiscal Surveillance during the Eurozone Crisis

This study analyses the tone and information content of the IMF Article IV Staff Reports during the Eurozone crisis. Researchers create a tone measure denoted WARNING, based on the existing DICTION 7.1 Hardship dictionary. Researchers find that in the run-up to the current credit crises the warnings by the IMF were issued to Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia. In contrast, the more severely hit countries were not warned by the tone of the IMF Article IV Staff Reports. Researchers also conclude that the IMF interactions were more effective with low-income countries and with other emerging economies than they were with advanced and large emerging economies. Individual countries Article IV Staff assessments for Ireland and Spain indicated the warnings by the IMF were only in the years when the countries were deeply in recession and it was too late to provide any policy guidance.

If Pandora had a Blog

In the context of internet genre migration and proliferation, conventional taxonomies are no longer valid. To classify blogs between thematic and personal blogs is to blissfully ignore the legions of successful content prosumers, from political blogs to travel blogs, from food blogs to MAD (mom and dad) blogs, from fashion blogs to milblogs. With the recent explosion of social media, the digital landscape shifted and today there are more voices online than ever before. For blogs, however, the original purpose for communication has always been twofold: to inform and to emote. Computer-mediated communication may be overpopulated with a myriad of mixed forms and blogs might be dead or simply, difficult to reach with so much overlapping. Yet high-impact blogs still remain and are widely read. This paper explores the language of high-impact blogs, testing a new methodology for genre analysis to solve genre hybridity in the case of computer-mediated discourse.

News-Seekers vs. Gate-Keepers

Traditional research on gatekeeping examines how journalists, editors, and publishers construct and position information to become news. Opportunities for interactivity in online news outlets, however, are creating space for audience members to also play this role. This article analyzes the tone and scope of the stories appearing on the print front-pages in the online most-read lists in twelve news outlets. Findings reveal how news-seekers prefer serious soft news articles, stories that position readers prominently, and fact-laden updates. These trends are interpreted in light of an elitist approach to gatekeeping versus a more egalitarian mindset and the authors conclude that the articles promoted by news-seekers are far less frivolous than feared.

Rethinking “Oil Nationalism”

In the early twentieth century, Great Britain began a new wave of imperialism, focusing on areas in the Middle East strategic to enhance their trade. Iran was one of the countries in which Britain gained enormous power and influence. This power was derived from its control of Iranian oil resources, through the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). After many years of AIOC producing oil in Iran with Iranian Government support, a wave of economic nationalism led to the nationalization of AIOC in 1951 by the Iranian Prime Minister Musaddiq. The nationalization of the AIOC angered the British and seemed part of a growing pattern of pressure on their interests culminating in wresting Musaddiq from the control of the oil industry. As a result, in considering the above effects, by using AIOC as a case study, a textual analysis of the Chairman's Statement to Shareholders is conducted and the validity of the Statements is reappraised with reference to historical evidence.

Ontology Learning from Text

The goal of Ontology Learning from Text is to learn ontologies that represent domains or applications that change often. Manually learning and updating such ontologies is too expensive. This is the reason for the Ontology Learning discipline's emergence. The leading approach to Ontology Learning from Text is the Ontology Learning Layer Cake. This approach splits the task into four or five sequential tasks. Each of the tasks may use diverse methods, ranging from uses of Linguistic knowledge to Machine Learning. The authors review the shortcomings of the Ontology Learning Layer Cake approach and conclude that the approach is not viable for Ontology Learning from Text. They suggest alternative approaches that may help learning ontologies in an efficient, effective way.